Chapter 31
Marie POV
The exhaust fan in the ceiling of our flat’s cramped bathroom rattled with an uneven, tinny buzz, vibrating through the cold plaster walls.
Outside the small, frosted transom window above the clawfoot tub, the Saturday morning sky over Lake Mistassini was the color of a bruised iron kettle.
Eight o'clock. Week twelve of the master calendar.
Exactly three weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid.
Thirteen weeks until the draft in Nashville.
Tonight, Carver played Brett Calhoun and Northbrook College for the ECAC Championship title.
I sat on the freezing black-and-white hexagonal floor tiles, my back pressed against the porcelain curve of the tub, my knees hauled tight against my chest. My bare toes were curled, numb against the ceramic chill.
Tessa had left thirty minutes ago to proctor an undergraduate sports law seminar, leaving the apartment locked in absolute, hollow silence.
The only sound was the slow, rhythmic drip of the sink faucet hitting the chrome drain.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
On the edge of the porcelain basin above my head, resting face-down on a double layer of paper towels, lay three plastic sticks. Two digital cartridges, one traditional lateral-flow dye strip, purchased two days ago in Plattsburgh with cash.
Beside my ankle, the display of my smartphone glowed in the dim room, the digital timer counting down the final seconds of a three-minute window:
00:14... 00:13... 00:12...
My pulse was hammering behind my eardrums with a deafening, erratic violence that made my vision blur. The taste of copper and cold water lingered on the back of my tongue, my throat dry as desert sand.
For four years, my life had been an equation of absolute control.
I had calculated force-plate vectors, balanced sixteen-hour academic loads, logged ninety-four clinical hours in The Vault, and managed my student debt down to the dollar.
I had constructed an iron fortress out of competence because competence was the only armor that kept the world from discarding me.
Now, every ambition, every fellowship application, and every plan for the future had narrowed down to three plastic indicators on a cold sink.
00:03... 00:02... 00:01.
The phone vibrated against the tile, a sharp, buzzing hum that cut through the silence like a gunshot.
* * *
My hands shook so violently my knuckles clicked against my knees as I reached for the edge of the sink.
I forced myself upright. My legs felt hollow, the muscles trembling beneath my fleece sweatpants as I leaned my weight over the porcelain basin.
The air in my chest turned to ash.
I reached out with trembling fingers and turned the first digital test over.
In the small liquid-crystal window, in stark, unblinking black letters, the screen read:
PREGNANT.
My breath hitched in a sharp, fractured gasp that tore at my vocal cords.
I reached for the second test—the traditional strip.
Across the white reaction membrane, two dark, indisputable, vivid pink lines burned through the plastic casing.
The test line was darker than the control, swollen with human Chorionic Gonadotropin that exceeded twenty-five milli-international units per milliliter.
The third digital display blinked, confirming the timeline:
3+ WEEKS.
Gestational age: six weeks, zero days.
The bathroom tilted fifteen degrees on its axis.
A wave of cold, greasy shock surged from my stomach straight into my throat.
The edges of the mirror blurred into dark, static-laced tunnels as my knees gave way, dropping my weight hard against the porcelain rim.
My fingernails clawed at the ceramic to keep from hitting the floor, my chest heaving in rapid, shallow gasps that brought zero oxygen into my lungs.
My heart exploded into a wild, frantic stampede, pounding at a hundred and thirty beats a minute against my ribs. A sheet of ice-cold sweat broke out across my hairline and the back of my neck, my throat constricting until I could only manage thin, broken hitches of breath.
Pregnant.
I was twenty-one years old. I had sixteen thousand dollars in deferred loans, no guaranteed income, and an athletic director actively hunting for an excuse to strip my degree.
And I was carrying the child of Carver’s starting center.
Slowly, dragging through the paralyzing fog of adrenaline, my right hand left the edge of the sink.
My fingers spread wide, moving down my torso, pressing flat against the cotton of my sweater over the lower curve of my abdomen.
The moment my palm settled over the flat skin, the terror shattered.
It didn't vanish, but it fractured under the sudden, staggering weight of a profound, primal warmth that flooded every vessel in my body.
Beneath my palm, microscopic and invisible, a new life was knit into my marrow. It wasn't an academic abstraction. It wasn't a compliance violation.
It was his baby.
It was the child of the man who had knelt between my knees on a hardwood floor, who had kissed the tears from my cheeks at midnight, who had hung Julian Mercer's silver pin around my neck and sworn on his life that we would walk into the daylight together.
A hot tear spilled over my lashes, tracking down my jaw to splash onto the back of my hand.
My fingers curled against my stomach, holding the life inside me with a fierce, instinctual protectiveness that turned the fear in my veins to liquid iron.
I've got you, I thought, my forehead resting against the cool mirror, my breath fogging the glass. I've got you both.
* * *
I turned on the cold tap, cupping freezing water in my hands, splashing it over my face until the fever burning in my skin receded.
I stood straight, forced my shoulders back, and took three deep, grounding breaths into the bottom of my lungs.
I picked up my phone, opened my private health portal, and booked a confidential clinical evaluation under my personal student health insurance: Dr. Elena Rostova, Attending OB/GYN, Lake Mistassini Health. Friday, April tenth. Two weeks out.
Then I took the traditional pink-dye test strip, wrapped it carefully in a clean white linen handkerchief, and slid it into the zippered breast pocket of my heavy green winter coat. The plastic sat flat against my left ribs, resting directly over my heart.
The image of Tate Halloway in the library yesterday flashed through my mind—his oily smirk, the manila folder containing my stolen research notes, his poisonous demand that I break Chosen's heart to force him into an agency contract.
You break him, Halloway had said. Or watch his world burn.
A cold, lethal defiance ignited in my chest.
I wasn't breaking anything.
Halloway thought I was a frightened undergraduate who could be bullied into running away like my father had. He didn't know who I was. And he sure as hell didn't know the man I loved.
Chosen was across campus at Sloan Arena right now, locked in pre-game meetings for the biggest game of his collegiate career. Tonight, he was supposed to skate forty minutes against Northbrook, lift the championship banner, and face the world.
I wasn't waiting for the morning. I wasn't letting him step onto that ice with a black-market extortion plot hanging over his head, and I wasn't keeping our child a secret for another twelve hours.
We were a team. We were an unbroken front.
I would go to the arena now, catch him in the private quiet of The Vault before pre-game warmups began, put the test in his hands, and tell him the truth. We would face Sterling, we would dismantle Halloway, and we would fight for our future together.
I zipped my heavy coat over my chest, pulling the wool tight across my stomach.
I grabbed my keys, threw my satchel over my shoulder, and stepped out into the freezing Adirondack squall, marching straight toward Sloan Arena with iron in my blood.