Chapter 16
Ryan POV
I stepped out from behind the heavy velvet drapes into the gallery corridor, buttoning the front of my suit jacket with fingers that felt thick and unsteady.
Nylah had slipped away twenty seconds earlier, her heels making no sound on the parquet runner as she melted back toward the main banquet tables.
The scent of her—crushed winter mint, warm skin, and the wild, sharp tang of her breath—was still clinging to the wool of my lapels, burning down into my lungs like smoke.
I turned toward the marble foyer near the terrace exit, needing five minutes of freezing coastal air to knock the fever out of my blood.
I didn't make it three steps past the archway.
"Owen."
The voice was coated in cheap bourbon, smooth authority, and thirty years of unearned wealth.
Arthur Vance stepped out from behind a stone pillar, cutting off my path to the double glass doors.
He was a senior member of the university board of trustees, head of the athletic booster committee, and Julian Vance’s father.
His tailored tuxedo strained across his thick gut, a half-empty scotch glass held in his right hand.
Flanking him were two prominent alumni donors whose names were stamped in brass across the varsity hockey arena.
I stopped dead on the marble floor.
My shoulders squared on pure reflex, my chin locking at that level, dead-eyed plane I used whenever a referee was handing me a bogus game misconduct.
"Mr. Vance," I said, my voice coming out flat, gravelly, and stripped of inflection.
"Quite an evening, isn't it?" Vance murmured, swirling the amber liquid in his glass until the ice clinked sharply against the crystal. "Enjoying the champagne while you can?"
"I don't drink during the season, sir."
"Right. The saintly captain." Vance took a slow step forward, his smile tightening into a thin, vicious line.
"I had an interesting conversation with the compliance director twenty minutes ago, Ryan.
It seems your little probation docket is hanging by a thread so thin I could cut it with a butter knife. "
The two donors behind him traded uncomfortable glances, but neither spoke.
"I’m meeting all the requirements," I said, keeping my hands shoved flat into my trouser pockets to hide the sudden, rigid clench of my knuckles.
"For now," Vance sneered, leaning in close enough that I could smell the stale cigar tobacco on his breath.
"But we all know what you are, Owen. My brother might have tolerated your violence because you sell tickets, but you're a thug.
A blunt instrument from a family that treats this university like an open insurance policy. "
The blood in my veins turned to slush.
"Leave my family out of this, Vance." The warning scraped out of my throat, low and dangerous, vibrating in the bones of my neck.
"Why should I?" Vance’s voice took on a mocking, venomous edge that carried across the quiet foyer.
"We all know the story. The reckless boy from Michigan who pushed his little brother onto thin ice because his ego couldn't handle losing a scrimmage drill. You put your own blood in a wheelchair, Ryan. And now you expect an NHL franchise to hand you a ten-million-dollar signing bonus to pay off your guilt? You're a liability. The second you step out of line again, I’m personally voting to pull your scholarship, and your brother’s rehab trust goes right down the drain with it. "
The blow hit me square in the sternum.
A sickening, familiar numbness spread through my limbs. The masseter muscles along my jaw locked until my back teeth groaned under the pressure. My vision narrowed down to the gold university crest on Vance's lapel.
I had been absorbing hits my entire life.
I was the wall that took the impact so the people behind me didn't shatter. If I opened my mouth, if I threw the punch that was currently screaming through the tendons of my right arm, my eligibility was dead before sunrise. Leo’s clinic invoices would bounce by Monday.
I stood there on the cold marble, locking my throat against the bile, preparing to take the humiliation with flat, dead eyes.
* * *
"Mr. Vance."
The voice cut through the foyer like a pane of tempered glass shattering on stone.
Emerald silk rustled against the marble.
Before Vance could take another sip of his scotch, Nylah stepped directly between us.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't hover at the perimeter. She placed her five-foot-five frame squarely into the two feet of space separating my chest from Vance’s face, her three-inch heels clicking once against the floor with the finality of a rifle bolt sliding home.
Her back was to me, her bare shoulders straight as an iron girder, shielding my body with hers.
Vance blinked, his scotch glass pausing halfway to his mouth. "Excuse me?"
"You are not excused," Nylah said.
Her voice wasn't loud. It held no hysterical pitch, no waver of uncertainty. It was quiet, icy, and lethal with absolute intellectual authority.
The two donors behind Vance froze, their eyes widening as they recognized the student technical director who had addressed the executive board three weeks ago.
"I find it fascinating," Nylah continued, her chin tilted at that sharp, imperious angle, "that a member of the Board of Trustees is attempting to intimidate an active athlete regarding an NCAA compliance docket that is currently classified under strict federal Title IX and FERPA privacy protections. "
Vance’s face began to flush a mottled, ugly crimson. "Young lady, you are a student assistant in a temporary research role—"
"I am the appointed Technical Director for the Division I Biomechanics and Load-Management Protocol," she interrupted, slicing through his sentence without a single breath of hesitation.
