Chapter 29
Marie POV
The fourth-floor reading room of the Carver University Memorial Library smelled of damp bookcloth, dry dust, and the sharp mineral sting of lemon wood oil.
High arched leaded-glass windows looked out over the gray, wind-whipped expanse of Lake Mistassini, where an early-morning squall drove needles of freezing sleet against the panes.
It was nine o'clock on Friday morning. Week eleven of the master calendar.
Exactly four weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid.
Fourteen weeks until the draft in Nashville.
I sat at a long oak trestle table in the secluded north alcove, surrounded by stacks of orthopedic journals and my three-ring compliance binder.
Across campus at Sloan Arena, the men’s varsity locker room was in full administrative lockdown. Coach Garrison Vance had scheduled closed walkthroughs and tactical video review ahead of tomorrow’s ECAC playoff quarterfinal, keeping the players isolated from media, scouts, and student foot traffic.
My stomach gave a sharp, violent roll.
A wave of cold, greasy nausea rose from my gut, sour and acidic, catching in the back of my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed my lips together, and took three slow, ragged breaths through my nose, forcing the bile down.
My breasts ached with an intense, bruised heaviness that made the cotton of my bra feel like sandpaper. My limbs were leaden, carrying a deep, bone-weary exhaustion that three cups of chamomile tea hadn't touched.
Under the edge of the heavy oak table, my right hand slid beneath my sweater.
My fingers spread wide, resting flat against the curve of my lower abdomen.
Nineteen days late.
The calendar on my phone was no longer a question mark; it was an iron rail leading straight toward an unavoidable biological reality. A quiet, impossible warmth blossomed beneath my palm, accompanied by an icy, suffocating dread that tightened my ribs like an iron band.
I was carrying Chosen Black’s child.
I hadn't taken the home immunoassay test yet.
I had two digital test boxes tucked into the bottom of my satchel, purchased forty miles away in Plattsburgh on Wednesday afternoon to avoid campus pharmacy records.
I had planned to take them tonight in the privacy of my flat, to confirm the lines before I figured out how to tell the man who had promised me the world.
A soft, rhythmic click echoed from the marble staircase outside the archway.
The sound was measured, heavy, and deliberate—the strike of polished leather heels on stone.
My hand snapped away from my stomach, coming to rest flat on the open pages of my biomechanics text. My spine went rigid, my defensive armor sliding back into place as the shadows shifted at the end of the aisle.
* * *
Tate Halloway stepped into the alcove.
The Apex Sports runner wore a tailored camel wool overcoat over an open-collared navy dress shirt, carrying a thick black leather portfolio tucked beneath his arm.
His fair hair was neatly combed, his face pale and sharp, his thin mouth pulled into an oily, victorious smirk that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
He didn't ask permission. He pulled out the heavy oak captain’s chair opposite mine, the wooden legs groaning against the floor, and sat down.
"You're an early riser, Miss Freeman," Halloway said. His voice was smooth, a quiet, grating purr that contaminated the library stillness.
"This is a designated quiet floor, Mr. Halloway," I said, my voice flat, cold, and clipped with clinical authority. "You have no business in this building."
"I have business everywhere Chosen Black leaves his gear," Halloway countered.
He unzipped the black leather portfolio, reached inside, and placed a thick manila folder squarely in the center of my open notes.
Stamped across the front in red ink was my own handwriting: PROJECT 14: KINETIC LOAD & BIOMECHANICAL PROFILE (CONFIDENTIAL).
My lungs seized. The air trapped behind my ribs turned to ice.
It was my original, proprietary research dossier on Chosen from September—the exhaustive clinical breakdown of his gait asymmetries, his past shoulder trauma, and the detailed psychological notes analyzing how his guilt over Julian Mercer’s broken neck drove him to take reckless physical punishment on the ice.
I had locked that folder inside my metal desk in The Vault four weeks ago.
"Samuel O'Connor has a very reasonable price for unlocking office doors after midnight," Halloway murmured, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the oak.
He flipped the folder open.
Clipped to the first page were three eight-by-ten glossy photographs.
The first showed me stepping out of the lower arena tunnel at midnight, wrapped in Chosen's #14 traveling hoodie.
The second showed Chosen leaning against my car in his private drive on Lake Mistassini, his hand cupping my jaw.
The third was a high-resolution scan of my signature on his official NCAA return-to-play clearance document, dated three days ago.
