Chapter 6
Ryan POV
The play diagram on my tablet screen was a blur of black lines and meaningless arrows.
I sat on the mezzanine level of the student center, my elbows planted on the high-top oak table, the heels of my boots hooked over the metal rung of the stool.
Outside the four-story glass facade, a pale, anemic sun hung low over the frozen grey expanse of Penobscot Bay.
The light was sharp and cold, cutting across the polished granite floor fifty feet below.
Knox was sitting across from me, tearing into a turkey sandwich, his voice droning on about the penalty kill rotation for Friday's game against Vermont.
I didn't hear a word he said.
The skin along my collarbone still felt tight, scorched by the memory of twelve hours ago in the basement. I could still feel the phantom heat of her sweater against my ribs. I could still smell that sharp, clean scent of crushed mint and rain that had settled into the back of my throat like smoke.
I'm looking at a man who's terrified of falling.
Her whisper had carved straight through four years of scar tissue.
She’d stood there in the dark, five feet five inches of stubborn, sharp-tongued defiance, looking right past the captain's jersey, right past the two hundred and twenty pounds of bone and muscle, and straight into the rot I kept locked behind my teeth.
My molars ground together until a dull ache radiated up into my temples.
I hated that she’d heard the call. I hated that she knew about Leo.
But worse than that—worse than the humiliation of being seen—was the sick, unyielding hunger that had seized my chest when I had her pinned against that stainless-steel table.
If she had leaned forward another half-inch, I would have dragged her onto the metal, stripped that severe knot out of her dark hair, and taken her mouth until neither of us had any breath left to fight with.
"Owen." Knox dropped the crust of his sandwich onto the paper wrapper, his blue eyes narrowing across the table. "You're gripping that stylus hard enough to snap the plastic."
I looked down. My knuckles were white, the tendons along my forearm standing out in rigid, strained cords.
"Just reviewing the neutral-zone trap," I muttered, my voice a gravelly scrape.
"Bullshit," Knox said. "You've been staring at the same power-play slide for twenty minutes. You haven't blinked once."
I didn't bother answering. My gaze drifted toward the grand staircase connecting the mezzanine to the main concourse, scanning the crowd by reflex.
Then my lungs locked up.
She stepped through the heavy revolving doors on the ground floor.
Nylah.
She was wearing a tailored charcoal wool coat over dark jeans, her winter boots clicking rhythmically against the stone floor.
Her leather messenger bag hung diagonally across her chest, pulling the heavy fabric of her coat tight against the curve of her waist. A dark green scarf was wrapped twice around her neck, but a few loose wisps of dark hair had slipped free from her knot, blowing across her cheek in the draft from the entrance.
My internal compass snapped toward her with a violent, physical pull. The surrounding chatter of five hundred students faded into a flat, distant hum.
She adjusted the strap on her shoulder, her right thumb spinning that thin silver band around and around her knuckle.
She looked tired—the faint purplish hollows beneath her eyes gave away the hours she’d spent in the lab—but her posture remained unbending, her chin held at that infuriating, arrogant angle that made my hands itch to take hold of her.
* * *
She cut across the open atrium toward the library annex, her stride quick and purposeful.
She didn't make it twenty yards.
A figure stepped out from behind the central coffee kiosk, intercepting her path.
Julian Vance.
He was wearing his varsity bomber jacket, the wool sleeves pushed up to his forearms, a smirk plastered across his face. He held a paper cup in one hand, the other tucked casually into the pocket of his designer jeans.
My hand flattened on the oak table. The wood groaned under the sudden transfer of weight.
Vance was a third-line winger with rich parents, soft hands, and a reputation for treating every freshman girl on the north side of campus like a disposable accessory. He stepped directly into Nylah’s stride, forcing her to stop or collide with his chest.
Nylah took a half-step back, her head tilting back as she looked at him. Even from thirty yards away, on the mezzanine above, I could see the cold, dismissive line of her mouth. She didn't want him there.
Vance didn't care. He leaned in, closing the gap she’d tried to create, using his size to crowd her against the broad limestone column supporting the second-floor overhang. He laughed at something she said, shaking his head, and then his free hand came out of his pocket.
He reached out.
His palm flattened against the small of her back.
The fingers of his right hand splayed wide over the charcoal wool of her coat, resting right against the delicate hollow above her hip.
The world stopped spinning.
A white-hot spike drove straight through my optic nerve, blowing out every rational thought in my skull.
The blood rushed into my ears with the roar of a jet engine, deafening and brutal.
My pulse hammered against my temples in violent, ragged thuds that shook my vision.
The air in my chest turned to pure, poisonous acid.
Get your hands off her.
