Chapter Text
Jean Moreau wasn't someone destined to be great from birth. He had clawed his way to the top of the youth hockey charts on a debilitating cocktail of fear, determination, and desperation alone.
Maybe if he got better, they would let him go home.
Maybe if he became the best, he could see his little sister again.
In the end, a single night shattered everything he had worked for.
In the end, none of it had mattered at all.
He had never expected anything better from his parents. Selfish and greedy to their core, they sent him to the States at fourteen to stay close to their employer’s son, then erased him from their lives the moment their business with the Moriyamas fell apart.
Jean had only just managed to drag himself out of Riko’s clutches, had only just began to discover who he was away from his shadow. That freedom had been new—fragile, fleeting, ephemeral.
And now it was gone.
What Jean hadn’t expected—what he hadn’t been prepared for at all—was Kevin’s cruelty when he found out.
“Just go back for the hearing and come home afterwards,” Kevin had argued when Jean told them he’d be leaving the team in the locker room after his final practice. “That can’t possibly take more than a few weeks.”
“I’m not going back for the trial. I’m going back for my sister,” Jean had snapped back, before softening almost immediately, as he always did when it came to Kevin.
“They’ll put her into the foster care system if I don’t go get her in time, and the process to become her guardian is complicated."
He couldn’t stand the thought of Elodie disappearing into a stranger’s house, no matter that it may be the best option for her. She was his little duckling. He would abandon everything else in his life before he abandoned her.
“You can’t be serious,” Kevin had shot back, face twisted in incredulity. “Jean, you’re eighteen. You’re a full-time collegiate athlete. You can’t take care of a kid, that’s insane.”
“She’s only nine, Kev,” Jean had pleaded with him to understand. “What choice do I have?”
Kevin had waved a hand in his face dismissively. “Aren’t you rich? Get her a nanny or something.”
But they weren’t rich. Maybe they had been, once. Now his family was drowning in debt—debts his parents would be paying back from prison. Jean and Elodie had a trust forcibly set aside for them, but it was barely enough to survive on, let alone build two lives on.
It seemed Kevin had been far from finished. He barreled on.
“Or just let her get adopted by some family in France. You haven’t even seen her in four years, and she was a baby when you left. She’s probably forgotten about you by now.”
Whether Kevin had meant for them to or not, his words slid neatly between Jean’s ribs and twisted in the place where it hurt the most, making it difficult for him to breathe.
“You want me to just abandon her?” Jean had asked, his voice thin.
“You didn’t seem to have a problem doing that for the past four years.”
“Kevin,” Andrew, who had been content to let them go at each other's throats till that moment, began in warning, but it had already been too late.
What was left of Jean’s heart shattered, the pieces scattering uselessly at his feet. Kevin startled at the look of devastation that had, no doubt, overtaken Jean’s face at his words.
“I didn’t mean…” Kevin had begun awkwardly, but Jean had been too numb to respond. He had only ever done what his parents had asked of him; he had never believed there were any other options.
Maybe there had been. Maybe he could have tried harder.
Maybe he had left his sister behind once, but he would never make that mistake twice. Jean turned his back on Kevin and began packing his things in silence.
His thoughts dissolved into a blur of static. Somewhere beyond it, he dimly registered Kevin's words trying to reach him, but Jean knew he couldn’t make Kevin happy this time. Not at what it would cost him.
When he'd looked back up, calculating ice-blue eyes were already studying him.
“I’ll drive you,” Neil had said, his voice brooking no argument.
Jean hadn't known if he meant back to their dorm, or eventually to the airport, but he didn’t have the energy to argue either way. He just nodded, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and tipped his head toward the door in a sign for Neil to proceed him out of the room.
The last thing he remembered seeing, from the corner of his eye, had been Andrew bodily holding Kevin back from following them.
Jean had left, not knowing then that a year would pass before he'd speak to Kevin again.
A year passed in a fever dream of lawyers, court hearings, and the slow, painstaking work of earning the trust of a traumatized nine-year-old all over again. The greatest obstacle, in the end, was not the grief or the paperwork—it was convincing the court that he, a nearly penniless, directionless eighteen-year-old former collegiate athlete, was the best possible guardian for a child.
