Chapter 11
Tallulah POV
My lower lip bore a tiny, faint split near the center—not from the Adirondack wind, but from the brutal pressure of my own teeth clamping down on the flesh for forty-eight hours straight, trying to erase the phantom weight of Coast Stuart’s thumb dragging across it.
My throat went dry on a hard swallow.
I hauled my hair back into a braid so tight the skin over my temples pulled taut, anchoring the dark strands against my scalp with four heavy steel pins.
No loose curls. No brass drafting clips that could slip, tumble to the floor, or invite large, scarred fingers to brush against the nape of my neck.
I dressed in armor. A faded gray compression long-sleeve under a heavy wool crewneck, topped by an oversized white clinical lab coat that fell past my mid-thigh.
The fabric was stiff with starch, smelling of bleach and industrial laundromat detergent.
It was thick enough to mute the shape of my collarbones and dull the rapid, humiliating rise and fall of my ribs.
In the kitchen, Sonya Finch was already sitting at the laminate counter, a ceramic mug of black coffee cradled in both hands. The glow from her tablet illuminated the sharp lines of her cheekbones. She didn't look at her screen. She looked at me.
"You've scrubbed the espresso machine twice," Sonya said, her voice flat in the pre-dawn quiet. "And you haven't blinked in ninety seconds."
"The steam wand was clogged with milk deposits," I muttered, grabbing my heavy aluminum equipment case from the floor by the radiator.
"You haven't mentioned his name since Friday night.
" Sonya set the mug down with a deliberate, soft click against the Formica.
"You drove back from the arena at two in the morning in the middle of a gale, your hands were shaking so hard you couldn't get the deadbolt open, and you spent the entire weekend running linear regressions on datasets you finished three weeks ago. "
My fingers tightened around the molded plastic grip of the case until the tendons across my knuckles ached. "I have sixteen credit hours, Sonya. And sixty-eight days until the national championship tournament."
"Sixty-eight days," Sonya repeated, her pale blue eyes narrowing as she cataloged the rigid angle of my jaw. "You're quoting the calendar like it’s a prison sentence. Did he touch you in that truck, Lu?"
A sudden, suffocating heat flared behind my breastbone, scorching up through the hollow of my throat to burn at the base of my ears.
The memory hit my nervous system like a direct jolt of adrenaline—the diesel engine vibrating through my spine, the scent of cedar and damp wool filling the cab, the terrifying, ruined rasp of his voice whispering I can't look at that table without wanting to drown in you.
"No," I lied, the word scraping out of my chest like dry slate. "He drove me to the curb and left."
Sonya held my stare for three long seconds. She didn't call me a liar, but the set of her mouth said the word for her.
"Watch your perimeter," she warned quietly, picking up her mug. "Coast Stuart doesn't leave things halfway done. If you gave him an inch on Friday, he’s going to take the whole floor today."
"He won't take anything," I said, hauling the equipment case toward the back door. "The protocol has rules. And so do I."
* * *
Sub-Level 2 of The Iron Foundry was forty degrees when I cleared the subterranean fire door.
It was 5:15 AM. Term Week 5. Sixty-eight days until the Frozen Four in St. Paul. Twenty-six hours remaining on the mandatory rehabilitation ledger.
I didn't turn on the warm, low-intensity examination lamps. I flipped the master breaker, flooding the twelve-by-fourteen-foot room in the blinding, surgical glare of three bare fluorescent tubes.
Then I built a fortress.
I dragged the heavy stainless-steel rolling instrument cart across the center of the room, positioning it like a physical barricade between the hydraulic treatment table and the force plates.
I pulled the high technician's stool behind the console, placing my digital clipboard, three printed binders of kinetic logs, and two physical goniometers in a symmetrical line across the steel tray.
Everything was measured. Everything was clinical. If Coast wanted to speak to me, he would have to do it across three feet of polished metal and five hundred pages of university data.
At 5:29 AM, the heavy steel door unlatched.
Coast didn't hesitate in the opening. He stepped over the threshold, and the room seemed to lose half its cubic volume in a single second.
My heart gave a hard, violent thump against my ribs, the pulse jumping into my throat so fast it made my vision blur around the edges.
He wasn't wearing the carbon-fiber boot.
In its place was a slim, low-profile black neoprene brace laced tight over his right ankle, allowing his foot to flex within a heavy cross-training shoe.
He moved without the pronounced hitch that had defined his stride for three weeks.
The limp was almost gone, replaced by that heavy, terrifying, predatory grace that made him look twice as large as any normal man.
He wore dark charcoal training fleece, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal the dense, vascular muscle of his forearms. His dark hair was damp from the shower, smelling of menthol soap, bitter cold, and fresh cedar shavings.
He didn't drop his duffel on the floor. He tossed it onto the empty chair in the corner with a casual flick of his wrist, then turned to face me.
His pale green eyes locked onto mine.
There was no smirk on his face. No sarcastic twitch of his jaw. His features were carved from hard, unforgiving granite, his pupils dilated into wide black rings despite the harsh halogen light.
"Session seventeen," I said.
My voice was too loud, pitching slightly higher than I intended before I forced it down into an emotionless monotone. I kept my hands flat on the stainless-steel tray, using the metal to hide the fine tremor in my fingers.
