“Yeah.”
“Then show me your wrist shot.”
I blink. “What?”
“Your wrist shot. I want to see how you shoot.”
I take the puck he passes me and line it up, slightly annoyed at being tested like a freshman. I wind up and release — clean, fast, top corner. The sound of it hitting the net echoes in the empty rink. Jamie watches it, following every move, but saysnothing.
“Again. But don’t muscle it so much. Let your blade do the work. Gently.”
“I’ve been taking shots since I was six.”
“I know. Again.”
I bite down on the response trying to claw its way out of me and take the next puck. This time I do what he says, slow the motion down, loosen my grip, and focus on the follow through.
It goes in cleaner than the first one.
I hate that it does.
“Your instinct is to overpower everything,” Jamie says, skating a slow circle around me in a way that should feel condescending and somehow doesn’t. Close enough that I can feel the air move every time he passes. “It works because you’re good enough to make it work. But it’s going to stop working at the next level and you know that. Or you might hurt yourself at some point.”
I turn to face him. “Is that why I’m not playing center?”
His nostrils flare. “Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
He looks at me for a beat too long. That serious face that gives nothing away. Then he passes me another puck.
“Again.”
We go like that for almost an hour. Him watching, correcting, me following and occasionally arguing and then following anyway because the corrections are working and I’m too honest with myself to pretend otherwise.
Even though it physically hurts me to not be a dick about it.
Every adjustment is physical first — he shows me before he tells me, uses his own body to demonstrate what mine is doing wrong, and there's a precision to it, like a low electriccurrent. The way he positions himself relative to me. The way he watches. The way his eyes track every movement I make like he's reading something important in it.
It’s intense, in a way that shocks every nerve ending.
At one point he skates behind me. I’m set up to shoot and I’m aware of his presence everywhere, the warmth of another person in the cold, close enough that the air between us is a few degrees hotter than the air anywhere else on the ice.
His hands find my shoulders and I shudder, such a small movement it could easily be missed. His palms flat against my shoulder pads, fingers wrapping over the top, thumbs pressing into the space between my shoulder blades to adjust my angle. I feel the pressure through the padding, through the jersey, and my whole back registers it like a signal.
He speaks close to my ear like he has no idea what he’s doing to me right now. Low. Focused. Walking me through the footwork, the weight distribution, a thorough explanation of what I'm doing wrong. His deep voice at that proximity raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I can feel him breathing.
Swear I could taste the cold on his skin. The sweat and exertion and something that’s just Jamie underneath.
His thumbs drag lower for a second before pressing in again, correcting my posture, and I become violently aware of the space between us. Or the lack of it. The line of his chest barely not touching my back. The way my body keeps trying to lean into it like it wants more.
“Now shoot,” he says, against my neck.
I miss the shot by two fucking feet.
“You okay?” he asks, brows knitting together.
He hasn’t moved back yet. Still too close.