Jean had pleaded his case until he was black and blue to no avail.
With only one stone left unturned, he stood in the hallway outside the courtroom, fingers trembling as he pulled out his phone and dialed a familiar American number.
“Call me if you need anything, okay, kid?” Coach James Rhemann had said six months earlier, voice steady through the phone as Jean had prepared to board his flight to Marseille. “Whether you choose to come back to USC or not, I’m only a call away.”
Jean hadn't known what to expect when he'd made that call, only that that deep inside, something about James Rhemann had always felt solid. He was a safe harbor among turbulent waves in a way no other adult in Jean’s life had ever been.
Coach hadn't said anything at first. He'd listened. He'd asked questions. Then he'd told Jean to hang tight and hung up, only to call back the next day with a plan ready to be set into motion.
When the court heard out James Rhemann’s new proposal—that Jean and Elodie be temporarily placed under his guardianship in California until Jean could establish financial and legal stability, the ruling came swiftly in their favor.
Jean could hardly believe his change in fortune in the course of a single day. He was going back to the States, and this time he was bringing his little sister along with him.
A few months later, Jean called again, this time from the arrivals terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, Elodie’s small hand tucked firmly in his and her wide gray eyes taking in every new sight with equal parts fear and fascination. By nightfall, Coach and his partner had ushered two half-starved orphans into their three-bedroom condo overlooking the greenery of Echo Park.
“It will only be until I find a job,” Jean tried to reassure them, once they'd sat down for a late dinner. “I swear, I will start looking tomorrow—”
“No.”
Jean startled at the quiet firmness in Adi’s voice. He had only spoken to the pediatric surgeon a handful of times over the phone and once over Skype and had met him for the first time just hours earlier outside the airport. Jean hadn't known what to expect from Adijan Bregović. He had known, of course, that Coach’s partner would be involved in whatever arrangement followed—but to avoid jeopardizing the case, Coach had introduced himself to the lawyers as a bachelor who lived with a roommate, rather than the man he had shared his life with for over twenty-five years now.
In any case, it was impossible to miss the kindness in the unassuming man with crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, or the softness that had put Elodie at ease with him almost immediately.
On the drive back from the airport, Elodie had chatted away happily from the back seat, unconcerned for once about her broken English as she told Adi about the bedtime story Jean had been slowly adding on to each night: a brave knight, a clever princess, and the two dragons that had stolen them away from the dungeon they called their home ("That is you!" she had explained happily, waving her stuffed dragon in the air between them to emphasize her point). Adi had listened as if every word mattered, and asked questions that had her turning to her big brother for clarification.
In the front seat, Jean and James had stayed mostly quiet. Jean had asked a few careful, stilted questions about the team, more out of habit than any true curiosity.
Jeremy Knox was their captain now.
Jean had no recollection of who that was.
Adi turned to study him across the dinner table now. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“You’ll spend the summer catching up on the credits you missed over the last year,” Adi continued, his tone brooking no argument. “It's too late to enroll you for the fall, but if we manage to catch up, we should be able to get you back for the spring semester."
Jean opened his mouth to protest.
“I know you were on track to graduate in four years because of your transferred high school credits. It may take an extra year,” Adi added, already anticipating his argument, “but you’ll still graduate on time with everyone else your age. We can help you. Let us help you."
No one had ever spoken about Jean’s future as if it were something worth planning ahead for. His parents hadn’t cared what he did as long as he played, so Jean had picked business as a major at random.
Now, he didn't know how to react, let alone how to respond. He could only stare at them as Elodie continued to devour her dinner beside him with no cares in the world.
“I couldn’t,” he stammered out finally. “I—I can’t go back to USC. They have no reason to take me back.”
“You’re forgetting who your head coach was, kid,” James reminded him gruffly. “And this isn’t me being biased.” He huffed a quiet breath, spearing a floret of broccoli with his fork. “All it takes is a quick search of your name. People are calling you the defensive ace that got away. If colleges hear you’re available again, trust me when i say they will be fighting over you all over again. Selfishly, I want to avoid that, and I can keep an eye out for you if you stay on my team.”
Jean’s fork hovered uselessly in his hand as he mulled over the words.