Vance leaned down, his face dipping toward the curve of her neck, whispering something that made his grin widen. Nylah’s body stiffened; she twisted her torso, trying to shrug off the contact, her hand coming up to shove at his forearm.
Vance didn't move his hand. His fingers curled slightly, tightening their grip on the wool at her waist.
The plastic stylus in my grip snapped in half with a sharp crack.
"Ryan?" Knox’s voice sounded muffled, like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well. "Hey—where the hell are you going?"
I was already on my feet.
The metal stool flew backward, clattering against the mezzanine floor. I didn't look at Knox. I didn't grab my bag. I moved with a blind, lethal momentum, my vision tunneled down to that splayed hand resting against the curve of her hip.
* * *
I cleared the mezzanine stairs three at a time, the heavy rubber soles of my boots striking the granite with dull, thunderous impacts.
Students scattered out of my path. A guy in a business fraternity dropped his folder when my shoulder clipped his arm; he opened his mouth to complain, saw my face, and choked on his own tongue.
I didn't break stride. I crossed the polished stone floor of the atrium like a heat-seeking warhead, cutting through the midday rush.
Vance was still leaning into her space, his head tilted down toward her cheek, his mouth moving. Nylah’s back was pressed flat against the cold limestone pillar, her messenger bag held against her ribs like a shield, her eyes flashing with sharp, rising anger.
I didn't slow down. I didn't announce myself.
I dropped my left shoulder and drove it straight into the meat of Vance’s upper arm and back, using all two hundred and twenty pounds of my frame to wedge him violently away from her.
The impact sounded like a clean check against the dasher boards.
Vance stumbled sideways, his boots skidding across the slick stone floor. The coffee cup flew from his hand, splashing dark roast across the granite as he caught his balance against a low recycling bin ten feet away.
"What the fuck—" Vance snarled, spinning around, his fists coming up.
Then he saw who had hit him.
I closed the space between us in half a stride, stepping directly into his chest, towering over him by three inches and thirty pounds. The silver scar over my eyebrow was throbbing; the vein at the side of my neck was pulsing like a live wire.
"Take your hands off her," I said.
The words didn't come out loud. They came out in a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated deep in the bone of my sternum, flat and stripped of everything human.
Vance’s fists wavered. He blinked, the arrogance draining out of his face, replaced by the sudden, ugly realization of what was standing in front of him. He knew what I had done to Marcus Davies’s shoulder. He knew what I had done to the BC winger.
"Owen," Vance said, his voice hitching before he forced a thin, nervous laugh. "Jesus, man. We were just talking. She's the analytics lead, right? I was just asking about—"
"Walk," I commanded. I took another half-step forward, my chest brushing the lapels of his jacket, my jaw clenched so tight the masseter muscle jumped beneath the skin. "Walk away from this pillar right now, Julian, or you won't be skating the power play on Friday."
Vance swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He held his hands up, palms out, backing away slowly before turning on his heel and disappearing into the crowd toward the north exit.
The silence around the column was absolute.
I turned around.
Nylah was still standing against the limestone, but her chin was tilted up, her amber-flecked eyes blazing with fury. Her chest was heaving beneath her coat, the pulse in the hollow of her throat thrashing wildly against her collarbone.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she hissed, stepping away from the pillar, her voice shaking with rage. "You just tackled a member of your own team in the middle of the student union!"
I didn't give her room to breathe.
I stepped into her perimeter, cutting off her advance, backing her straight back against the cold stone until her shoulders made solid contact with the rock. I planted my left palm flat against the granite beside her head, trapping her between my arm and the pillar.
The smell of winter mint and rain washed over my face, mixing with the hot adrenaline burning in my throat.
"You let him touch you," I growled, leaning down until my face was three inches from hers. My breath hit her cheek in hot, ragged bursts.
"He put a hand on my coat, Owen!" Her eyes flashed, unafraid of the size difference between us, her hands coming up to plant themselves against the center of my chest. Her palms were burning hot through my grey hoodie.
"And even if he didn't, who I talk to and who touches me is none of your damn business! "
"It is my business," I snapped, leaning closer, my chest pressing hard against her hands, forcing her fingers to splay against my ribs.
"You are on my compliance docket. You are in Sub-Level Two every morning.
While your name is signed on my clearance card, you keep your distance from trash like that. "
"I am not your property!" she whispered, her voice rough, her breath catching as the pressure of my body forced the air from her lungs. "You don't own me, Ryan."
I leaned down further, until my mouth was millimeters from the shell of her ear, my rough stubble grazing the sensitive skin of her jawline.
"Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart," I murmured, my gravelly voice dropping into a dark, possessive register that made her whole body shudder against the stone. "You look at him again, and I’ll break his hands. You're in my perimeter now. Act like it."