Chapter 4
Jess
The morning sun hitting the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse was aggressive.
It didn't filter in; it assaulted the room.
It bounced off the polished chrome of the kitchen island, the gleaming black marble floors, and the terrifyingly spotless glass of the coffee maker, turning the entire apartment into a blinding white box of headache-inducing brightness.
I stood in the center of the kitchen, wearing one of Nick’s t-shirts that I had stolen from the laundry pile because I refused to wear the silk dress while making scrambled eggs.
The shirt smelled like him—cedar, laundry detergent, and that distinct, crisp scent of winter air that seemed to cling to his skin even when he was indoors.
It reached my knees. I looked like a toddler playing dress-up in a giant’s house.
I cracked an egg into the pan with more force than necessary. The shell shattered, sending a fragment into the yolk.
"Perfect," I muttered, fishing the shell out with my finger. "Just like my life. A broken mess."
I was angry. No, that wasn't the right word. I was vibrating with a complex cocktail of humiliation, rage, and a lingering, traitorous arousal that I wanted to scrub off my skin with steel wool.
I replayed the scene in the study for the hundredth time since waking up.
Is a kiss worth your future? Is it worth being homeless again?
He had weaponized my poverty. He had taken the most vulnerable thing about me—my desperate need for survival—and turned it into a leash.
He had looked at me with eyes that burned with desire, eyes that told me he wanted to devour me whole, and then he had doused the fire with the ice water of his checkbook.
I hated him. I hated that he was right. I hated that I had frozen, terrified of losing the roof over my head, instead of slapping him.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I glared at it.
It was a notification from The Sin Bin, the anonymous campus gossip app that everyone pretended to hate but refreshed every five minutes.
@PuckBunnyWatch: Saw Vance leaving the Hive last night dragging a redhead. Rumor has it she’s the new live-in 'assistant.' Since when does an assistant wear a silk slip dress to a kegger? Rates must be high at the Meridian. ?? #SugarBaby #VanceTheWallet
I felt the blood drain from my face.
I gripped the edge of the counter, my knuckles turning white. Sugar Baby. Vance The Wallet.
They thought I was a prostitute.
Of course they did. Why else would a broke scholarship student be living in the penthouse of the richest guy on campus? No one knew about the "contract." No one knew I was scrubbing his protein shakers and organizing his color-coded calendar. They just saw the dress and the address.
"Great," I whispered, my voice cracking. "Just great."
I turned off the stove. I wasn't hungry anymore. The smell of the eggs made my stomach turn.
I needed to find him. I needed to quit. I didn't care about the money anymore. I would live in the library. I would sleep in the dance studio. I couldn't do this. I couldn't be his "pet" while the whole school called me a whore.
"Nick!" I yelled, marching out of the kitchen.
The apartment was silent.
"Nick! We need to talk! I'm done!"
I checked his bedroom. The bed was made—military corners, duvet smoothed to an impossible flatness—but empty.
I checked the office. Empty.
A strange sound drifted down the hallway from the far end of the penthouse. It was a rhythmic, metallic clank... clank... followed by a heavy, wet thud.
The home gym.
I stormed down the hallway. I was going to throw the phone in his face. I was going to scream until he looked at me with something other than that bored, arrogant stare.
I pushed open the double glass doors of the gym.
The room was impressive, obviously. It was better equipped than the university’s athletic center. Rows of matte black weights, a treadmill that probably cost more than my parents’ house, and a wall of mirrors.
But I didn't look at the equipment.
I looked at Nick.
He was on the floor.
He wasn't working out. He was crumpled near the squat rack, his back pressed against the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. He was wearing nothing but grey compression shorts. His skin was slick with sweat, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon.
But it wasn't the exertion that stopped me cold. It was his face.
Nick Vance—the Ice King, the robot, the man who treated emotions like a software error—was grimacing. His eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth grit so hard I could see the muscles in his jaw jumping. His complexion was grey, clammy.
He looked... broken.
"Nick?" My anger evaporated instantly, replaced by a sharp spike of alarm.
His eyes snapped open. For a second, they were unfocused, wild with pain. Then, he saw me. He tried to straighten up, to put the mask back on, but his body betrayed him. A spasm ripped through him, and he let out a low, guttural groan, his hand flying to his left hip.
"Get out," he rasped. His voice was thin, strained.
"What happened?" I ignored him, stepping into the room. "Did you drop a weight?"