“Your full ride to USC will always be there,” James continued, as he met Jean's eyes, steady and sure. “It’s your call, Jean. If you want to play, you tell me, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“And we’d stay here?” Jean asked, still feeling dazed. “For how long? The lawyers will check in after a year. Do we have to leave then?”
Adi’s gaze flicked briefly to Elodie before returning to Jean once again.
He took a deep breath before saying, his voice unmeasurable gentle, “Jean, we were prepared to act as your beneficiaries so you could secure guardianship of Elodie and leave it at that. But we talked about it at length, and we were wondering if you and your sister would consider being fostered by us for longer."
Jean’s breath caught. He couldn't breathe.
“I know you’ve aged out of the system,” Adi continued, his eyes remaining locked onto Jean's, “but we would be honored to have you both. There’s absolutely no obligation to accept. If you ever feel this isn’t right for you, the door will always remain open. We'll help you find a better situation, even if it isn't with the two of us." His voice softened even further, and his eyes filled with a raw tenderness. “We just want you to be safe. And we think the two of you would make us very happy.”
His smile, small and sincere, pierced Jean to the soul.
“So,” Adi finished, “what do you say about the four of us helping each other out?”
Jean couldn’t understand how any of this could possibly be real, how he could bring these men even a fraction of the happiness they so contentedly spoke about. But he knew, deep down, that this wasn’t really about him. He knew that these kind, selfless men would be the best thing that could ever happen to his sister. Who was he to stand in her way?
He looked down at her and asked softly, in French, “Would it be okay if we stayed here and if I went back to school?”
Elodie nodded, tilting her head up toward him, a smear of mashed potatoes still clinging to her chin.
“I like it here,” she announced simply, as he grabbed a napkin and wiped the food away. “Let’s stay.”
So, they stayed.
A week later, Jean startled over his textbooks at the kitchen counter when a loud series of bangs rattled the front door. Beside him, Adi merely raised an eyebrow at the disturbance and motioned for Jean to stay put as he rose to answer the incessant summons.
Jean heard him before he saw him.
Neil Josten burst into the house like a tiny auburn hurricane. Andrew Minyard followed at a slower pace, deliberate and watchful, his gaze never straying far from Neil’s back. As if on instinct, Jean’s body went rigid, muscles locking into place as his eyes tracked the doorway, waiting for a familiar figure: taller, broad-shouldered, cropped brown hair and piercing green eyes, to appear like a wraith behind them.
“He’s not here,” Neil said, equal parts bored and blunt, the words cutting straight through Jean straight to his soul. “We didn’t tell him we were coming.”
Jean’s shoulders sagged, relief flooding through him so fast it left his knees weak.
A year had passed, but some things were the same. They still understood how he felt about Kevin—how he feared that getting too close would pull him back onto the same path, one where Kevin led and Jean followed without question. Even now, Jean could close his eyes and hear Kevin’s voice, cold with disdain, telling him to abandon Elodie, like she was nothing. He didn’t know how either of them could ever move past that.
Some things were the same, but others were irrevocably different.
Like the way Neil and Andrew now moved like they were caught in each other's gravity, in each other's space more than they were out of it, cigarette smoke and matching armbands and lingering looks when one fell out of orbit for too long.
Yes, things had changed in the time Jean had been gone.
"I think we're at a good place with calculus," Adi announced, closing the laptop Jean had been using to finish that week’s online assignment. “Why don’t I leave the three of you to talk? You boys help yourselves to anything in the pantry or fridge.”
Andrew's eyes tracked Adi as he headed upstairs and disappeared into the master bedroom. Then he turned back to Jean, eyebrow raised, only slightly mocking when he asked, “How’re the new dads?”
Jean felt warmth creep up his cheeks. “He’s not—this is temporary.”
Neil frowned at him. “Why? He clearly likes you. Just stay.”
Just stay. As if it were really that simple. As if Jean could burden these two men for the rest of his life simply because they seemed willing to carry the weight of his burden.
Jean shook his head. “I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Okay,” Neil agreed, then immediately demanded, “So why are you ignoring us, asshole?”
“I am not—” Jean started, then stopped at the twin looks of unimpressed disbelief immediately leveled at him. He made himself exhale, and the breath left his lungs uneven and shaky. “It is not you I am ignoring.”
