Chapter 74: The Adjustment

Danton did not call us in to talk about the last series.

He called us in to change the way we won the next one.

I knew it the second I walked into the meeting room and saw the board already set up, the magnets waiting in neat rows, and the coaches standing too still in front of the whiteboard like they had already made the hard decisions and were just waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Cassian came in a step behind me.

I did not turn at first, but I felt him anyway. The shift in the room. The way my attention snagged on him like it always did when he was near. He shut the door behind us and crossed to the bench with his usual quiet focus, one hand still taped from practice, face calm in that way that meant he was paying attention to everything.

Danton looked up when the last of the guys settled. “All right.”

Nobody spoke.

He tapped the board once with the marker. “We are adjusting.”

That got the room to settle even further.

I took a seat near the middle, Cassian dropping beside me with just enough space between us to keep from making it obvious to everyone else that we were still aware of each other every second. That space was a joke, we both knew it.

Danton drew a line on the board and started moving magnets. “The last series showed us what is and is not working. We are not forcing anything just because it got us this far.”

Raffi leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “That sounds like a speech before somebody gets benched.”

A few guys snorted.

Danton ignored him. “It is a speech before somebody gets smarter.”

He moved another marker into place. “We are changing the top line.”

The room shifted.

My eyes went to the board.

Then I saw it.

Cassian and me.

Not just power play.

Full shifts.

I felt Cassian glance at me before I even turned my head.

Danton set the marker down and faced the room.

“Torin and Cassian are going to play together.”

Nobody said anything for a beat.

Then one of the younger guys blinked and looked between us. “For real?”

“Full shifts,” Danton said.

Raffi made a low sound in his throat. “Well, that is either genius or dangerous.”

“Both,” Danton said.

That got a few laughs.

I kept my face steady, but I could feel the room around me shift as the idea sank in. We had played together in pieces all season. Power play. Certain matchups. Certain situations where the chemistry was too obvious to ignore. But full shifts was different. That was a decision. One that meant trust, pressure, and a lot of eyes on us every second we were on the ice.

Cassian shifted beside me, not much, but enough for me to feel it.

Danton pointed at the board again. “You two make the puck move cleaner when you are on together. Better entries. Better reads. Better support on the cycle. We are using that.”

He looked at me first. “Torin, you are going to drive the pace.”

Then Cassian. “Cassian, you are going to make the first pass available every shift and stop trying to do everything yourself.”

Cassian’s mouth twitched. “That sounds suspiciously personal.”

“It is coaching,” Danton said. “And a little personal.”

A few of the guys laughed again.

I looked at Cassian out of the corner of my eye. He was trying not to smile, which usually meant he was already thinking three moves ahead of everybody else in the room. The problem was that the room probably knew it too.

Danton folded his arms. “You two are dangerous when you are in sync.”

Raffi lifted a brow. “That is one way to put it.”

Danton pointed the marker at him. “Do not start.”

“I was not starting. I was supporting.”

“You were not supporting.”

“Coach,” Raffi said, grinning now, “the entire building supports that pairing.”

More laughter.

Cassian looked down and shook his head once, the barest hint of amusement tugging at his mouth. I caught that and had to work to keep my own expression level. The truth was, hearing Danton say it out loud did something to the air in the room. Not because it was a shock. Because it was a commitment. A real one. Not just to winning, but to trusting that the two of us together could make the difference.

Danton turned to the board and started changing the rest of the lines. “You will not be chasing on every shift. You will not be forcing pucks through traffic because you think you can outwork physics. You will read each other and move the puck faster than they can adjust.”

He drew a line under the new pairing. “I need you two to be magic.”

That landed.

Not because it was dramatic. Because Danton did not say things like that unless he meant them.

The room went quiet enough that I could hear the hum of the overhead lights.

Danton looked at us again. “Can you do that?”

I felt Cassian turn towards me before I looked at him.

There it was again. That familiar look that always got me. Not just heat. Not just trust. The full weight of him trying to read my face before the answer came out of my mouth. He did that when the stakes mattered. He did it when he wanted to know whether I was with him before the room did.

I looked back at him.

The air in the room shifted immediately.

The rest of the guys were still there. Danton was still at the board. But for a second it was only us and the question he had not asked out loud.

Can we do this?

Can we be the line Danton wanted? The pair he trusted to change the series? The two players everyone in the room had been side-eyeing and laughing about and quietly counting on?

Cassian’s mouth tilted just a little. Not a smile. Almost one.

I knew what he was doing. Giving me the answer before I gave him mine.

I leaned back in my chair and said, “Yeah.”

It came out steady.

Danton’s eyes moved to Cassian.

Cassian did not break eye contact with me when he answered. “Yeah.”

The room stayed quiet for half a second longer.

Then Danton nodded once, like he had expected nothing less. “Good.”

Raffi let out a short laugh. “There it is. Team chemistry and terror in one sentence.”

“Raffi,” Danton said.

“What?”

“Stop talking.”

“No.”

That pulled another round of laughter out of the room and broke the tension enough for the rest of the players to start shifting again. A few guys leaned forward to look at the board more closely. One of the defensemen asked a question about zone exits. Another wanted to know if the second line shifted too.

Danton kept answering, but I barely heard the rest. Cassian had turned his head back toward the board, but his shoulder was still close enough to mine that I could feel the heat of him through practice gear. I had to remind myself we were still in a room full of teammates and not alone where I could say what I actually wanted to say.

He glanced at me once.

That was enough.

I held his gaze until he looked away first.

The room was still moving around us, but the rest of it had started to blur at the edges. Danton kept talking lines and matchups, but I was more aware of Cassian beside me than of the whiteboard. His knee brushed mine once under the bench, accidental enough to be plausible.

Danton tapped the board again. “This is not about making a statement. This is about winning the series.”

He turned to us again, the marker in his hand. “You understand that?”

“Yes,” I said.

Cassian answered at the same time. “Yes.”

Danton nodded, satisfied. “Good. Then I do not care what it looks like from the outside. I care what it does on the ice.”

That earned a few murmurs of approval from the room.

Raffi leaned forward in his chair and grinned at me. “So you two are officially the problem now?”

Cassian looked at him. “We have been the problem.”

“Fair,” Raffi said.

Danton shook his head and turned back to the board. “If you are done making this about your personalities, I would like to finish the plan.”

A few players laughed under their breath.

I looked at Cassian again. He was still facing front, but his expression had shifted into something quieter. More focused. The same look he got before a face-off when he had already decided the result was going to go our way. I liked that look on him too much. It made me think of all the reasons this pairing worked, and most of them had nothing to do with hockey.

Danton finished the changes, capped the marker, and turned to face us one last time. “This is the adjustment. Trust it.”

Then he looked between us. “And I mean both of you.”

Cassian gave a short nod. “Got it.”

I nodded too. “Got it.”

The meeting started to break up after that.

I stayed seated until most of the room had cleared.

Cassian did too.

“Do you really think we can do this?” I asked, when the room was finally empty.

Cassian’s response came almost immediately, “We can.”

And the worst part was that I knew, before we ever skated a shift together, that he was right.