Chapter 2
Killian POV
The metallic bite of cold steel and the bitter reek of camphor clung to the back of my throat.
Down in the varsity training room beneath The Pit, iron plates slammed against the rubber lifting platforms with rhythmic, bone-jarring crashes.
My knuckles throbbed inside the wet wraps, raw from the fifty pucks I’d ripped against the end-boards after practice officially ended.
The air was frigid—always frigid in this concrete crypt—yet steam rolled off the bare skin between my shoulder blades, cooling into an icy film over my ribs.
I grabbed the shark-nosed shears off the trainer’s cart and jammed the dull blade beneath the zinc oxide tape around my left wrist. One vicious jerk sliced the adhesive free. I ripped it away, taking a layer of forearm hair and dead skin with it.
The pain was clean. Simple. It drowned out the noise in my head.
On the wooden bench five feet away, Hayes Bennett dropped a pair of ninety-pound dumbbells with a double thud that shook the floorboards. He dragged a gray towel across his flushed face, his chest heaving under a sweat-stained Barrow Hockey tank.
"You're going to saw your own hand off one of these days, Castaneda," Hayes wheezed, tossing the towel aside. "Briggs looked like he wanted to swallow his own whistle during third-period line rushes. What the hell was that cross-checking drill? You almost put Miller through the Zamboni gate."
"Miller needs to learn how to brace on the cycle," I said, my voice scraping low and dry.
I reached for my right wrist, repeating the cut. My left shoulder ached with a familiar, deep-seated thrum—the blunt reminder of three years spent playing like an executioner. But beneath the athletic strain, an entirely different irritation was working under my skin.
My thumb still carried the phantom imprint of a frantic, fluttering pulse.
Nadia Gregory.
Ten minutes ago in the service hallway, my fingers had clamped around her arm to keep her from hitting the deck.
I hadn't planned on touching her. But when she’d slammed into my chest, small and rigid as a steel rod, the shock of contact had sent a jolt straight into my nervous system.
She smelled like winter air, unscented soap, and hot paper.
And then she’d looked up at me with those dark honey eyes, spitting fire about my pelvic mechanics and my hip torque like she held the deed to my career.
Most people in this town took two steps back when eighty-eight came down the hall. They looked at the silver line slicing through my left eyebrow and remembered the blood on the glass from the regional semi-final.
Gregory hadn't backed up an inch. She’d tilted her chin, exposed the white line of her throat, and dared me to hit her with a chart.
My jaw locked so tight my back molars protested. I tossed the balled-up tape into the steel wastebin.
Across the room, my locker stood half-open. The screen of my phone lit up against the dark metal shelf, buzzing once, twice. A short vibration that made the back of my neck prickle with cold dread.
I stepped over the bench and picked it up.
Great Lakes Spinal Institute — Automated Billing Notice.
Account: Castaneda, Mateo.
Monthly installment due October 14: $4,200.00.
Current outstanding balance: $140,000.00.
My stomach contracted into a hard, sour knot.
Seven days. I had seven days to wire the next installment before they delayed Mateo’s robotic gait-training sessions for the winter block.
Mateo was nineteen. He spent twelve hours a day fighting to regain motor function in his lower limbs because three years ago, I’d told him to keep his head up and take an open-ice hit from a twenty-four-year-old minor-league goon.
I’d told him that pain was just weakness leaving the body.
Then I’d watched his neck whip against the dasher board, the sound of fracturing bone echoing through an empty Minnesota rink like dry pine snapping in a blizzard.
Every cent I possessed went to Duluth. Every workout, every hit, every blocked shot had one single purpose: an NHL Entry-Level Contract.
Two years at the nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand maximum cap hit, with performance bonuses.
If I made the league, Mateo walked. If I didn't, my brother spent the rest of his life staring at a linoleum ceiling while my father worked graveyard shifts in an iron mine.
"Castaneda!"
The locker room door crashed open against the concrete wall.
Coach Donald Briggs stood in the opening, his windbreaker zipped to the chin, his face mottled red with fury.
"Drop the tape," Briggs barked, his voice carrying the authority of thirty years behind the bench. "Palmer's office. Right now."
Hayes whistled low under his breath, raising his eyebrows. "Sounds like someone's getting a promotion."
