Chapter 27
Nylah POV
The smell of roasted Ethiopian dark roast hit the back of my throat, and my stomach violently turned inside out.
I stood by the brass pickup counter of the Keller Hall café kiosk, clutching the warm cardboard sleeve of the paper cup.
Outside the four-story glass atrium, a bitter mid-March frost coated the granite pathways in white needles.
Students were streaming past in heavy parkas, their voices a dull, echoing hum beneath the vaulted ceiling.
I brought the cup to my mouth, intending to take my first sip of morning caffeine.
The dark, oily steam rose into my nostrils.
In half a second, my diaphragm seized. A sickening, cold wave of nausea surged from the pit of my gut straight up into my windpipe, sharp and acidic as liquid copper.
The floor tilted beneath my boots.
A sudden, drenching sweat broke out along my hairline and the back of my neck, soaking the collar of my wool sweater with icy dampness. The fluorescent lighting above the counter fractured into sharp, swimming halos of yellow glare.
My hand jerked.
I dropped the untouched cup into the metal recycling bin beside the register, pressed my mitten against my mouth, and bolted down the side corridor.
My boots skidded on the polished terrazzo floor. I shoved open the heavy oak door of the single-occupancy faculty restroom, turned the brass deadbolt with a frantic flick of my thumb, and fell to my knees before the porcelain basin.
My throat contracted in violent, dry spasms.
Nothing came up except sour bile and thin air. My stomach muscles clenched so hard a sharp ache radiated through my lower ribs, my knuckles turning bone-white as I gripped the rolled ceramic rim of the sink to keep from collapsing onto the tile floor.
For two minutes, the only sound in the small room was the ragged, wet rasp of my own breathing.
Slowly, the violent heaving subsided.
I pushed myself upright, my knees trembling with a fine, uncontrollable spasm. I turned on the cold tap, cupped the freezing water in my palms, and splashed it repeatedly over my burning cheeks, forehead, and throat.
I looked up into the mirror.
The woman staring back looked like an unburied corpse. My skin was an ashen, bloodless grey, my amber-flecked eyes wide and shadowed with dark purple hollows, my lower lip pale and bitten raw.
Gastritis, my brain recited, desperately building an intellectual barricade against the rising dread. Acute autonomic exhaustion. You worked ninety hours this week. You haven't eaten a solid meal since Sunday afternoon. Your cortisol is through the roof.
It was textbook. Chronic stress combined with sleep deprivation and excessive black coffee degraded the gastric lining. It was a simple biological equation.
I wiped my face with a rough brown paper towel, applied a fresh coat of rose lip balm to hide the pallor of my mouth, and gathered my coat.
I had a nine-fifteen telemetry verification in the athletic annex.
* * *
The freezing wind whipping across the varsity quad did nothing to clear the heavy fog behind my eyes.
Every step felt like wading through wet sand. My boots dragged against the salted brick walk, my balance precarious enough that I had to brush my shoulder along the granite balustrade of The Foundry to steady my footing.
I pushed open the frosted-glass door to the private auxiliary video room, stepping out of the gale.
Ryan was standing by the high mahogany drafting table at the back of the room, a digital tablet balanced in his left hand, reviewing transition charts for Friday's regional match against Boston University.
He wore his dark navy St. Jude training fleece, the sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his dark hair damp from a morning skate.
The second the latch clicked, his head snapped up.
He didn't look at the clipboard in my hands. He didn't look at my clothes. His slate-grey eyes locked directly onto my face with the terrifying, instantaneous precision of an apex predator noting an injured animal in the open.
His jaw locked.
He dropped the tablet onto the drafting table with a sharp clatter, crossing the twenty feet of rubber flooring in three long, concussive strides.
"Collins."
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that scraped through the quiet room.
Before I could offer a professional greeting, his large hand shot out. He caught the strap of my heavy leather messenger bag, lifting the twenty-pound weight off my shoulder in one effortless pull and tossing it onto an empty chair.
His other hand came up, his thick, scarred fingers sliding behind the nape of my neck, his palm warm as a branding iron against my icy skin.
"You're white as a sheet," he growled, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the hollows beneath my cheekbones. "You're shaking."
"I'm fine, Ryan," I lied, my voice sounding thin, cracked at the edges. "I just... the wind outside was bitter."
"Bullshit."
He didn't let go of my neck. He guided me with gentle, immovable authority across the rubber floor, pushing me down onto the low leather bench against the wall.
He didn't sit beside me.
Ryan dropped down onto one knee on the floor between my boots, his massive frame towering over my lap even from the ground.