“And what,” Andrew drawled, “we’re Kevin’s minions?”
“That’s not—” Jean swallowed. “You were his first. I did not want… to make you choose sides.” He had gratefully answered the handful of calls he'd received from them during his time in France, but things had to be different now that he was back in the States…didn't they?
“That’ll be the first and last time you play the martyr,” Andrew informed him flatly. “Pick up your phone when we call.”
“Kevin has nothing to do with the two of us,” Neil added, the faint hurt in his voice impossible to miss. “You’re mine too. Just because he was an asshole doesn’t mean he gets to take you from me.”
The possessiveness in his tone was impossible to miss, and something warm and glowing began to take shape in Jean’s chest. His eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to hold eye contact. He dropped his gaze to where his hands were twisted together in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he told them quietly, and he really meant it. “I’ve missed you too.”
Neil softened visibly, and the tightness around Andrew’s mouth eased by a fraction. A moment later, the front door clicked open, ushering in a tangle of voices—the deeper baritone of an older man enmeshed with the high, breathless pitch of an overexcited child.
"Big brother!" Elodie always slipped back into French when she was excited. “Mr. James let me feed the ducks at the pond, but I got too close and one of them almost bit me but then— oh!”
Jean was off the dining table in an instant, striding toward her. “You’re hurt? Let me see.”
“Got to her in time,” James said gruffly, holding up two fingers splinted together with gauze. “Did have to make a quick trip to the emergency room, though. Hey, boys, here to pay Jean a visit?"
Jean looked over Elodie’s head, his eyes catching on the bandaged hand. “I am sorry,” he said, through the guilt now clenching his stomach taut. “I know how she gets around ducks, I should have warned you. I did not mean for you to get hurt—”
“Jean.” James cut him off, a palm raised up in a firm but placating gesture. “She’s a kid. No warning in the world would’ve stopped this from happening, and that's perfectly okay.” His expression gentled, and his typically loud voice came out quiet, almost coaxing. “It was just a little cut. I’m fine.”
He crossed the room and ruffled Jean’s hair before heading for the fridge to pull out a cold bottle of water.
Neil smirked in Jean’s direction, fluttered his eyelashes and mouthed, Dad, then immediately rearranged his face into something approaching a frankly suspicious level of innocence when Coach turned back to face them.
"Since you're here, Coach," he began, “we were wondering if we could drag Jean to the court a few times a week before school starts in the fall. I’m sure he’d appreciate the practice before he’s officially back on the team.”
Beside him, Andrew let out a scoff, but even he couldn't fully mask the reluctant fondness in his voice when he muttered a disdainful, "Junkie," under his breath.
Jean brightened at the suggestion and turned back to his coach. "Could I? I have become unforgivably rusty."
He had missed the rink like a missing limb. A year ago, he had walked away from the sport that had been his entire life to take care of his sister, and he would make that decision without hesitation all over again if he had to.
But if he didn't have to choose…if there was a way for him to have it all…
The sister in question squinted up at him, suspicious. “But you made me go watch you skate all the time in Paris!”
Jean was immediately brought back to their sterile, FBI-provided safehouse on the outskirts of the city, the endless waiting between hearings, the long drives back and forth from the courthouse, with nothing else to look forward to in the meantime, and strict instructions to remain in their quarters.
He remembered the day he’d spotted the rink in the distance and had asked to be dropped off there instead, promising to find his own way back to the hotel afterward. He had been lucky, Agent Wells had agreed to keep it on the down low, and he had exited the rink hours later and found the FBI's car idling at the curb waiting for him.
He never stayed longer than thirty minutes. He couldn't justify any more time than that. But he took what he could get. He cherished every moment he spent on the ice.
Elodie had shown no interest in joining him on the ice, and she never demanded, in the bossy way that she had, that he teach her how to skate. Perhaps she understood how sacred that time on the ice was for her older brother, or perhaps she simply didn not care. Either way, she was content to entertain herself while she waited for him to tire himself out.
“It was a figure skating rink,” Jean explained to the others. “They didn’t have any gear, or a stick for me to rent, but I did what drills I could with a pair of skates.” He paused, measured, feeling the need to clarify, “It was nowhere near enough to maintain the level I was at last spring.”
