Chapter 10
Chosen POV
I broke the contact first.
My hand dropped from her wrist as if the skin beneath my fingers had caught fire.
I took two uneven steps backward, the cold concrete of the recovery bay floor jarring the torn fibers in my right knee, but the ache in the joint was nothing compared to the violent, chaotic hammering behind my sternum.
Her palm had felt like a brand against my chest. Her fingers had curled over my heart, and for ten terrifying seconds, every defense I had built over three years of guilt had ceased to exist.
"Get your coat," I rasped, turning my back on her before she could see the tremor running through my hands.
I grabbed my heavy Carver team hoodie from the stainless steel cart, dragging the dark green cotton over my head. The fabric scraped against the fresh butterfly closures on my eyebrow and the deep contusions along my ribs, a sharp flare of agony that helped anchor my thoughts.
"I can walk," Marie said behind me, her voice trembling slightly before she forced it into that rigid, clinical cadence.
"It’s past two in the morning, Freeman," I said, shoving my arms through the sleeves of my winter parka and zipping it to the chin. "Thursday night is already gone, there’s four inches of freezing slush on the access road, and the temperature is twelve below zero. You aren't walking anywhere."
She didn't argue. She packed her diagnostic tablet and the antiseptic bottles into her canvas satchel with quick, mechanical movements, her shoulders held stiff as pine boards.
We left Sloan Arena through the north service tunnel, our boots crunching against the salt-crusted asphalt of the deserted parking lot. The wind howling off Lake Mistassini hit us like a wall of broken glass, driving pellets of sleet against the dark nylon of our coats.
My four-wheel-drive pickup sat idling beneath a flickering amber security fixture, thick exhaust pluming white into the sub-zero Adirondack air. I unlocked the passenger side, holding the heavy door open while she climbed in, before rounding the hood and hauling myself into the driver's seat.
The cab was freezing, the blower vents churning out lukewarm air that smelled of cold upholstery, road salt, and cedarwood. As I pulled the door shut, cutting off the shriek of the blizzard, the space instantly shrank to a claustrophobic box.
Marie sat pressed against the passenger door, her hands tucked deep inside her wool coat pockets, her breath misting against the side window.
I threw the transmission into gear and eased off the clutch.
The tires caught the frozen slush, the truck rolling slowly past the dark concrete bulk of the arena toward the campus exit.
Sixty-eight hours remaining on Thorne’s rehabilitation log.
Eleven weeks to the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. Twenty-one weeks until the NHL Draft.
The numbers were supposed to be an iron rail keeping me on track. Instead, they felt like sand running through a clenched fist.
My fingers tightened around the leather-wrapped steering wheel until my knuckles clicked.
Every nerve ending in my torso still remembered the heat of her fingers pressed over my ribs.
The memory tasted like copper and smoke, an infection in my bloodstream that no amount of ice or physical punishment could flush out.
In less than four hours, the team bus was rolling out of the parking bay for the weekend showcase in Boston. I was supposed to be dialing in, locking my focus onto forty minutes of checking opposing forwards and protecting my knee.
Instead, having her sitting three feet to my right made my lungs burn as if the cab had run out of air.
If I let her stay this close, I was going to lose everything. Julian’s trust, the draft, the captaincy—all of it would burn because I was weak enough to crave the touch of the only person who refused to bow to my anger.
I had to build the wall back up. Now.
"You should have let Thorne stitch the brow," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the heater, cold, flat, and deliberately harsh. "You're an unpaid student fellow, Freeman. Taking care of broken players after hours isn't going to look as noble on your fellowship application as you think."
* * *
The silence that followed was sharp enough to sever bone.
Marie didn't look away from the frosted glass of the passenger window. For five seconds, the only sound was the rhythmic slap of the wiper blades clearing freezing rain from the windshield.
Then she turned her head.
Her face was illuminated by the pale green wash of the dashboard instruments. Her dark eyes were wide, hard, and blazing with a furious, unyielding fire that made my foot ease off the accelerator.
"Pull over," she said.
The command was quiet, steady, and deadly.
"We're three blocks from Pine Street," I muttered, staring straight through the windshield into the driving snow. "I'm dropping you at your door."
"I said pull over, Chosen."
Her voice didn't rise, but the absolute lack of fear in it hit me harder than a blindside hit along the half-boards.
My jaw muscles locked until my back molars ground together.
I checked the rear-view mirror, saw nothing behind us but an empty stretch of road bordering the frozen lake, and yanked the wheel hard to the right.
The truck slid four feet through the slush before the front tires bumped the snowbank overlooking the shoreline.
I slammed the gearshift into park, cut the engine, and ripped off my seatbelt. The silence rushed into the cab, thick, heavy, and suffocating.