"Twenty-six hours remaining," I continued, staring directly at the bridge of his nose, refusing to look into his eyes. "Today we advance to multi-planar plyometric deceleration on the dual force plates. Thorne signed the phase-two clearance at seven o'clock yesterday evening."
Coast didn't move toward the force plates.
He walked slowly, deliberately, toward my barricade.
His heavy shoes made no sound on the wet rubber flooring.
He stopped on the other side of the stainless-steel tray, his massive chest rising and falling in deep, measured expansions, the heat coming off his body washing across the three feet of cold metal like a furnace draft.
"What is this, Barry?" he asked.
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated directly against the bones of my wrists.
"It's the equipment setup for session seventeen," I said, forcing my gaze down to the clipboard, tracing the printed numbers with the tip of an ink pen. "Step onto the left plate. We need a baseline resting EMG on the gastrocnemius before you begin the lateral hops."
"Look at me."
The command was quiet, but it had the density of lead.
I didn't move. My knuckles turned white around the plastic barrel of the pen. "Stuart, we have twenty-six hours left on this protocol. I am not wasting fifteen minutes of departmental time on—"
"I said look at me, Tallulah."
* * *
The sound of my first name in his rough, ruined voice hit the base of my skull like a hammer.
My chin tilted up before my pride could stop the reflex.
Coast was leaning forward across the stainless-steel cart, his broad shoulders blotting out the fluorescent lights behind him. The purple shadow on his cheekbone had faded to a dull yellow, but the jagged scar over his collarbone was visible through the open neck of his training top.
His eyes were burning, locked onto my mouth with a dark, consuming hunger that stripped away every layer of the starch and wool I had wrapped around myself.
"You didn't answer my text on Saturday," he said, his voice dropping into a register so low it was almost a whisper.
"The protocol doesn't require digital correspondence outside clinic hours," I bit out, my breath hitching as my chest rose against the stiff cotton of my lab coat.
"And you didn't answer on Sunday." He took a slow step to the right, testing the edge of the rolling cart. "You spent two days hiding in your apartment because you're terrified of what happened beside that reservoir."
"I was studying," I lied, my throat so tight the words felt like broken glass. "And nothing happened beside the reservoir. A snowplow drove past, you took your hands off me, and I went home. That is the entire clinical record of Friday night."
A dark, dangerous fire flared in the depths of his pale green irises.
"Clinical record?" he murmured.
Before I could register the shift in his weight, Coast’s left hand shot out.
He didn't grab me. He grabbed the tubular steel handle of the rolling instrument cart. With a single, effortless jerk of his forearm, he shoved the seventy-pound stainless cart sideways.
The casters shrieked against the wet rubber matting.
The cart slammed into the side of the hydrotherapy plunge tank with a concussive metallic crash that echoed off the cinderblock walls like a thunderclap.
Clipboards, goniometers, and data sheets went flying, scattering across the wet floor in a chaotic flurry of white paper.
The barricade was gone.
My breath stopped in my throat. I took a panicked step backward, but my hips hit the rigid edge of the high examination table.
Coast closed the four feet of empty space between us in half a stride.
He didn't touch me, but he crowded me back until the small of my spine arched over the black vinyl mat. He planted his large, calloused hands flat against the table on either side of my hips, caging me within the circle of his massive frame.
The heat rolling off him was suffocating, thick with the scent of cedar, sharp athletic friction, and raw, unrestrained male focus.
He leaned down until his face was barely two inches from mine. His jaw was clenched so hard the masseter muscle jumped in violent, continuous spasms. His breath washed over my parted lips, hot and heavy, carrying the faint, clean bite of mint.
"Say that again," he growled, the gravel in his voice scraping raw against the quiet room.
My pulse was thrashing against the side of my neck like an animal caught in a snare. I pressed my palms flat against the cold vinyl beside his hands, digging my fingernails into the material to keep my knees from buckling beneath me.
"Coast," I whispered, the word trembling on an exhale.
"Tell me nothing happened, Tallulah," he rasped, leaning an eighth of an inch closer, his chest grazing the stiff lapels of my lab coat. "Tell me you didn't lean into my hand. Tell me you didn't look at my mouth like you wanted me to tear the breath out of your lungs."
A ragged gasp caught in my throat. The flush crawled up from beneath my heavy sweaters, burning across my neck, setting fire to my cheeks.
I couldn't look away from him. The clinical detachment, the twenty-six hours, the eighteen-thousand-dollar waiver—all of it had burned away into gray ash on the floorboards.
"You said we were done," I breathed, my lips inches from his stubble. "You said next time would be a mistake."
"I lied," Coast whispered, his voice cracking with a fierce, absolute surrender.
He didn't back away. His gaze dropped to my parted lips, his pupils swallowing the last sliver of green in his eyes, his 228-pound frame trembling with the agonizing effort of holding himself back.
"I have spent forty-eight hours with my hands shaking because I didn't finish what we started in that truck," he muttered, his lips brushing the air against my cheek as he spoke. "I am done pretending, Barry. I am done keeping my distance."
My chest heaved against his, the stiff cotton of my coat offering zero protection against the furnace of his body.
Every survival instinct I owned was screaming that I was falling into the blast radius of an unchained enforcer, but as I looked up into the ruined, desperate intensity of his face, the only thing I could feel was the terrifying, undeniable hunger to let the fire take us both.