“I see,” James responded, his expression thoughtful, “Actually, once we had all your paperwork in order, I spoke to Jeremy about you getting some ice time before officially joining the team again. He offered to do one-on-one practices with you three times a week once the fall semester starts, unofficially, but I can let him know that you want to begin earlier. Your friends are welcome to join, if you’d like.”
"No."
The word landed like a sharp, visceral punch, echoing through the otherwise quiet room. Jean remembered too well how vicious Riko became when his plans were disrupted—how quickly favor could curdle into violence, a stick crashing into his back, skates biting through skin and drawing blood. He didn’t know Jeremy, and he wasn’t about to hand him any such ammunition, not when he was about to be Jean's captain for the next two years.
“There’s no need to inconvenience him,” Jean said at last, unable to meet his coach’s eyes. “I will practice with Neil and Andrew until the fall.”
He very deliberately ignored Andrew’s answering scoff, knowing very well that he would join their practices if Neil asked it of him.
James blinked, clearly taken aback by the intensity. “Okay. If you’re sure—”
“He’s not Riko,” Neil cut in bluntly.
The name cracked through the air, and Jean flinched despite himself.
Los Angeles, he told himself. He was in Los Angeles. The kitchen was warm, the floor solid beneath his feet. Riko Moriyama was in Winnipeg, a forty-hour drive, an eight-hour flight away.
He wasn’t here.
He was not here.
Jean forced his fingers to unclench, his nails leaving half-moon marks behind on his palms. The room slowly came back into focus: Neil’s familiar voice, Andrew’s watchful stillness, Elodie's warm presence wrapped in his arms. No blood on the ice. No threats that dripped with poison. No hand to his throat, slamming him up against the boards.
“He’s like an overgrown puppy,” Neil was saying. “You’ll see.”
A puppy? Jean distantly remembered they had been discussing Jeremy Knox. His new captain. Not Riko.
Jeremy Alan Knox. Number 11. Center forward. Fourth-year senior. Age twenty-one. Five foot eleven. One hundred eighty pounds.
Jean had seen the name on Coach Rhemann’s roster and allowed himself an indifferent glance at the accompanying photograph. Even so, the man remained a mystery to him, no matter how he scoured through memories of the summer before freshman year.
“I do not remember him,” Jean admitted out loud.
“You wouldn’t,” Andrew replied without batting an eye. “He was the addict slumped over like a wraith in the corner at every team meeting. Only had enough energy to make it through his time on the ice, never talked to anyone except his childhood friend, Laila Dermott."
Jean nodded, putting a face to the name right away. "Goalie. She is very good."
"She is," Andrew agreed, his tone entirely unaffected as he continued speaking. “A few months after you left, he got caught by the cops when a college party got raided, high out of his mind on cocaine. The school threatened him with expulsion, but Coach talked them into keeping him on the team. He went to rehab in winter, came back a new man in spring.” Andrew shrugged, like that was all there was to it. “Single-handedly took us to the finals until we lost to UMich. He’s starting as vice-captain this fall.”
Jean suddenly had a vivid recollection of a boy with matted brown hair, dull brown eyes, and a look on his face so desolate that it had always left an uncomfortable pit in his stomach. A look Jean had learned, instinctively, to look away from.
It turned out he had never found anything in Jeremy Knox worth a second glance. Part of him wished now that he had taken the time to look twice, if only so he wouldn’t now be walking into the season blind.
Neil nodded, his eyes insistent on Jean's face. "You remember him now."
“He is clean?” Jean asked. Then, he suddenly remembered— “And Kevin?”
Neil and Andrew shared a look, which was all the answer Jean needed.
“I thought once he moved in with Coach Wymack things would get better,” Jean admitted. He despised the fact that, even now, he still cared that Kevin Day was drinking his life away.
“Coach gives him the alcohol,” Neil explained. “It keeps him stable enough to play.”
Jean wanted to argue. He wanted to scream. He simply could not understand how Kevin’s own parent—how his friends—could mistake poison for medicine, could stand by and watch it run through his veins without a care.
But Kevin was no longer his to protect.
Kevin had forsaken him, had chosen to turn away, to leave Jean behind as if their friendship had never meant anything at all. He did not get to claim Jean’s concern now.
