Chapter 23
Tallulah POV
High above the ice sheet, tucked into the shadow of the press box, I held my leather-bound research notebook clamped against my ribs. Down on the surface, bathed in the blinding glare of the halogen banks, the Garrison varsity team was running five-on-five transition drills at full game speed.
Coast Stuart was an absolute, terrifying force of nature.
Two rows below me, the bleachers were packed with dark wool overcoats.
Grant Wesley sat flanked by five professional scouts—two wearing Calgary Flames pins on their lapels, one from San Jose, and two from Montreal. They held stopwatches, electronic tablets, and thick draft dossiers stamped with NHL league seals.
"The lateral recovery is flawless," the scout with the Calgary lanyard muttered, writing a note on his screen. "Thorne’s department did a hell of a job. Stuart’s playing at two hundred and thirty pounds without losing half a step in his transitions."
"He's NHL-ready right now," the San Jose scout agreed, leaning back with a dry whistle.
"Calgary’s offering a first-rounder to acquire his exclusive negotiating rights before August. If they get him out to Alberta in May, he steps onto their top four pairing with three million guaranteed across his three-year entry-level package. "
A sudden, sharp wave of cold nausea rolled through the pit of my stomach.
My throat contracted on a dry swallow. The bile rose sour behind my molars, hot and acidic, forcing me to lower my head between my knees.
I took a slow, trembling sip from my metal water bottle, letting the freezing liquid wash over my tongue, blaming the sickness on two cups of black coffee and the peanut butter toast I had skipped at dawn.
Calgary. Alberta.
Two thousand, four hundred miles away. Across an international border, across a continent.
I looked down at my hands. My fingertips were stained with black printer ink from my morning lab hours; the cuff of my coat was frayed at the seam.
In fifty-one days, the NCAA tournament would end. Coast would graduate into private planes, six-figure signing bonuses, and professional locker rooms in cities I had only ever seen on weather maps.
And I would still be here. In the Adirondacks. An unpaid graduate fellow with eighteen thousand dollars of tuition debt and three part-time jobs, trying to keep my brother from being evicted from a track dorm.
The physical reality of the gulf between us struck my sternum with the weight of an anvil.
Down on the ice, Coast circled behind the net, his chest heaving beneath his blue Garrison sweater, dark sweat dripping from his temples. He looked up into the dark stands, his pale green eyes cutting through sixty yards of cold air to find me in Section 108.
He didn't wave. He just held my stare for three seconds, his jaw setting, before Hayes blew the whistle for blue-line sprints.
I closed my notebook, my knuckles white around the binding, the nausea in my throat refusing to fade.
* * *
The cab of Coast’s truck was warm, but the silence inside was an iron vice.
The winter dusk had settled over Lake Placid, painting the snowbanks along the road a bruised, slate-blue. The heavy diesel engine hummed beneath the floorboards, its low vibration rattling through my boots into my ankles.
Coast drove with his left hand on the steering wheel, his right arm resting over the center console.
His large, calloused palm slid across the leather, coming to rest heavy and warm over my denim-clad knee. His thumb stroked a slow, familiar circle against my leg, the heat of his skin bleeding through the fabric.
I stiffened.
It wasn't an intentional refusal. It was a purely autonomic reflex—the sudden, defensive freezing of a nervous system trying to brace for an impact it knew was coming. My knee pulled an inch to the right, pressing against the passenger door, my gaze fixed on the frosted glass of the side window.
Coast’s hand stopped moving.
His fingers didn't leave my leg, but the pressure turned firm, unyielding.
He didn't say a word. He flicked the turn signal, swung the truck off the main road, and pulled hard into the gravel driveway of his timber house. He shoved the transmission into park, cut the ignition, and let the silence drop over us like a wet blanket.
He turned in his seat.
His 6'4" frame blotted out the blue dusk filtering through the windshield, his broad shoulders crowding my space until the scent of cedar, clean sweat, and leather filled my lungs.
"What happened in the arena, Tallulah?"
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, stripped of all patience.
I kept my hands clenched tightly in my lap, digging my fingernails into the thick waxed cotton of my messenger bag. "Nothing happened. You had a good practice. Your lateral deceleration was under two percent asymmetry."
"Don't give me numbers, Barry," he growled, leaning forward until his face was eight inches from mine. "You've been pulling away since I picked you up at the equipment bay. You wouldn't look at me in the hall, and you just flinched when I touched your leg. What did Mercer say to you?"
"Mercer didn't say anything!"
The words tore out of my throat, louder than I intended, vibrating with a raw, jagged edge that made my vocal cords ache.
Coast went very still, his pale green eyes narrowing as he studied the rapid, shallow rise of my ribs beneath my coat. "Then what is it?"
