Page 24 of Coaching Prince Charming

“Thanks, Coach,” Carter said casually and looked away.

“What? No ‘well done’ for Rigby?” Ron teased. “Ah, I gotta take a leak anyway. Stage fright.” He laughed and got up, then disappeared into the crowd.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” Carter said to the wall behind me.

“I didn’t expect to be here.” I leaned forward and waited for him to look at me. When he didn’t, I still spoke from my heart. “I see now that you were right, Carter.”

He raised his eyebrows a little. I wished he wasn’t this beautiful when sweat covered his brow and began tousling his hair.

“You could have a future in hockey, believe me, but that’s not what you should do with your life.” I couldn’t avoid feeling like I was betraying my old friend, but nobody should dictate a child’s future. “If it comes to that, I’ll talk some sense into Dana.”

“Thanks, Nate,” Carter said. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get there.”

“Don’t let yourself be defeated before the fight,” I said.

He met my gaze now. It was as if he was pinning me against the wall with that knowing look. But he smirked after a moment and shook his head. “Does that mean I should keep trying?”

Shivers ran down my spine. “I…don’t think that’s wise.”

“Of course not,” he said. “You don’t want someone like me.”

Deep in my bones, I knew he had already surrendered all his fights. These were the words of someone who didn’t care about the outcome. He spoke freely even if it doomed him. “Carter, there’s twenty years between us.”

“Eighteen and a half,” he corrected me. “The third of August.”

My birthday. “Regardless, your dad’s been my closest friend since before you were born. I’m your coach, for God’s sake.”

Carter nodded. Something about his expression was changing, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “You’ve barely spoken in two years. Besides, I don’t have to be a Titan if that makes all the difference.”

He was tempting me to be cruel, I realized. He wanted to hear me say the vicious words. He wanted me to tell him I didn’t find him attractive, that I would never find him attractive, or he would continue this forever. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “I thought you were doomed to play hockey forever,” I said pointedly.

Carter sucked a breath of air sharply to argue with that, but Beckett and Caden reached our table, and the tension disappeared like some magician had taken it away with the sleight of hand. The boys put fresh beers on the table, and I pretended that Carter was old enough to drink. After all, he was old enough to wow the entire pub. And he was old enough to argue with me about destiny and the ways of the heart, even to leave me jumping through the logical loops just to make a point.

A pleased expression remained on Carter’s face for the rest of the night, which didn’t last very long at my insistence. We didn’t speak much to one another. In fact, I didn’t speak a lot at all. Four boys in a bar had a lot more to talk about to each other.

That night, while tossing and turning and waiting for our trip to Chicago, I couldn’t get his music out of my head.

EIGHT

Carter

We suffered a loss on our first night in Chicago. While Beckett raged in the locker room, Nate was the voice of reason, telling us not to let one failure define us any more than we would let a victory make us complacent. There was a wisdom to that, but the morale in the locker room was at its lowest point.

Personally, I was finding it hard to care. Not that I hadn’t done my best in the first period before Nate pulled me in favor of Kieran, who was arguably the better choice between the two of us in the circumstances. I’d missed a few drills over the last week. Even if that hadn’t impacted my performance, playing with the team felt odd when I had mentally unplugged for so long.

I didn’t want to let the team down, but I preferred other players taking my place. Especially if their hearts were in the game, unlike mine.

Last night, I had experienced something I’d never expected to happen to me. Sure, the crowd was small, and Nate’s presence left me feeling all sorts of ways — I couldn’t decide between being humbled, embarrassed, and aroused by the admiration in his eyes if I were being honest — but playing on the stage was easily the most alive I had felt in years.

Ron had filmed the whole thing and posted the clip on his Instagram. His following was mostly made up of girls he’d impressed as a high school hockey player, but the video circulated to our team, and the looks I got were flattering. They regarded me a little differently today. They had seen me do something they hadn’t realized I could, and it made me more relevant in a way.

I didn’t hate feeling relevant. I didn’t hate answering questions about where I’d learned to do those things.

The last time I had truly felt this way while playing hockey had been in my first year of high school, but that was partly due to the fact that I was a Prince, and not just any Prince, but Dana Prince’s own son.

I had a plain water at the bar after the game. Ron was grumbling about the risks of ordering a beer in an unfamiliar place. To me, it was all the same. I was simply passing the time with the team that was in a rotten mood. So, when I left the guys behind and stalked the streets on my way back to the hotel, I was relieved not to have the chatter filling my ears.

I didn’t know what I would do next. I knew what my heart was set on, but I also knew how hard it was. Dad had mentioned more than once how my comfort depended on my performance, but I doubted that performing on a stage qualified me to live off of his wealth. Would he cut me off completely? Send me to make my own way in the world? And was that the worst thing that could happen to me?

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