Coach cleared his throat. Jean blinked, only then realizing with absolute horror that he had completely forgotten his presence still in the room.
“I would like to practice with Jeremy,” Jean said, before any of them could be scolded for gossiping about their captain. “If that is something he would be amenable to.”
“Good,” Coach said. He was still studying Jean, his expression faintly troubled. “Both he and Dan—she's our captain this year—want to meet you. We’ll set it up.” He shifted gears easily, raising a playful eyebrow at the three boys in his kitchen. “In the meantime, the rink’s free if you boys want to have at it until dinner.”
He held out a ring of keys and tossed them toward Jean.
Neil practically launched himself out of his chair, already halfway to the door without looking back to see if they would follow. Andrew rolled his eyes, offered Coach a brief nod, and went after him.
Jean remained where he was, staring down at the keys to the USC Court now resting at the center of his palm. The same way he had when Coach and Adi had first handed him keys to their house without a second thought. It felt like an undeserved honor, a privilege he had done nothing to earn.
“You and Kevin.”
Coach’s voice pulled him sharply back to the present. Jean looked up, suddenly feeling like a bug squirming under the glare of a microscope.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened between the two of you,” Coach continued evenly. “But will it be an issue going forward?”
“No, Coach,” Jean answered at once, before forcing himself to add, “I won’t let my personal life affect the team, I promise.”
Coach hesitated, weighing him with knowledgeable dark eyes. Then he spoke again.
“And about Riko—” he began carefully. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but there have been some allegations coming to light about how he—”
"Don't."
Jean froze, fully aware that he had just interrupted at his Coach. The silence that followed was taut and expectant, and Jean braced himself for the punishment that was sure to follow his insolence—for the reprimand, the withdrawal, the disappointment.
It never came.
Coach Rhemann only watched him, concern darkening his face. Jean swallowed the bile threatening to choke him back down his throat.
“I don’t want to talk about him, Coach,” he begged. “I can’t. Please do not make me.”
Coach looked as though he was fighting against himself, but in the end he only sighed. “You know you can always talk to me, right? About anything. Whenever you think you're ready. I’m here to make your life easier, but you have to let me.”
Jean opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again.
“I am hesitant to meet him,” he admitted, which seemed a bland statement for an anxiety so deep it shot straight through his bloodstream.
The words horrified him the moment they left his mouth, but Coach straightened, something like pride flickering in his expression—pride in Jean, for that small confession. Jean found himself continuing to speak despite his worst fears, the restraint he had clung to giving way all at once. His words poured out like a flooded dam, long contained, sudden and violent in their release.
“We met when we were children at a little league training camp, and up until he left Edgar Allen, he was my entire world. I would have done anything for him, and he knew it. I never believed he would not do the same for me.” Jean’s voice wavered despite his effort to keep his emotions in check. “But when I told him about my parents’ trial, and about Elodie, he did not…react well. He told me I couldn’t give up my career for a sister who had probably forgotten me. That I should let the foster care system handle her.”
Jean swallowed hard when he noticed the displeased frown that now marred Coach Rhemann's face.
It broke my heart to hear him say those words," he confessed softly. "To hear him so callously dismiss someone I had sworn to protect from the day she was born. It felt like a dismissal of me, of everything we had, everything I thought we were.
“Even after I left, I kept waiting for him to call. I did not even need an apology from him. I just wanted him to care, to ask if I was okay. That year was the worst of my life. I was terrified my parents would walk free, terrified my sister would slip through my fingers.” His hands curled into fists in his lap, and he let some of the hurt betrayal he felt seep through his words. “You called. Coach Wymack and Abby called. Neil and Andrew called.”
He looked down, clenching and unclenching his fingers as he whispered, “But my best friend did not.” His voice was barely coherent as he admitted, "I do not know where to go from here. I do not know how I could ever forgive him."
“You don’t forgive him,” Coach Rhemann told him sternly. “From what you’ve told me, he hasn’t done a single thing to warrant your forgiveness. Whether you should forgive him is not a thing for you to sit and agonize over. It should depend on what he does to make it right, to earn your forgiveness. And even then, if you decide you don’t want to forgive him, that’s fine too.”
