Chapter 28
Chosen POV
The halogen floodlights in the Sloan Arena media theater were hot enough to bake the wool of my charcoal Carver suit jacket.
Thirty reporters from Boston, Albany, and the regional sports desks were crammed into the four tiered rows of folding chairs, their digital recorders blinking red along the edge of the dais, the lenses of three television cameras tracking every breath that expanded my chest.
Week ten of the master calendar. Exactly ten hours of clinical supervision left on the compliance sheet in my locker. Five weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. Fifteen weeks until the draft in Nashville.
"Chosen, reports from the NHL Central Scouting bureau have you holding at number eight overall," a beat writer from the Boston Globe shouted over the low acoustic hum of the audio monitors.
"There are persistent rumors from the Northbrook camp that you’re managing an undisclosed medial ligament tear.
Are you skating at one hundred percent for the ECAC playoffs? "
My hands rested flat on the laminate table, my knuckles thick and scarred against the wood.
The blood thudded heavy and rhythmic behind my eardrums, a slow, fifty-beat march that kept my face carved out of dead gray stone. I didn't reach for the glass of water. I didn't adjust my tie.
"I skated thirty-eight minutes against Clarkson on Saturday," I said, my baritone level, clipped, and flat as a frozen pond. "The telemetry is on file with the league office. My right edge is fine. Next question."
"What about your draft preference, Black?" an ESPN college hockey analyst chimed in from the third row. "Word circulating among Western Conference scouts is that your camp has refused pre-draft interviews with Vancouver and Calgary. Are you trying to force your way to a Northeast franchise?"
Beside me on the riser, Coach Garrison Vance shifted his weight, clearing his throat to intervene.
I cut Vance off with a single, slight lift of my hand.
"I don't have a camp," I said, holding the reporter’s gaze until the man looked down at his legal pad.
"I have a captaincy at Carver University, and I have five weeks left to win this school a national championship.
Where I play in October will be decided after we lift the trophy in Lake Placid. We're done here."
I stood up before the moderator could dismiss the room.
The flashbulbs erupted in a blinding, stuttering white storm, cameras clicking frantically as I turned my broad back on the podium and pushed through the heavy acoustic curtain into the private service corridor behind the stage.
* * *
"Hold up, Chosen."
Vance caught my arm in the concrete hallway outside the athletic director's suite. His face was drawn tight, the skin beneath his eyes gray with stress, his jaw working violently over an unlit cigar.
"Sterling wants us in his office," Vance muttered, his voice dropping below the ambient rumble of the arena compressors. "Now."
We didn't take the elevator. We took the back iron stairs straight to the fourth floor.
Reginald Sterling’s corner office smelled of expensive leather, stale bourbon, and panic.
The athletic director stood behind his mahogany desk with his suit coat discarded, his silk tie loosened, staring down at a white document bearing the red seal of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference compliance board.
He didn't offer us seats. He tossed the document across the blotter the second the heavy oak door latched shut.
"An anonymous formal complaint was lodged with the league commissioner’s office at noon today," Sterling said, his voice shaking with suppressed fury.
I looked down at the paper.
The letterhead was official, stamped with an urgent administrative case number: Inquiry into Student-Athlete Eligibility and Clinical Governance Violations.
"The complaint alleges three specific infractions," Sterling rasped, running a hand over his slicked-back gray hair.
"One: an undisclosed high-grade ligament injury sustained in January.
Two: unauthorized facility utilization and access lockouts in sub-level two outside standard athletic training hours.
Three: an impermissible conflict of interest and unethical relationship between the team captain and a student athletic trainer holding autonomous medical clearance authority. "
The veins along the side of my neck corded, thick and rigid as iron wire.
My vision tunneled into a dark, suffocating point. The air in my lungs turned to ash as the pieces slammed together in my skull.
Tate Halloway.
The forty-eight-hour clock Halloway had given me in the parking tunnel on Saturday had expired. This was the opening salvo from Apex Sports—a calculated, poisonous strike designed to squeeze my draft leverage and force my signature on their representation deal before the weekend.
"It’s an unverified tip, Reginald," Vance snapped from the leather chair, leaning forward with his fists balled.
"Aris Thorne signed the non-surgical rehabilitation directive under NCAA Bylaw 3.
2.4.16. Black has logged ninety hours of verified clinical telemetry.
His joint stability is at ninety-eight percent. "
"The commissioner doesn't care about the ninety-eight percent, Garrison!
" Sterling slammed his open palm onto the desk, the mahogany groaning under the blow.
"The complaint names Marie Freeman. It alleges that Black and Freeman have been using The Vault for personal conduct, and that she falsified his return-to-play clearance to protect his draft stock in exchange for fellowship leverage. "
The blood roared in my ears with deafening, violent force.
