Chapter 9
Tallulah POV
Outside, the Adirondack freeze had deepened to eight below zero, locking the moisture inside the stone foundation into crystalline webs of frost.
I set two stainless-steel bowls of warm saline solution onto the rolling cart, alongside a tub of dense arnica emollient and three rolls of cohesive compression wrap.
My fingers were warm from the hot tap, but my pulse was unsteady, fluttering against the collar of my thermal shirt like an irregular clock.
I hadn't slept more than four hours. Every time my eyelids slipped shut, the memory of Saturday midnight on the ice sheet surged behind my eyes—the cold steel of his skates, the rough heat of his bare hand cupping my jaw, the low vibration of his voice whispering Liar into the dark.
The heavy fire door swung inward with a muted hydraulic wheeze.
Coast stepped through the threshold, but the rhythm of his entrance was broken.
He was limping badly. The late-night spill on the ice three days ago, paired with whatever full-contact drills Coach Hayes had run in yesterday's closed scrimmage, had extracted a brutal price.
His left shoulder was pulled high to compensate for his right side, his jaw set in a rigid line that pulled the skin flat across his cheekbones.
He was not alone.
Coast’s large, calloused hands were resting on the padded push-handles of a lightweight titanium wheelchair.
Seated in the chair was a young man with Coast’s dark, wavy hair, though his frame was narrower, his shoulders lean under a heavy gray wool sweater. A dark green fleece blanket was tucked securely around his lower legs, concealing the immobility of his limbs beneath neat, disciplined folds.
Coast moved the chair over the concrete threshold with an unnatural, delicate care, his knuckles easing the wheels down so the transition didn't jar the frame.
"Watch the lip, Jules," Coast murmured, his voice dropping into a low, protective register I had never heard him use. Not on the ice, not in Thorne’s office, and certainly not with me.
"I've been clearing thresholds since I was twenty, Coast," the young man replied, his tone laced with a dry, affectionate warmth. "The linoleum isn't going to break me."
The young man looked up, his pale eyes—the exact gray-green of Coast’s, but softer, untainted by violence—locking onto mine. A quick, knowing smile touched the corners of his mouth.
"You must be Tallulah," he said, offering a lean, warm hand. "I'm Julian Cross. My brother has spent the last three weeks on our Sunday calls claiming you're an academic dictator who lives to make his life miserable."
* * *
The air in my throat caught on a sudden, dry inhale.
I stepped forward, wiping a trace of emollient from my fingers onto a paper towel before taking Julian’s hand. His grip was firm, though the musculature in his forearm showed the specific, hypertrophied tone of someone who relied solely on his upper body for propulsion.
"He exaggerates to deflect from his poor mechanics," I managed, my voice steady despite the rapid pounding behind my ribs.
Coast didn't look at me. He had already set the wheel locks on Julian's chair with a quick flick of his boot toe. His face was gray with exhaustion, dark rings bruised under his eyes, his breathing shallow and tight through his nose.
"Julian has a neuro-imaging consult at the regional clinic in Saranac Lake at seven," Coast said, addressing the concrete wall above my diagnostic monitors. "His medical transport is picking him up at the loading bay in twenty minutes. I’m going to change."
Coast disappeared into the small equipment alcove behind the hydrotherapy tank, dragging his right foot with a heavy, scraping step that made my teeth ache in sympathy.
The room fell into a quiet hum. Julian turned his chair slightly, his gaze sweeping over the calibrated force plates, the optical cameras mounted on the structural pillars, and the dual monitors displaying Coast’s historical joint-load curves.
"He looks terrible, doesn't he?" Julian asked quietly, his hands resting easily on the composite push-rims of his wheels.
I hesitated, leaning against the edge of the stainless cart. "He's skating on a joint that needs immobilization. He took a spill on the ice over the weekend and clearly aggravated the syndesmosis during yesterday's drills."
"He doesn't know how to stop," Julian said.
There was no pity in his voice, only a profound, heavy understanding that seemed to weigh down the air between us.
"Four years ago, when our father was running the junior program in Plattsburgh, Arthur convinced himself that Coast and I were his ticket out of the minor leagues.
Arthur put me on the ice with a hairline crack in my fourth cervical vertebra.
Told Coast it was his job to clear the lane so nobody touched me. "
My chest contracted, the breath freezing in my trachea.
"A blindside check," Julian continued, his gaze drifting toward the scuffed rubber floor.
"Clean hit from the neutral zone. Coast was tied up with a forechecker on the half-wall and missed the assignment by half a second.
My neck snapped against the dasher board.
When I woke up in the trauma unit, our father looked Coast in the eye and told him he had crippled his own brother because he was too slow to protect his flank. "
A cold, bitter nausea pooled beneath my tongue. "That wasn't his fault."
"I know that," Julian said softly, looking back up at me.
"The doctors knew that. Even Arthur knew it, before he packed his bags and left for Montreal the day my settlement cleared. But Coast never accepted it. He thinks if he bleeds enough, if he breaks enough of his own bones for this university, he can balance the ledger. He carries six thousand dollars a month for my care facility like it’s a debt he owes the universe. "
Julian reached out, his hand resting lightly on the aluminum arm of my rolling cart.
