Chapter 38
Nylah POV
The iron woodstove in the corner of the keeping room crackled softly behind its mica door, snapping dry hemlock and birch into pale, glowing embers.
Outside the triple-paned bay window, the rocky bluffs of Cape Breton Island sloped downward toward the dark Atlantic surf. A freezing mist was rolling off the water, clinging to the branches of the spruce pines and dusting the gravel driveway in a fresh layer of dry, powdery snow.
It was four-thirty on Tuesday afternoon.
I sat in the deep pine window seat, my legs tucked beneath a heavy wool blanket, a warm ceramic mug of chamomile and peppermint tea resting between my palms.
Beneath the thick weave of my oversized oatmeal knit cardigan, my right hand was resting flat and warm over the lower curve of my abdomen.
For eight days, I had lived inside the quiet of this grey-shingled cottage.
I had cut the noise of St. Jude University out of my bloodstream—no compliance logs, no athletic board gossip, no roar of arena crowds.
The morning sickness still hit me at dawn, sharp and acidic, but I had learned to breathe through the nausea, sipping cold ginger water and eating dry toast by the hearth while the sun rose over the ocean.
I was teaching my nervous system how to be still. For the child growing beneath my ribs, I was building an impenetrable sanctuary out of birch smoke and cedar needles.
The quiet was shattered by a low, mechanical rumble.
A heavy vibration rolled through the frozen earth, rattling the spruce floorboards beneath my feet.
I looked up through the frost-ferns on the glass.
Turning the sharp bend in the coastal lane, cutting through the six-inch snowdrifts, was a black Ford F-250. The truck was crusted in grey highway salt, mud frozen along the wheel wells, steam boiling off the radiator grille into the sub-zero air in thick, white plumes.
My heart hit the back of my ribs with concussive, sickening force.
* * *
I didn't panic.
I set the ceramic mug down on the wooden sill with slow, steady precision, my fingers refusing to tremble.
I rose from the window seat, letting the blanket drop to the floor. I pulled the front of the oversized cardigan securely across my chest and waist, fastening the lowest horn button so the heavy wool fell loose and thick over my stomach, concealing every trace of the life sheltered beneath my ribs.
I walked across the scrubbed floorboards to the front door, pulled the heavy spruce slab inward, and stood on the threshold behind the wire screen.
The truck door swung open with a violent shove.
Ryan Owen stepped down into the unplowed slush of the drive.
The sight of him struck my chest like an iron mallet.
The arrogant, untouchable enforcer who had commanded the ice at St. Jude was gone. The man standing in the driveway was an unrecognizable ruin.
He wore no hat, no gloves, and no scarf.
His black wool coat was soaked through with freezing slush, hanging open over a dark grey thermal shirt that was damp with road grime.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with melting sleet, his cheekbones carved into sharp, hollow shadows beneath nine days of thick, untrimmed stubble.
His grey eyes were bloodshot, sunken, ringed with dark purple hollows of absolute physical exhaustion.
His left foot dragged slightly in the snow—the navicular fracture he had refused to rest—his body shivering with a fine, continuous tremor from eight hundred miles of driving through a winter storm without stopping.
He climbed the three weathered wooden steps to the porch.
His boots made a wet, heavy scuff against the treads, his hands hanging limp and open at his sides, his breath billowing out in ragged white puffs that caught in the freezing wind.
He stopped four feet from the threshold, staring at my face through the wire mesh.
I pushed the screen door open and stepped out onto the cold porch boards.
I didn't wrap my arms around myself. I held my posture straight, my chin locked at an unbending, horizontal plane, my left hand buried deep in the pocket of my cardigan, resting flat and protective over my stomach.
My face was an unyielding wall of stone.
"You're trespassing, Owen," I said.
My voice was ice. It carried over the porch without a single tremor, quiet, articulate, and devoid of human warmth.
Ryan flinched as if I had driven a blade into his collarbone. His jaw worked, his throat contracting on a dry, convulsive swallow as his bloodshot eyes tracked the cold indifference in my face.
"Nylah..."
The word was barely a sound—a rough, broken rasp that cracked on the freezing coastal draft.
"There is nothing for you here," I continued, holding his gaze with chilling calm. "Turn the truck around and leave this property."
* * *
Ryan didn't argue.
He didn't offer an excuse. He didn't mention the forged dossier, Arthur Vance, or his father.
He took half a step forward, his boots clearing the top tread of the porch.
Then his legs gave out.
His massive, six-foot-three frame collapsed.
His knees slammed into the wet, freezing porch boards with a sickening, concussive thud that vibrated through the wood straight into the soles of my boots.
I stayed motionless.
The untouchable captain, the projected top-five NHL enforcer, remained on his knees in the freezing slush. He didn't brace his hands on the cedar railing; he laid his massive, scarred palms flat on the wet wood beside his knees, bowing his head before me in total, unvarnished surrender.
The freezing drizzle soaked straight through the denim of his jeans, sleet collecting on his broad, shivering shoulders, ice freezing in the stubble along his jawline.
He lifted his head, looking up at me from the wet boards, his face shattered into raw, bleeding pieces of agony.
"I know," he rasped, his voice tearing from his chest in a broken, ragged whisper that shook with an unhealed decade of grief. "I know Vance forged the files. I know his son stole your login token. I had Arthur Vance arrested yesterday morning, Nylah. I gave the state police the recordings."
A single, scalding tear broke from his lash line, tracking down through the dark stubble on his cheek.
"I went to the board," he whispered, his hands trembling against the freezing wood. "I gave them the forensic logs. I told them to exonerate your name, or I’d burn the program to the ground. The USOC has the formal retraction. Your record is clean. Your fellowship is safe."
I looked down at the top of his bowed head, my pulse knocking slow and guarded behind my ribs.
"I don't care about the fellowship, Ryan," I whispered.
"I know," he choked out, his shoulders heaving under the wet wool of his coat as he pressed his bleeding, calloused palms harder into the wet porch boards.
"I threw away the draft. I told Dan Bradley to tear up the contracts.
I told Coach Vance to strip my jersey off the arena wall.
I don't care about the money. I don't care about the NHL.
I don't care about a single damn thing on this earth except you. "
He looked up into my eyes, his slate-grey irises hollowed out with a ruined, desperate plea that stripped away every defense he had ever possessed.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," he rasped, his voice breaking into a ragged, breathless sob.
"I know I destroyed the only pure thing I ever had.
I know I don't deserve to breathe your air.
But I will stay on these freezing boards until you tell me how to bleed for you, Nylah.
Or I will stay here until the snow covers me.
I am never walking away from you again."
I stood above him on the threshold, the ocean gale whipping the hem of my cardigan against my thighs.
My hand curled tight over the lower swell of my abdomen, feeling the secret life thriving in the quiet warmth beneath my ribs.
I stared down at the broken titan kneeling in the slush, and the silence of the North Atlantic swallowed us whole.