Chapter 4
Ryan POV
Shower steam billowed out of the varsity stalls in thick, white plumes, turning the locker room air thick with eucalyptus soap, bleach, and hot water.
I sat on the wooden pine bench, my elbows resting on my knees, dragging a pair of medical scissors under the thick bands of white athletic tape wrapping my wrists.
The adhesive tore away with a sharp rip, pulling at the dark hair on my forearms. My knuckles were swollen, mottled purple across the index and middle joints from an uncalled slash during the five-on-four penalty kill.
Beneath my ribs, the deep contusion from the BC game pulsed with a dull, throbbing heat that made every deep breath feel like swallowing glass.
Across the rubber aisle, Knox Mercer dropped his heavy shoulder pads onto the floor with a loud plastic clatter. He slumped back against his locker, his chest heaving, his face still flushed red from thirty minutes of full-contact line rushes.
"Coach is out of his mind," Knox groaned, dragging a wet towel through his damp blonde hair. "Running blue-line suicides after an hour of transition drills. My quads are about to detach from the bone."
I didn't answer. I balled the discarded tape into a tight sphere and tossed it into the industrial bin ten feet away. It hit the rusted metal rim with a flat clang.
Knox kicked his skates out of the way, leaning his head back against the wood slats. A slow, speculative grin spread across his face. "Saw your new shadow in the equipment corridor before skate."
My hand stopped halfway to the zipper of my gear bag. The muscles along my neck tightened into rigid cords.
"She was hauling those black plastic crates," Knox continued, reaching down to unlace his left boot.
"Collins, right? Engineering girl. The one who made Vance lose his mind last season. Man, I knew she had a brain, but nobody told me she had legs like that under those lab coats. If the athletic department offered private diagnostic sessions to the rest of the roster, I’d pull my hamstring tomorrow. "
A sudden, violent pressure flared behind my temples.
My vision narrowed to the wet linoleum between my feet. The blood pounded against my eardrums with a deafening, rhythmic thud, so loud it drowned out the hum of the ventilation fans. My jaw clamped shut, the molars grinding together until a sharp ache shot straight up into my cheekbone.
I stood up.
The motion was sudden enough that Knox’s head snapped up, the easy humor vanishing from his eyes as I crossed the narrow rubber runner between our benches. I stopped two inches from his knees, looking down at him from my full height.
"What did you say?" My voice didn't rise. It dropped into a low, gravelly rasp that scraped against the humid air, lethal and stripped of warmth.
Knox blinked, his grin freezing in place. "Whoa, Cap. I was just—"
I reached down, grabbed the front of his grey practice jersey, and twisted the fabric tight in my fist, hauling him forward two inches until his spine went rigid against the locker.
"Don't look at her," I whispered, the words coming out flat, cold, and venomous. "Don't talk about her in this room. Don't say her name again."
Knox’s hands came up, hovering near his chest in surrender. His eyes widened, scanning my face, clocking the tight fury in the set of my mouth and the white-knuckle grip I had on his shirt. "Jesus, Ryan. All right. Hands off. It was a joke."
I held him there for two agonizing seconds, letting the threat sink into the bone. The locker room around us had gone dead quiet; two freshmen defensemen by the hydrotherapy tubs froze, staring at the floor to avoid catching my eye.
I released his jersey with a sharp push that sent him back against the pine slats.
"I have enough administrative bullshit on my plate without my linemate acting like a stray dog," I growled, grabbing my clean grey sweatshirt and hauling my duffel bag onto one shoulder. "Keep your mind on Friday night."
I didn't wait for his answer. I kicked the locker room door open and took the stairs down into the cold silence of the basement.
* * *
The air in Sub-Level Two was forty degrees colder than the locker room, smelling of damp coastal bedrock, ancient iron, and refrigeration brine.
I shoved the heavy blast door open. It swung back with an echoing metallic groan.
Nylah was already there.
She sat at the steel workstation, her posture rigid as a surveyor’s rod, illuminated by the harsh blue glare of her laptop screen.
She had shed her coat, wearing a dark navy long-sleeved athletic top that hugged her ribs and the sharp, straight line of her shoulders.
Her hair was pinned up again, but two loose, dark strands had escaped the knot, brushing against the pale curve of her neck just above the collar.
The contrast between her and the filth of the arena hit my sternum like a physical blow. She didn't smell like sweat, damp pads, or industrial disinfectants. She smelled of crushed winter mint, rain, and the faint, bitter edge of cold caffeine.
My lungs hitched, pulling the scent in before my brain could stop the impulse.
She didn't jump when the heavy door banged shut. Her fingers continued typing across the keyboard, rapid and rhythmic, though the slight flare of her nostrils told me she knew precisely where I was standing.
"You're seven minutes late, Owen," she said, her eyes remaining fixed on the monitor. "I was about to notify the athletic office that you failed to report for the post-skate assessment."