My throat tightened until drawing breath felt like swallowing broken glass. The dam I had kept sealed behind clinical terms and academic schedules cracked right down the middle, spilling four weeks of buried panic into the confined cab.
"The Calgary scouts were sitting two rows in front of me, Coast," I whispered, the words shaking so violently they could barely hold their shape.
"They were talking about their draft board.
They were talking about three million dollars, and two starting blue-line slots, and moving you to western Canada in May. "
Coast’s jaw clenched, but he didn't interrupt.
"In fifty-one days, this season is over," I said, a tear finally escaping my lower lash to run hot and humiliating down my cheek.
"You're going to the NHL. You're going to private planes, and multi-million-dollar contracts, and cities on the other side of North America.
And I am staying here. With an unpaid fellowship, and twenty credits, and three print shop shifts a week. "
I clutched my bag against my stomach, trying to stop the cold, sickening flutter in my gut.
"I don't want to be the college girl you look back on with mild affection while you live your real life, Coast," I sobbed, my voice breaking into jagged pieces. "I can't be a footnote. I love you too much to watch you pack a bag and leave me behind on this ice."
* * *
The words hung in the cab for half a second.
Then Coast detonated.
He unbuckled his seatbelt with a violent click, surged across the center console, and hauled me out of my seat by my waist before my boots could touch the floorboards.
"Coast—"
He kicked the passenger door open, carried me down the steps through the snow, and shoved through the front door of the timber house, kicking the heavy oak slab shut behind him.
The deadbolt engaged with a concussive bang.
Before my breath could catch up with my lungs, he backed me hard against the pine paneling of the entryway, trapping me between the wood and the immovable furnace of his body.
His large, scarred hands came up, clamping onto the sides of my jaw with an urgent, desperate pressure that tilted my face toward the dim amber light of the hall lamp. His thumbs smoothed over my wet cheekbones, wiping the tears away with rough, trembling force.
"Look at me," he roared, the sound a low, furious rumble that rattled straight through my teeth.
I looked.
His eyes were wild, the pale green irises burning with a terrifying, unhinged ferocity that stripped every defense I had left down to bare bone. His chest was heaving against mine, his jaw muscles locked in violent spasms, his breath washing scalding hot over my trembling lips.
"Stop writing endings we haven't agreed to, Tallulah," he rasped, each word driven home like an iron spike. "Stop it right now."
"Coast, the scouts—"
"To hell with the scouts!" he snarled, his forehead slamming gently against mine, his hands shifting into my hair to hold my skull locked against his. "You think I give a damn about Calgary? You think I give a damn about three million dollars in Alberta?"
My breath hitched on a ragged gasp. "They have an open roster spot—"
"I turned them down on Friday afternoon," he growled against my lips, the confession dropping between us with the force of an avalanche.
My heart stopped beating. "What?"
"Wesley brought me Calgary's trade inquiry on Friday afternoon," Coast whispered, his voice cracking with a fierce, absolute devotion that made my knees go slack against his thighs.
"I told him to throw it in the trash. I told him I don't skate west of the Hudson River.
I told him my rights stay with Boston, or I don't sign an NHL contract at all. "
The world seemed to spin on its axis, the air leaving my lungs in a stunned, disbelieving rush. "You... you turned down guaranteed NHL ice time?"
"Because you applied to Northeastern," he rasped, his thumbs pressing hard into my jawline, forcing my gaze to stay locked with his.
"Because you applied to Boston University.
Because Julian is in Rochester, and you are in my blood, and I am not putting three thousand miles of ice between me and the only two people who matter in this world. "
Tears spilled over my lashes, hot and blinding, soaking into the rough callouses of his thumbs.
"Coast..."
"You are not a footnote, Barry," he whispered, his voice thick with a ruined, unshakable possessiveness that brought a sob from my chest. "You are not a chapter in a college town.
You think I let you touch my scars, you think I let you sleep in my bed and take over my kitchen, just to shake your hand on graduation day and walk away? "
He pulled my face half an inch closer, his lips brushing the wet curve of my mouth.
"You're mine, Tallulah," he commanded, the praise sliding through the fury like warm steel. "Good girl. Breathe for me. Stop crying and look at me. You're coming with me. We are not negotiable."
"Coast," I wept, my hands flying up to wrap around his thick neck, my fingers knotting into the dark hair at his collar.
He didn't give me time to answer with words.
He crushed his mouth down onto mine in a fierce, breathless, starving kiss that stole the rest of the oxygen from my chest. It tasted of salt, cold winter air, and an ironclad claiming that burned away every terror I had carried since the gala.
I clung to his broad shoulders, my body arching into his mass, our hearts hammering in wild, bruised unison against the pine wall, blissfully blind to the shadow descending upon the northern ridge.