The princes playbook, p.12
The Prince’s Playbook, page 12
“Alright,” Kevin called out. “Let’s run the power play one more time. Focus on timing and positioning.”
The drill resumed, but my attention kept drifting to Adan despite my best efforts. The way he moved on the ice, confident and powerful and completely in his element. The way his mouth looked when he called out to his teammates. The memory of how those lips had felt against mine, soft and warm and more perfect than I’d ever imagined.
He caught me watching him and held my gaze for a moment. There was something in his expression that looked like a question, or maybe a challenge. Something that suggested he was thinking about last night too, that he wasn’t planning to pretend it had never happened.
I looked away first, focusing on my clipboard with desperate intensity.
This couldn’t continue. The awareness, the tension, the way my body responded to his presence despite every rational thought in my head… It was going to destroy my ability to function as his coach. I needed to find a way to compartmentalize, to separate my professional responsibilities from the feelings that had been acknowledged but could never be acted upon again.
But as practice continued and I watched Adan execute drill after drill with growing confidence and skill, I couldn’t shake the memory of how right it had felt to kiss him. How natural it had seemed in that moment to close the distance between us, to give in to the attraction that had been building for months.
And if he kissed me again, I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to pull away. The realization should’ve terrified me. Instead, as I watched him score a perfect goal during the final drill of practice, it only made me want him more.
Practice ended with the usual routine of equipment cleanup, a brief team meeting, and players heading off to classes or study hall. I busied myself with organizing pylons and gathering pucks, anything to avoid the moment when Adan might approach me for individual feedback or casual conversation.
But as the arena emptied and I was left alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t escape the truth that had been building since last night’s kiss.
I wanted him. This went beyond mere physical attraction. It was something deeper and more dangerous. Something close to needing him, craving him. Something that made the thought of maintaining appropriate distance feel like torture.
And I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do about it.
14
ADAN
A week had passed. Seven days since I’d kissed Nils in his living room, since he’d kissed me back like he’d been thinking about it as much as I had, since everything between us had changed in the space of a few seconds.
Seven days of him acting like it had never happened.
Seven days of him keeping his distance—painfully so.
Seven days of me wondering if I’d made a mistake by telling him, if I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I slammed my locker shut harder than necessary, the metallic clang echoing through the mostly empty space. Most of the team had already left after practice, but I’d stayed behind to work on drills that should have been getting easier, not harder.
“You okay?” Tank asked from across the room, pulling his street clothes out of his locker. “You’ve been in a shit mood all week.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been playing like garbage, and that’s not like you.”
He wasn’t wrong. My positioning had been off, my shot selection questionable, my timing completely fucked. All the technical improvements I’d made over the past two months seemed to be evaporating, and I knew exactly why.
Nils had stopped coaching me. Really coaching me.
Oh, he still showed up to our sessions, still called out instructions from across the ice, still went through the motions of individual training. But the hands-on corrections, the physical adjustments that had been making such a difference in my game—all of that had disappeared.
He wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t even get close enough to demonstrate proper technique the way he used to. Instead, he’d stand ten feet away and describe what I was doing wrong, leaving me to figure out the corrections on my own.
“Maybe you should talk to Coach,” Tank suggested, sitting down to tie his shoes. “Your individual coaching doesn’t seem to be working as well as it was.”
“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just working through some technical adjustments.”
“If you say so. But you might want to figure it out soon. We’ve got Syracuse next weekend, and they’re gonna be gunning for us after what happened last time.”
Tank left, and I sat alone in the locker room trying to process the fury that had been building all week. It wasn’t just the coaching—though that was bad enough. It was the way Nils looked through me during team practices, the careful distance he maintained whenever we were in the same space, the complete absence of the easy friendship we’d been building.
I’d lost him. Not merely as whatever we might’ve been to each other, but as the coach who’d been helping me become a better player. The person who’d made me believe I could actually make it to the NHL.
And that was unacceptable.
By the time I reached my dorm room, I’d made a decision. I couldn’t keep going like this, pretending everything was normal while my game fell apart and Nils acted like I was any other player on the roster.
“Going somewhere?” Tank asked as I grabbed my jacket.
“Out.”
“Adan—”
“I’ll be back later.”
During the drive to his apartment, my anger only intensified. Every missed correction from the past week, every moment he’d kept his distance when he should’ve been helping me improve, every careful avoidance of eye contact—it all fueled the rage burning in my chest.
