Hostile Ice

Chosen Black, Carver's most ruthless hockey enforcer and a projected first-round draft pick, plays with cold brutality meant to keep everyone away and to atone for a tragedy in his past.

To remain on the ice, he must complete one hundred hours locked in a basement with Marie Freeman, the senior biomechanics fellow who despises him and holds the medical clearance that can end his season.

After he cost her an eighteen-thousand-dollar grant, Marie works graveyard shifts to survive and intends every mandatory session in The Vault beneath Sloan Arena to stay strictly clinical.

That resolve shatters when she treats his damaged knee, and the hours they spend confined at dawn and midnight turn hostility into a consuming obsession.

Agents and campus administration are already watching those private sessions, putting his draft future and her fellowship at risk, yet Chosen would rather lose everything he has built than let her leave.