Chapter 21
Tallulah POV
The concrete corridor outside the main varsity rink smelled of frozen slush, ammonia, and twenty gallons of floor sealant drying under yellow halogen lamps.
I carried my diagnostic clipboard pressed tight against my ribs, my heavy boots scraping the salt crust along the rubber runners. My dark hair was pinned flat with four industrial steel clips, my oversized white lab coat buttoned to the collarbone.
At the intersection of the athletic training pavilion, Coach Bramwell Hayes was standing beside a dry-erase board, barking instructions at two junior forwards.
Standing half a pace behind the coach, his arms crossed over a dark gray Garrison Hockey long-sleeve, was Coast.
His right ankle was free of the heavy brace, wrapped only in thin white athletic tape. He stood with his weight balanced evenly over both hips, tall, immovable, the undisputed sovereign of the blue line.
As I approached the turn, Coast’s eyes flicked toward me.
His gaze was cold. It was distant, flat, stripped of every trace of the man who had groaned my name into the dark seventy-two hours ago.
He didn't nod. He didn't drop his chin. He listened to Hayes explain a defensive zone face-off play, looking right past my left shoulder as if I were a piece of cleaning equipment being wheeled toward the laundry room.
"Good morning, Captain Stuart," I said, keeping my vocal cords dead and flat as I passed.
"Barry," he rasped, his voice dismissing me with a single syllable.
Nobody in that hallway blinked. Hayes didn't pause his marker stroke. The two forwards didn't look up from their skates.
Yet beneath the stiff cotton of my coat, my body betrayed the lie.
The moment I stepped within six feet of him, the skin along my arms prickled with a sudden rush of heat. The carotid artery at the side of my neck thumped with a heavy, slow cadence that made my throat feel tight.
I kept my stride even, walking past them down the metal stairs, through the fire doors, and into the windowless box of Sub-Level 2.
* * *
The steel fire door unlatched at 5:28 AM.
Coast stepped over the threshold, caught the heavy door with his heel, and threw the deadbolt.
The brass mechanism locked into place with a sharp, heavy clack.
In the time it took the latch to set, the icy, arrogant captain vanished.
Coast dropped his black duffel on the floor with a concussive thud, crossed the twelve feet of rubber matting in three strides, and stepped up behind me at the diagnostic console.
Before I could set my stylus down, his large, calloused hands came around my waist, his thick fingers splaying wide over my hipbones, gathering the fabric of my lab coat in his palms. He pulled me backward against his chest, locking my lower back against the dense, burning wall of his torso.
My shoulders slumped as the tension drained from my spine in a long, shuddering exhale.
I let my head fall back against his shoulder.
Coast buried his face in the crook of my neck, his lips pressing a slow, heavy kiss to the sensitive hollow beneath my ear. He drew in a deep, ragged breath, inhaling the scent of my skin, his stubble grazing my collarbone as his chest expanded against my back.
"You walked right past me," he murmured, his voice a low, rough rumble that vibrated straight through my sternum.
"Hayes was standing two feet away," I whispered, leaning my weight into him, my hands coming down to rest over his large, scarred knuckles on my hips.
"I know," he rasped into my skin. "Doesn't mean I liked it."
He reached into his jacket with his left hand, setting a stainless-steel thermos and a small brown paper bag onto the console beside my keyboard.
"Dark roast. Two sugars. And a blueberry scone from the diner across from the rink."
My throat tightened with an ache of sudden tenderness. I turned in the circle of his arms, looking up into his face.
Up close, the cold public mask was gone. His pale green eyes were soft, heavy with the quiet, possessive warmth that had filled his bedroom all weekend. A faint shadow of fatigue sat beneath his lower lashes, but the brutal, self-destructive tension that had defined him in January had melted away.
"You went to the diner at five in the morning?" I asked, raising a hand to brush a stray lock of dark hair off his brow.
Coast leaned into my palm, his jaw muscle relaxing under the light pressure of my fingers. "The baker opens the side door for me at four-thirty. You worked until midnight on your thesis. You needed sugar."
"Coast..."
"Eat the scone, Tallulah," he murmured, his hands sliding down to the curves of my thighs, lifting me effortlessly onto the edge of the aluminum table.
He stepped between my parted knees, his broad shoulders blocking out the fluorescent glare, his hands framing my face. His thumbs smoothed over my cheekbones, his gaze dropping to my lips with an unhurried, devastating focus that made my breath catch in my throat.
"You're beautiful when you're bossing people around," he rasped, his lips hovering a millimeter from mine. "Even when you're looking right through me."
"I wasn't looking through you," I breathed, my fingers knotting into the collar of his training shirt. "I was trying to keep from touching you in front of your coach."
A dark, slow smile curved the corners of his mouth.
