Chapter 22
Killian POV
The fluorescent bulbs in the third-floor conference room hummed with a sterile, low-frequency buzz that grated against the back of my skull.
On the polished oak table sat a thick black binder stamped with the logo of the Western Conference Scouting Bureau. Beside it, Coach Donald Briggs leaned back in a leather swivel chair, a lukewarm paper cup of black coffee wedged between his hands, watching me with narrow, calculating eyes.
Across from us, Derrick Palmer tapped a gold pen against a typed summary sheet.
"Calgary called again at noon," Palmer said, sliding the printout across the wood toward my knuckles.
"They have the fourth overall pick in June.
Their director of player personnel wants an exclusive dinner during the Frozen Four showcase in Minneapolis.
Anaheim is holding at seven, and they're willing to guarantee an immediate roster slot in their rookie camp. "
I didn't pick up the paper.
My knuckles, bruised and swollen from ninety minutes of full-contact cycle drills on the ice this morning, rested flat on the cool wood.
Six weeks ago, I would have signed with an expansion club in Alaska if they guaranteed the maximum entry-level bonus.
I had spent three years operating on a single, ruthless metric: draft capital, signing cash, and enough money to clear Mateo’s hundred and forty thousand dollars of debt at the Great Lakes Spinal Institute before the collection agency sent a notice to my father’s mailbox.
Where I lived hadn't mattered. What city I bled in hadn't mattered.
Now, looking at the word Calgary printed in bold black ink, a cold, immovable refusal locked into my jaw.
Two thousand miles away. Across an international border. Three time zones removed from Lake Superior, and three time zones removed from the girl currently sitting in the basement lab reading motion-capture code.
"Tell Calgary to spend their pick on a defenseman," I said.
My voice was flat, level, and stripped of inflection.
Briggs paused, his paper cup freezing halfway to his mouth. He set it down with a dull plastic crinkle, his bushy gray eyebrows pulling together into a hard, incredulous knot.
"What did you just say?" Briggs rasped.
"You heard me, Coach." I leaned back, the oak chair groaning under my weight as my shoulders squared against the leather. "I'm not signing a tender with a Pacific team. And I'm not moving to Western Canada."
Palmer looked like he had swallowed a live wasp.
His gold pen clicked frantically against the table.
"Killian, you don't dictate geographical preference to NHL general managers.
You're an amateur athlete with sixty penalty minutes and an off-ice behavioral review.
If Calgary wants you at four, you put on the jersey and thank them for the contract. "
"I don't thank anyone for anything," I growled, my voice dropping an octave, low enough to make Palmer’s pen stop clicking.
"Under Article Nine of the CBA, I'm twenty-two.
If I don't sign with the team that drafts me, I can play out my senior eligibility and become an unrestricted free agent by August. I have leverage, Palmer. Don't act like I don't."
Briggs leaned forward, his forearms planting heavy on the desk. "What the hell is this, eighty-eight? You've spent two years tearing through opposing forwards to prove you belong in the top five. Now you're scratching half the league off your board? What changed?"
Everything.
The image of Nadia asleep against my ribs on Sunday morning flashed behind my eyes—her dark curls spilled over my chest, her breath warm against my neck, her small hands relaxed against my skin.
Nadia had a fellowship here. She had a shipyard father depending on her degree. In four months, she would be presenting her senior capstone to regional biomechanics clinics across Michigan and Minnesota.
I was not leaving her behind. And I was sure as hell not dragging her away from her life.
"Detroit is picking at six," I said, meeting Briggs's stare with unblinking certainty. "Chicago is picking at eight. Minnesota is sitting at nine. Tell the scouts from the Central Division that I'm ready to talk. The rest can scratch my name off their boards."
Briggs stared at me for five long seconds, searching my face for hesitation. He found none.
"You're playing with fire, Castaneda," the coach muttered, shaking his head.
"I know how to handle the heat," I said, pushing my chair back and rising to my feet. "Good night, gentlemen."
I turned my back on the scouting reports, shoved my hands into the pockets of my dark team jacket, and walked out into the freezing November dusk.
* * *
The saltbox house on the granite bluffs was dark against the purple evening sky, but through the kitchen window, a soft yellow light glowed like an ember against the snow.
My pulse, heavy and jagged from the meeting with Palmer, began to slow the second my tires bit into the gravel driveway.
I cut the engine, stepped out into the crisp, sub-zero air, and took the porch stairs two at a time. I didn't reach for my keys. I tested the brass doorknob; the latch yielded with a soft, smooth click, the heavy cedar door swinging inward into the warmth of the entryway.
The scent hit my lungs before I even cleared the threshold.
Seasoned birch woodsmoke. The clean, sharp tang of radiator heat. And cutting through it all, unmistakable and intimate, the subtle scent of her peppermint-chamomile tea and plain soap.
A deep, quiet breath expanded my ribs, uncoiling the last knot of tension behind my temples.
Nadia was sitting at the high breakfast bar.
She wore my heavy gray wool crewneck sweater—the old one from my sophomore year with the ribbed collar stretched wide enough to expose the pale curve of her right collarbone.
The sleeves were rolled three times over her wrists, leaving only her fingertips free to turn the pages of a massive biomechanics textbook propped against a stack of spiral notebooks.
A ceramic mug of tea was steaming beside her elbow, and her dark chestnut curls were pinned back with a single blue pencil shoved through the knot.
She didn't hear me take off my boots.
I padded across the pine floorboards in my socks, dropping my keys into the ceramic bowl by the fridge with a muffled clink.
Nadia looked up.
