Chapter 11
Nylah POV
The ceramic rim of the mug touched my lower lip, and a sharp, stinging flare shot straight through the nerve endings.
I lowered the black coffee, setting the cup down on the laminate counter with a fragile plastic clatter.
My fingers lifted, the tip of my index finger pressing lightly against the center of my bottom lip.
The skin felt swollen, hypersensitive to the morning draft, humming with the phantom friction of Ryan Owen’s rough, calloused thumb dragging across the surface in the dark cab of his truck.
Six-forty-five in the morning.
Outside our second-floor kitchen window, the coastal sun was a blinding, pale disc rising over the frozen salt flats of Penobscot Bay. The glare bounced off the iced asphalt below, throwing sharp, fractured beams of white light across the ceiling.
My chest hitched on a shallow breath.
The memory didn't come back in pieces; it hit like a physical weight dropped directly onto my sternum.
The sound of sleet drumming against the steel roof.
The heavy, low-frequency rumble of his diesel engine vibrating through the floorboards.
His massive frame blotting out the dashboard instruments, caging me against the passenger door until there was no air left in the cab that hadn't passed through his lungs first.
You think I want to be sitting in this truck, losing my fucking mind every time you take a breath?
A hot, suffocating flush crawled up the sides of my neck, settling beneath the skin of my cheeks.
I had leaned toward him. When his mouth had hovered a millimeter from mine, when his rough stubble had grazed my jaw, every rational survival instinct I possessed had shut down.
I hadn't pushed him away. My hands had knotted into the thick fleece of his hoodie, pulling him closer, desperate for the impact of his mouth against mine.
Adrenaline, I told myself, my knuckles whitening as I gripped the edge of the sink. Acute sympathetic nervous system overload. A physiological byproduct of sustained interpersonal conflict and physical exhaustion.
It was textbook. When the human body is subjected to sustained stress, cortisol and epinephrine spike, creating false indicators of intimacy. It was a biological glitch. An error in the data.
I reached for my black merino wool sweater, pulling the high, ribbed collar all the way up to my jawline. I tucked every loose strand of dark hair into a severe, immovable knot at the base of my skull, securing it with three steel pins.
The new protocol was simple: zero deviation from the NCAA compliance rubric. No informal conversation. No private rides in his vehicle. Nitrile gloves for every single sensor placement, creating an impermeable chemical barrier between his burning skin and mine.
I would treat him like an eccentric load-bearing equation. Nothing more.
* * *
By noon, the skybridge connecting the engineering quad to the athletic complex was an unyielding tunnel of cold light.
I walked with my head down, my leather messenger bag slung across my chest, my arms wrapped tightly around my diagnostic tablet. The glass panes rattled in the coastal wind, leaking drafts that smelled of salt and diesel exhaust from the service courtyard below.
My strategy was avoidance. If I didn't cross his path outside the scheduled one o'clock kinematic verification in the basement, I could maintain the fiction that last night hadn't brought us to the edge of an abyss.
I pushed through the heavy double doors into the varsity concourse of The Foundry.
The lobby smelled of floor wax, damp rubber matting, and the familiar, biting chill of refrigeration ammonia. A dozen students were milling around the trophy cases, their winter coats dripping melted slush onto the terrazzo floor.
I took three steps toward the service stairwell before the double doors of the varsity dressing room swung open.
The morning skate had just ended.
A dozen players spilled out into the lobby, carrying gear bags and sticks, their loud voices echoing off the concrete rafters. In the center of the pack stood Ryan.
The air left my windpipe in a sharp, dry gasp.
He towered over the rest of the forwards, wearing a dark grey team parka unzipped over a long-sleeved black training shirt.
His dark hair was still damp from the showers, curling slightly against the nape of his neck.
Across the ridge of his cheekbone and through his left eyebrow, the white butterfly bandages I had smoothed down with my own trembling hands stood out in stark, violent contrast against his bruised skin.
He stopped dead in the middle of the concourse.
Through the crowd of thirty milling students, his pale grey eyes snapped to mine with the terrifying precision of a heat-seeking weapon.
He didn't blink. He didn't nod. He simply stared at me, his gaze dropping to my mouth, lingering on the swollen curve of my bottom lip, before rising back to pin my pupils with an intensity that made the floor feel unstable beneath my boots.