I didn’t knock when I reached his door. I pounded on it, hard enough that the sound echoed through the hallway.
“Adan?” Nils’s voice came through the door, surprise clear even through the wood. “What are you doing here?”
“Open the door.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“Open the fucking door, Nils.”
A pause, then the sound of locks being undone. The door opened to reveal Nils looking exactly as shocked as he’d sounded, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt like he’d been settling in for a quiet evening at home.
“We need to talk.” I pushed past him into the apartment.
“Adan, this really isn’t appropriate—”
“Don’t.” I spun around to face him. “Don’t give me that professional-boundaries bullshit. Not after what happened last week.”
He closed the door but stayed near it, like he was ready to flee at the first opportunity. “What happened last week was a mistake.”
“Was it? Because it didn’t feel like a mistake when you kissed me back.”
“It was a momentary lapse in judgment—”
“Stop lying.” The words came out louder than I’d intended, my frustration boiling over. “Stop pretending like you didn’t want it as much as I did.”
“What I wanted is irrelevant. I’m your coach, you’re my student, and I crossed a line that should never have been crossed.”
“Fine. You crossed a line. But that doesn’t give you the right to completely ignore me for a week.”
“I haven’t been ignoring you—”
“Bullshit!” I was shouting now, all the anger I’d been holding back for seven days exploding out of me. “You’ve been treating me like I have the plague. You won’t get within ten feet of me during training, you won’t correct my positioning, you won’t even look at me during team practices.”
“I’ve been maintaining appropriate professional dist—”
“You’ve been acting like a coward!”
That got a reaction. His face flushed, and something flashed in his eyes that looked like anger. “I am trying to protect both of our careers,” he said, his voice tight with control. “I am trying to ensure that one moment of poor judgment doesn’t destroy everything we’ve both worked for.”
“Well, congratulations. Your protecting is destroying my game anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been playing like shit all week because my coach suddenly decided he’s too good to actually coach me.” I stepped closer to him, close enough to see the guilt that flickered across his expression. “Do you have any idea how much my technique has suffered without your corrections? How many mistakes I’m making that you used to help me fix?”
“I’ve been providing verbal instruction—”
“Verbal instruction is garbage compared to hands-on coaching, and you know it. You’ve spent all these weeks teaching me that positioning is everything, that tiny adjustments make huge differences. And now you’re too afraid to touch me to make those adjustments.”
“Adan—”
“I’m regressing. Every day, I’m getting worse instead of better. And for what? Because you kissed me back and now you feel guilty about it?”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple!” I was close enough now that he had to look at me, close enough to see the conflict in his eyes. “I told you I know we can’t be together. I get it. Professional boundaries, potential consequences, all of that. But I never said I was willing to lose you as my coach too.”
“You haven’t lost me as your coach.”
“Haven’t I? When’s the last time you corrected my stance during a drill? When’s the last time you showed me proper positioning instead of describing it? When’s the last time you coached me the way you were coaching me a month ago?”
He was quiet, and I could see him struggling with the truth of what I was saying.
“I need you,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “I need my coach back. I need the person who believed I could make it to the NHL, who was helping me get there. I can’t do this without you.”
The anger in his expression softened into something that looked like pain. “I was trying to do the right thing.”
“The right thing would be finding a way to coach me without letting what happened between us ruin everything.” I felt tears threatening and fought them back. “I’m losing everything, Nils. The coaching that was making me better, the friendship we had, the person who understood my game better than anyone else.”
“I never meant for that to happen.”
“But it did happen. And you need to fix it.”
For a long moment, we looked at each other. I could see the war happening behind his eyes—guilt and professional obligation battling against something that looked like genuine care.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “You’re right. I let my guilt about crossing professional boundaries affect my coaching, and that wasn’t fair to you.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to figure something out. I can’t keep playing like this, and you can’t keep avoiding me like I’m going to attack you the moment we’re alone.”
“I don’t think you’re going to attack me.”
“Then why won’t you get near me during training?”
He was quiet for another long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Because I don’t trust myself around you.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Every time I’m close to you, every time we have physical contact during coaching, I remember what it felt like to kiss you. And that makes it very difficult to maintain professional focus.”
“So you’d rather ruin my game than deal with being attracted to me?”
“I’d rather not compromise either of our positions any further than I already have.”