His broad shoulders blocked out the fluorescent light from the ceiling, caging me in the familiar scent of crushed winter pine, cedarwood, and the raw heat pouring off his skin.
He reached out, gathering both of my icy hands into his large, calloused palms.
His thumbs began to rub firm, rhythmic circles across the backs of my knuckles, his skin blazing hot, steadily driving the numbness from my fingers.
"Your hands are like dry ice," he murmured, his brow furrowing with a fierce, protective focus that made my throat ache with an overwhelming tightness.
He reached behind him without breaking contact with my left hand, pulling a clean, unopened bottle of spring water and a sealed foil sleeve of saltine crackers from his gear bag on the floor.
He cracked the cap on the water with one hand, holding it out to my lips.
"Drink," he commanded softly.
I took the bottle with trembling fingers, taking three slow, careful swallows. The cool, tasteless water settled into my stomach without triggering the gag reflex, loosening the rigid knot behind my sternum.
"Good girl," he rumbled, his gravelly voice dropping into that thick, velvet register that always bypassed my defenses. He tore open the cracker packet with his teeth, pressing a salted square into my hand. "Eat the cracker. Slow bites. Breathe for me, Nylah."
I chewed the dry biscuit, the salt absorbing the sour tang on my tongue, my chest expanding on a deep, shuddering inhale as the warmth of his hands seeped through my skin.
"You're working yourself into the ground," he murmured, his rough thumb trailing up to trace the dark shadow beneath my left eye. "You haven't slept more than four hours a night since the blizzard. What's going on with you, sweetheart?"
The raw tenderness in his voice was an ache that pressed hard against my ribs.
"It's just the mid-semester deadlines," I whispered, leaning my forehead down until it rested against his broad shoulder. "I'm just tired, Ryan."
* * *
A sharp, double knock sounded against the frosted glass of the door.
Head Coach Vance’s voice barked through the wood: "Owen! The regional broadcast liaison needs you in the main office for three minutes. Now."
Ryan’s jaw clenched.
He didn't move immediately. He stayed on one knee between my legs, his hand lingering on the side of my neck, his thumb pressing gently into the pulse point beneath my jaw.
"Don't move from this bench," he ordered softly, his grey eyes pinning mine. "Finish the water. I'll be back in two minutes to carry your bag."
"I won't move," I promised.
He rose to his full six-foot-three height, tossed his team jacket over my shoulders so the heavy fleece trapped my body heat, and stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.
The room went dead silent, save for the hum of the overhead lights.
I sat alone on the leather bench, wrapped in his scent and the suffocating warmth of his jacket.
The nausea had receded to a dull, stagnant ache, replaced by a leaden, bone-deep exhaustion that made my eyelids droop.
My breasts felt strangely tender, the underwire of my bra pressing uncomfortably into my ribcage with an unfamiliar, swollen fullness that had bothered me since dawn.
I pulled my phone from my coat pocket to check the time.
The screen illuminated with my calendar app, displaying the weekly schedule for the biomechanics lab.
My gaze drifted to the small circular health widget pinned to the corner of the home screen.
A cold prickle traveled down the back of my neck.
I opened the health application, my thumb tapping the calendar grid. I scrolled backward through the weeks, tracking the tiny red dots that marked my biological cycle.
My finger froze on the screen.
Today was Tuesday, March 14.
My last cycle had concluded on February 12.
The next cycle had been projected for February 26—the morning after the coastal blizzard that had trapped us inside his apartment for forty-eight hours.
Sixteen days.
I was sixteen days late.
The air vanished from the room.
My lungs locked up into rigid stone. In twenty-two years of life, my cycle had never deviated by an hour. My body had always operated on the precise, predictable clockwork of an athlete, calibrated down to the day.
A sudden, deafening ringing filled my inner ears, drowning out the hum of the fluorescent tubes.
The floor seemed to drop out from beneath the bench. The sour coffee, the sudden dizziness in the café, the hypersensitivity to his cedar soap, the swollen ache in my chest—it wasn't gastritis. It wasn't academic burnout. It wasn't the flu.
My hand left the phone.
Slowly, shaking with a violent, autonomic tremor that started in the marrow of my bones, my palm slid down the wool of his team fleece.
My fingers pressed flat against the soft, warm expanse of my lower abdomen.
Beneath my hand, deep within my own flesh, the universe had fundamentally shifted.
A blinding collision of sheer, suffocating dread and raw, primordial awe tore through my bloodstream, leaving my heart knocking frantically against my ribs.
The heavy brass latch on the video room door clicked.
Ryan was coming back.