"What is your problem?" I snarled, turning in the bucket seat to face her.
"My problem?" She released her own seatbelt, turning toward the center console, refusing to give an inch. Her chin was tilted up, the defensive posture I knew by heart, but her voice was shaking with raw, unfiltered indignation. "My problem is that you are a coward, Black."
The word hit me like a slap across the cheekbone. The blood roared in my ears. "Watch your mouth."
"No," she fired back, leaning forward, her hands bracing against the dark vinyl of the dashboard.
"I spent forty minutes cleaning blood out of your face because you were too proud to let a doctor see that you were hurting.
I sat there in the dark while you forced my hand onto your chest, and now you want to sit behind that wheel and pretend it was an administrative exercise? "
"It was an exercise in keeping my roster spot," I growled, crowding the space between the front seats, my chest heaving against the nylon of my jacket. "You think you're special because you touched an open wound? I let you tape the brow because you have clearance authority, Freeman. Nothing else."
"You're a liar," she whispered, her voice dropping into a register that sliced through my chest like a scalpel.
"You let me touch you because nobody else on this campus has looked at you in three years without seeing a monster or a paycheck.
You're terrified because I don't want your money, I don't care about your draft ranking, and I'm not afraid of your temper. "
My vision tunneled into black.
The rational, controlled athlete I had spent twenty-two years building snapped like dry birch under an iron boot.
* * *
I didn't think. I lunged across the center console.
My left hand reached out, thick, calloused fingers burying into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, my palm wrapping around the curve of her jaw with an iron, unyielding grip.
Marie didn't flinch. She didn't pull back. Her hands came up instantly, her small, bare palms planting flat against the front of my heavy coat, clutching the fabric right over my bruised ribs.
I dragged her forward until the space between our faces vanished.
Her breath, hot, sweet, and smelling of peppermint, hit my split lower lip in ragged, shallow gasps. The air in the cab was pure heat, thick with the scent of melted snow, cold cedar, and the wild, racing pulse of two bodies pushed past the breaking point.
"You think you know me?" I rasped, my voice a ruined, gravelly vibration that brushed against her lips.
My thumb dragged across the swollen crest of her lower lip, feeling the delicate, warm skin give way beneath the pressure. Her breath hitched in a soft, broken sound that went straight to my groin, tightening every muscle in my frame until I was trembling from the strain of holding back.
"I know you're running," she whispered, her dark eyes wide, dilated until the brown was swallowed in midnight black.
Her forehead leaned forward, resting against mine, her fingers tightening into the wool of my jacket, holding me in place.
"I know you're drowning, Chosen. And you'd rather tear this entire town down than admit you need someone to pull you out. "
"I don't want to be pulled out," I breathed, my mouth hovering a single millimeter from hers.
The heat radiating off her lips scorched my skin. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to close the fraction of an inch between us—to take her mouth, to taste the defiance, to strip away the remaining air in the truck until there was nothing left but her surrender.
Her lips parted slightly against mine. She didn't push me away; she leaned into the hold, her eyes searching mine with a raw, terrifying hunger that matched the sickness in my own blood.
One inch. That was all that stood between the line and the dark.
A sharp, violent vibration rattled through the plastic console cup holder.
My smartphone buzzed against the hard plastic, the screen illuminating the dark cab with a harsh, cold white light:
CARVER ATHLETICS: MORNING TRAVEL NOTIFICATION
Bus departs Sloan Arena 06:00 for Boston College series.
Four hours. In four hours, I had to be on that bus with my gear stowed under the floorboards, headed across the state line for two games against Boston College.
Two hundred yards behind us on the lake road, the high-beam headlights of a county snowplow crested the ridge, sweeping a blinding, golden glare through the frosted rear window of the truck.
The reality of the world crashed through the glass.
I froze, my chest heaving against hers, my thumb still resting on her lower lip.
Marie’s eyes flickered, the sudden light illuminating the flush on her high cheekbones and the rapid, visible flutter of the vein in her throat. She looked at my mouth, then up into my eyes, the understanding passing between us without a single syllable spoken.
We were standing on the edge of a cliff, and both of us had leaned forward.
Slowly, agonizingly, I let my hand fall from her jaw.
The cold Adirondack air rushed into the space between our bodies, chilling the skin where our breath had mingled. Marie let go of my jacket, sinking back into the passenger seat, her hands trembling as she pulled them into her lap.
Neither of us said a word.
I turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared back to life, the headlights cutting through the swirling blizzard, lighting the empty road to Pine Street.
My knuckles were white as I shifted into drive. The line was gone. The professional pretense was dead and buried under four inches of snow.
And as I pulled away from the lake, my ribs aching with every breath, I knew with lethal, absolute certainty that the next time we were alone in the dark, neither of us would stop.