Jean stayed silent, as he listened and wondered if what his coach said could really be true. Could Jean truly be the one holding the cards for once in his life?
“I know he means a lot to you,” Coach went on, after clearly taking a moment to steady himself, “but in the month I got to be your coach, I watched you disappear into him. You isolated yourself in a way Kevin never did. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize Jeremy’s name, or Dan’s. It was like you couldn’t look past Kevin to anyone else. That kind of devotion, it's not healthy, Jean. I won’t lie, it worried me.”
He folded his arms at his chest, his expression serious but not unkind. “This team is big enough for you both to coexist. If he tries to make amends, it’s your choice whether you want to hear him out or not. But don’t let him move past hurting you without an apology. You deserve better than that.
"You're kind, and you're loyal. You’re one of the most selfless kids I’ve ever coached. You give everything your all, so don’t let people give you less than you deserve in return.”
Jean stared at him, touched beyond belief. "Thank you," he began, just as Andrew began obnoxiously laying on the horn from outside the house.
James just shook his head at Jean's apologetic frown, fondness tugging his mouth upward. “Go,” he said. “Enjoy practice with your friends. I’ll see you at home for dinner.”
Jean nodded, grabbed his hockey bag, and hurried outside, but the warmth of Coach Rhemann’s words stayed with him, glowing like a gentle ember within his chest, lighting him from the inside out.
The USC stadium was just as grand as Jean remembered it, the air inside humming with an electricity he could feel all the way down to his toes. For a fleeting, irrational moment, he expected the locker room to still bear his name, '03-Moreau'stenciled above his stall like a promise left intact, waiting for him all this time.
Instead, the metal plate now read '21-Adams'.
“We don’t have your kit ready yet,” Neil said cheerfully, already half-dressed in his gear as he strode back into the locker room, a fresh uniform tucked under his arm. “But I found some equipment you can use for now.”
Behind him, Andrew lingered in the doorway, fully suited, helmet tucked under one arm and a stick resting casually in his grip.
At first glance, it was immediately apparent that he was not holding a goalie's stick, which had a wider paddle to better block shots taken at the goal.
Jean's entire world narrowed to that curved piece of composite and tape. His fingers twitched, his body reacting before his brain could intervene, and he was holding his hand out without even realizing he’d moved.
Andrew huffed a quiet, amused snort and passed the stick over.
The moment the stick settled into Jean’s palm, something long misaligned inside him snapped back into place. The familiar weight. The balance point. The worn tape beneath his fingertips. It felt like coming home to a part of himself he had left behind, never expecting to find it again.
“I'm surrounded by junkies,” Andrew muttered, waving a dismissive hand at Jean before he turned around and headed for the rink. Neil flashed Jean an overexcited grin before jogging after Andrew.
Jean dressed in record time, his hands moving on instinct alone as pads were strapped, his skates laced, and his jersey tugged into place. His pulse quickened with every piece of equipment he put on, as if his body were being assembled for a purpose it still remembered, no matter how hard his mind had tried to make itself forget.
Andrew and Neil were skating laps when Jean finally stepped onto the ice. He clipped off his blade guards and pushed off slowly at first, letting his body take over.
One stride. Then another. And then he was free.
He fell into their wake, matching their pace as they cut through the neutral zone. His crossovers came to him naturally, left over right as they curved around the boards, his skates biting into the ice with a confidence that came back to him the longer he spent on the ice. His lungs burned, but it was a good kind of burn, one that he chased, the kind that reminded him he was alive.
By the third lap, Andrew peeled off toward the goal and Neil cut sharply toward the faceoff circle.
“Warm-ups,” Neil called over his shoulder, already gliding backward with effortless balance.
Jean followed without thinking. He caught the puck Andrew slid toward him, cushioning it on his blade, and ran it through a familiar stickhandling pattern. His wrists loosened as he moved, the puck staying glued to his stick as he weaved it through imaginary opponents.
He paused when Neil caught his eye, his mouth curving into a half-feral, satisfied grin. Andrew tapped his stick against the goalpost—a sharp, metallic clack—a signal for them to stop wasting his time. But Jean knew that Andrew felt it too, this feeling of absolute certainty.
The ice was the only solace they'd ever had, these boys that had never known a home.