"Which means I am an official administrative officer of this university under the oversight of the Faculty Senate. "
She took half a step forward, forcing Vance to shift his weight back.
"Under Article Four, Subsection B of the St. Jude Athletic Governance Charter," she said, her words dropping like heavy steel weights onto the marble floor, "any trustee who attempts to use non-public medical or disciplinary inferences to coerce or harass an athlete under active review is subject to immediate removal from the advisory board. "
Vance’s mouth opened, but nothing came out except a dry, choking noise.
"Furthermore," Nylah said, her eyes flashing with a cold, unyielding fire that held the entire foyer captive, "given that your son, Julian, is currently competing for third-line minutes against the very athletes you are attempting to defame, this interaction represents a gross, actionable conflict of interest. I will be submitting an official memorandum to the Dean of Academic Integrity and the Athletic Oversight Committee at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. "
She paused, letting the silence crush the room.
"Unless, of course, you wish to tender your resignation from the hockey advisory council tonight."
The two alumni donors stepped forward immediately, their faces pale with panic.
"Arthur," one of them murmured, grabbing Vance’s elbow with urgent force. "Let's go. The president is about to announce the endowment gifts."
Vance glared at Nylah, his hand shaking so badly the scotch splashed over the rim of his glass onto his cuff. He looked past her shoulder at me, but the arrogance had drained out of his eyes, replaced by pure, humiliated shock.
He turned on his heel without a word and let the two donors steer him away through the archway into the main hall.
The foyer went dead, terrifyingly silent.
I stood there, paralyzed on the marble floor.
My breath was trapped in my chest, a sharp, suffocating tightness expanding behind my sternum until every rib ached.
In twenty-two years of life, through hundreds of games, broken bones, and locker room brawls, nobody had ever stepped into a punch for me.
Nobody had ever placed their body between me and the fire.
I was the protector; I was the enforcer who absorbed the damage so everyone else could stay safe.
And here she was. A slip of a woman in an emerald silk dress, her bare shoulders shivering faintly from the draft, having just torched a multi-millionaire trustee to the ground to keep him from bruising my pride.
The last brick in the wall around my chest didn't just crack.
It turned to dust.
* * *
I didn't care about the gala. I didn't care about the trustees, the cameras, or the donors watching from the dining room.
My hand shot out.
My thick fingers wrapped around Nylah’s bare wrist, firm and unyielding. I didn't give her time to speak; I pulled her forward, shoving the heavy glass French doors open with my shoulder, and hauled her out onto the freezing stone terrace.
The winter wind hit us like a slap, carrying thick, silent flakes of snow that swirled through the dark.
I dragged her into the deep shadow of the stone balustrade, away from the warm light spilling through the windows.
I spun her around, pressing her back against the weathered granite railing, and stepped directly into her perimeter, using my broad frame and wool coat to block the bitter gale from her bare skin.
"Ryan—"
I didn't let her finish.
My hands came up, large, rough, and trembling with a violent, uncontrollable tremor that started deep in my bones. I framed her face, my calloused palms cupping her burning cheeks, my thumbs resting right against the delicate bone of her eye sockets.
Her skin was hot against the freezing air, her dark hair blowing across my knuckles in wild, silk strands.
"Why did you do that?"
The words ripped out of my throat in a ruined, gravelly rasp that cracked on the cold air.
Her amber-flecked eyes were wide, dilated, looking straight up into the fractured mess of my face. She didn't pull away from my hands. Her small palms came up, resting flat against the thick wool over my forearms, steadying my trembling grip.
"He was trying to destroy you," she whispered, her teeth clicking once from the cold.
"He could have gone to Albright!" I rasped, my chest heaving against hers, the snow melting on my eyelashes. "He has the board in his pocket. He could have pulled your funding, Nylah. He could have killed your fellowship in five minutes."
"I don't care about the fellowship," she said, every word hitting my sternum with the force of an unyielding blade. "I don't care about Vance, and I don't care about his money."
She leaned her face harder into my palms, her warm breath washing over my lips in the freezing dark.
"Nobody gets to speak to you like that," she whispered, her voice fierce, steady, and stripped of every defense she had ever possessed. "Nobody gets to treat you like you're disposable, Ryan. Not while I'm breathing."
The wind howled off the black water below the terrace, but I couldn't hear it.
The world shrank down to the heat of her cheeks between my hands and the steady, unblinking fire in her amber eyes. Every rule I had ever written to keep myself safe, every bitter lie I had told myself about being alone in the dark, evaporated into the falling snow.
She had stepped into the fire for me.
I pulled her forward, burying my face in the crook of her neck, my arms locking around her waist to pull her off her heels, holding her against my chest as the blizzard began to swallow the coast.