Chapter 4
Coast POV
The steam in the varsity shower bay smelled of bleach and iron-rich well water.
I sat on the wet pine bench in the corner, my left heel braced against the drain trough, my right leg extended straight out.
Even through the carbon-fiber shell of the boot, the dull, throbbing heat in my ankle felt like a fist twisting inside the joint capsule.
Above the sound of rushing water, the locker room was loud. The heavy bass from a portable speaker rattled the metal mesh of the gear stalls, vibrating through the wet floor tiles into my spine.
"Mercer's running your slot on the power play this afternoon," Kip Callahan said, stepping out of the shower stall with a gray towel slung over his wet shoulders.
He dropped onto the bench opposite mine, water dripping from his dark hair onto the floorboards.
"Hayes had him working the left point on the five-on-four drill.
The kid can't hold the blue line to save his life.
Kept coughing up the puck to the second-string forecheck. "
"Mercer's soft," I said, my voice scraping low against my dry throat. "He turns his skates sideways whenever he hears a body coming along the boards."
"He might be soft, but he’s got healthy ligaments," Kip muttered, leaning down to untie his training shoes.
He paused, glancing toward the open doorway that led to the equipment corridor.
"Speaking of which, I saw Barry dragging two crates of sensor gear out of the subterranean lift twenty minutes ago.
Those tiny brass clips she wears in her hair were falling out, and she looked ready to stab someone with a digital caliper. "
A sharp, uninvited pressure clamped down behind my breastbone. The image hit my brain before I could stop it—the curve of her neck when those clips slipped, the loose dark strands sticking to her temple, the flush riding high on her skin when she lost her temper.
"Mercer was hanging around the door," Kip added casually, reaching into his locker for a dry shirt. "Asked her if she needed a hand with the heavy gear. Told her he had an hour before team video and could carry the plates down to Sub-Two for her."
My hands stopped moving.
The white athletic tape wrapped around my right wrist dug deep into the tendons as my fingers curled into a hard, rigid fist. A foul, burning taste—raw bile mixed with cold adrenaline—flooded the back of my mouth.
The sound of the locker room music seemed to drop an octave, drowned out by the heavy, rhythmic pounding of blood behind my eardrums.
"What did she say?" I asked. The words came out flat, stripped of inflection, but Kip’s head jerked up at the tone.
"She told him to back up before she crushed his toes with forty pounds of optical hardware," Kip said, watching me with narrowed eyes, his humor vanishing behind sudden suspicion. "She handled him. Barry doesn't take charity from anyone."
"Tell Mercer to stay out of Sub-Two," I said.
"Coast—"
"I'm not saying it twice, Kip." I stood up, my height forcing him to crane his neck back. I grabbed my clean compression shirt from the hook, hauling it over my head with a rough yank that pulled at the bruises across my ribs. "If he wants my minutes on the ice, he can earn them in practice. If I catch him lingering around that lab while she’s working, I’ll take his front teeth out on the boards. Make sure he understands that."
Kip stared at me, the towel clutched in his hands, his mouth slightly open. "She’s your biomechanist, Stuart. You’ve spent two sessions with her and you look like you want to put a teammate in the hospital because he offered to carry a box."
"She’s my clearance," I rasped, leaning down until my face was a foot from his. "She holds the paper that keeps Boston from walking away. If Mercer gets in her way and messes with my kinetic data, it’s my contract he’s burning. Now drop it."
I didn't wait for him to answer. I grabbed my black duffel by the strap and hauled my weight toward the subterranean stairs, my jaw locked so tight the muscles ached down into my neck.
* * *
The steel fire door to Sub-Level 2 didn't make a sound when I pushed it open.
The air in the Neuromuscular Isolation Lab was cold, carrying the faint, chemical bite of isopropyl alcohol and that clean, sharp scent of rain-soaked wool that belonged to her.
Tallulah was at the metal desk, her back to the door.
She was wearing a thin black athletic long-sleeve that hugged the lean, wiry line of her spine, her dark hair pinned up in an untidy knot with those two brass drafting clips.
A few loose wisps curled against the pale skin at the nape of her neck.
Her shoulders were tight, raised slightly toward her ears as she rapidly typed data into the motion-tracking console. Beside her keyboard lay three folders stamped with the university compliance seal, alongside an empty white paper cup crushed flat at the rim.
I let the heavy door swing shut.
The mechanical latch clicked into place with a sharp thunk.
Tallulah didn't jump, but the rapid tap of her keystrokes ceased instantly.
Her spine went rigid, each vertebra locking into alignment like steel links.
She didn't turn around immediately. She drew a slow, shallow breath, her ribs expanding against the black fabric, before she swiveled the rolling chair to face the room.
"You're seven minutes late, Stuart," she said.
Her voice was cool, steady, and entirely clinical, but the pale skin at the base of her throat told a different story. Her pulse was hammering there, a rapid, frantic rhythm fluttering against the hollow of her collarbone.
"Clock broke," I lied, stepping into the room.
I didn't take the stool on the far side of the table this time. I walked straight toward her desk, my rigid boot striking the floor with a rhythmic, heavy thud that ate up the twelve feet of space between us.
The room was too small. With every step I took, the air thinned out, compressed by the heat rolling off my skin and the sharp, defensive energy bristling from hers. I stopped when the toes of my boots were four inches from the metal wheels of her chair.
I looked down at her. She didn't drop her gaze. Her honey-dark eyes met mine with that same infuriating, unyielding stare, her chin tilted at that exact forty-five-degree angle.