They had barely moved past warmups when Andrew’s phone started buzzing insistently in his pocket. Seeming to know who was calling, he ignored it the first few times, skating in lazy circles around the goal, but eventually fished it out and answered with a perfectly succinct, "What?"
He paused as the person on the other end spoke.
“Where?” he hummed, sounding profoundly bored. “We’re at the rink.”
A pause. Even from where Jean stood beside Neil, he could practically hear the fury crackling through the line, though you couldn't tell from the stoicism on Andrew's face.
“Yes, we’re practicing without you,” Andrew said flatly. “He needs us more than you do right now. Deal with it.”
The warmth from before grew within Jean’s chest, leaving him reeling.
Andrew and Neil had been Kevin’s safe harbor when he’d escaped Edgar Allan Prep for Palmetto High during their junior year. Jean had first met them across the ice, when their teams went up against each other, and it was then that Neil had taken a particular interest in him. Still, they hadn’t begun playing together until the summer before freshman year of college, and though the camaraderie had come easily, Kevin had always been the common denominator between them. A small, aching part of Jean had long feared they saw him as little more than an extension of their friend.
He had no reason to expect their loyalty. They gave it to him anyway.
“No, I’m not handing him the phone.”
Andrew glanced at Jean, one eyebrow lifting in silent question.
Jean shook his head once, sharp and vehement. He didn’t want to speak to Kevin—not now, and not ever if he was given a choice. He knew it was inevitable, that playing on the same team meant their confrontation was only a matter of time, but if he could postpone it for even one more day, he would do so without feeling any guilt.
“He didn’t change his number, jackass,” Andrew continued coolly. “He blocked you. Sit on your bed and chew on that for a moment. If you come here, I’ll lock you out.”
He ended the call without so much as a goodbye.
Jean waited for one of them to say something, to acknowledge what had just happened, but neither Neil nor Andrew did. Neil merely nudged a puck back into motion with his skate, and their practice session resumed as if nothing had happened.
They began drills. Passing. Shooting. Slap shots. Snap Shots. Edge work.
By the time Neil wound up for his third attempt to get past Jean, a competitive fire had begun to burn within his ice blue irises.
Jean blocked his shot the same way he had the first two, his stick extended, blade angled, body bent just enough to force the shot wide.
Neil twisted around, his eyes flashing. “How do you always know?”
Jean shrugged, breath coming steady despite the burn all over his body. “Figure it out.”
Neil’s mouth thinned at the challenge. “Again.”
And they went again.
On the fifth try, Neil finally slipped the puck past Jean’s stick, sending it careening towards open left side of the net.
Andrew stopped its trajectory with a casual flick of his wrist, catching the puck and swatting it away from the goalposts like it was nothing. It ricocheted cleanly off the boards and slid straight onto Jean’s blade.
Neil groaned in protest. “We need another striker.”
He blinked suddenly, focus snapping past Jean’s shoulder to catch on something behind him. “Oh. We have another striker!”
Jean turned sharply as Neil skated away, and he only exhaled when he realized the figure by the railing was too short to be Kevin.
The man stood with his arms braced against the glass, posture relaxed but attentive as he offered Neil a wave, skates planted as if he’d been there for a while. Jean couldn’t tell how long he’d been watching, but Neil was already by his side, very clearly gesturing at him to join their practice.
Jean skated over towards them more slowly, his senses now on high alert at the presence of a stranger at the rink. When the man same into sight, Jean felt his heart give a pathetic little skip inside his chest.
To Jean, he seemed less like a man and more like an angel, like something straight out of a painting. Cherubic golden curls framed his face in soft disarray, his warm brown eyes shone brightly under the overhead lighting and when he smiled, deep dimples carved themselves into his cheeks. Freckles dusted his nose and cheekbones like scattered constellations, and the light haloed behind him, giving Jean the irrational urge to pinch himself if only to make sure the man was real.
Then the angel turned and looked directly at him, and his smile widened. Jean's poor lungs spluttered and threatened to give out, leaving him feeling lightheaded and weightless.
“Hi! I’m Jeremy Knox,” he said, bright and easy, holding his hand out between them for a handshake.
Oh.
Jean was in so much trouble.