Chapter 23
Nadia POV
Down on the main sheet, the whistle of Coach Donald Briggs cut through the cavernous arena like a whip crack.
Ten seconds later, number eighty-eight entered the neutral zone at thirty miles an hour.
Killian lowered his left shoulder, opened his stride, and drove a sophomore defenseman into the acrylic glass with a bone-jarring crash that sent shockwaves vibrating up through the concrete bleachers beneath my boots.
The plexiglass groaned, bowing three inches under the impact, before Killian scooped the loose puck off the half-wall and buried a backhand into the top shelf with lethal, casual precision.
Around me, three rows down, forty men in heavy wool parkas leaned forward in unison.
NHL scouts.
They held black leather clipboards stamped with embossed team crests—Boston, Montreal, Calgary, Anaheim. Radar guns hummed in gloved hands, digital displays flashing puck velocities in bright red numbers, while ballpoint pens scribbled furiously in the margins of prospect dossiers.
"The edge work is fully corrected," a gravelly voice muttered three seats to my left.
A scout wearing a black Calgary Flames jacket tapped his pen against a stopwatch.
"Whatever the university did with that biomechanics protocol worked.
The hip torque is clean. Calgary takes him at four if he's on the board.
Three-year entry-level tender, maximum schedule A performance bonuses. Kid moves straight to Alberta in July."
"Anaheim will jump them if they get the chance," another scout replied, not looking up from his notes. "They need size on the wing. They'll guarantee him an immediate rookie roster spot."
A sudden, icy wave of nausea churned in the pit of my stomach.
The sensation hit me so fast the arena seemed to tilt on its axis.
My throat tightened, turning slick and bitter with bile, my lungs seizing on a thin, shallow gasp of freezing air.
I reached down, my trembling fingers closing around the stainless-steel cap of my water bottle, forcing two swallows of ice-cold water down my parched esophagus.
The cold liquid helped settle the sudden heave in my gut, but the dizziness lingered behind my temples.
Stress, I told myself, digging my fingernails into the denim of my thighs through my wool coat. Two cups of coffee on an empty stomach and four hours of capstone revisions.
I forced my eyes back down to the ice.
Killian was skating back to the center circle, his black practice jersey clinging to the broad shelf of his shoulders, steam rolling off his damp dark hair in thick white curls.
He looked like an apex predator among boys.
Powerful. Untouchable. Destined for private charter jets, eighty-thousand-seat arenas, and seven-figure wire transfers.
And I was sitting in the bleachers with an eight-thousand-dollar tuition grant, wearing a secondhand scarf, praying my father’s shipyard pension didn't default before January.
One hundred and twenty days until the draft.
Four months until the collegiate season ended, the contract was signed, and Killian Castaneda was packed onto an airplane heading three thousand miles away.
A sharp, suffocating ache clamped around my breastbone. The secret house on the bluffs, the brass key burning in my pocket, the quiet mornings tangled in his navy sheets—it wasn't a future.
It was borrowed time.
* * *
The black pickup rolled along the granite crest of the ridge in absolute, suffocating silence.
Outside the passenger window, the Michigan dusk was an oppressive, bruised violet, casting long blue shadows across the snowdrifts lining the road.
Killian drove with one hand on the worn leather of the steering wheel, his right forearm resting on the center console.
His knuckles were raw and swollen from the scrimmage, his dark hair still damp at the nape from his shower, smelling of clean cedar and cold iron.
Slowly, without taking his eyes off the road, his large hand shifted across the console.
His broad, calloused palm settled heavily over my right thigh, his thumb coming to rest against the denim seam just above my knee.
His touch was warm, burning straight through the denim into my skin.
My body answered with an involuntary, sharp flinch. My leg muscles stiffened, my posture pressing back into the passenger door, my gaze remaining glued to the swirling snow along the shoulder.
The truck slowed.
Killian’s fingers tightened on my thigh, not hurting me, but gripping with an immediate, watchful tension that felt like steel wire snapping taut.
He swung the wheel hard to the right, turning into the saltbox driveway with enough momentum to send gravel clattering against the undercarriage. He slammed the transmission into park, killed the ignition, and unbuckled his seatbelt with a violent click.
The engine tick-ticked in the sudden silence.
"What is your problem, Gregory?" he rasped.
The voice was rough, scraping low across the dashboard, stripped bare of the domestic softness we had shared twenty-four hours ago.
I didn't turn around. I stared at the dark hemlocks outside the glass, my fingers knotting into the wool lapels of my coat until my knuckles ached. "Nothing."
"Look at me."
The command was heavy, vibrating in the narrow compartment.
I didn't move. A tremor ran through my chin, a hot, bitter sting burning behind my eyelids that I fought with everything in me to suppress.
In half a second, Killian crossed the distance.
His large hand shot out, broad fingers clamping gently but firmly around my jawline. His calloused thumb pressed into the soft skin beneath my cheekbone, tilting my head with deliberate, unyielding force until my face was an inch from his.