My hands came out of my pockets. I stepped up to the edge of the mahogany desk, looming over Sterling, my massive frame blotting out the light from the window until the athletic director took an involuntary step back against his credenza.
"Listen to me, Sterling," I growled, my voice dropping into a terrifying, gravelly register that made the hair on the back of Vance’s neck stand up.
"Marie Freeman has logged every degree of joint flexion in that basement under Thorne’s direct supervision.
She has never falsified a single data point in her life. "
"If the conference opens an official inquiry board on Monday, Chosen, you are placed on mandatory administrative hold," Sterling hissed, his face pale, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
"NCAA Bylaw 10.1. You don't skate in the ECAC Semifinals next Friday.
You don't skate in Lake Placid. And if Freeman's research files are subpoenaed by the ethics committee, her fellowship nomination is terminated before she can sit for her degree. "
My back molars ground together so hard the masseter muscle along my jaw bunched into an agonizing knot.
They were going after her.
They were using the pure, selfless devotion she had poured into my broken knee to destroy the only dream she had ever owned.
"The conference won't open an inquiry," I said, every word dripping with cold, absolute venom.
"And how do you plan to stop them, Captain?" Sterling challenged, his hands trembling against his desk.
"Because if Halloway’s name appears anywhere near this compliance filing," I whispered, leaning down until my face was six inches from Sterling’s, "I will hand the commissioner the security footage from the winter gala corridor. I will show the board how Carver’s athletic director stood by while an unaccredited runner tried to inject an amateur player with black-market steroids.
You will lose that one-point-two-million-dollar donor endowment, Sterling.
And you will spend the rest of your career explaining federal fraud statutes to a grand jury. "
Sterling went the color of wet chalk. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I turned on my heel, hauled the heavy oak door open, and walked out into the cold corridor, leaving the room in shattered, breathless silence.
* * *
The freezing twilight in the arena parking lot tasted of road salt and diesel exhaust.
The sub-zero wind howling off Lake Mistassini drove pellets of sleet against my face as I strode toward the north security gate, my keys clenched so tightly in my right fist the brass edges cut into the meat of my palm.
My vision was still red at the margins, my chest heaving against my wool coat in ragged, uneven drags.
Then I saw her.
Marie was standing beneath the concrete overhang of the private team exit, sheltered from the driving snow.
She was wrapped in an oversized dark green wool coat that reached her boots, a heavy gray scarf wound tight around her throat. She had her canvas satchel slung across her chest, but she wasn't reading her notes.
She was leaning back against the brick pillar, her face pale as parchment, her dark eyes hollowed by an exhaustion that made my throat seize.
Her right hand was tucked deep into her coat, pressed flat, motionless, and protective over the curve of her lower abdomen.
The blinding rage that had driven me down the fourth-floor stairs vanished in the span of a single heartbeat.
It evaporated into an ache so sharp and desperate it nearly knocked the balance from my boots.
I didn't care about the cameras in the concourse. I didn't care about the compliance letter in Sterling’s office.
I closed the distance between us in four long strides, reached out, and caught her small frame by the waist.
Her breath hitched in a soft, startled gasp as my momentum carried her back against my chest. She looked up, her dark eyes wide and vulnerable, a faint tremor running through her lips when she recognized the heat of my hands.
"Chosen," she whispered, her voice fragile and thin against the wind.
I didn't let her speak.
I unlocked the passenger door of my truck, lifted her effortlessly onto the high leather seat, and climbed in right behind her, hauling the heavy door shut against the howling blizzard.
I didn't move to the driver's side.
I pulled her across the center console into my lap, wrapping my massive arms around her back, burying my face into the warm hollow of her neck.
Her scent—lavender, rain, and the faint, sweet warmth of her skin—flooded my senses like oxygen in a burning room.
I held her with crushing, unyielding possessiveness, my hands clutching the back of her coat, holding her so tightly our ribs compressed together, our heartbeats colliding in a frantic, uneven rhythm.
"Chosen, what happened?" she whispered into my ear, her small hands rising instantly to cup the back of my head, her fingers tangling into my damp hair. "Your heart is hammering."
"Stay right here," I rasped into her skin, my voice ruined, thick with gravel and a fierce, suffocating reverence.
My large hand slid down her back, pressing against the small of her spine, anchoring her flush against my chest as my head rested in the crook of her shoulder.
"Good girl," I murmured, my breath hot and ragged against her throat. "Just let me hold you, Marie. Breathe for me. I’ve got you."
A soft, trembling exhale slipped from her lips, her body melting into mine, her cheek resting against my jaw as she held me in the dark cab while the sleet beat against the windshield.
I held her in the quiet sanctuary of the truck, my eyes fixed on the black lake road ahead.
The storm was gathering on all sides. The trap was closing.
And as I tightened my grip on the woman breathing softly against my neck, I knew that before I let anyone touch her, I would burn the entire world to ash.