Chapter 34
Dual POV
Ten seconds remained on the scoreboard clock.
The ice deck of Sloan Arena was a war zone of white frost, black rubber marks, and the deafening, vibrating roar of eight thousand five hundred people screaming for blood.
My right skate dug into the ice along the half-boards, my carbon-fiber hinge brace locking under the strain as I drove my shoulder straight through Brett Calhoun’s chest. The impact produced a dull, wet crunch that rattled through my pads.
Calhoun hit the dasher boards hard, his helmet striking the glass, the puck squirting loose into the neutral zone.
I didn't watch him fall.
I gathered the puck on my backhand, took two punishing strides toward the blue line, and snapped a blind, tape-to-tape feed through the skates of two Northbrook defensemen.
Knox Davies cut through the slot, caught the pass on his forehand, and roofed the puck over the goalie’s blocker with three seconds on the clock.
The red goal light ignited behind the glass.
A concussive, howling siren detonated through the arena rafters as the final horn shrieked.
Carver had won the ECAC Championship, 2–1.
Confetti rained down in a blinding storm of green and white paper, fluttering through the cold air. The player bench emptied over the boards, twenty players mobbing Knox against the glass, gloves and sticks flying into the air as the stadium floor shook beneath the stomping bleachers.
The championship trophy—three feet of polished sterling silver—was hauled onto the ice by the league commissioner.
Teammates grabbed my sweater, pounding my shoulder pads, screaming into my visor, dragging me toward the center circle. Garrison Vance wrapped an arm around my neck, shouting over the din, shoving the silver handles into my gloved hands.
The metal was freezing.
I looked down at the trophy. I looked up at the flashbulbs strobing across the glass, at the banners, at the cameras tracking my face for the national sports broadcast.
The victory tasted of copper, bile, and ash.
My split lower lip was bleeding, dark drops hitting the front of my sweater. The roar of the arena sounded like it was coming from the bottom of an empty well. I had won the title. I had secured my draft ranking. I had paid Julian Mercer’s debt.
And my chest felt hollowed out, gutted by a blast of buckshot that had torn my lungs to ribbons.
I pushed the silver trophy into Knox’s chest, turned my back on the celebration, and skated off the ice before the banner could be raised.
I hit the rubber matting of the players' tunnel, ripped my helmet off with a violent jerk of my hand, and let it smash against the concrete floor.
I planted both palms flat against the cinder blocks, dropping my head between my arms, gasping for air that refused to reach my lungs. The white noise in my ears was absolute, deafening, drowning out the music, the sirens, and the world.
I had won the war.
And I had slaughtered the only thing that had ever made me human.
* * *
The concrete corridor outside the lower equipment annex was freezing, smelling of stagnant sulfur water and machine grease.
Above my head, the vibrations of the post-game celebration were fading into a distant, hollow rumble.
I stood under the pale, buzzing halogen strips, my back pressed against the cold limestone wall.
My dark green wool coat was buttoned tight to my chin, my hands buried deep inside my pockets.
My left fingers stayed locked over the wrapped plastic casing of the pregnancy test resting against my ribs, holding the secret against my heart.
My right hand was pressed flat over the lower curve of my abdomen, an unyielding, protective shield.
A sharp, greasy wave of nausea rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down, forcing my posture straight, locking my knees against the violent tremors running through my thighs.
Skate guards clicked against the rubber runner down the hall.
Chosen rounded the corner.
He was still in his game gear, his dark green #14 sweater soaked with sweat and torn at the left shoulder.
His white captain’s 'C' was smeared with dried blood from his split lower lip, his dark hair wild and wet against his forehead.
His pads hung heavy off his frame, his gloves clutched in one hand, his face carved out of dead gray granite.
He stopped ten feet away.
His dark eyes found mine, and the air in the corridor died.
His jaw locked, the masseter muscle bulging against his stubble like iron cord. He didn't look like a champion. He looked like an executioner who had just finished burying his own soul.
"I told you to be gone by the final horn, Freeman," he rasped, his voice a low, ruined vibration that scraped across the concrete.
I didn't flinch. I didn't step back.
I tilted my chin up, meeting his bloodshot, dead-eyed stare with an icy, unyielding composure that cost every ounce of strength I had left.