"Session three," she said, reaching for a digital tablet on the desk. "Fifty-four hours remaining. Today we begin active isometric plantarflexion under a ten-pound baseline load. I need you on the table."
"No," I said.
Her eyebrows pulled together, a tiny, sharp crease forming between them. "No?"
I reached out, grabbed the back of the metal rolling stool, and dragged it forward until it slammed against the side of her desk with a metallic scrape. I sat down, planting my elbows on the stainless-steel surface, leaning forward until my face was barely eighteen inches from hers.
"I spent forty minutes on the ice this morning," I said, my voice dropping to a low, quiet gravel. "The joint is fine. Run the force-plate test right here. I'm not laying on your table like a specimen."
Tallulah didn't blink. She set the tablet down on the steel desk with a sharp snap, leaning forward to match my posture. Her small, ink-stained hands rested flat against the metal, her fingers spread wide.
"You spent forty minutes on the ice doing non-contact edge-work you weren't cleared for," she countered, her breath dusting warm across my lower jaw.
"I looked at the rink telemetry while you were in the showers.
You're favoring the left side on every single backward crossover.
You're cutting the radius of your turns by twelve inches to keep from loading the medial ligament. "
A muscle in my temple twitched. "You spent your morning tracking my practice?"
"I spent my morning analyzing data to ensure you don't tear your ankle into shredded meat before Friday," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut deeper than any shout.
"You think you're fooling Coach Hayes? You think you're fooling Boston?
You're compensating, Coast. And every time you lie to me about your pain levels, you put my fellowship at risk. "
Hearing my first name on her lips hit me like a solid check into the boards. It was the first time she had used it, and the sound of it—rough, quiet, spoken through clenched teeth—sent a dark, violent surge of heat straight down my spine.
"Say that again," I murmured, leaning in another two inches.
Her dark eyes flared. "What? That you're reckless?"
"My name," I rasped, my gaze dropping to her mouth.
Her lips were bare, slightly dry from the cold mountain wind, parted just enough for me to see the edge of her teeth. Her breathing hitched, the rhythm turning ragged, her chest rising and falling in quick, shallow bursts beneath the black cotton.
"Don't flatter yourself, Stuart," she whispered, but the defiance in her voice wavered, just enough for the underlying tremor to bleed through.
* * *
She reached across the desk to grab a black elastic resistance band from the plastic organizer tray.
Her movement was too fast, driven by the need to put something between us. Her left knee shifted under the cramped overhang of the metal desk, swinging outward just as I shifted my weight forward.
Our knees collided.
The impact was hard, bone meeting bone through the layers of denim and fleece.
Neither of us pulled away.
Her knee was small, sharp, and radiating heat through her jeans, pressed tight against the dense muscle of my outer thigh. The contact sent a jolt of raw sensation straight to the back of my neck, locking the muscles in my back into rigid stone.
Tallulah froze. Her hand stopped midway across the desk, her fingers hovering an inch above the resistance band.
Slowly, deliberately, I reached out. I didn't touch the band.
I laid my large, calloused palm flat against the stainless steel right beside her hand, my thumb coming to rest less than half an inch from her index finger.
The skin of my palm was burning hot from exertion; I could feel the cold chill radiating off her ink-stained knuckles.
"You're not moving your leg, Barry," I murmured.
My voice had lost its edge, dropping into a low, rough rumble that vibrated through the metal frame of the desk between us.
Tallulah swallowed. The motion was heavy, her throat working as she forced the air past her vocal cords. Her gaze flicked down to our touching knees under the desk, then to our hands resting on the steel, before slowly rising back to my face.
"Neither are you," she whispered.
The air in the room seemed to vanish completely, replaced by a thick, suffocating weight that made every breath feel like drawing water into the lungs.
Overhead, the refrigeration pipes hummed their low, relentless tune, but inside the twelve-by-fourteen-foot box, the only sound that mattered was the uneven cadence of her breathing.
I leaned closer, my broad shoulders blocking out the yellow glare of the fluorescent tube behind me, casting her face in shadow. I watched a faint, rosy flush creep up from the collar of her shirt, spreading over her collarbones, staining the sharp line of her jaw.
She was terrified of what was happening between us, but she wasn't running. She sat there with her knee pressed hard against mine, her chin held high, her eyes blazing with an unyielding challenge that dared me to take another inch.
"You want me to move?" I asked, my voice barely louder than the hum of the chiller pipes.
"I want you to do your job," she said. Her voice shook, just a fraction, but she didn't look away. "Take the band, Coast. Put it around your forefoot."
Hearing her say it again—quiet this time, breathless, almost like a secret—snapped something fragile inside my chest.
I didn't take the band. My hand shifted, my calloused fingers brushing against the side of her wrist. The contact was brief, an accidental slide of rough skin over her racing pulse point, but she gasped, her fingers curling inward against the cold steel.
I held her gaze, my jaw aching from the pressure of my teeth grinding together, a dark, dangerous truth settling heavy into my bones.
I had thought I could scare her out of this room. I had thought sixty hours of intimidation would break her down, make her run back to Thorne and forfeit the assignment so I could deal with my injury on my own terms.
I was wrong.
She wasn't going to break. And looking at her now—flushed, furious, her knee burning against mine in the cold concrete basement—I realized with brutal certainty that I didn't want her to leave.
I wanted to keep her in this room until every single wall she had built turned to dust.
"Fifty-four hours left, Barry," I whispered, my fingers curling slowly around the rubber band, letting my knuckles graze the back of her hand as I pulled it away. "Let's see who survives them."