The clinical concentration on her face vanished, her honey-brown eyes softening instantly as they found mine. A slow, warm flush rose from beneath the gray wool of my sweater, tinting her cheeks with pink.
"You're late," she whispered, her voice husky from hours of reading in silence. "Hayes texted an hour ago. He said Briggs kept you after practice."
"Palmer was running his mouth about draft projections," I said, walking behind her stool.
I didn't keep my distance. I stepped right into her perimeter, resting my hands on the edges of the wooden bar on either side of her hips, crowding her until the heat from my chest warmed her shoulders.
I bent my head, pressing my mouth to the soft, exposed hollow below her ear, dragging in a long, greedy breath of her skin.
Nadia sighed—a soft, trembling exhalation that relaxed every muscle in her spine. She tilted her head into the crook of my neck, her hand reaching up to rest against my forearm where the dark hair met my wrist.
"Bad meeting?" she murmured.
"Irrelevant meeting," I rasped against her hair.
I pulled out the high wooden stool beside hers, spun it around, and sat down. She was wearing only thick wool socks on her feet, her toes tucked under the rung of her chair, slightly pale from the draft near the floorboards.
I reached out, took her left foot in my large, scarred hands, and lifted it onto my bare knee.
"Killian," she whispered, half-laughing, a startled look crossing her face. "I'm trying to calculate thoracic load variables."
"Calculate them," I rumbled, wrapping both calloused palms around her cold arch.
My hands were broad, hot as river stones, working firm, rhythmic circles into the ball of her foot, chasing the cold from her skin with slow, unhurried pressure.
Nadia’s eyelashes fluttered, her head dropping back against her shoulder with an involuntary, breathy moan that settled straight into my groin. Her fingers went slack on her highlighter, the neon pen rolling across the notes.
"You're distracting me," she breathed.
"Good girl," I murmured, shifting my thumbs to her heel, applying steady, grounding pressure to the tendon. "Keep your eyes on the textbook. Talk to me."
She swallowed hard, trying to summon her academic composure while my hands worked their way up to her ankle, warming the chilled bones.
"Dr. Morris wants my capstone defense scheduled for the second week of January.
She said if the preliminary data from the sixty hours holds up, the department will submit it for the Midwest Biomechanics Conference in Chicago. "
My thumbs paused against the side of her foot.
Chicago.
A dark, slow wave of satisfaction washed over my sternum. Chicago was ninety miles from South Bend. Four hours from Detroit. Dead center in the territory I had just carved out of Palmer's scouting sheet.
"You'll crush it," I said, my voice steady, certain as gravity.
She looked at me through the shadows of the kitchen, her dark eyes searching mine with a soft, wondering gaze. "You haven't even read the abstract, Castaneda."
"I don't need to read it," I rasped, my thumb tracing the delicate bone of her ankle. "I've watched your mind work for a month, Gregory. You're smarter than every tenured professor in that building. There isn't a board in this country that could tear down your research."
A tiny, beautiful tremor rippled through her lower lip. She didn't speak. She reached out with her free hand, her small, smooth fingers closing over my scarred knuckles, holding on like I was the only thing keeping the world from spinning off its axis.
* * *
By nine-thirty, the fire in the woodstove had burned down to a thick bed of scarlet embers, casting long, crimson shadows across the pine floor.
Nadia was still sitting beside me, but her notes had gone unread for forty minutes.
Her head had slipped down from the high back of the stool, resting heavily against my right bicep.
The textbook was open beneath her limp forearm, her rhythmic, slow exhalations blowing warm through the cotton of my shirt against the meat of my arm.
She had fallen asleep mid-sentence, exhausted by the relentless grind of her senior semester.
I sat motionless for ten minutes, letting the silence settle around us, my hand resting flat over her ankle to keep the warmth in her skin.
Slowly, carefully, I reached across the counter and capped her highlighter. I closed the heavy textbook with one hand, keeping the movement dead silent.
Then I slid my right arm behind her shoulders and my left beneath her thighs.
I rose from the stool in one fluid, effortless lift, scooping her into my chest.
Nadia stirred faintly, letting out a soft, sleepy murmur, her cheek nuzzling into the curve of my collarbone, her small hands curling into the fabric of my dark shirt by pure instinct.
She weighed almost nothing against my two hundred and twenty-eight pounds, light and fragile as pine boughs under fresh snow.
I carried her down the dark hallway, stepping quietly past Hayes's empty bedroom door, and entered the master suite.
The room was cool, the faint scent of cedar and lake air hanging near the frosted glass.
I laid her down in the center of my bed.
She curled onto her side the second her head hit the dark navy pillow, drawing her knees toward her chest with a contented, sleepy sigh. I reached down, took the heavy down duvet, and pulled it up over her shoulders, tucking the thick flannel securely beneath her chin.
Her face was soft in the faint, silvery light of the streetlamp filtering through the hemlocks outside. The sharp, defensive lines she wore on campus had vanished, leaving only the girl who had looked up at me in the blizzard and told me I didn't have to bleed alone.
I stood beside the mattress in the quiet dark, my fists resting loose at my sides, my chest rising and falling in deep, heavy cadences.
My pulse was steady as iron.
Palmer could make his phone calls. Martin Cole could dig through old police reports in Duluth. The scouts could write whatever numbers they wanted next to my name.
It didn't matter.
I looked at the rise and fall of her chest beneath the duvet, at the dark curls spilled across my pillow, and let the silent, unyielding vow sink into the deepest bedrock of my soul.
I would tear down my career. I would shred my draft stock to ribbons. I would burn every bridge between here and Montreal before I ever let a single shadow touch this room.
She was my home now.
And anyone who tried to take her from me would have to kill me first.