Chapter 23
Marie POV
At four o'clock on Friday afternoon, Sloan Arena smelled of shaved frost, freezing draft, and the bitter, hot steam rising from forty styrofoam cups of burnt concession coffee.
Overhead, the high Adirondack clouds hung low and leaden, pressing a heavy gray gloom against the clerestory glass.
Week eight of the master calendar. Exactly thirty hours of clinical supervision remaining on the compliance sheet in my satchel.
Seven weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid.
Seventeen weeks until the NHL Entry Draft.
I sat in row twelve of section one-oh-four, directly behind the Carver home bench, with my laptop open on my knees and two binders balanced on the plastic chair beside me.
Down on the ice, Carver was running an open-showcase power-play practice before tomorrow night's conference match against Clarkson.
The lower bowl was crawling with scouts.
They stood in clusters along the glass in matching heavy franchise parkas—the stylized orca of Vancouver, the burning 'C' of Calgary, the black-and-gold spoked 'B' of Boston, the crossed tomahawks of Chicago.
They held digital radar guns, heavy stopwatches, and leather scouting ledgers, tracking every blade-cut across the neutral zone with predatory precision.
Down in the slot, Chosen took a feed off the half-boards from Knox Davies.
He didn't hesitate. He took the puck on his forehand, pivoted on his repaired right skate with a violent, fluid snap of his hips, and drove a wrist shot past the backup netminder's blocker into the top corner so hard the water bottle flew off the mesh.
A collective murmur rippled through the scouts leaning over the rail.
Three rows below my seat, two men in Vancouver Canucks staff jackets were talking over the scrape of skate blades, their voices carrying easily through the cold air.
"Five overall," the older scout muttered, tapping his pen against his clipboard. "The kid’s six-four, two-twenty-eight, and his lateral push-off off the right edge is showing zero deficit. If his knee holds through the combine in Buffalo, front office is pulling the trigger on him at five. They’re already looking at residential lofts near Rogers Arena. "
"Calgary’s scouting him at eight," the younger one replied, checking a stopwatch. "If Vancouver passes, Calgary takes him the second he’s on the board. Three-year entry-level max, three point five in schedule bonuses. He’s in Western Canada by July."
A sudden, sharp flutter of cold nausea twisted in the pit of my stomach.
My throat contracted on a dry swallow. The air in my chest turned thin and sour, a sudden wave of lightheadedness washing over my vision until the green dasher boards below seemed to tilt on their axis.
I set my laptop aside with trembling hands, reached into my canvas satchel for my metal water bottle, and forced two mouthfuls of ice water down my tight throat.
Just low blood sugar, I told myself, pressing two fingers hard against the center of my collarbone, feeling the frantic, shallow thudding of my heart. Skipped breakfast. Too much black coffee. Seven hours in the lab.
I stared down at the ice.
Chosen was leaning over the dasher board, his dark hair soaked with sweat, chest heaving under his green practice sweater, laughing at something Knox shouted from the bench.
He looked like an NHL franchise center already.
He looked like a man about to step into a multi-million-dollar reality of charter jets, private training facilities, and three-thousand-mile relocations.
And what was I?
An undergraduate fellow with sixteen thousand dollars in student loans, a battered silver Civic with a failing alternator, and an application for a training post in Colorado Springs that might never materialize.
The calendar was ticking down. In seven weeks, the collegiate season would end. The compliance mandate would terminate. The iron door of The Vault would open, and Chosen Black would step onto an airplane to Western Canada, leaving me behind in the Adirondack mud.
The realization settled over my ribs like a slab of frozen lake ice.
* * *
The drive north along Route 9 was choked with heavy, gray silence.
The heater vents in Chosen's black pickup truck churned out dry, eighty-degree air, but my hands remained ice-cold inside the pockets of my wool coat. Outside the windshield, the first flakes of an evening squall danced in the glare of the headlights, swirling over the asphalt.
Chosen drove with his left hand resting easily at twelve o'clock on the leather wheel, his jaw relaxed, his broad shoulders filling the driver's side of the cab.
Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached his right arm across the center console. His large, warm palm came to rest heavily on my denim-covered thigh, his blunt fingers spreading wide, his thumb beginning that slow, rhythmic stroking that had become second nature behind closed doors.
My muscles locked.
An involuntary, defensive stiffness seized my spine. I shifted my leg half an inch away from his touch, turning my face toward the frosted passenger window, watching the dark silhouette of the pines rush past in the gloom.
Chosen’s hand went still on my leg.
He didn't pull his hand away, but his fingers tightened slightly, pressing through the denim, anchoring me in place.
Five minutes later, the truck tires crunched through the packed snow of his private drive. He killed the engine, cut the headlights, and threw the transmission into park.
The sudden silence in the carriage house drive was deafening.
