Chapter 9
Marie POV
The sports medicine recovery annex smelled of betadine, melted ice, and the bitter, eye-stinging vapor of isopropyl alcohol.
High overhead, the single fluorescent fixture buzzed with an uneven forty-cycle hum that set my teeth on edge. It was eight-forty-five on a freezing Adirondack Thursday night. Sixty-eight hours remained on the compliance sheet in my bag. Eleven weeks until the Frozen Four.
I had come down to sub-level two to log Chosen’s evening cryo-tank cycle after Carver’s closed, full-contact scrimmage against the varsity reserves. The varsity corridors were dark, the upper arena locked down for the night, leaving the subterranean foundations dead quiet.
I pushed the painted steel door open with my shoulder, my tablet clutched against my chest.
The words died in my throat.
Chosen sat alone on the edge of the high vinyl examination table in the center of the room, his head hanging low between his shoulders. He had stripped off his pads and sweater; he wore only low-slung black athletic compression shorts, his long, heavily muscled legs dangling toward the concrete.
He was bleeding.
A two-inch laceration tore through the arch of his right eyebrow, dark crimson tracking a steady path down his cheekbone, pooling in the hollow above his collarbone before dripping onto the white towel clutched in his lap.
Deep, purple-black contusions bloomed across his left ribcage where an unpadded cross-check had caught him beneath the armor.
His right knee was wrapped haphazardly in a leaking plastic bag of crushed ice, water dripping off his shin onto the floor with a rhythmic, hollow slap.
In his left hand, he held a torn foil packet of butterfly closures and a bottle of iodine.
His fingers, thick and wrapped in frayed athletic tape, were trembling with a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
He tried to angle his face toward the small mirror mounted on the brick wall, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth as he attempted to press a piece of sterile gauze to the cut with one hand.
He looked broken, half-blinded by blood, his massive frame drawn taut against agony he refused to voice.
The professional detachment I had spent three weeks constructing vanished in the span of a single heartbeat.
My canvas satchel hit the floor with a heavy thud.
My boots moved before my brain could calculate the danger.
I crossed the concrete floor, grabbed the bottle of sterile saline, the betadine solution, and a fresh roll of medical foam from the stainless-steel cart, and stopped directly in front of the table.
"Give me that," I said, my voice sharp to cover the sudden constriction in my throat.
I reached out and took the bloody towel and the torn foil packet from his unsteady fingers.
Chosen’s head snapped up. The motion was too fast; a sharp grimace pulled at his mouth, his left hand flying to his bruised ribs as his breath hitched in a ragged, shallow gasp. For half a second, the enforcer flared in his dark eyes—hostile, cornered, ready to strike.
Then he saw it was me.
The defensive violence drained out of his posture, leaving behind an exhaustion so deep and hollow it made the air leave my lungs. He let his hands drop onto his bare thighs, his broad shoulders slumping an inch.
"You're not supposed to be here, Freeman," he rasped, the words thick, scraping over the raw lining of his throat.
"And you're supposed to have a team physician stitch a facial laceration," I said, setting the supplies on the edge of the table. "Why didn't you go to Thorne?"
"Thorne would look at the ribs," Chosen muttered, his right eye half-shut against the stinging blood. "He’d run an x-ray, see the swelling in the intercostal cartilage, and scratch me from the Boston showcase on Friday."
"You have two cracked ribs, Black."
"They're bruised," he lied, though the involuntary flinch in his diaphragm betrayed him. He looked up at me through the crimson running into his lashes, his voice dropping into a quiet, ruined baritone. "Just tape the skin together, Marie. I don't need a lecture."
* * *
I didn't answer. I pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from the box on the cart, snapping them over my hands with a sharp, plastic snap.
The table was set high for physical assessments. To reach his face without craning my neck, I stepped forward, closing the remaining distance until I stood directly between his parted knees.
The space between us vanished.
The physical heat pouring off his bare torso hit me like a furnace blast, thick with the scent of cedarwood, dried sweat, raw copper, and the sharp bite of menthol.
His chest, broad and heavily mapped with thick cords of athletic muscle, rose and fell in rapid, uneven drags less than four inches from the front of my green wool sweater.
I saturated a sterile cotton pad with saline. "This is going to sting."
"Do it," he growled.
I brought my left hand up, my bare fingertips curling gently around the side of his skull just behind his right temple to brace his head.
His skin was burning hot, damp with sweat, his dark hair clinging to his brow.
Beneath my fingers, the temporal artery was hammering a frantic, punishing rhythm against his skull.
I pressed the wet pad to the cut.
Chosen didn't flinch from the chemical burn. He didn't make a sound. But his hands moved.
His massive, calloused palms came off his thighs and settled on the curves of my hips, his fingers wrapping around the denim of my jeans with heavy, bruising grip pressure.