His dark eyes were wild, black ink swallowing the amber, his brow pulled into a hard, furious line. The silver scar through his left eyebrow twitched with suppressed violence.
"You've been pulling away since the second period," he growled, his breath washing hot and mint-sharp over my mouth. "You didn't look at me in the tunnel. You won't let me touch your knee. What happened up in those bleachers?"
"The scouts happened, Killian!"
The words tore out of my throat, sharp and ragged, shattering the fragile glass of my composure.
I shoved my hands against his chest, pushing with all the strength in my arms. He didn't budge an inch—his two hundred and twenty-eight pounds stayed rooted, absorbing the blow like granite, his fingers holding my jaw securely in place.
"Calgary was there," I choked out, tears of pure, agonizing frustration finally spilling over my lower lashes, burning hot against his thumb.
"Anaheim was there. I sat three seats away from their directors of personnel while they talked about your nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar entry-level contract.
They talked about moving you to Alberta in July. "
Killian’s jaw locked, but his eyes didn't waver.
"And?" he rasped.
"And four months from now, you're gone!" My voice cracked, a broken sob catching in the base of my throat.
"You get drafted to the other side of the continent, and I'm still here in the sub-basement running motion-capture for track athletes!
You have an NHL franchise waiting to hand you the world, and this...
this thing between us has an expiration date stamped on the forehead! "
My fingers curled into the heavy cotton of his dark sweatshirt, trembling violently.
"I can't do it, Killian," I whispered, the confession tasting of ruin. "I can't sit in your kitchen and play house, pretending that you're mine, when I know that in four months I'm just going to be an interim chapter you leave behind in Michigan."
* * *
A low, guttural roar tore from the center of his chest.
Before I could draw breath, Killian’s hands shifted. He didn't let go of me—he hauled me out of the passenger seat, his arm banding around my waist, his other hand shoving the truck door open.
He pulled me through the snow in two brutal strides, kicked his front door open, and slammed it shut behind us with a thunderous bang that rattled the cedar beams.
He didn't take off his coat. He didn't drop his keys.
He shoved me gently but firmly back against the heavy oak front door, his massive frame trapping me against the wood, blotting out the light from the hallway.
Both of his large, calloused hands slammed flat against the door on either side of my head, caging me inside the physical heat pouring off his body.
His chest was heaving, rising and falling in violent, ragged surges that brushed against the front of my coat.
"Stop writing endings we didn't agree on, Nadia," he snarled.
The gravel in his voice shook with a terrifying, unvarnished ferocity that made the breath freeze in my windpipe.
"It's the draft, Killian—"
"I don't give a damn about the draft!" he roared, leaning down until his forehead struck mine with a dull, heavy thud.
His hands left the wood, coming up to frame my face. His fingers tangled into the dark curls at my temples, his palms burning against my cold skin, holding my head still with a desperate, shaking urgency.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice dropping into a dark, broken rasp that scraped raw against my lips. "Look at me, Gregory. Good girl, breathe."
I dragged in a ragged, shuddering gasp, my honey-brown eyes locked onto his, drowning in the black fire consuming his face.
"You think I'm walking away from this?" he whispered, his thumbs wiping the wet tracks of tears from my cheekbones with rough, possessive friction.
"You think some corporate bastard in Calgary tells me where I live?
I sat in Palmer's office for forty minutes this morning and told them to strike every Pacific team off my board. "
My heart gave a violent, disbelieving thud against my ribs. "What?"
"I told them I'm staying in the Central Division," he rasped, his lips grazing the bridge of my nose, mapping down to the corner of my mouth. "Detroit. Chicago. Minnesota. Somewhere I can drive to you in four hours. Somewhere you can finish your fellowship without uprooting your life."
The room spun. My lungs refused to take in air. "Killian, you can't dictate—"
"I dictate whatever I want," he growled against my lips, his grip tightening in my hair, pulling my face up until my mouth was a millimeter from his.
"You are not an interim chapter, Nadia. You are not a sixty-hour diversion.
You are the only thing in this miserable world that makes my chest stop aching. "
His hands slid down to my waist, lifting me clean off the floorboards, pinning my back against the solid oak of the door as his hips pressed hard against mine.
"You have my key," he murmured, his voice breaking with raw, untamed devotion. "You have my bed. And you have every goddamn breath in my lungs. You don't get to run from that. You're mine."
Before I could speak, before the panic in my throat could form another defense, Killian crushed his mouth onto mine.
The kiss was savage, desperate, and starved, filled with a terrifying certainty that shattered my doubts into dust. His tongue swept into my mouth, claiming my breathless gasps, his body pressing me into the wood until there was not a single breath of cold air left between us.
My hands came up, clutching the corded muscle of his shoulders, my fingers digging into the cotton of his shirt as I surrendered to the heavy, unshakeable anchor of his arms.
He wasn't going anywhere.
And as the storm outside beat against the hemlocks, I buried my face in his neck, praying with every fiber of my being that the past wouldn't come to tear us apart.