"You called me an informant, Chosen," I said, my voice quiet, steady, and level as a blade. "You took an academic grant proposal written in September, before I ever stepped into The Vault, before I ever touched your skin, and you decided that everything we had in that house was a lie."
A cruel, broken sound scraped past his teeth—a humorless, jagged laugh that made my heart contract.
"You were an academic study, Marie," he growled, stepping forward, his massive, padded frame closing the distance until his shadow fell across my face.
Up close, his breath smelled of black coffee, copper, and raw adrenaline.
"You needed five hundred clinical hours to secure your fellowship in Colorado Springs.
You needed an unviable tear to prove your theories.
You picked the most broken bastard on this campus because you knew I was pathetic enough to let you touch me. "
The words struck my sternum like physical blows, but I kept my hand locked over my stomach, refusing to let the agony reach my eyes.
"I was going to tell you the truth tonight," I whispered, the words trembling slightly before I forced them back into iron stillness.
"I came down that tunnel before the game to tell you that Halloway stole that dossier.
I came to tell you that he was blackmailing us, and that we could fight him together. "
Chosen’s eyes narrowed, black and bottomless with a toxic, defensive fury.
"Halloway didn't write those notes, Marie," he snarled, his voice dropping into a vicious, ragged whisper that tore through the quiet.
"You wrote them. You documented my guilt.
You wrote down how to bypass my defenses.
You played me like a cello in that basement, and I was stupid enough to think you saw a man instead of a laboratory animal. "
I looked at him—really looked at him.
I saw the terror behind his rage. I saw the twenty-two-year-old boy who had broken his teammate's neck and decided he wasn't worthy of being loved.
He was so terrified of being vulnerable, so conditioned to being disposable, that the second a shadow appeared, he burned down the sanctuary with his own hands rather than risk being hurt.
"You really believe that," I breathed, the revelation settling over my ribs like cold stone. "After everything. After the fire. After the promises you made in that bed. You believe I used you."
Chosen didn't answer.
His chest heaved under his pads, his jaw clamped shut, his fists trembling against his thighs, his silence answering for him.
* * *
I didn't cry.
The tears burned like hot acid behind my eyelids, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break.
I reached inside the collar of my heavy coat with my right hand.
My fingers found the cold silver links resting against my skin. Slowly, deliberately, I unclasped the chain from around my neck—the antique chain carrying Julian Mercer’s scratched #14 varsity pin that Chosen had fastened over my heart twenty-four hours ago.
From my right coat pocket, I pulled out the heavy brass key to his lake carriage house.
I stepped forward.
Chosen went rigid, his breath catching in his throat as I entered his perimeter, our boots inches apart on the black rubber runner.
I took his left hand.
His fingers were thick, calloused, and ice-cold. I pried his clenched hand open, laid the silver chain across his palm, and placed the brass key on top of the links.
His fingers twitched, but he didn't close them. He stared down at the metal, his chest rising and falling in violent, shallow drags.
"You were right in October, Black," I whispered, my voice calm, clear, and steady as an executioner's blade. "You are just a violent machine who knows how to bleed."
He flinched, a sharp, microscopic hitch pulling at his jaw, his dark eyes snapping up to mine.
"You spent three years terrified that someone would break you," I said, looking straight into the black void of his gaze. "You built walls out of guilt and anger, thinking you were protecting yourself. But you're the only coward in this building, Chosen. Nobody broke this. You broke it yourself."
My hand moved down, pressing flat and protective over the heavy wool covering my lower abdomen.
He didn't notice the gesture. He didn't look down. He was drowning in his own manufactured ruin.
"Goodbye, Chosen," I said.
I turned on my heel.
I walked down the concrete corridor, my boots steady against the rubber matting, my spine straight as rebar, my head held high.
I reached the heavy steel fire door at the end of the hall, shoved the panic bar open, and stepped out into the Adirondack night.
The sub-zero blizzard hit me instantly, sixty-mile-an-hour winds howling across the parking lot, swirling a blinding wall of white powder around my coat. The steel door banged shut behind me with a concussive, final crash.
Behind the glass, in the yellow halogen glare of the empty tunnel, Chosen stood alone, staring down at the silver pin and the brass key burning in his palm.
And as the blizzard swallowed my footsteps, wiping away every trace of where I had been, the tears finally fell.