Chapter 27
Marie POV
At seven-thirty on Tuesday morning, the brick walkways of the Carver University quad were glazed in gray, crusty frost that cracked like eggshells beneath my winter boots.
Overhead, the Adirondack sky was a pale, frozen sheet of tin. Week ten of the master calendar. Exactly ten hours of clinical supervision remaining on the compliance sheet in my canvas satchel. Five weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. Fifteen weeks until the NHL Entry Draft.
I pushed open the heavy brass-and-glass door of the Science Annex café, desperate for warmth.
The air inside was thick with the scent of freshly ground dark roast, cinnamon pastries, and damp wool coats.
I paid three dollars for a large black drip coffee—the same roast I had consumed two times a day for four years of undergraduate research—and took the paper cup over to the condiment counter.
I lifted the plastic lid to my mouth.
The dark, bitter steam hit my nostrils, and my central nervous system detonated.
The rich, familiar scent of roasted beans suddenly transformed into something rancid—a sour, oily stench of burning acid and rotted earth that slammed into the back of my throat like a physical fist.
My stomach violently heaved.
A wave of cold, greasy nausea rose from the pit of my gut straight to my esophagus. The horizon of the café tilted fifteen degrees to the left; my vision narrowed into a dark, pulsing tunnel as a sheet of ice-cold sweat broke out across my forehead and the nape of my neck.
My fingers went numb, nearly crushing the paper cup.
I shoved the coffee into the nearest aluminum waste bin, clamped my hand over my mouth, and stumbled through the side corridor toward the single-occupancy staff restroom.
I barely made it through the door.
I kicked it shut behind me, dropped to my knees on the cold hexagonal floor tiles, and gripped the porcelain rim of the basin with white-knuckled desperation.
My diaphragm seized in three violent, dry spasms that tore through my ribs. Nothing came up except bitter yellow bile that burned the lining of my throat, but the retching was so severe my abdominal muscles locked into rigid, agonizing knots.
I stayed on the floor for two minutes, my forehead pressed against the cold porcelain, gasping for air that tasted of sulfur and bleach.
Slowly, dragging my weight up by the chrome plumbing pipe, I reached the sink. I cranked the cold tap, cupping the freezing water in trembling hands, splashing it over my burning face, rinsing the bitter metallic taste from my mouth.
I looked up into the mirror.
My skin was the color of wet chalk. My dark eyes were huge, bloodshot at the edges, dark violet hollows carved beneath them. My hands were shaking with a fine, rapid vibration that I couldn't arrest.
Flu, I thought, my fingers digging into the edge of the ceramic basin, forcing my medical training to build an immediate, logical wall against the panic rising in my chest. Viral gastroenteritis.
You've been averaging four hours of sleep for two weeks.
You skipped dinner on Sunday. Your immune system is suppressed from cortisol.
I pulled a compact of pressed powder from my satchel, dusted color over my hollow cheekbones, and took three slow, mechanical breaths through my nose.
Ten hours left. I wasn't missing a session today.
* * *
By eight-fifteen, I was down in sub-level two of Sloan Arena, walking down the rubber-runner floor toward the quiet treatment annex adjacent to The Vault.
My boots felt heavy, as if lead weights had been sewn into the soles. The familiar subterranean smell of limestone, chlorine, and skate-blade oil—which had never bothered me before—made my throat tighten with that same lingering, oily revulsion.
Chosen was waiting outside the treatment room door.
He was dressed in gray Carver Hockey sweatpants and a dark green long-sleeve thermal, his skates slung over his shoulder, his hair damp from a six-o'clock captain's skate with Knox.
At six feet four inches and two hundred and twenty-eight pounds, he leaned against the concrete block wall, reviewing a laminated sheet of power-play formations.
The moment his dark eyes flicked up and caught my face, the playbook vanished.
He dropped his skates to the rubber floor with a sharp clatter, straightened his massive frame, and closed the distance between us in two long, urgent strides.
"What happened to you?" he demanded.
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated with instant, laser-focused vigilance. He didn't ask permission; his hands came up, lifting the heavy canvas satchel off my shoulder with one hand, his blunt fingers catching my left elbow with the other to steady my swaying footing.
"I'm fine," I lied, forcing my lips into a composed, level line. "Just a minor stomach bug. We have Session eighty-two to log."
"You're white as ice, Marie," he growled, ignoring my clipboard.
He pushed the door to the treatment room open, steered me inside, and guided me toward the padded leather bench against the wall. He didn't let me sit alone; he dropped to his knees on the rubber floor right between my boots, his massive frame folding down until his face was level with mine.
The heat radiating off his body enveloped me, thick with the scent of crushed cedarwood and cold rain.
He reached out with both hands, his large, calloused palms wrapping around my ice-cold fingers. He began rubbing warmth back into my skin with firm, unhurried strokes, his thumbs smoothing over my knuckles, his jaw set in a hard, protective line.
