Chapter 8
Chosen POV
The forty-four-degree chill of the empty arena tasted of ammonia and shaved ice, burning like ground glass against the back of my throat.
Above the center red line, a single high-pressure sodium utility light hummed sixty feet in the rafters, casting a narrow, amber circle over the gray ice.
The rest of the eight-thousand-seat bowl was swallowed in pitch-black silence, the vacant fiberglass chairs rising into the gloom like a frozen amphitheater.
My skate blades dug into the deck, steel slicing through fresh-cut ice with a sharp, rhythmic hiss.
Crossover. Plant. Drive.
I took the turn behind the north net at full stride, leaning twenty degrees off-axis, forcing every ounce of my two hundred and twenty-eight pounds through the medial edge of my right skate.
The torn ligament screamed. The scar tissue holding the collateral fibers together pulled tight against the bone, a hot, stabbing friction that radiated from my femoral condyle straight down to my ankle.
I didn't ease off. I drove the blade deeper, carving a four-foot spray of white frost against the dasher boards, then turned hard on the left inside edge to sprint the length of the neutral zone.
Seventy mandatory hours left on Thorne's protocol. Eleven weeks until the Frozen Four. Twenty-one weeks until the draft.
I had been on the ice since one-thirty in the morning, skating until my lungs burned and the sweat ran down my ribs in stinging rivulets.
I had stripped off my Carver practice sweater an hour ago; I was skating in gray sweatpants and a sleeveless black compression shirt, my bare shoulders and arms steaming in the bitter draft that circulated off the refrigeration coils.
It didn't work. The physical exhaustion wasn't enough to kill the noise.
For twenty-four hours, my mind had been locked on the fourth-floor lab.
Every time my pulse spiked, I felt the phantom pressure of her wrist against my palm.
I could still feel the rapid, delicate thrum of her blood jumping against my thumb, could still see her dark eyes looking at me in the blue glow of the monitors when she stopped fighting me.
She had looked at me without fear. She had looked at the cracked, ruined pieces of who I was and held her ground.
A sharp clack echoed from the north tunnel—the heavy steel latch of the Zamboni bay door disengaging.
I dug my edges into the ice, coming to a halt at the center red line in a shower of shaved ice. My chest rose and fell in ragged, heavy drags, steam boiling off my bare skin in thick, white plumes.
Across the dark ice, a silhouette emerged from the tunnel.
She was bundled in a dark green wool coat that reached her knees, a heavy gray scarf wrapped around her neck, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. Her boots made a soft, dull crunch against the rubber floor runner as she walked toward the home bench.
Marie Freeman.
My pulse, already hammering from the sprints, surged with a sudden, violent jolt against my collarbone. The air in my lungs turned thin and hot.
* * *
I didn't take off my gloves. I glided toward the boards, my skate blades tracking a straight, silent line across the ice until I stopped directly in front of the home bench gate.
Standing on the three-inch steel runners, I towered over the boards at nearly six feet seven.
Marie stopped on the rubber matting on the other side of the half-wall. The freezing draft from the ice blew a loose tendril of dark hair across her cheek. Her face was pale from the Adirondack night, her nose and the high crests of her cheekbones stung a sharp, vivid pink by the wind off the lake.
In her gloved hand, she held a thick manila folder stamped with Carver’s blue administrative seal.
"Samuel O'Connor left the service door unlocked," she said, her voice small and clear in the vast, dead silence of the arena. Her breath plumed white between us, dissipating against the bare heat of my chest. "He said you were down here."
"Samuel talks too much," I rasped. My voice sounded thick, ruined by the cold and the heavy breathing.
I rested both forearms on the yellow plastic dasher cap, leaning over the barrier. The space between us collapsed to less than twelve inches. The heat pouring off my bare shoulders and collarbone hit her face, a wave of cedarwood, sweat, and friction-heated iron that pushed back the arena chill.
Her dark eyes flicked over my bare arms, taking in the sheen of sweat on my skin, the tattoo on my ribs, the dark ink of the compass rose rising and falling with each ragged breath. Her throat moved on a dry, deliberate swallow.
"What are you doing, Chosen?" she asked, her voice dropping into that quiet, scolding cadence that made my jaw tick. "You skated forty minutes of high-speed transitions on a grade-two tear. Your joint capsule is going to be full of fluid by dawn."
"Testing the lateral edge," I said, my gaze dropping to the scarf wrapped around her throat, then rising to her mouth. Her lips were parted slightly, glistening under the lone utility light. "What are you doing in my rink at two in the morning, Freeman?"
