Chapter 6
Chosen POV
I sat in the corner booth with my back to the wood-paneled wall, my right leg stretched straight out beneath the table. The rigid carbon-fiber hinge brace was locked under my heavy denim, pressing into the swollen tissue of my medial joint line.
Eighty-eight hours remaining on Thorne’s compliance mandate. Twelve weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. Twenty-two weeks until the NHL Draft.
Across the formica tabletop, Knox Davies was methodically drowning a stack of blueberry pancakes in corn syrup, rattling on about Boston College's penalty kill.
I didn't hear a word he said. The blood behind my ears had been pounding with the same restless, venomous rhythm for eighteen hours straight.
No matter how hard I clenched my teeth, I couldn't purge the memory of Thursday night in The Vault.
My hands still held the phantom imprint of the steel utility desk where I had bracketed her hips.
I could still feel the heat radiating off her small body, scorching through my compression shirt, could still hear the soft, ragged hitch in her breathing when my chest pressed against hers.
Her mouth had been less than two inches from mine—dry, parted, smelling of peppermint and raw defiance.
I was losing my grip on the only rule that kept my life from detonating: control. I had built a fortress out of routine, self-punishment, and distance, and in less than two weeks, an unpaid student trainer with an attitude and an antique silver ring had cracked the foundation.
"Black, you listening to me?" Knox asked, waving a sticky fork in front of my face. "I said their left defenseman pinches early on the power play. If we run the weak-side chip—"
The brass bell above the diner’s heavy front door chimed.
A blast of sub-zero wind swept inside, carrying the smell of wet asphalt and pine needles.
My gaze flicked up on instinct.
Marie Freeman stepped over the threshold, stamping the slush from her boots onto the rubber entry mat.
She was wearing a dark green wool sweater that hugged her shoulders, an oversized black coat hanging unbuttoned, her canvas satchel slung across her chest. Beside her was Tessa Rhodes, the compliance clerk from the athletic director's wing, her sharp eyes scanning the counter stools.
The breath locked in my lungs. My pulse surged against my throat, heavy and sudden as a body check.
Marie didn't look toward the back booths. She walked with that same straight-backed, stubborn posture she used in the basement, her dark hair falling in soft, loose waves around her collar instead of pinned in its usual clinical twist.
"Look who it is," Knox muttered, chewing slowly. "Doctor Freeman. Wonder if she ever takes that satchel off."
"Shut up, Knox," I said, my voice scraping low and flat.
I pulled the brim of my black Carver Hockey cap down over my eyes, slumping an inch lower into the cracked vinyl seat, watching her through the shadow of the bill.
* * *
Marie and Rhodes took a booth near the front of the diner, right beside the chrome-and-neon casing of the old Wurlitzer jukebox. Marie slid onto the bench, her back to the glass, pulling a thick physiology textbook and a legal pad from her satchel.
She reached up, tucking a stray curl behind her left ear. The movement exposed the pale, slender curve of her neck—the exact patch of skin my mouth had hovered over less than twenty-four hours ago.
My masseter muscle knotted until the back teeth clicked in my skull. I reached for my glass of ice water, my fingers closing around the thick glass so hard the ice cubes rattled against the rim.
The brass bell over the door chimed again.
A gust of laughter cut through the diner’s clattering silverware. Three guys walked in, broad-shouldered, carrying gym bags, their varsity jackets bearing the maroon-and-gray wool of Northbrook College.
In the lead was Brett Calhoun.
The Northbrook captain (#22) had his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, his jaw bruised from our game last week, swaggering toward the counter like he owned the county. Northbrook was in town for a regional showcase scrimmage against Plattsburgh tomorrow morning.
Calhoun stopped dead in the center aisle. He wasn't looking at the pie display.
He was looking at Marie.
My vision narrowed, the perimeter of the diner dissolving into a dark, tunnel-like haze. The skin across my knuckles went ice-cold as my hands clenched into tight, bloodless fists against my thighs.
Calhoun nudged his linemate, muttering something that made the other two laugh. Then he adjusted his collar and sauntered straight toward the jukebox booth.
"Freeman, right?" Calhoun’s voice was loud, oily, carrying across the quiet room.
Marie looked up from her legal pad, her pen freezing an inch above the lined paper. Her shoulders went rigid, the instant defensive armor sliding into place as she recognized him.
"You're in the wrong town, Calhoun," Marie said, her tone smooth, dry, and sharp enough to draw blood. "Carver’s rink is four blocks south if you're looking for another loss."
Calhoun laughed, leaning one hip against the edge of her table. He didn't stay standing. With a smooth, presumptuous slide, he dropped into the vinyl bench right beside her, crowding her against the frosted windowpane.
"Saw you on the ice after the third period last week," Calhoun murmured, leaning his forearms onto the formica, closing the distance between them until his face was six inches from her hair.
"You had that little medical kit. You looked a lot prettier down on the ice than you do carrying binders across campus. "
Marie’s chin tilted up. Her eyes went flat and lethal, but I saw the tiny, involuntary flinch in her neck—the way she pressed her back flat against the window frame to put inches between her skin and his leather jacket.
Her right hand moved to her throat, two fingers pressing against the rapid flutter of her collarbone.
Tessa Rhodes spoke up, her voice icy. "Get out of the booth, Brett. Now."
Calhoun ignored Rhodes entirely. He reached across the table, his fingers trailing over the open pages of Marie’s notebook, moving closer to her hand.
