Chapter 32
Killian POV
The concrete footings beneath my skate guards vibrated with the rhythmic, thunderous stomping of six thousand boots in the bleachers overhead.
Six-fifteen on Saturday evening.
Through three feet of solid foundation, the arena bowl roared like an uncaged furnace.
The brass band was blaring the Barrow fight song, the drum line hammering out a heavy, martial cadence that echoed down the damp player underpass.
The air was frigid, thick with the sour stench of machine grease from the ice resurfacer, fresh carbon steel, and the menthol liniment seeping through my black game socks.
I stood in the narrow alcove beside the stick-prep bench, fully geared in my home black jersey.
Number eighty-eight pulled taut across the hard plastic caps of my shoulder pads.
The captain's C was stitched in crisp white twill over my left collarbone.
My wrists were wrapped tight in zinc oxide tape, my composite stick balanced in my gloved hand, my resting pulse sitting at a steady, rhythmic fifty beats a minute.
I was ready for war.
Sixty minutes against Northland State. Roman Lindqvist on the opposing faceoff dot. Sixty NHL scouts sitting in the mezzanine boxes with their stopwatches and draft dossiers.
And then, the final horn.
My chest expanded on a deep, slow breath, a faint, uncharacteristic warmth brushing the cold edges of my focus.
Twenty-four hours ago, I had promised her against the front door of my house that the hiding was over.
Tonight, after the buzzer, I was walking straight to the tunnel doors, taking Nadia Gregory by the hand in front of the cameras, the scouts, and the entire athletic department.
I was signing an entry-level deal with a team in the Midwest. I was paying off Mateo’s medical debt with the signing bonus, and I was buying her a home wherever her fellowship took her.
For the first time in twenty-two years, hockey wasn't a punishment. It was the bridge to her.
The heavy steel fire door at the end of the maintenance ramp swung open with a sharp, pneumatic hiss.
A figure stepped out from the shadows of the refrigeration bay, planting his boots directly in the center of the narrow rubber runner.
Martin Cole.
* * *
He wasn't carrying a press badge. He had his brown overcoat buttoned to his chin, his greasy hair plastered to his forehead with melting slush, clutching a thick red-tabbed folder against his ribs.
A thin, venomous smirk curled the corners of his mouth as his eyes locked onto mine.
"Looking sharp, eighty-eight," Cole said, his voice cutting through the distant roar of the crowd.
My skates stayed rooted on the rubber mats. I didn't drop my stick. I gave him a flat, dead-eyed glare, my jaw locking into an iron anvil.
"You're in a restricted player lane, Cole," I grated, my voice low gravel vibrating with immediate violence. "Get out of the tunnel before I put my blade through your shins."
Cole didn't flinch. He took two steps forward, closing the distance until the sour smell of his menthol tobacco and wet wool washed across my visor.
"You might want to read this before you step out there and break your neck for sixty scouts," Cole said smoothly.
He didn't hand me the folder.
He shoved it hard against the embroidered crest on my chest pads.
The thick cardboard struck my ribs with a dull thud. Before I could knock his arm away, he opened the tab with a flick of his thumb, holding the top page inches from my eyes under the buzzing halogen lights.
It was an official Barrow University kinesiology department requisition slip.
Dated October sixth.
Special Behavioral Compliance Fellowship Grant: $8,000.00.
Recipient: Gregory, Nadia.
Faculty Sponsor: Morris, Dr. Evelyn.
Account Allocation: NCAA Behavioral Risk Assessment Fund.
Terms: Conditional upon bi-weekly qualitative reporting regarding Subject #88 impulsive velocity torque and concussion susceptibility.
Beneath the document, clipped to the white bond paper, was an audio transcription printed on formal administrative letterhead.
I knew the words before my eyes even finished scanning the ink.
Session One. October eighth. Lab 04.
Gregory, N.: "He generates three hundred pounds of unchecked kinetic force because his right hip collapses inward on deceleration. That's all he is, Siobhan. Mass, acceleration, and a signature on a grant form."
A high-pitched, deafening screech detonated behind my eardrums.
The roar of the crowd overhead vanished, swallowed in a vacuum of dead, freezing silence.
The concrete floor beneath my skates seemed to drop away into a bottomless black drop.
The air in my windpipe seized, turning to pure, bitter ash, my lungs refusing to expand against the tight laces of my chest pads.
"She met with me yesterday morning in the Science Library, Castaneda," Cole purred, his voice dropping into a vicious, mocking whisper that dripped straight into the open wound in my skull.
He pulled out a set of glossy eight-by-ten photographs, fanning them like playing cards against my forearm.
Nadia, sitting across from him at an oak table, her hands resting flat on the red-tabbed folder.