“What if I told you that avoiding me is compromising my position more than anything else you could do?”
“Adan—”
“I’m serious. I need you to coach me. Really coach me. And if that means you have to deal with being attracted to me while you do it, then that’s what you have to do.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” He stopped, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Because I care about you too much to risk destroying your future over my own feelings.”
The words hung in the air between us, more honest than anything he’d said since I’d arrived.
“You care about me,” I said.
“Of course I care about you. More than I should, more than is appropriate, but yes. I care about you.”
“Then stop punishing both of us for it.”
“I’m not punishing—”
“You are. You’re punishing me by withholding the coaching I need, and you’re punishing yourself by avoiding something that made you happy.”
“It made me happy for thirty seconds. Then it made me feel guilty for seven days.”
“What if it didn’t have to?”
“What do you mean?”
I stepped closer, close enough that he had to tilt his head back slightly to maintain eye contact. “What if we found a way to separate the coaching from everything else? What if you could coach me the way you used to, and we dealt with the other stuff separately?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” He stopped again, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back up to my eyes. “Because every time I look at you, I think about kissing you again.”
The admission sent heat rushing through my system. “So kiss me again.”
“Adan—”
“I’m serious. If that’s what you’re thinking about anyway, if that’s what’s making it impossible for you to coach me properly, then maybe we should get it out of our systems.”
“That’s not how attraction works.”
“How do you know? Have you tried?”
“This is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this situation in the first place.”
“No, what got us into this situation was you deciding that one kiss meant we could never have a normal working relationship again.”
I could see him struggling, see the careful control he’d been maintaining for a week starting to crack.
“I’m not asking you to risk your job. I’m not asking you to date me or declare your feelings in front of the team. I’m asking you to stop acting like I’m radioactive.”
“And if I can’t? If being near you makes it impossible to maintain professional boundaries?”
“Then we’ll figure it out when we get there. But this,” I gestured at the space between us, at the careful distance he was maintaining even now, “this isn’t working for either of us.”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he might not respond. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. “I hate that I’ve hurt you. That I’ve made you feel like you lost your coach.”
“Then fix it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Start by not acting like touching me is going to end the world.”
Before he could respond, I closed the distance between us, not to kiss him but to wrap my arms around him in the kind of hug I’d given him at the youth center. The kind of contact that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with the friendship we’d been building.
For a second, he went rigid, like he was going to pull away. Then his arms came up around me, tentative at first, then stronger as he let himself return the embrace.
“I missed this,” I said quietly. “I missed being able to talk to you.”
“I missed it too.”
“Then don’t take it away again.”
“I’ll try.”
We stayed like that for a long moment, holding each other, and I could feel some of the tension that had been building between us starting to ease. This was what I’d been missing: not just the attraction, but the comfort of being close to someone who understood me.
But as the seconds stretched on, I became aware of other things. The way he smelled, clean and familiar and distinctly him. The solid warmth of his body against mine. The way his breathing had changed, becoming deeper and more careful.
When I pulled back to look at him, his eyes were dark and focused on my face with an intensity that made my pulse quicken.
“Adan,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yeah?”
“I think we should—”
I kissed him.
It wasn’t planned, wasn’t a conscious decision, but an instinctive response to the way he was looking at me. But unlike the first kiss, which had been brief and shocking, this one immediately deepened into something more urgent.
His hands came up to frame my face, and I pressed closer, backing him up against the door as the careful control we’d both been maintaining shattered completely. This wasn’t the tentative exploration of the first kiss—this was need, pure and simple, seven days of tension and avoidance and forced distance exploding into desperate contact.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, amazed by how soft it was, how perfectly he fit against me. He made a sound low in his throat when I bit gently at his bottom lip, and the sound sent heat racing through my system.
“Adan,” he gasped when we broke apart for air, but he didn’t try to stop me when I kissed him again.
This time, he kissed me back with equal intensity, his hands sliding from my face to my shoulders to the small of my back, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us. When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, trying to process what had happened.
He sighed. “We shouldn’t have—”
“Probably not.”
But neither of us moved away. I couldn’t look away from him. He was so damn gorgeous, his lips slightly swollen from kissing, his normally perfect hair messed up from my hands.
“This doesn’t solve anything,” he said quietly.
“Doesn’t it?”
“It makes everything more complicated.”
“Maybe. But it also proves that we can’t pretend this doesn’t exist between us.”