I ignored him, shoved the phone deep into the pocket of my Barrow athletic shorts, pulled a clean gray team hoodie over my head, and stepped out into the hall.
* * *
The second-floor administrative suite was stifling.
The heat from the cast-iron radiators pressed against my face as I pushed through the frosted glass door marked Director of Athletics. The sudden warmth made the sweat on the back of my neck turn clammy.
Athletic Director Derrick Palmer sat behind his mahogany desk, a black legal folio open in front of him. Coach Briggs took up position by the heavy oak credenza, his arms folded tight across his broad chest, his mouth drawn into a thin, bloodless slit.
And standing near the radiator, clutching two black vinyl binders to her ribs like a bulletproof vest, was Nadia Gregory.
Her dark curls were still unruly from the gale outside, pinned back haphazardly with two silver clips. The flush from our hallway collision hadn't faded from her cheekbones. The moment the latch clicked behind me, her eyes snapped to mine.
Her pupils flared. The pulse in the hollow of her throat—right above the notch of her wool coat—jumped into immediate, visible overdrive.
She remembered the grip on her bicep just as clearly as I did.
I didn't break her gaze. I closed the door, walked to the center of the Persian rug, and stopped. I deliberately let my frame take up the center of the room, crowding the space until the air felt scarce.
"Coach," I said, my voice flat, ignoring Palmer entirely. "You wanted me."
"Sit down, Killian," Briggs rasped.
"I'll stand."
Palmer leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk blotter.
His gold signet ring clicked against the polished wood.
"We have an issue with your behavioral file, Castaneda.
The NCAA regional review board completed their preliminary assessment of the tunnel incident following the Northland State game. "
My left shoulder rolled back, a defensive tick I had to force myself to kill. "Lindqvist threw a stick at Hayes's head in the dark. I handled it."
"You put your bare hands around the throat of an opposing player off the ice," Palmer snapped, his tone sharp. "That's not handling it. That's a mandatory five-game athletic suspension under Bylaw 16. The notice came down this morning."
A cold weight dropped into the pit of my gut. Five games.
The Boston Bruins’ head of amateur scouting was sitting in section 102 next Friday.
Montreal’s assistant general manager was arriving the week after.
If I was scratched for five games, my draft stock would slide out of the top ten.
A second-round projection didn't come with the signing bonus Mateo needed to stay in the Duluth clinic.
"You're appealing it," I said, looking at Briggs. My voice was dangerously quiet.
"There is no appeal," Briggs said bluntly. "Not for a repeat offender with sixty-four penalty minutes in six games. But Palmer found a bypass. An institutional diversion protocol."
Palmer tapped a finger against a fresh sheaf of departmental paperwork.
"A sixty-hour Kinematic Motion Recalibration and Behavioral Redistribution program.
Supervised sports science tracking. We demonstrate to the NCAA compliance committee that the university is proactively correcting your impulsive physical mechanics and torque deficits before you re-enter conference play. "
I stared at him, my jaw grinding. "You want me to do physical therapy? My body isn't broken."
"Your body is a liability," a crisp, clinical voice cut through the room.
I turned my head.
Nadia took a half-step forward from the radiator. Her expression was completely devoid of warmth, her jaw set with an obstinate edge that made a pulse of dark heat thud behind my temples.
"You generate three hundred pounds of unchecked kinetic force on the ice, Castaneda," she said, her voice cool and steady, though her fingers were digging into the spine of her binder with white-knuckled pressure.
"Your center of gravity drifts three inches forward when you initiate high-speed contact, which means you're hitting out of control.
It's why you draw roughing penalties. And it's why you're going to tear your labrum before the season ends. "
"Shut up, Gregory," I rumbled, stepping toward her.
She didn't retreat. She held her ground, her chin lifting until her eyes bore straight into mine.
"Don't tell me to shut up in my own department," she fired back, her tone clipped and lethal.
"I didn't ask for this assignment. But if the athletic department is paying my senior fellowship stipend, you will show up, you will attach the telemetry sensors, and you will follow the kinematic protocol.
Or you can sit in the bleachers for five games and watch your draft stock burn. "
A heavy silence descended on the room, broken only by the hiss of the radiator valve.