"Come on, sweetheart," Calhoun drawled, his head dipping lower, his shoulder pressing into hers. "Word around the conference is you spend an awful lot of time in the training room with Carver’s pretty boys. Why don't you let a real center buy you a drink across the state line?"
His hand shifted. His fingers brushed against the wool of her green sweater, right at the crook of her elbow.
A high, metallic ring detonated in my ears.
The blood in my veins turned to pure liquid fire, scalding through my chest, burning away every rational thought, every shred of caution, every promise I had ever made about staying in the shadows.
* * *
"Chosen, wait—" Knox hissed from across the table, reaching for my arm.
I was already on my feet.
The hinge brace groaned beneath my jeans as I drove my right foot down onto the linoleum. The pain in the torn ligament didn't register; the agony was nothing compared to the blinding, suffocating fury that drove me forward.
I crossed the diner in four long, uneven strides, my shadow falling over the jukebox booth like an iron curtain.
Calhoun didn't hear me coming over the hum of the neon lights.
I reached down with my left hand, buried my fingers into the thick wool collar of his Northbrook jacket, and hauled him backward out of the booth with one violent, upward jerk.
The leather ripped at the seam. Calhoun let out a strangled, choked gasp as two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of momentum tore him off the vinyl bench.
Before his feet could find purchase on the floor, I spun him by the throat and drove him backward.
The back of his skull and spine slammed into the reinforced glass casing of the Wurlitzer jukebox with a sickening, concussive crash.
The glass rattled in the chrome frame. The music died instantly, a vinyl needle scratching across a record with a shrill, shrieking whine. Plates stopped clattering. The entire diner went dead, frozen silent.
"Chosen!" Marie’s voice cut through the air, sharp with shock.
I didn't look at her.
I kept my left forearm jammed hard across Calhoun’s windpipe, pinning him against the shattered neon of the jukebox.
He was six feet one, but his heels were dangling two inches off the linoleum, his eyes bulging wide with pure terror as his fingers clawed at my wrist. His face was mottled gray-blue, his breath wheezing through his crushed throat.
I stepped in until my chest was flush against his, towering over him, bringing my face down until my lips were an inch from his ear.
"You listen to me, you gutless sack of shit," I rasped, my voice dropping into a low, gravelly vibration that vibrated through the metal casing behind his head.
"You ever touch her again—you ever look in her direction, you ever speak her name in a locker room, you ever let your hands drift within three feet of her body—and I won't wait for the referee to drop the puck. "
I drove my forearm a fraction of an inch deeper, cutting off the air until his heels kicked frantically against the chrome.
"I will take your knee off at the joint," I whispered, every syllable coated in cold, unadulterated venom. "I will snap your collateral ligaments through the dasher boards, and you will spend the rest of your life watching hockey from an electric chair. Nod if you understand me."
Calhoun nodded, his eyes wild, choking on his own spit.
I released his collar. He dropped to the floor in a heap, coughing violently, dragging air into his bruised lungs. His two Northbrook teammates stood by the cash register, white-faced, neither of them making a move to step in.
"Get him out of here," I told them without turning my head.
They grabbed Calhoun by his torn jacket and dragged him through the door, the brass bell ringing in a frantic, stuttering clatter as the cold air rushed in and the door slammed shut.
I turned around slowly, my breathing harsh and low through my flared nostrils.
The entire diner was staring at me. Knox was standing up in our booth, his jaw slack, while the cook held a spatula mid-air behind the grill.
Marie stood at the edge of her table.
Her green sweater was pulled tight across her chest, her ribs heaving in rapid, shallow bursts. Her face was flushed crimson, her dark eyes wide and blazing with a furious, unhinged fire. The silver signet ring on her pinky was digging deep into her thumb.
I didn't care about the witnesses. I didn't care about compliance, or Sterling, or the six-game suspension this could bring down on my head.
I closed the distance between us, backing her up until the back of her thighs hit the booth table, trapping her against the wood. My hands slammed flat onto the formica on either side of her hips, pinning her in place, my massive frame blotting out the rest of the diner.
The scent of her—winter rain, peppermint, and pure, raw adrenaline—washed over my face, scorching through my senses.
"What are you doing?" she whispered, her voice trembling with rage, her chest rising and falling against the space between our bodies. "Are you out of your mind? You just assaulted a player in a public diner! Do you have any idea what Sterling will do to you if this gets reported?"
"I don't give a damn about Sterling," I growled, leaning down until my mouth was centimeters from the curve of her jaw, feeling the violent, frantic pulse thrumming in the hollow of her throat.
"You don't own this town, Black!" she hissed, her hands coming up to plant flat against my leather jacket, pushing against my chest with everything she had. Her palms burned through the hide like white-hot iron. "You don't own this booth! You don't have the right to police who talks to me!"
I caught both of her wrists in my right hand, lifting them off my chest, pinning her small, trembling hands against the formica table beside her hip.
I leaned down until my lips brushed the shell of her ear, my voice dropping into a dark, ragged rasp that vibrated straight through her skull.
"Right or wrong, Freeman, you're in my perimeter now," I whispered, my teeth grazing the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe. "You belong to this medical track. You belong in that basement. And as long as your name is on my clearance sheet, no other man puts his hands on your skin. Ever."
She sucked in a sharp, suffocating breath, her body going entirely rigid beneath my hold. Her dark eyes locked onto mine, dilated, terrified, and blazing with a raw, undeniable heat that mirrored the sickness in my own blood.
I released her wrists, shoved myself off the table, and walked out into the freezing Adirondack dark, leaving the diner behind in shattered, breathless silence.