Chapter 38
Nadia POV
The cast-iron woodstove ticked in the corner of the living room, its iron door glowing dull orange through the mica window.
Four-forty-five on Tuesday afternoon.
Outside the high bay windows of the cabin, the Minnesota dusk was closing in fast, turning the stands of black spruce and the frozen shoreline of the lake into jagged silhouettes of slate and charcoal.
A quiet, steady snow fell through the hemlocks, muffling the world in a vast, impenetrable stillness.
I sat at the rough-hewn pine table in thick wool socks, an oversized oatmeal knit cardigan wrapped securely around my torso.
On the wooden surface lay my laptop, its screen displaying the revised velocity curves for my capstone methodology.
Beside the keyboard, a heavy stoneware mug of steeped peppermint and chamomile tea released a thin curl of steam into the warm air.
My left hand rested flat over my lower abdomen beneath the knit fabric.
The persistent morning sickness had subsided to a faint, hollow flutter behind my ribs, leaving behind a deep, steady rhythm that seemed to pace my breathing.
Over the last forty-eight hours, since Siobhan had driven me over the state line, my nervous system had begun the slow, agonizing process of resetting itself.
The roaring crowds of The Pit, the buzzing halogen lights of the sub-basement, the sharp smell of ammonia and friction wax—I had locked it all behind the heavy double doors of the past.
I had built a quiet sanctuary out of cedar logs, hot tea, and clean spreadsheets.
A life for two.
The sudden, heavy crunch of oversized tires over frozen gravel shattered the silence of the clearing.
My fingers stiffened against the knit of my cardigan.
The low, rumbling growl of a heavy-duty diesel engine vibrated through the floorboards beneath my wool socks. Twin beams of yellow headlights swept across the cabin's beamed ceiling, illuminating the cedar rafters before cutting out into sudden darkness.
I didn't run to the window. I didn't knock my tea over.
I rose from the pine chair with slow, deliberate control, my left palm remaining anchored firmly over the flat curve of my belly. My heart gave a single, hard thump against my ribs, then settled into a cold, guarded beat that felt like permafrost.
Through the frosted glass beside the entryway, I saw the black truck idling in the snowbank at the end of the driveway, steam billowing in thick white plumes from its front grille.
The driver's side door swung open into the sub-zero air.
Killian stepped out into the snow.
* * *
He wasn't wearing a winter coat.
He wore only a black thermal shirt that was soaked black across the shoulders from freezing rain, clinging to the dense shelf of his chest, and dark gray sweatpants caked with slush at the ankles. His heavy leather boots sank knee-deep into the unplowed powder of the path, but he didn't stumble.
He moved toward the porch like a man walking through a minefield.
I pulled the front edges of my cardigan tightly over my midsection, crossed the small entryway, and pushed open the heavy pine front door.
I stopped behind the black iron screen, the freezing Minnesota wind rushing over my bare neck, carrying the sharp scent of spruce resin, hot engine oil, and sub-zero freeze.
Killian climbed the three wooden steps to the porch.
The yellow utility bulb above the door flickered to life, casting harsh, shadowless light down over the wreckage of the man standing on the planks.
My throat contracted on a dry, silent swallow.
The arrogant, untouchable enforcer of Barrow University was gone.
His dark hair was plastered to his skull in wet, frozen clumps, snow crystals clinging to the silver scar slicing through his left eyebrow.
His face was hollow, gray as wet limestone, the sharp angles of his cheekbones bruised with days of starvation and sleeplessness.
His lower lip was split in two places, dark dried blood smeared along the heavy stubble on his jaw, his bloodshot eyes sunken into dark purple hollows that looked like fresh contusions.
His massive hands were bare, shaking with a violent, uncoordinated tremor, the raw skin on his knuckles split wide open, red and weeping against the sub-zero chill.
He stopped five feet from the threshold, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged bursts that formed thick white clouds in the air between us.
He looked at me through the screen.
