Page 28 of Pucking Daddy

The argument. The tension. Jaxon. All of it.

Because right now, it’s just this.

A little girl who gives her trust so easily, who wants nothing more than to soar into the sky.

And standing here in the late afternoon light, I realize something that settles deep in my bones—

No matter how complicated things get with her father…

I’m not going anywhere.

6

JAXON

Favorite Daddy

My mood has been off all damn day, and it shows.

The whistle cuts through the rink, sharp enough to slice bone.

“Again.”

My voice carries over the scrape of blades and the dull crash of bodies against the boards. The drill resets in seconds. No wasted movement. No talking back. No one on this ice is stupid enough to mistake my tone for a suggestion.

Good.

Because I’m not in the mood to repeat myself today.

The Metro Raptors spread across the ice in formation, jerseys dark with sweat from the last forty minutes of hard skating. Cold air bites at the exposed skin of my face, but the rest of me runs hot. The arena always smells the same at practice. Ice. Rubber. Steel. Sweat. Effort.

“Puck movement needs to be cleaner,” I bark. “I don’t want pretty. I want fast. Again.”

Hayes corrals the puck and sends it down low. Morrison cuts across the slot a fraction too late, forcing the pass wide. It glances off a stick, bounces wrong, and the whole sequence falls apart.

I blow the whistle once.

Everything stops.

That’s one thing I’ll give them. This team knows how to listen when it counts.

I step closer to the boards, arms folded. “What was that?”

Nobody answers immediately.

Jake Morrison glides backward, expression carefully blank in the way veteran players get when they know they screwed up but aren’t interested in putting on a show about it.

“Well?” I ask.

Morrison shrugs once. “Timing.”

“Timing,” I repeat flatly. “Interesting. I was under the impression you all owned watches.”

That earns a few restrained smirks from the younger guys. Morrison’s mouth twitches, but he says nothing.

Good choice.

I point at him with two fingers. “You’re the captain. If you’re half a second late, everyone else is dead in the water. Again.”