“He screws the timing. If I come across anyway, we stack the lane. If I hold lower, he can recover above me or at least not turn it into a three-man traffic jam.”
“Good. Next.”
He did not react to the word the way most players did. No smile. No preening. His focus sharpened harder, like approval was not the reward, only proof that he had one more standard to meet.
I showed him four more clips. He got three clean. On the fourth, he chased the shiny option.
“That seam is there,” he said before I could ask.
“It is.”
“So if I delay and draw F2, Milo has the backside.”
“Does Milo know he has the backside?”
Jace opened his mouth. Closed it. Watched the clip again when I rewound it.
His fingers tightened around the pen. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never showed low. I went straight into the delay, so their center doesn’t bite, and Milo thinks I’m still the first option.”
“Again.”
This time he caught it before the clip reached the turnover.
“Shit,” he said quietly. “I do that a lot.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me, and there was no anger in it. Frustration, but not at me. At the pattern. At the fact that the evidence existed on a screen where instinct had nowhere to hide.
“I hate video,” he muttered.
“No, you hate being slowed down long enough to see the mistake.”
His eyes flicked up.
I should not have enjoyed how quickly the room tightened when I said things like that to him. I should not have noticed his breathing change. I should not have noticed the rough stubble along his jaw, the faint pink mark at the side of his neck from his hoodie collar, the way his throat moved before he answered.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Not maybe.”
His gaze dropped to the notebook. “Yeah.”
I let that sit. Then I closed the clip.
“On the ice,” I said, “you’re running the first progression.”
His head snapped up. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“With the group?”
“With Lowell’s line.”
