Page 25 of Her Coach

Instead I found myself gravitating toward the stands.

Just for a minute, I told myself. I’d watch for a minute and then get to work.

I slipped into the second row and pulled my jacket tighter around me.

Colton was in the middle of it, on skates, moving the guys through a passing drill I didn’t know the name of but could tell immediately was more complicated than anything the last coach had run. He wasn’t barking from the boards. He was out there with them, adjusting angles, positioning guys with his hands on their shoulders, demonstrating footwork and then stepping back to watch them replicate it.

Most coaches I’d seen used the clipboard as a shield. Colton had left his on the boards twenty minutes ago by the looks of it.

Moose fumbled a pass and braced for the reaction. The old coach would have blown his whistle three times and run them in circles for five minutes.

Colton skated over, said something I couldn’t hear, and demonstrated the footwork again. Slowly. Like it mattered that Moose got it right, not just that he got it done.

Moose tried it again.

Better.

Colton tapped the boards twice and moved on without making a thing of it, which somehow made it a bigger thing than if he’d said anything at all. I watched Moose’s shoulders drop about an inch — not deflated, just settled. Like he’d been given permission to stop bracing for impact.

I’d seen my father do that exact thing from these same stands.

I sat with that for a second.

Rhett was running a different line through something at the far end of the ice. Colton had split them up without me noticing, working two drills simultaneously, moving between them like he had eyes on all twenty-three guys at once. Which maybe he did. He’d been watching the team at the bar Friday night with the same kind of attention — quiet, thorough, not missing a thing.

Jett tried to cut a corner on the drill and Colton’s whistle went off before Jett’s skate had fully pivoted. Sharp. Once. Jett reset without a word and ran it again clean.

I realized I’d been sitting here for forty minutes.

I also realized I still hadn’t gone to my office.

I looked down at my coffee cup. Then back at the ice. Colton had gathered them all at center now and was talking, low enough that I couldn’t catch the words, and every single one of them was facing him. Not because they had to. Because he had the kind of presence that made you want to know what he was going to say next.

I knew what I was doing. I was fully aware of what I was doing. I was sitting in the stands of my father’s arena on a Saturday morning watching a man I had absolutely no business watching with the kind of attention I was paying him, and I had been doing it for the better part of an hour.

He is not for you, I told myself. He is not for you and you know exactly why.

I stood up and made myself walk toward my office.

I tried not look back at the ice on my way out. But I failed.

Our eyes caught and he smiled. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as I smiled back and quickly turned around.

I made it approximately twelve steps down the hallway before my phone rang.

"Why are you at the arena on a Saturday?" Dani said by way of greeting.

I dropped into my office chair. "How do you know I'm at the arena?"

"Because you just posted a story of the ice from the stands and tagged the arena location like you weren't even thinking about it."

I looked at my phone. I had absolutely done that.

"I had signage proofs to drop off," I said.

"Mhm."

"And the sponsorship display cases needed checking."