She held up the manila envelope, keeping it between us like a shield. "The compliance verification arrived from the ECAC head office twenty minutes ago. Sterling wanted me to sign the provisional tournament clearance before the administrative offices open at eight. I brought your copy."
I looked at the envelope, then slowly brought my eyes back to hers.
"You didn't drive across town in a blizzard to drop off a piece of paper, Marie," I said, the gravel in my voice cutting through the hollow space. "Thorne's mailbox is on the second floor. You could have left it there."
Her chin tilted up, that stubborn, defensive rigidity snapping back into her shoulders. "I wanted to make sure you hadn't torn the ligament doing something reckless."
"You wanted to see me," I corrected, leaning further over the dasher cap until my shadow swallowed her completely. "You couldn't sleep either."
* * *
The flush on her cheeks deepened, flaring hot beneath the cold wind.
"Don't flatter yourself, Black," she whispered, her fingers tightening against the cardboard envelope. "I have twenty hours of telemetry to compile before—"
I reached down with my right hand, caught the brass latch on the player gate, and shoved the heavy door inward.
The metal hinges creaked, swinging wide.
Before she could take a step back, my left hand shot out. My gloved fingers closed around the thick wool sleeve of her coat, hauling her across the threshold into the narrow wooden perimeter of the home player box.
Her boots stumbled on the rubber flooring. A sharp, breathless gasp tore from her throat as my momentum carried her back.
Her spine hit the clear acrylic of the Plexiglas partition separating the bench from the lower bowl seats. The impact produced a dull, vibrating thud that echoed off the empty concrete risers.
I stepped off the ice onto the rubber floor, dropping my height back to six-four, but the difference didn't matter. I crowded her against the glass, planting my left forearm against the partition above her head, using my bulk to seal off her escape.
The heat radiating off my body trapped her against the cold acrylic. She was pinned between the freezing plastic behind her back and the furnace of my chest, her breath catching high in her throat.
"Chosen," she breathed, her hands coming up to press against the center of my chest.
She had taken her gloves off; her bare palms burned through the damp cotton of my compression shirt, searing right over my sternum. She could feel the violent, heavy cadence of my heart knocking against my ribs, hammering like an engine at redline.
I didn't step back. I ripped my right hockey glove off with my teeth, letting the heavy leather hit the rubber floor with a dull slap.
I reached out with my bare hand.
My fingers, thick and calloused from the stick, caught the sharp line of her jaw. My skin was hot from the drills, contrasting with the icy silk of her cheek. My thumb slid up to press against the corner of her lower lip, dragging it downward just enough to expose the white edge of her teeth.
"Look at me," I commanded.
The words came out low, gravelly, and vibrating with absolute, unyielding authority.
Her eyelashes fluttered, her dark irises locking onto mine. Her pupils were blown wide, black drowning the dark brown until there was nothing left but raw, dilated awareness. Her chest heaved against mine, the thick wool of her coat dragging over my bare skin with every ragged breath she took.
"You like playing with fire, Freeman?" I whispered, my voice dropping into a dark, rough rasp that vibrated against her jaw.
I leaned down until my mouth was a fraction of an inch from the shell of her ear. The scent of her—peppermint, rain, and the faint, sweet warmth of her skin—flooded my senses, drowning out the bitter smell of the ice.
My thumb stroked the line of her throat, finding the wild, frantic flutter of her carotid artery.
"You come down into the dark when you know nobody is here to pull me off you," I murmured, my lips grazing the sensitive skin beneath her jawline.
I felt the violent shudder that tore through her frame at the contact.
"You think because you hold that clipboard you're safe?
You think I won't take what you're offering? "
"I'm not offering anything," she breathed, but her head tilted back against the cold Plexiglas, exposing the pale arch of her neck to my mouth. Her fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, pulling me an inch closer instead of pushing me away.
"You're lying," I growled, my teeth lightly catching the soft skin just above her collarbone.
She let out a broken, breathless whimper that shattered the last thread of rational discipline in my brain. My grip on her jaw tightened, holding her face steady, my thumb pressing hard against her lips.
"Go home, Marie," I whispered against her mouth, my breath searing her lips, every muscle in my body trembling with the strain of holding back. "Go home before I forget that we're standing in an empty rink, and I show you exactly what happens when you cross my boards."
I stepped back one agonizing inch, releasing her jaw.
She stood pinned against the Plexiglas, her chest rising and falling in violent, uneven bursts, her lips swollen and damp from my thumb.
She looked at me for three long, suffocating seconds, the fire in her eyes hot enough to melt the ice behind us, before she turned and fled down the concrete tunnel into the dark.