Beside him, Knox Mercer flipped an orange into the air, caught it, and followed Ryan’s unmoving line of sight.
A wide, knowing grin spread across Knox’s face. "Collins!" he barked across the lobby, his voice booming over the chatter. "You look like you got about as much sleep as our captain did. Did he keep you up reviewing shift charts until dawn?"
The blood drained from my face, leaving my extremities icy cold.
Ryan didn't look at Knox. His jaw clenched so hard a cord of muscle twitched beneath his dark stubble, his pale eyes remaining pinned to mine.
"Shut your mouth, Mercer," Ryan muttered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that cut through the lobby noise like a blade.
My diaphragm locked. I didn't answer Knox. I didn't give Ryan the satisfaction of seeing me flinch. I wheeled around on the heel of my winter boot, lunged through the heavy steel door of the service stairwell, and descended into the cold shadows of the basement as fast as my legs could carry me.
* * *
The air in Sub-Level Two was forty-eight degrees, smelling of damp limestone, ancient iron, and refrigeration brine.
I shoved the heavy iron blast door open, stumbled inside, and slammed my equipment case onto the stainless-steel workstation with a concussive rattle. I braced both palms flat against the cold metal surface, dropping my head between my shoulders, pulling in ragged, icy mouthfuls of air.
You're fine, I told myself, the pulse in my throat hammering violently against the ribbed wool of my collar. He's on the second floor with the team. You have forty minutes before the scheduled session. You're in control.
Behind me, the heavy iron blast door swung shut.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening, the latch catching with a brutal, mechanical finality that vibrated straight through the concrete floor into the soles of my boots.
The deadbolt clicked into place.
My breath trapped itself in my chest. I spun around, my lower back hitting the hard edge of the steel table.
Ryan Owen was standing against the closed door.
He had shed his heavy parka. He stood in his black training shirt and dark sweatpants, his broad shoulders filling the frame of the iron doorway.
His duffel bag lay at his feet where he had dropped it on the floor.
His chest was rising and falling in heavy, uneven intervals, the grey in his eyes swallowed by massive rings of dilated black.
He hadn't taken the stairs normally. He had taken the service elevator or sprinted down the catacombs to intercept me.
He smelled of cold ice, crushed cedar, fresh soap, and the dark, suffocating heat pouring off his skin.
"Did you really think you could run from me across the lobby, Collins?"
His gravelly baritone scraped against the stone walls of the bunker, low, rough, and stripped bare of any polite restraint.
My throat was so dry it felt like sandpaper. "We have an appointment at one o'clock, Owen. Back away from the door."
He didn't back away. He pushed off the iron slab, taking three slow, grounded strides across the narrow room. His heavy boots made no sound on the concrete, moving with the terrifying, predatory economy that made opposing defensemen freeze on the ice.
I gripped the edge of the stainless-steel table behind me, my fingernails digging into the cold metal, refusing to give another inch of space.
Ryan stopped directly in front of me.
He was so close his body heat obliterated the basement chill, creating a wall of suffocating warmth that soaked straight through my heavy wool sweater. His shadow swallowed the fluorescent light, caging me against the metal table.
"You ran," he whispered, leaning down until his face was inches from mine. His breath hit my cheek in hot, ragged bursts that tasted of black coffee and adrenaline.
"I had data to calibrate," I lied, my voice shaking at the edges as my heart battered itself against my ribcage.
"Bullshit."
His right hand came up.
His bare, calloused knuckles grazed the sensitive skin along my jawline, slow, rough, and burning hot.
He hooked his thumb beneath the ribbed collar of my sweater, pulling the wool down by half an inch, exposing the pale hollow of my throat where my carotid artery was thrashing like a trapped animal.
A violent shudder ran through my whole body, starting where his knuckles brushed my skin and racing all the way down to the tips of my toes.
"Look at me, Nylah," he commanded, his gravelly voice dropping into a dark, ruined rasp that vibrated against my jaw.
I lifted my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his unyielding stare. His pale grey irises were wild, fractured with a desperate, edge-of-control hunger that made my lungs burn for oxygen.
"Look me in the eye," he growled, his thumb dragging slowly across the delicate line of my jaw, tilting my face up toward his until our lips were millimeters apart, "and tell me you didn't spend all night thinking about what almost happened in that truck."