"He talks about you differently, Tallulah," Julian murmured, his eyes searching my face with razor-sharp perception. "Coast doesn't complain about people. He ignores them, or he runs through them. But with you... he listens. Don't let him kill himself for this tournament."
Before I could answer, a double tap sounded on the steel fire door. An orderly in medical scrubs leaned into the room, announcing that the patient transport van had arrived at the south loading dock.
Coast stepped out of the alcove, wearing dark athletic shorts and a sleeveless compression shirt.
The change in him was stark; every line of his posture was focused on his brother.
He released the wheel locks, guided Julian up the ramp toward the corridor, and lifted his brother into the passenger seat of the transport with an effortless, gentle strength that looked like second nature.
Through the glass door, I watched Coast lean down into the vehicle, his forehead resting against Julian’s for three quiet seconds, his hand clasping Julian’s neck with raw, unshakable devotion.
Then the doors closed, the van pulled away, and Coast walked back down the concrete corridor alone.
* * *
When Coast re-entered the lab, the strength that had carried him through the morning vanished.
Without Julian watching, the armor fell away. Coast’s shoulders sagged, his head dropping forward, his right hand catching the corner of the hydraulic table to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
He didn't speak. He dragged himself onto the edge of the treatment table, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the black vinyl.
His right leg was bare from the mid-thigh down.
My breath caught behind my teeth.
The ankle was swollen to nearly twice its normal circumference.
The skin over the lateral malleolus was stretched tight, shining under the fluorescent bulbs, stained a mottled, violent shade of plum and sickly yellow.
The inflammation had traveled up the interosseous membrane, creeping toward the fibular head.
Every pulse of his heart was visible as a tiny, rhythmic shudder in the taut flesh.
He was trembling. A fine, continuous tremor ran through the dense muscle of his quadricep, his skin burning with the systemic heat of acute tissue trauma.
"Don't," he rasped, his voice cracked and hollow as I stepped toward him. "Don't start with the lecture, Barry. Just hook up the stim pads so we can log the hours."
I didn't reach for the electrodes.
I rolled the low technician's stool across the rubber mat, stopping directly between his parted knees. I set a warm basin of water on the floor, soaked a flannel cloth, and reached out.
Coast flinched as my fingers touched the skin above his knee, his thigh muscles locking into stone beneath my palms.
"Relax," I whispered, keeping my voice low, dropping the clinical distance that had failed to protect either of us. "Look at me, Coast. Let it go."
He didn't move away. He lowered his head, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his chest expanding in ragged, uneven hitches as he stared down at my hands.
I lifted his injured foot gently, cradling his heel in my left palm, resting the back of his calf across my knee.
His skin was scorching hot, radiating an inflammatory fever that seeped through the denim of my jeans.
With slow, measured care, I pressed the warm cloth against the swollen joint, letting the heat draw the surface tension out of the skin.
He let out a long, shuddering breath through his teeth, his forehead dropping until it was inches from my shoulder.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" I asked softly, my fingers smoothing a thick layer of arnica balm over the bruised tissue.
"I'm fine," he lied, but the word broke on an exhale.
"You're not fine," I said, my thumbs finding the dense, fibrous adhesions along the anterior inferior tibiofibular ligament. "You're human, Coast. You don't have to bleed for everyone."
As my thumbs applied steady, circular pressure to disperse the pooled edema, a sharp jolt of pain shot through the joint.
Coast’s breath hitched violently. His hands left the vinyl edge; his thick fingers reached out and gripped the fabric of my sweater at my hips, anchoring himself to me as the manual therapy broke up the damaged fibers.
He didn't push me away. He pulled me closer, his forehead coming to rest against the hollow of my shoulder, the heat of his face burning through my layers.
His scent—cedar, menthol, and raw exertion—wrapped around my senses, thick and intoxicating. Every time he drew air, his chest pressed against mine, his heartbeat pounding against my ribs with a heavy, desperate rhythm.
My hands never stopped moving. I worked my way up the calf, smoothing the tight, knotted muscle fibers of the gastrocnemius, feeling the iron tension slowly yield beneath my thumbs.
With every pass of my hands, the rigid barriers he had built around himself dissolved further into the warm, quiet air of the basement.
Coast’s grip on my hips shifted. His hands slid upward, his thumbs brushing the soft skin beneath the hem of my thermal shirt, resting against the curve of my waist. His touch was burning, reverent, stripped of all aggression.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
Our faces were inches apart. His green eyes were dark, heavy with exhaustion and a vulnerability so raw it made my throat ache. He looked at my mouth, his breathing shallow and hot against my lower lip, before his gaze rose to hold mine.
"You shouldn't be this good to me, Tallulah," he rasped, his voice trembling with a quiet devastation that shook me to the bone.
"Someone has to be," I whispered, my hand leaving his calf to rest flat against his cheek, my thumb brushing the stubble along his jaw.
Coast closed his eyes at the contact, his jaw muscle jumping beneath my palm as he leaned into my touch, surrendering the last piece of control he had left in the dark.