Chosen didn't reach for the door handle. He unbuckled his seatbelt with a sharp, metallic snap, turned his heavy frame in the bucket seat, and pinned me with an unblinking, dark gaze that made the pulse hammer behind my ears.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
His voice wasn't loud, but the low, gravelly weight of it vibrated through the small cab, stripping away any hope of polite deflection.
"Nothing," I said, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the dark porch. "I'm tired. I have clinical data to compile."
"Don't lie to me, Marie," he growled, leaning forward until his shadow swallowed the center console.
His right hand left my knee, his blunt fingers catching the curve of my jaw, forcing my face around until my eyes met his.
"You've been stiff as pine since the third period.
You flinched when I touched your leg. Talk to me. "
The dam broke.
The cold nausea in my stomach surged upward, knotting in my throat until the words tore out of me, sharp and ragged with suppressed terror.
"Vancouver," I whispered, my voice trembling despite my desperate effort to lock it down. "Calgary. The scouts in row nine were talking about your draft slot, Chosen. They're talking about rookie maximums and Rogers Arena and July training camps in British Columbia."
Chosen’s brow furrowed, his jaw setting hard, but he didn't interrupt.
"We have seven weeks until Lake Placid," I said, the words tumbling out in a breathless, burning rush, my fingers knotting into the wool of my coat until my nails bit into my palms. "Seven weeks until this compliance protocol ends.
And then you get on an airplane and fly three thousand miles across the continent to start your real life.
And what am I, Chosen? Am I just the girl who taped your knee in a basement?
Am I an Adirondack chapter you leave behind when the snow melts? "
My breath hitched on a fractured, sharp gasp. A hot, angry tear escaped my lash line, tracking down my cheek to wet his calloused thumb.
"I can't do borrowed time," I choked out, my chest aching with an agony so acute it stole my breath.
"I watched my father pack a suitcase and walk out of our house when I was twelve, and I swore on my life I would never let another man leave me standing in the dirt.
If this ends in April, Chosen, tell me now.
Because I cannot survive you walking away. "
* * *
Chosen snapped.
He didn't answer with words. He threw his door open, stepped into the sub-zero Adirondack wind, and rounded the hood of the truck in three violent strides.
He yanked the passenger door open, caught me by the waist with both hands, and hauled me out of the cab into his arms before my boots could touch the snow.
He carried me across the porch, kicked the heavy timber front door open, and slammed it shut behind us with a concussive bang that shook the entryway walls.
He didn't turn on the lights.
He backed me hard against the solid oak of the door, his massive frame crowding me into the dark, trapping me against the wood. His breath came in harsh, furious drags that scorched across my face, smelling of cold winter wind, cedar, and pure, untamed adrenaline.
His hands came up.
Both of his large, calloused palms clamped around my jaw, his thick fingers tangling deep into the dark hair at the sides of my head, holding my face in an iron, immovable grip.
"Stop writing endings we haven't agreed on, Marie," he roared, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying growl that rattled straight through my skull.
"Chosen—"
"Look at me!" he commanded, his thumbs pressing hard into the crests of my cheekbones, tilting my face up until my tear-blurred eyes locked directly with his.
His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the dark brown, his chest slamming against mine with every ragged breath he drew.
"Look at me, good girl," he rasped, the praise rough, possessive, and thick with desperation. "Breathe. You think I’m getting on a plane to Vancouver? You think three thousand miles of ice matters more to me than having you in my bed?"
My breath caught in my throat, my hands rising blindly to clutch at the lapels of his heavy jacket. "The draft board—"
"I told Vance on Wednesday to pull Vancouver and Calgary off my board," he growled, the words sinking into my chest like white-hot iron.
My heart stopped beating. "What?"
"I told him I won't sign north of the border," Chosen rasped, his forehead coming down to rest against mine, his hot breath searing my parted lips. "I told him to steer the combine interviews to Denver and the Northeast. Where your fellowship is. Where you can breathe."
A sharp, breathless sob tore from my throat. My fingers clenched into the wool of his coat, holding him as my knees went entirely soft beneath me.
"You gave up the fifth pick?" I whispered, the impossibility of the sacrifice stealing the air from my lungs.
"I didn't give up a damn thing," he rumbled, his voice dropping into a dark, sacred register that vibrated through every bone in my body.
"I took what belongs to me. You think anything that happens in that arena matters if you aren't standing at the glass?
You are my future, Marie. My only team. My only home.
Nobody is leaving you. Nobody is walking away. "
He crashed his mouth down over mine.
The kiss was desperate, bruising, and starved. It tasted of salt, raw hunger, and an unyielding, unbreakable claiming that shattered the last lingering fear in my chest.
I clung to his broad shoulders, arching my back against the timber door, pulling him closer as his heavy body pinned me into the dark, drowning in the terrifying, beautiful certainty that whatever storm was coming, he would burn the world to the ground before he ever let me go.