Chapter 33
Marie POV
My boots hit the rubber-runner flooring of the arena underpass at a dead sprint, the heavy wool of my dark green coat flapping against my shins.
Above my head, eight thousand five hundred pairs of boots stomped against the aluminum grandstands, sending a rhythmic, concussive vibration through the concrete foundations of Sloan Arena.
The deafening blare of the pep band brass and the distant roar of the student section chanting Carver’s fight song shook the air in my lungs.
Thirty minutes until puck drop.
My chest burned, my breath sawing through my parted teeth in ragged, icy hitches. Inside the left breast pocket of my coat, resting flat against my ribs directly over my hammering heart, the wrapped plastic pregnancy test sat like a burning coal.
Six weeks, zero days.
My left hand stayed jammed inside my pocket, my fingers clutching the fabric around the test casing, an instinctual, protective shield holding the secret against my body.
I rounded the concrete corner by the ice maintenance bay, my rubber soles sliding on the wet slush tracked in from the service ramp. The smell of ammonia, vulcanized rubber, and cold iron was suffocating, setting off a sharp, warning tremor of nausea in the back of my throat, but I forced it down.
I had to reach him.
Tate Halloway’s poisonous threats in the library yesterday, the stolen September dossier, the compliance blackmail—none of it mattered if I could reach Chosen before he skated through that gate.
We were a team. We were an unbroken front.
I would give him the truth, put the test in his hands, and stand beside him against Sterling and the entire athletic board.
"Chosen!"
The name tore from my throat as I reached the yellow wash of the halogen lights outside the coaches' corridor.
He was standing five feet ahead of me, his back to the wall, fully strapped into his dark green #14 game armor.
He rose to his full height as my boots skidded to a halt on the matting.
The words of relief died on my tongue.
The air in my windpipe locked solid.
Chosen turned slowly to face me, his skate guards grinding into the rubber floor with a sharp, heavy scrape.
The man who had gathered me into his lap twenty-four hours ago, who had whispered sacred vows into my hair by the dying embers of the hearth—that man did not exist.
He stood six feet four inches of stone and iron, his broad shoulders squared beneath his pads, his jaw locked so hard the muscle bulged like a knot of rope beneath his stubble.
His eyes were dead. They were hollow, pitch-black voids stripped of every trace of light, staring through me with an arctic, lethal hostility that struck my breastbone like a physical blow.
In his right hand, crushed into a mangled, shredded ball against his leather glove, were white sheets of paper marked with yellow highlighter.
* * *
My knees went weak, a cold, sickening numbness rushing down the length of my spine.
"Chosen," I whispered, taking half a step forward, my right hand extending instinctively toward the green wool of his sleeve. "Listen to me—"
"Don't touch me."
The command wasn't loud. It was a flat, ruined rasp that scraped across the concrete, venomous enough to make my hand freeze mid-air.
He recoiled from my reaching fingers as if my skin were soaked in poison, stepping back three inches, his shadow blotting out the corridor lights above us.
He raised his right arm and hurled the crushed ball of paper straight at my chest.
The wad struck the front of my heavy coat with a dull thud, bouncing off my ribs and dropping between our boots, the crumpled pages springing open across the black rubber runner.
I looked down.
My own handwriting stared back at me through the halogen glare.
PROJECT 14: KINETIC LOAD cold sweat broke out along my hairline as the suffocating realization slammed into my chest.
Halloway had delivered the dossier.
"Chosen, no," I choked out, my voice cracking on the syllable as my hands rose to press flat against my collarbone. "That was September. That was four months ago, before the board review, before I ever—"
"Save the methodology, Freeman," he snarled, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying register that vibrated with raw, bleeding agony.
He stepped forward, towering over me, his face inches from mine. Up close, I could see the fine tremor running through his jaw, could see the red static of broken veins in the whites of his dark eyes.
"Did you get the data you needed?" he whispered, every word carved from jagged ice. "Did Subject Fourteen give you enough physiological variables to secure your little fellowship in Colorado Springs?"
"Stop it," I begged, the room spinning wildly as bile rose in my throat. I reached for his arm again, desperate to anchor him, desperate to make him see. "Halloway stole that from my desk! He’s blackmailing both of us! I never submitted that grant draft—"
"You accessed my private orthopedic files forty-eight hours before Thorne ever signed that mandate," he rasped, cutting through my words with ruthless, brutal force.
He gestured down at the crushed papers with a gloved fist, his breath washing over my face in harsh, ragged drags that smelled of copper and cold iron.
"You wrote down how to bypass my defenses, Marie. You wrote down Julian's name. You calculated that if you put your hands on my knee and looked at me with those soft, lying eyes, I’d be stupid enough to let you stay in that basement."
A sharp, breathless sob tore from my throat. "I love you, Chosen! That was an early academic proposal—"
"You don't love a damn thing except your resume," he growled, a harsh, dry sound scraping past his lips that sounded like breaking bone. "You made a fool out of me. I had you in my bed. I took that pin off my gear and put it around your neck while you were taking notes on my trauma."
* * *
The arena warning buzzer detonated down the hallway—a harsh, mechanical horn that blared three times, signaling that the teams were taking the ice.
From the double doors at the end of the corridor, Knox Davies and Coach Garrison Vance appeared, their skate blades clicking on the rubber as they shouted down the hall.
"Black! Let's go, Captain! Ice is ready!"
Chosen didn't look at his coach. He didn't blink.
He stepped directly into my perimeter, his massive, padded frame closing the remaining inches until the hard plastic of his chest protector pressed against the front of my coat.
He leaned down, bringing his mouth so close to the shell of my ear that his split lower lip grazed the lobe.
The heat coming off his body was an open furnace, but his words were arctic venom that drove straight through my marrow.
"We're done, Freeman," he whispered, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that shattered the remaining pieces of my world. "You were the biggest mistake of my life. When this game ends, be out of my house. Be out of The Vault. And don't you ever let me see your face again."
He pulled back.
He didn't give me a chance to answer. He didn't look at the tears spilling over my lashes, and he didn't look at the way my knees were buckling beneath my coat.
He shouldered past me with brutal, indifferent momentum, his heavy pads brushing hard against my shoulder as he strode toward the ice ramp, his skate guards clattering against the concrete.
"Chosen!" I screamed, the sound small, broken, and swallowed by the sudden, deafening roar of eight thousand five hundred fans exploding into cheers as the captain stepped through the gate onto the ice.
The heavy double doors swung shut behind him.
The corridor fell silent, save for the buzzing halogen fixtures and the dull thud of vulcanized rubber hitting the boards in the distance.
My back hit the concrete block wall, the rough stone biting through the wool of my coat as my legs gave out completely. I slid down the wall, hitting the rubber matting on my knees, my forehead pressed against the cold cinder blocks as a violent, dry heave tore through my chest.
My right hand slipped inside the heavy wool of my coat.
My trembling fingers slid over the plastic casing of the pregnancy test resting over my heart, then moved down, pressing flat, hard, and shaking against the lower curve of my abdomen.
Beneath my palm, our baby was alive.
And the father had just walked out into the light, leaving us alone in the dark.