"I said get out, Jessica. Clause... Clause 2..." He tried to quote the contract, but another wave of pain hit him, cutting off his words. He squeezed his eyes shut again, his head thumping back against the wall. "Fuck."
I had never heard him curse like that. It sounded desperate.
I walked over to him, kneeling on the rubber mat. Up close, the damage was visible. The scar I had seen briefly the night before—the jagged white line running from his hip bone down his thigh—was angry and inflamed. The muscles around it were locked in a visible, rock-hard knot.
"It's a spasm," I said, my dancer brain taking over. I knew spasms. I knew the specific, blinding agony of a muscle seizing and refusing to let go. "Your hip flexor?"
"Leave me alone," he gritted out, breathing through his nose in short, sharp bursts. "I just... need a minute."
"You don't need a minute, you need release," I said. "You're seizing up. If you don't unlock it, you're going to tear something."
"I don't need your help."
"Shut up, Nick."
I moved closer. The smell of him was overwhelming—sweat and heat and pain. I reached out, my hands hovering over his hip.
"Don't touch me," he warned, opening his eyes. They were glacial, terrified. "I swear to God, Jess..."
"Do you want to walk tomorrow?" I asked, looking him dead in the eye. "Because looking at this contraction, if you stay like this for another ten minutes, you're not going to be skating on Monday. You’re going to be limping."
He stared at me. The threat of not playing silenced him. Hockey was the only thing that mattered to him. It was his religion.
"Fine," he exhaled, the word tearing out of his throat. "Do it."
I didn't hesitate. I moved my hands to his hip. His skin was burning hot. The muscle under my fingers felt like stone. It was a massive, violent cramp.
"I have to press hard," I warned. "It's going to hurt like hell before it gets better."
"Just do it."
I dug my thumbs into the center of the knot.
He shouted. It was a raw, animalistic sound that he tried to swallow, but it escaped anyway. His hand shot out and gripped my shoulder, his fingers digging into my skin with bruising force.
"Breathe," I commanded, my voice calm, authoritative. "In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Nick, look at me."
He looked at me. His pupils were blown wide.
"Breathe," I repeated. "Don't fight me. If you tense up, I can't get deep enough."
I pushed harder, using my body weight, leaning into his hip. I felt the muscle twitch, resisting, fighting the intrusion.
"Talk to me," I said, needing to distract him. "Tell me about the scar. How did you get it?"
He gasped, his grip on my shoulder tightening until I knew I’d have bruises later. "Hockey. Junior year of high school. Skate blade. Cut the... cut the muscle."
"And it still bothers you?" I asked, working my thumbs in a circular motion, hunting for the trigger point.
"Only when... I push too hard," he panted. "Stress. Lack of sleep."
"You were up all night," I stated. "I heard you pacing."
"I was working."
"You were stressing," I corrected. "You're terrified of the draft."
"I'm not... terrified."
"You are. You're scared you're not good enough. Or that you're too broken."
I found the center of the knot. I pressed down with everything I had.
Nick arched his back off the floor, a hiss of air leaving his lungs. His other hand scrambled for purchase and found my waist, gripping me, pulling me closer as if I were an anchor in a storm.
"There," I whispered. "I feel it giving. Breathe, Nick. Let it go."
We stayed like that for what felt like an eternity.
Me kneeling between his splayed legs, digging into his hip, him gripping me like I was the only thing keeping him from falling off the earth.
The air in the gym was thick with the scent of our combined sweat and the heavy, intimate sound of his ragged breathing.
Slowly, agonizingly, the muscle began to surrender. The rock-hard knot softened under my fingers.
Nick’s head fell back against the wall. His grip on my shoulder loosened, his hand sliding down my arm to rest heavily on the floor.
"It's releasing," he murmured.
"Yeah," I said softly. I didn't stop. I kept working the area, smoothing out the fascia, ensuring it wouldn't seize again immediately.
My hands were slippery with his sweat. I was touching him intimately, my fingers pressing into the dangerous V-line of his hips, inches from the waistband of his shorts. But there was nothing sexual about it. It was medicinal. It was raw.
And yet, it was the most intimate moment of my life.
I looked at his face. The mask was gone. The arrogance, the sneer, the cold calculation—it had all been stripped away by pain. He looked young. He looked tired. He looked human.
He opened his eyes and caught me staring.
We froze.
My hands were still on his hip. His hand was still resting on my waist. The silence stretched, heavy and profound.