He closed the distance, his mouth taking mine in a deep, slow morning kiss. It was thick with the taste of sweet coffee, heavy with a quiet, sacred devotion that made my fingers curl tight into his shoulders.
I opened for him without hesitation, my head tilting back as his tongue swept deep, claiming my mouth with the unhurried authority of a man who knew he didn't have to fight for my surrender anymore.
* * *
A brass key scraped inside the exterior lock of the fire door.
The sound was a gunshot in the quiet basement.
My heart vaulted straight into my throat. The adrenaline hit my bloodstream like ice water, my hands instantly shoving hard against Coast’s chest to scramble off the table.
Coast didn't shove back, but he didn't panic.
He kept one heavy, calloused hand anchored firmly to my waist, stepping half a pace sideways so his massive 228-pound frame stood directly between my flushed face and the doorway. His jaw hardened into granite, his green eyes narrowing to slits as the deadbolt turned.
The steel door swung open.
Kip Callahan stepped into the room, holding a roll of black friction tape and a pair of goalie skate laces.
He didn't make it two paces.
Kip stopped dead on the rubber mat. His mouth fell slightly open, his dark eyes darting from Coast’s hand locked around my hip to my disheveled hair, then to the stainless thermos sitting beside my unclipped lab coat on the console.
The silence in Sub-Level 2 dropped to an absolute, suffocating zero.
My breath locked behind my teeth. My fingers clenched into the denim of my trousers, every survival instinct I owned screaming that my fellowship had just detonated before breakfast.
Kip looked at Coast. Then he looked at me.
Slowly, deliberately, Kip reached behind his back, grabbed the heavy steel door handle, pulled it shut until the latch clicked, and threw the deadbolt from the inside.
He turned around, his face pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and sheer, unadulterated fury.
"Are you out of your goddamn minds?" Kip whispered.
His voice didn't carry past the cinderblock, but the venom in it was lethal. He pointed the roll of tape straight at Coast’s chest.
"I came down here to grab extra toe-ties from the training lockers because the supply closet upstairs was locked. What if that had been Hayes? What if that had been Corinne Vane?"
Coast didn't drop his hand from my waist. He stood tall, towering over his roommate, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that held zero apology. "It wasn't Hayes. It was you."
"You idiot," Kip bit out, stepping closer, his knuckles white around the tape. "Do you have any idea what Mercer would do with this? If Mercer saw your hand on her hip in this room, he’d have the compliance committee in Thorne’s office before the morning skate finished. They’d strip your captaincy.
They’d pull her fellowship waiver. They would burn her whole academic career to the ground just to keep you off the ice in the quarterfinals. "
Kip turned on me, his eyes blazing with a fierce, terrified loyalty that cut straight through my panic.
"And you, Barry," Kip rasped, his chest heaving beneath his team hoodie. "I thought you were the smart one. You're supposed to have a brain like an IBM mainframe. You're letting this caveman compromise four years of work because he looks good in a suit?"
"Kip," Coast growled, stepping forward, his broad chest rising like a wall between Kip and me. "That's enough."
"No, it isn't enough!" Kip snapped, holding his ground against the captain.
"I live with you, Coast. I watched you carry Julian into the emergency room four years ago.
I watched you bleed through three seasons of junior hockey without taking a single painkiller because you thought you deserved to hurt.
I am not going to watch you throw your NHL contract away sixty days before the draft. "
Kip looked between us, his chest heaving, his gaze dropping to the way Coast’s fingers were still curved protectively around my hip, refusing to release me even under the threat of ruin.
A slow, devastating understanding settled across Kip’s face. The anger drained out of him, replaced by a heavy, exhausted gravity.
"You're in love with her," Kip whispered.
It wasn't an accusation anymore. It was an execution sentence.
Coast held his roommate’s stare. He didn't blink. He didn't deny it.
"Keep it to yourself, Kip," Coast rasped, his voice dropping into a register so low and final it seemed to vibrate through the concrete footer. "Nobody knows. Nobody touches her."
Kip stood there for five long seconds, his fingers squeezing the roll of tape until the cardboard core crumpled. He looked at me, seeing the absolute, unyielding devotion in my eyes, before letting out a long, ragged exhale through his teeth.
"If anyone asks," Kip muttered, turning back toward the heavy steel door, "I didn't find the toe-ties. But if you two don't lock this door every single second you're down here, I will personally padlock the outside handles. Don't ruin her, Stuart."
Kip threw the deadbolt, slipped through the gap into the corridor, and pulled the door shut behind him.
The latch clicked.
The basement returned to silence.
I stood beside the console, my pulse thudding like a hammer against my ribs, looking up into Coast’s dark, unreadable eyes.
The sanctuary held, but the perimeter had shrunk to a razor’s edge.