"Engage your core!" I called out. "You're relying too much on upper body strength. Balance comes from your center."
"My center is telling me this is a bad idea," someone groaned from the ice.
"Your center is wrong. Try again."
I worked with them individually, adjusting stances and providing encouragement laced with just enough sarcasm to keep them engaged. Most of them were actually trying now, the mockery replaced by determination.
I spent extra time with Blake, who struggled more than the others because his size worked against the kind of balance these moves required.
"You're fighting your own body," I said, skating up beside him. "You're trying to muscle through it instead of finding your center of gravity."
"I don't think I have a center of gravity," Blake muttered. "I think I have a center of mass that's slowly pulling me toward the earth's core."
I laughed. "Let me help."
I placed my hands on his hips, adjusting his posture, demonstrating how to distribute his weight differently. We were both acutely aware of the contact. Blake's body went rigid under my hands, his breath catching slightly.
Professional, I reminded myself. This is professional. This is no different than when your coach adjusted your positions.
Except my coach had never been a six-foot-four hockey player with a body that felt like touching warm granite and eyes that looked at me like I was something precious and breakable.
"Feel that?" I said, pressing against his obliques. "That's where you want to engage. Think of it like anchoring yourself to the ice."
"Anchoring," Blake repeated, his voice slightly strained.
"Try the spiral again."
He did. This time, he made it almost halfway through before his balance wobbled.
"Better," I said. "Again."
By the end of practice, the team was exhausted, humbled, and notably quieter about their mockery. Coach Williams looked impressed, which seemed to be his equivalent of enthusiastic approval.
As I left the ice, I caught Nolan watching me with an expression that might have been respect, Logan with something that looked like fascination, and Blake with an intensity that made my skin prickle with awareness.
That evening, I returned to the house exhausted and starving. The smell hit me the moment I opened the door—something that made my mouth water and my stomach growl.
I found Blake in the kitchen, surrounded by ingredients that suggested he was preparing for a cooking show rather than feeding college athletes. Classical music played from a speaker on the counter. He was chopping vegetables with the same methodical precision I used for everything, his massive hands surprisingly delicate with the knife work.
"Is this what you do with your free time?" I asked from the doorway. "Cook elaborate meals while listening to Chopin?"
Blake jumped, nearly dropping the knife. "It's Brahms," he said automatically, then looked embarrassed. "And yes. I like cooking. It's... calming."
"Brahms. Right. Obviously." I had no idea if it was Brahms or Chopin or Beethoven. Classical music was not in my skill set.
"Are you hungry?" Blake asked, already moving to grab an extra plate. "I always make too much."
I looked at the spread of ingredients, the carefully measured spices, the simmering pots on the stove. "You cooked all of this?"
"My grandmother's recipe," he said softly. "She taught me when I was young. Before she passed."
There was something in his voice that made me step further into the kitchen. "Tell me about her."
Blake hesitated, then began talking as he cooked. He told me about being adopted as an infant, about growing up bigger than everyone else, about how his size made him valuable for hockey but isolated him socially. How his adoptive grandmother had taught him to cook as a creative outlet, a way to make something beautiful instead of just being the enforcer on ice.
"I want to open a restaurant someday," he admitted, stirring a pot. "After hockey, if I can."
"That's amazing," I said. "What kind?"