"Try it," I said, dropping my duffel onto the concrete floor with a dull thud.
I walked toward the desk. My stride was slow, deliberate, the heavy rubber soles of my boots clicking against the rough stone. Instead of taking the rolling stool across from her, I rounded the edge of the steel table, stepping directly into her perimeter.
She stiffened. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a fraction of a second before she forced herself to resume typing.
I stopped behind her left shoulder, planting my right forearm on the back of her chair. I leaned down, bringing my chest within inches of her back, casting a wide shadow that swallowed the blue light of her screen.
The heat rolling off my body hit her instantly. I watched the skin along the side of her neck prickle, the tiny dark hairs standing up in response to the temperature shift. Her breathing hitched, losing its steady cadence, turning shallow and fast.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was flat, but I caught the slight tremor running along the edges of the vowels.
"Looking at your numbers," I murmured, my face hovering near her ear. The scent of her hair—clean, cool, with that sharp undertone of mint—filled my throat, scorching its way down into my lungs. "Seeing how much time you spent staring at graphs while I was doing the work."
She turned her head sharply, intending to glare at me, but the movement brought her face within three inches of mine.
Her amber-flecked eyes widened slightly.
Her lips parted, drawing in a sharp, defensive breath.
Up close, I could see the minute gold rings circling her dark pupils, dilated wide in the dim fluorescent light.
She wasn't wearing makeup; her skin was pale from the basement chill, except for a faint, high flush burning across the ridge of her cheekbones.
"Your lateral acceleration dropped four-tenths of a second during the third transition drill," she said, her voice dropping into a defiant, clinical tone that did nothing to mask the rapid rise and fall of her chest. "Your left adductor is failing under sustained load. You’re masking it by putting sixty percent of your balance onto your right skate. "
"I scored three goals on that drill," I said, leaning an inch closer, daring her to pull back.
"You're degrading the structural integrity of the joint," she countered, her chin tilting up, her eyes locking onto mine without an ounce of surrender. "Scoring goals doesn't make you invulnerable. It just makes you reckless."
"It makes me effective, Collins."
"It makes you a medical liability."
* * *
Her defiance was a physical provocation. It sparked behind my ribs, a dark, heavy heat that coiled tight in my lower gut.
I didn't back away. Slowly, deliberately, I dragged the low metal stool across the concrete with a screech that made her jaw clench. I pulled it up right beside her, dropping my weight onto the seat so that I was level with her shoulders.
The space beneath the narrow desk was cramped, built for a single technician, not an athlete with a six-foot-three frame.
When I slid my legs forward, the outside of my heavy thigh made solid, unyielding contact with hers.
She froze.
Her leg didn't pull away. Through the thin fabric of my sweatpants and the rough weave of her dark denim, the heat of her skin burned straight into my muscle.
The friction was searing, immediate, and heavy.
I felt the instantaneous contraction of her quadricep as she resisted the urge to retreat, her body locking up under the pressure.
Neither of us moved. The silence in the room stretched thin, suffocating, drowning out the distant hum of the ice plant.
Nylah reached for a printed telemetry graph on the corner of the desk, her fingers rigid. "Sign the compliance log for the post-skate data. Then you can get out."
She held the thick cardstock out between us.
I reached out, my fingers wrapping around the opposite edge of the sheet. As I took it, the calloused side of my thumb brushed the bare skin across the back of her knuckles.
Her breath hitched in a sharp, audible gasp.
The contact was dry, rough, and scorching. A jolt traveled straight up the tendons of my arm, lodging deep in my chest. I didn't pull my hand back. I let my thumb rest against her skin, feeling the delicate bones beneath the surface, fragile and burning hot.
My voice dropped into a rough, gravelly murmur that barely cleared the space between our mouths. "You like giving orders, don't you, Collins?"
Her gaze dropped to my lips, lingering on the hard line of my mouth, before snapping back to my eyes.
The pulse in the hollow of her throat was thrashing violently, hammering against her carotid artery like a bird trapped in a cage.
Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow intervals, the dark navy fabric of her shirt straining against her ribcage.
She didn't flinch. She didn't drop her gaze. Instead, she leaned forward by a fraction of an inch, her knees pressing harder against mine beneath the table, her breath washing over my chin in warm, sweet bursts.
"I like keeping arrogant men from destroying themselves," she whispered, her words razor-sharp despite the tremor in her throat. "Sign the paper, Owen."
I stared into her dark, dilated eyes. The urge to scare her away, to intimidate her into packing up her plastic cases and running back to the safety of her engineering lab, vanished completely.
It was replaced by something dark, raw, and dangerous.
I signed the paper with a slow, heavy stroke of the pen, never taking my eyes off her mouth.
I didn't want her gone anymore.
I wanted to find the exact fracture point in that iron composure. I wanted to push her until her breath broke, until her clinical little spreadsheets burned to ash, and see what it took to make her shatter in my hands.