His eyes were wild, ruined, and bleeding with an agony so absolute that it made the air in the porch feel scarce.
I didn't move. I didn't step onto the deck. I stood straight on the wooden threshold, my chin lifted at that forty-five-degree angle, my face settling into an impenetrable mask of polite, glacial indifference.
"You're trespassing on private property, Castaneda," I said.
My voice was quiet, even, and devoid of tears, cutting through the falling snow with the clean finality of a guillotine.
Killian flinched.
His broad shoulders caved inward by half an inch, his head snapping back as if I had driven a composite blade straight through his sternum. The total absence of anger in my voice hit him harder than any scream ever could.
"Nadia," he rasped.
The syllable was a broken, scraped-raw sound that barely made it past his teeth.
"Turn the truck around and leave," I said, holding his gaze without a flicker of warmth. "Before I call the county sheriff."
* * *
He didn't make an excuse. He didn't mention Martin Cole, the forged compliance documents, or the regional trophy sitting in his empty house. He didn't take a step toward the door.
Instead, his legs simply gave way.
Two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of elite athletic bone and muscle collapsed straight down onto the wet pine porch boards with a sickening, heavy thud that shuddered through the floor under my socks.
His knees struck the freezing wood, sinking into the slush that had blown across the deck.
I froze, the breath catching in the center of my throat.
Killian didn't push himself up. He knelt there in the freezing slush, his massive frame hunched forward, his scarred hands resting palm-up on the wet floorboards on either side of his knees in a posture of total, unconditional submission.
Snow fell onto the broad expanse of his soaked shoulders, melting against the fever radiating off his neck.
He lifted his head, his dark eyes looking up at me from the wet planks, tears cutting clean, hot tracks through the grime and dried blood on his cheekbones.
"I know," he choked out, his voice cracking on a ruined, jagged edge that sounded like weeping. "I know what I did."
His hands trembled on the freezing wood, fingers curling slightly, but he didn't reach for my feet.
"Cole is in handcuffs," he rasped, the words tumbling out in a desperate, bleeding rush against the howling wind.
"The county sheriff took him this morning.
Palmer signed your full exoneration—it's on your student account, certified by the dean.
The eight-thousand-dollar grant was an administrative setup by the athletic board.
You're clear. Your fellowship is clean. Your capstone is safe. "
He swallowed hard, his throat working on a dry, agonizing convulsion.
"I burned my draft ranking, Nadia," he whispered, staring up at me from the deck with eyes stripped of every scrap of pride he had ever owned.
"I stood in Palmer's boardroom and told them I'd tear the whole program down before I let them touch your name.
The scouts can tear my contract up. I don't care.
I don't give a damn about Montreal. I don't give a damn about the NHL. "
A violent shiver wracked his broad frame, his teeth clicking together as the sub-zero chill bit through his soaked shirt into his ribs.
"I'm not asking you to let me inside," he rasped, his voice dropping into a low, broken gravel that vibrated against the threshold beneath my boots. "I'm not asking you to forgive me. You have every right to let me freeze to death on this porch."
He leaned his forehead forward until it pressed hard against the icy edge of the wooden floorboards, inches from the screen.
"Just tell me how to bleed for you, Nadia," he wept into the wet pine, his large frame shuddering with silent, ragged sobs that rattled the boards.
"Tell me what to do. I will crawl through broken glass from here to Houghton.
I will stay on these boards until the snow covers me.
Just don't look at me like I'm a stranger.
Please, sweetheart... don't look at me like you don't know who I am. "
I stood above him in the warm light of the doorway, looking down at the enforcer of Barrow University shattered into ash at my feet.
The wind howled through the black spruce, blowing a dusting of dry snow across the hem of my cardigan.
Beneath the thick knit, my fingers pressed hard against the flat expanse of my lower abdomen, feeling the secret, delicate life sheltered safely from the cold.
My pulse hammered behind my ribs, slow, heavy, and profound.
The titan was on his knees.
And the time had come to show him what he had almost destroyed.