Chapter 34
Dual POV
Killian POV
The red numbers on the arena scoreboard clock bled down to zero.
The final horn blasted through the roof of The Pit, a deafening mechanical shriek that shook the cedar rafters forty feet above the ice.
Barrow: 4. Northland State: 1.
Red and gold paper confetti showered down through the glare of the television lights in a fluttering, suffocating blizzard. Six thousand throats erupted into a unified, bloodthirsty roar that rattled the acrylic dasher boards against the concrete footings.
"Eighty-eight! Eighty-eight! Eighty-eight!"
Before the echo of the horn died, thirty black jerseys hit the ice from the home bench.
Gloved hands slammed into my shoulder pads with violent, ecstatic force.
Helmets cracked against mine in bone-jarring collisions of joy.
Hayes Bennett tackled my waist, screaming something incoherent about Minneapolis, about the Frozen Four, about the regional banner that was already being hoisted toward the ceiling.
Someone shoved the heavy silver trophy into my chest.
The metal was cold, biting through the torn wool of my jersey.
I looked down at the engraved plaque, my chest heaving in ragged, shallow surges that tasted of blood and burnt rubber.
My lower lip was split wide open, the warm metallic drip of copper trailing through the stubble on my chin.
My right knuckles were throbbing inside their taped wraps, my shoulder aching from the open-ice hit I had delivered to Roman Lindqvist in the second period.
I had won.
Sixty scouts in the mezzanine boxes had their pens capped. The first-round draft status was locked. The nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar contract was waiting in June.
And the victory tasted like a mouthful of dry ash.
The roar of the crowd was a high, thin ringing in my ears, completely detached from the hollow cavity behind my ribs.
I didn't hoist the silver. I shoved the trophy hard into Hayes's arms, turned my back on the cameras, and skated off the ice.
I kicked my skate guards on at the threshold, shoved through the heavy double doors of the runway, and stumbled into the concrete service tunnel.
I ripped my black helmet off my head, hurling it against the cinder blocks with a violent, echoing crack.
I braced both gloved hands flat against the freezing wall, hanging my head between my broad shoulders, dragging in ragged, broken gasps of sub-zero air. Sweat dripped off my nose, mixing with the blood from my lip, spattering the rubber matting between my skates.
The draft was mine. Mateo’s debt was paid.
And I had stood in this exact corridor forty minutes ago and cut the heart right out of the only woman I had ever loved.
* * *
Nadia POV
The shadows near the refrigeration compressor bay were cold, smelling of damp limestone and machine oil.
I stood motionless against the concrete pillar, my hands buried deep inside the pockets of my heavy wool coat.
Beneath the cotton handkerchief in my left pocket, the white plastic test pressed flat against the outer seam of my ribs. A delicate, hidden anchor.
My stomach gave a slow, sickening heave, the sour metallic taste of morning sickness rising in my throat before I forced it down with a dry, painful swallow.
Beneath my sweater, my other hand rested over my lower abdomen, my fingers curved protectively over the quiet, microscopic life sheltered beneath my skin.
Heavy, uncoordinated footsteps sounded on the rubber runner down the hall.
Killian rounded the corner.
His black jersey was shredded at the left collar, dark sweat soaking the tackle-twill of his number eighty-eight.
His hair was plastered to his forehead in wet, dark curls, his lower lip split and dripping crimson down his jawline, a deep purple contusion blooming across his left cheekbone.
He carried his stick loosely in his right glove, his broad shoulders heaving with the dying fumes of athletic adrenaline.
He stopped dead ten feet away.
The distant celebration in the arena bowl—the marching band, the chanting fans, the thump of the bass drums—felt like noise from an alien planet.
In the dim corridor, the silence between us was an open grave.
Killian looked at me.
His dark eyes were wild, red-rimmed with an agony so profound, so devastating, that it made my own lungs contract in a sympathetic, agonizing spasm.
But beneath the grief, the old, poisonous armor had slammed shut.
His jaw hardened into a block of iron, his mouth drawing into that cold, cruel line he used when he was preparing to break someone on the ice.
"You're still here, Gregory," he said.
The voice was hollow, stripped of every drop of the reverence he had poured into my skin thirty-six hours ago.
I didn't shrink into the pillar. I stood straight, lifting my chin to that forty-five-degree angle, forcing my trembling knees to lock beneath my jeans.
"You won," I said, my voice quiet, flat, and steady as an executioner's ledger.
A harsh, ugly bark of laughter broke from his throat.
"We won," he spat, taking two heavy strides toward me, his physical mass crowding the narrow corridor until the smell of his sweat, blood, and cold rink mist washed over my face.
"Barrow takes the regional seed. The scouts get their highlight reel.
You can go run to Palmer now, Nadia. You can collect your eight thousand dollars. "
The cruelty in his tone struck my sternum like an iron mallet, driving the air from my chest in a sharp, burning whistle.