He didn't push me away. He pulled me half an inch closer, anchoring me between his legs, using my balance to steady his own trembling frame.
My breath caught high in my chest. My fingers twitched against his temple, but I forced myself to focus on the wound, wiping away the dark smears of blood until the clean, jagged edges of the split skin were exposed.
"You took Calhoun’s hit on the ice today, didn't you?" I whispered, my voice shaking despite my effort to keep it clinical. I grabbed a swab of amber betadine, painting the antiseptic over the laceration. "Knox told Tessa that Northbrook’s second line was running drills against your defense."
Chosen’s dark eyes locked onto mine. He was watching my mouth, tracking the rapid parting of my lips with an unblinking, heavy focus that made the blood rush to my ears.
"Calhoun tried to take another run at my right side," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that resonated straight through his palms into my hip bones. "He caught my ribs instead."
"You could have stayed on the bench."
"I don't stay on the bench, Freeman."
"You're an idiot," I breathed, discarding the swab and picking up three butterfly adhesive strips. "You're going to destroy yourself before you ever see a professional contract."
"Then fix me," he whispered.
The command was stripped of arrogance. It was a low, desperate plea that vibrated against my collarbone.
His thumbs stroked the fabric of my jeans, pressing into the crest of my pelvis, holding me pinned in his space.
I leaned closer, my chest grazing his bare shoulder as I carefully aligned the edges of the cut.
My hands were steady now, driven by an instinctual need to stop his bleeding, to seal the damage before it could tear deeper.
I pressed the first adhesive strip across the center of the wound, smoothing it down with my thumb. Then the second. Then the third.
With every movement, my breath brushed across his parted lips.
He smelled of dark roast coffee, cold iron, and raw adrenaline.
His pupils were blown wide, the black swallowing the irises until his eyes looked like bruised ink.
He watched my eyelashes, my cheekbones, the tension in my jaw, his chest expanding in deep, shuddering breaths that dragged against his cracked ribs.
"Done," I whispered, the word hanging fragile and thin in the heavy air.
* * *
I applied a square of sterile gauze over the closures, pressing the medical tape into his skin.
The work was finished. The clinical justification for being this close had expired. Every rational instinct in my head screamed at me to step out from between his knees, grab my canvas satchel, and walk out into the cold corridor.
I took a half-step back, my hands lowering from his face.
Chosen’s right hand left my hip.
His thick fingers caught my left wrist with lightning speed, his grip warm, iron-hard, and unyielding.
"Don't," he rasped.
Before I could pull away, he pulled my arm inward, flattening my bare palm against the center of his chest.
The contact was an electric shock of pure somatic heat. His bare skin was fever-hot, slick with the sweat of suppressed pain, the dark ink of the compass rose rough beneath my fingers.
Beneath my palm, his heart was detonating.
It wasn't the slow, measured pulse of an elite athlete. It was a violent, erratic stampede, slamming against his bruised ribs with a force that rattled straight up the bones of my arm.
"Chosen," I whispered, my throat parched, my eyes darting to his.
"Feel that?" he growled, his voice ruined, thick with gravel and something dark and untamed. He pressed my hand harder against his sternum, refusing to let me break the connection. "That’s what happens every time you step into my space. You think Calhoun’s check hurt?
You think getting cross-checked through the boards breaks me? "
He leaned forward, his forehead dropping until it rested against mine, his hot breath washing over my lips in ragged, broken bursts. His broad chest heaved against my palm, dragging my skin over his scarred collarbone.
"Having your hands on me hurts worse than anything that happens on that ice, Freeman," he whispered, his eyes closing as his brow pressed into mine, the fresh bandage brushing my hairline.
"Because you're fixing a body that isn't worth saving, and you're making me want things I have no right to touch. "
My ribs seized. My fingers curled against his skin, my nails pressing lightly into the hard muscle over his heart instead of pulling away. The air in the room vanished, crushed under the weight of an intimacy so raw and absolute it terrified me.
"You're worth saving," I whispered, the confession slipping past my defenses before I could stop it.
Chosen’s eyes opened, black and wild, staring straight into my soul from an inch away.
His left hand came up, his taped fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck, his thumb tilting my jaw upward.
His mouth hovered millimeters from mine—so close I could feel the heat of his split lower lip, so close that a single inhale would seal our mouths together.
"Marie," he groaned, his voice cracking on my name, his thumb tracing the swollen line of my lower lip.
The metal pipes overhead shuddered, a sharp hiss of escaping steam echoing through the quiet room. Neither of us moved. We stayed suspended over the abyss, our hearts hammering against each other in the subterranean gloom, clinging to the edge of a line that had already turned to dust.