"Look at that paper trail," Halloway whispered, his eyes glittering with malicious satisfaction.
"A student athletic trainer who lost an eighteen-thousand-dollar grant in October because the team captain called her research soft.
The same trainer who gets assigned to his private rehabilitation in January, begins an illicit sexual relationship in an unmonitored basement, and signs off on an unstable grade-two ligament tear so he can skate. "
"His ligament is stable," I hissed, my knuckles turning white as my fingernails bit into the oak table. "He has ninety-four hours of verified telemetry under Dr. Thorne."
"It doesn't matter what Thorne says, Miss Freeman," Halloway said, his voice dropping into a harsh, venomous cadence.
"The optics are catastrophic. If this file lands on the ECAC compliance desk tomorrow morning, Chosen Black is placed on immediate administrative suspension.
He doesn't skate in the playoffs. He doesn't skate in the Frozen Four.
And when I send these photos and your psychological case notes to the twenty-two NHL front offices holding first-round draft picks, his draft stock drops into the dirt. "
He tapped a manicured finger against the photograph of my face.
"An elite center with an unstable joint and an ethics violation involving athletic medical staff," Halloway purred.
"Nobody touches him with a ten-foot pole.
He becomes an undrafted free agent with a blown knee and forty-eight thousand dollars in debt on Julian Mercer's hospital room. His life is over before noon tomorrow."
* * *
The cold nausea in my stomach surged upward, knotting in my throat with such violent force my vision blurred at the edges.
The room seemed to tilt. The blood roared in my ears like an oncoming train, my heart hammering a frantic, suffocating beat against my sternum.
They were going to destroy him.
They had taken my clinical notes—the very words I had written before I ever knew his heart, before I saw him bleed for his teammates, before he held me in the dark—and twisted them into a weapon to murder his future.
"What do you want?" I whispered, my voice shaking with an agony so sharp it tasted like copper.
Halloway leaned in, his smile vanishing, his eyes dead and predatory.
"I want Chosen Black under an exclusive pre-draft representation contract with Apex Sports before he steps onto the ice tomorrow night," Halloway said. "And I want you out of his life."
My breath hitched in a sharp, broken gasp. "What?"
"You're a distraction, Miss Freeman," Halloway snarled softly. "He told Garrison Vance to take Vancouver and Calgary off his draft board on Wednesday. He gave up top-five money and a three-year rookie maximum because he’s trying to stay close to your pathetic little Olympic fellowship. He’s throwing away his career for an undergraduate trainer. "
He tapped the manila folder with his knuckles.
"You pack your bags," Halloway commanded.
"You withdraw your clinical assignment with Carver Athletics today.
You tell him that this dossier was your real goal—that you used him as a clinical experiment to secure your USOC fellowship, and that you're done with him.
You break him so hard he has nothing left to focus on except hockey and the contract I put in front of him. "
"And if I refuse?" I breathed, my chin tilting up, a spark of pure, unadulterated fury igniting in the ashes of my terror.
Halloway stood up, buttoning his camel overcoat with casual, brutal finality.
"If you refuse, this entire package goes to Reginald Sterling, the ECAC commissioner, and the national hockey press at eight o'clock tomorrow morning," he said flatly.
"You will be expelled from Carver University.
Your fellowship nomination will be revoked for gross medical fraud.
And Chosen Black will spend the rest of his life knowing that the girl he loved was the weapon that broke him. "
He turned on his heel, his leather shoes clicking sharply on the hardwood as he strode down the center aisle of the reading room.
The heavy double doors of the library wing closed behind him with a dull, concussive thud that shook the leaded glass.
The room fell dead silent.
My knees gave out beneath the table.
I grabbed the edge of the heavy oak desk with both hands, my forehead hitting the polished wood as my body folded inward, a violent, silent sob tearing from my throat.
The nausea hit me in an uncontrollable, heaving wave. I gripped my stomach with both arms, my fingernails digging through the wool of my sweater into my flesh, my breath coming in ragged, terrified hitches that rattled in my chest.
Twenty-four hours.
The trap had closed around us, sealed in ice and blackmail.
I looked down at the empty space where the folder had been, then slowly, with trembling hands, reached into my canvas satchel and touched the cardboard boxes of the pregnancy tests resting in the dark.
I had twenty-four hours to save Chosen Black from total ruin.
And as I pressed my shaking palm over the life growing silently beneath my ribs, I knew that the cost of his salvation would be the destruction of my own heart.