My fingers tightened around the fabric of my coat over my stomach, shielding the baby from the venom pouring from his mouth.
"Is that what you think happened?" I whispered, my voice trembling with a grief that had moved past anger into a quiet, frozen wasteland. "You think I took an eight-thousand-dollar grant to spy on you?"
"I saw the requisition slip, Gregory!" he roared, stepping into my face, his chest pads striking the air inches from my chin.
"I saw your signature! Conditional on behavioral risk reporting!
You sat in my kitchen, you took my key, you let me look at you like you were the only thing that mattered in this goddamn world, while you kept a ledger for the compliance board! "
"The audio was spliced, Killian," I said, looking straight into the black, ruined voids of his pupils. "It was recorded the first day we met, before I ever touched you. Before I knew who you were."
"And yesterday in the library?" he rasped, his voice cracking on a raw, bleeding edge of humiliation that tore through his ribs. "Cole had the photos, Nadia! He had the promissory note! You met with him in the archives!"
"He cornered me," I choked out, a single, scalding tear slipping past my lower lashes, tracking down my pale cheek. "He brought Holt's paper to extort me. He told me that if I didn't get on a bus to Duluth, he would drop that dossier on the scouts this morning and disqualify you from this game."
Killian stared down at me, his chest rising and falling in violent, jagged bursts.
For half a second, a flicker of doubt rippled across his features—a tiny, agonizing crack in the stone.
Then his jaw locked again. The three years of self-loathing, the guilt of his brother's paralysis, and the conviction that he was a monster who was destined to destroy everything he touched detonated behind his eyes, burning the doubt to ash.
"You expect me to believe you were protecting me?
" he whispered, his voice dripping with bitter self-hatred.
"A brilliant girl with an honors degree, throwing herself in front of a butcher from the iron range?
You wanted your capstone clean, Nadia. You wanted your name off the police blotter when the NCAA came down on my family. "
The words cut through the last fragile thread of hope I had carried into this arena.
He didn't want the truth.
He was so comfortable in his misery, so terrified of being loved, that he would rather believe I was a mercenary than face the reality that someone could love him without a price tag.
I looked at his ruined, bleeding face, and the urge to plead died in my throat.
I would not beg.
I would not pull the positive test from my pocket and use an innocent child as a shield to convince a man who looked at me with disgust that I was worth keeping.
If he couldn't see my heart, he didn't deserve our baby.
* * *
"You're right, Castaneda," I whispered.
The words were cold, steady, and devoid of tears.
Killian went utterly motionless, his breath catching in his throat, his dark eyes widening by a microscopic fraction as he registered the sudden, absolute death of my defiance.
I pulled my right hand from my coat pocket.
Between my bare fingers, resting against my pale skin, was the notched brass house key he had pressed into my hand on Sunday morning.
I took one slow, deliberate step forward, closing the distance until the heavy fabric of my coat brushed against the black wool of his game jersey.
Killian looked down at my hand. The blood drained from his cheekbones, leaving his skin gray beneath the sweat and the red smear on his jaw. A violent, visible tremor ran through his right forearm.
I reached out, took his large, leather-gloved left hand, and turned his palm upward.
I placed the cold brass key in the center of his palm.
The metal clinked softly against the leather, a tiny sound that echoed down the concrete tunnel with the finality of a closing coffin.
"You were terrified that love was an executioner, Killian," I said, looking him dead in the face, my voice clear as ice water. "You spent three weeks telling me that pain was the only thing you understood. But you're the only executioner in this room. You broke this. Not Cole. Not the scouts. You."
His breath hitched in a ragged, broken gasp, his gloved fingers trembling as if the small piece of brass were eating through his skin like acid.
"Nadia—" he rasped, his voice dropping into that low, ruined register, a desperate, sudden plea breaking through his armor.
"Don't speak to me," I said softly.
I stepped back, pulling my coat tight around my midsection, my fingers resting flat and firm over my lower stomach, over the life he would never know about.
"You got your trophy," I whispered. "You got your first-round contract. Enjoy the league, Captain. Goodbye."
I turned on my heel.
I didn't run. I walked down the rubber runner with an unhurried, iron dignity, my boots carrying me past the equipment racks toward the heavy steel emergency exit at the end of the underpass.
I hit the metal crash-bar with both hands.
The heavy door flew open into the night, the howling Michigan blizzard slamming into the corridor in a blinding wall of white powder and sub-zero wind.
I stepped over the threshold into the storm.
The heavy steel door swung shut behind me with a thunderous, airtight clack, severing the arena from the dark.
Behind me, in the concrete tunnel, Killian Castaneda stood alone under the yellow lights, staring down at the cold brass key in his bleeding hand, as the silence of the abyss swallowed him whole.