"Your hands are freezing," he murmured, his brow drawing low over his dark eyes as he tracked the rapid flutter of my pulse at the base of my throat. "You're burning up at the hairline, and your hands feel like snow."
"Chosen, we need to do the eccentric quadriceps tests," I whispered, but the fight was gone from my voice.
The sheer, overwhelming relief of having his warm hands holding mine made my chest cave inward, a soft, ragged sigh breaking from my lips.
"The tests can wait twenty minutes," he commanded, his voice dropping into that dark, velvety register that brooked no argument.
He stood up, crossed the room to the small mini-fridge in the corner, and returned with a bottle of plain spring water and a sleeve of saltine crackers from the training staff pantry.
He knelt back down on the floor before me, cracked the cap on the bottle, and held it to my lips, forcing me to take three small sips.
Then he stripped off his heavy green Carver Hockey traveling jacket—the thick wool fleece carrying his scent—and draped it over my shoulders, tucking the heavy lapels around my neck until I was swallowed in his warmth.
"Good girl," he rasped, his thumb moving up to stroke the side of my jaw, his touch infinitely gentle against my fevered skin. "Sit back against the wall and breathe for me. What's wrong with you today, sweetheart?"
The pet name, combined with the raw, unguarded reverence in his dark eyes, made my throat ache with an agonizing, sharp tightness. Tears burned at the backs of my eyes, hot and uninvited.
"Just tired," I whispered, pulling the heavy wool of his jacket tighter around my ribs. "Just so tired, Chosen."
"I'm taking you home after this," he growled softly, leaning up to press his lips to my temple, his stubble grazing my skin. "You're staying in bed, and I'm bringing you soup from the diner. You're running yourself into the ground for this department, and I'm putting a stop to it."
* * *
The treatment room door clicked open.
Coach Garrison Vance stuck his head into the room, a whistle dangling from his fingers, his eyes flicking from Chosen kneeling on the floor to me wrapped in the captain's jacket.
"Black," Vance said, his voice clipped. "Scouts from Denver and Boston are in the upper lounge. I need you on the whiteboard in the coaches' theater for five minutes to go over the defensive zone faceoff rotations."
Chosen didn't scramble to his feet. He took his time, his large hand squeezing my knee through my denim before he stood, towering over Vance.
"Five minutes, Coach," Chosen said, his tone flat and unyielding.
He looked back at me, his eyes dark with fierce, lingering instruction. "Don't move from that bench, Marie. Drink the water."
"I won't move," I promised softly.
The door clicked shut behind them, leaving the subterranean room plunged into heavy, ringing silence.
I sat there on the leather bench, clutching the bottle of water, enveloped in the heavy heat of Chosen's jacket.
My stomach had settled slightly, the cold nausea retreating to a dull, uneasy simmer beneath my ribs. But something else—a cold, sharp prickle of instinct—began creeping up the back of my neck.
Viral gastroenteritis doesn't hit in twenty seconds from the smell of roasted coffee beans.
My hands began to shake again, not from physical weakness, but from an icy, sudden dread that gripped my spine like an iron vice.
I set the water bottle on the bench.
With trembling fingers, I reached into the pocket of my coat, pulled out my smartphone, and unlocked the screen.
I opened my personal health tracking calendar.
The screen glowed pale blue in the quiet room. I scrolled past the current date—Tuesday, March thirteenth—and traced my finger back along the digital grid.
My last menstrual cycle was logged on Saturday, January twenty-fourth.
My cycle had run like clockwork since I was fifteen years old. Twenty-eight days. Never late. Never irregular.
I counted the days.
Cycle day twenty-eight would have been February twenty-first.
Saturday, February twenty-first.
The night of the historic Adirondack blizzard. The night the power grid died on Lake Mistassini. The night Chosen carried me across the carriage house floor and made love to me before the stone fireplace until the dawn broke over the snow.
Today was March thirteenth.
My period was eighteen days late.
A high, deafening ringing sound detonated in my ears, drowning out the hum of the ventilation pipes.
The air vanished from my lungs. My vision tunneled into blackness as the biological math locked together with absolute, horrifying, undeniable precision.
The sudden, violent revulsion to coffee.
The bone-deep exhaustion that had dragged at my limbs for a week.
The heightened, hypersensitive awareness of every texture against my skin.
It wasn't burnout. It wasn't the flu.
My left hand left the phone.
Slowly, dragging through the air like it was moving through deep water, my trembling palm dropped to my lap. My fingers spread wide, pressing flat against the lower curve of my abdomen beneath the heavy wool of Chosen Black's jacket.
An icy shock of terror and an impossible, terrifying warmth collided in my bloodstream, tearing through my chest with the force of an avalanche.
I was carrying his child.