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That shut me up again.

He played the clip. Paused. Rewound. Played it slower.

“There,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

I started answering before the clip even settled in my head. “Their F2 is late, D is flat-footed, if I loop lower I can pull him with me and open the seam, but if Lowell bobbles it, then yeah, we’re dead, and Roman complains, and everyone acts like I personally invented turnovers.”

Reid waited.

I shifted. “What?”

“You jumped from read one to consequence four.”

“I got there, didn’t I?”

“You did. I’m asking if you can separate the steps.”

My knee stopped bouncing for half a second.

Nobody asked that.

People told me to slow down, which was like telling a fire alarm to consider jazz. They told me to focus, as if I wasn’t focusing on too much at once. Reid was asking me to show the work.

“I can try,” I said, more carefully than I meant to.

So we did.

It should have been boring. It wasn’t. He paused clips and made me name one thing at a time. Puck. Pressure. Support. Exit. If I got ahead of myself, he brought me back without snapping.

“Start with the puck.”

“I know where the puck is.”

“Say it anyway.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Maybe. Do it.”

I exhaled hard. “Puck is on Lowell’s backhand.”

“Pressure?”

“Coming from inside shoulder.”

“Support?”

“Me, too high.”

He clicked the remote. “So?”

“So I come lower.”

“Good. Next.”

There it was again. That simple, controlled acknowledgment. Not a gold star. Not a performance. Just confirmation that I’d met the expectation.

My chest loosened in a way that made me uncomfortable.