Nadia, walking away from his chair with her head down, her satchel clutched tight to her ribs.
"She brought me the files," Cole whispered, his rat-like eyes gleaming with triumph.
"She knew the NCAA was coming down on you for the Holt promissory note.
She knew Palmer was preparing an audit. So she cut a deal to protect her fellowship.
She gave me the raw telemetry logs proving you skated on an unverified hematoma, and she signed an affidavit stating she was pressured by the athletic department to certify your sixty hours. "
My vision narrowed to a tiny, dark tunnel.
The blood in my veins ran ice-cold, freezing the muscles along my spine into rigid, agonizing paralysis. A violent, sickening rush of nausea hit the back of my throat, tasting of copper and old rot.
A signature on a grant form.
She brought him the files.
"Did you really think she cared about you, kid?
" Cole sneered, taking half a step closer, tapping the paper with his thumb.
"Look at you. You're an iron-range goon with sixty penalty minutes who couldn't even keep his own brother from breaking his neck.
You're a butcher with a stick. Did you honestly believe a brilliant girl with an honors thesis saw anything in you except an eight-thousand-dollar tuition check? "
A bone-deep, agonizing convulsion ripped through my sternum.
Every word I had ever whispered into her hair—every vow, every touch, every night I had held her trembling body in my bed and believed that I was finally clean—shattered into jagged, poisonous shards that shredded my throat from the inside out.
The three years of guilt. The terror of being disposable. The conviction that love was a trap that destroyed everything in its perimeter.
It was all true.
She hadn't looked at me and seen a man.
She had looked at me and seen a lab rat that could pay off her father's debt.
"She’s outside right now, Castaneda," Cole murmured, his mouth curling in disgust as he backed toward the exit ramp. "Waiting by the player tunnel to make sure you skate. Because if you don't take the ice, her grant defaults. Good luck with the scouts, Captain."
* * *
Cole turned on his heel, slipping through the fire door into the concourse.
The heavy steel door swung shut behind him with a hollow, metallic bang that echoed down the empty corridor.
I stood alone under the buzzing, yellow glare of the halogen tubes.
My hands, encased in thick black leather gloves, shook with a violent, uncoordinated palsy that made the carbon composite stick clatter against the concrete baseboard.
I looked down at the crumpled papers resting on the floor at my skates.
Mass, acceleration, and a signature on a grant form.
A sound tore from the base of my throat—a ragged, choked gasp of pure, unadulterated agony that rattled my teeth.
My gloved fingers curled into fists, grabbing the papers off the deck, crushing the white sheets into a mangled, shredded ball of pulp until the staples ripped through the leather of my palms.
My jaw clamped down so savage a molar cracked with a sharp, sickening pop in the back of my mouth, blood welling warm and metallic along my gums.
The five-minute pre-game warning horn detonated down the runway.
A loud, abrasive buzz that vibrated through the steel beams.
Down the hall, the locker room double doors flew open. The voices of my teammates echoed off the concrete—loud, aggressive, pumped with adrenaline:
"Let's go, Dreadnoughts!"
"Castaneda! Eighty-eight, line's heading to the tunnel!"
"Captain, where are you?"
I didn't answer them. I couldn't move. The world had turned to black ice, a frozen void where every breath felt like dragging broken glass through my chest.
Hurried, uneven footsteps clicked on the rubber matting at the far end of the corridor.
The sound was light. Frantic.
I slowly, agonizingly lifted my head.
Nadia rounded the corner by the refrigeration pipes.
She was running, her boots skidding on the wet runner, her thick cream scarf loose around her throat, her dark chestnut curls wild around her face.
Her cheeks were flushed with a hectic, breathless rose from the cold outside, her honey-brown eyes wide, shining with an urgent, desperate light as she clutched her charcoal coat tightly over her stomach.
"Killian!" she gasped, her voice echoing off the concrete walls, trembling with tears, with relief, with a terrifying secret she was desperate to tell me.
She reached the alcove, her small chest heaving in rapid, shallow bursts, her boots coming to a halt three feet from my skates.
"Killian, thank God," she whispered, her lips parting on a ragged breath, her eyes searching my face with unvarnished, desperate love. "I need to tell you something. Before you step on the ice—"
I turned my body toward her.
Slowly. Mechanically.
The crumpled ball of papers dropped from my gloved hand, hitting the rubber floor between our boots with a dull, final slap.
I looked down at her.
The warmth was gone. The devotion was gone. The sanctuary we had built in the dark was a pile of smoldering ash.
My dark eyes were black, dead voids of raw, bleeding ruin, stripped of every shred of mercy I had ever possessed.
"Speak, Gregory," I rasped, the gravel in my voice cutting like an axe. "Tell me how much my contract was worth to you."