Chapter 26
Coast POV
The low winter sunlight pushed through the narrow slit between the heavy wool curtains, cutting a sharp, pale gold stripe across the dark pine floorboards.
Outside the window, a light sleet ticked against the double-paned glass, the sound rhythmic and soft against the silence of the timber house.
I lay flat on my back, my left arm extended across the pillow, my resting heart rate settled at forty-six beats per minute. For the first time in four years of college athletics, there was no phantom ache in my right ankle, no bile in my throat, no urge to put my fist through a drywall partition.
Curled against my side, her head pillowed on the meat of my left bicep, was Tallulah.
She was asleep, her breathing slow, even, and warm against my ribs.
Her dark hair was tumbled across my bare shoulder, smelling of clean lavender soap and the sweet, honeyed musk of our shared skin.
One of her bare hands rested over my sternum, her fingers relaxed and curved, rising and falling with every deep breath I drew.
My right hand hovered over the curve of her waist.
The contrast made my throat tighten with an ache that had nothing to do with violence. My hand was huge, the knuckles thick and scarred from bare-knuckle scuffles along the boards, the skin calloused from ten thousand hours of gripping composite stick handles.
Her skin was porcelain, smooth as river stone, marked only by the faint, pale indentations where my fingers had held her hips against the mattress during the dark hours before dawn.
I looked down at her in the quiet gold light.
Out in the arena, my life was a meat grinder.
Hayes barked until his vocal cords bled; Wesley watched my gap control with the cold, appraising stare of a livestock buyer; Arthur stood in concrete tunnels demanding forty thousand dollars of blood money.
In that world, I was just 228 pounds of bone and gristle meant to absorb high-speed trauma.
In this room, she had looked at my scars and called me home.
She had given me her fears, her bankruptcies, her tears, and laid her head over my heart like it was the only safe place left on earth.
A fierce, quiet heat spread behind my breastbone, settling into the marrow of my bones. I brought my hand down, my fingers curling gently around the curve of her hip, my thumb smoothing a slow circle over her skin.
Nothing was touching this room. Nothing.
* * *
Tallulah stirred, a soft, sleepy sigh catching in the back of her throat.
Her eyelashes fluttered, dark and thick against her flushed cheekbones, before her honey-brown eyes blinked open. She didn't flinch from the morning light. She looked up at my jaw, her lips parting in a slow, unhurried smile that hit my ribs with the force of a clean hit.
"You're awake," she whispered, her voice rough and husky from sleep.
"Been awake an hour," I murmured, my thumb tracing the line of her jawline.
She stretched, her spine arching against the flannel sheets with a feline, unconscious grace that pulled the duvet down to her waist. Her skin was warm, flushed pink from the heavy down comforter, her collarbones sharp in the pale sunlight.
"What were you thinking about?" she asked, her hand sliding up from my sternum to tangle her fingers in the hair at my collar.
"You," I rasped.
I shifted my weight, rolling onto my side, crowding her frame with my mass until she was bracketed between my body and the headboard. She didn't retreat. She reached for me, her arms looping around my neck, her thighs parting naturally beneath the covers to make room for my hips.
"Coast," she breathed, her pupils already dilating as my chest met hers.
"Shower," I murmured against her lips, my voice a low, gravelly vibration. "Come with me."
I didn't wait for her to answer. I slid my arms under her back and knees, lifting her off the sheets in a single, fluid motion. She let out a small, breathless gasp, her face burying itself in my neck as I carried her into the ensuite bath.
The bathroom was dark slate and warm cedar, already filling with thick, rolling steam from the walk-in shower.
I set her feet onto the wet stone tiles, stepping into the cascade of hot water with her. The water hit my back in a scalding, rhythmic torrent, soaking my hair, running down the dense ridges of my shoulders to splash over her bare collarbones.
Tallulah gasped as the heat enveloped us, her hands flattening against my wet chest to steady her balance. Her dark hair plastered itself to her shoulders, highlighting the delicate curve of her neck and the rosy flush blooming across her skin.
I didn't rush.
I picked up the bar of cedarwood soap, working a rich lather between my scarred palms.
Slowly, reverently, I began to wash her.
My large hands smoothed over her shoulders, down the slender line of her arms, over her ribs, and across the soft flare of her hips. Every touch was firm, deliberate, grounding her against the wet slate.
Tallulah’s head fell back against the tiled wall, a ragged, shuddering exhale slipping past her parted lips as my thumbs traced the curve of her hipbones.
"Look at me, sweetheart," I commanded, my voice low and thick over the drumming of the water.
Her eyes opened, dark, heavy with a liquid surrender that made my blood pound hard behind my temples.
"Good girl," I murmured, stepping into her space until her thighs were pressed against mine, the friction of wet skin against wet skin sending a jolt straight down my spine.
I lifted her right leg, hooking her knee over my hip, pinning her gently against the warm stone.
She didn't fight the movement. Her arms wrapped around my wet shoulders, her fingers digging hard into my traps as my hips settled against hers with an unhurried, agonizing patience.
"Coast," she cried out, the sound muffled by the roar of the shower as I entered her in a slow, deep glide that stole the air from both our chests.
The heat of the water was nothing compared to the fire between our bodies.
I held her steady, taking her weight on my forearms, my hips moving in a slow, punishing cadence that rocked her against the stone. Every stroke was a claim, a vow hammered into bone and sinew.
"You're mine, Tallulah," I rasped into the crook of her neck, my teeth grazing the skin over her leaping pulse. "Every piece of you. All mine."
"Yours," she sobbed, her hips lifting to meet mine, her heels locking around my thigh under the rushing stream. "Always yours."
"Good girl," I growled, my control snapping as the rhythm turned fierce, driving us both over the edge of the world in a blinding rush of heat and water that left us gasping for air against the wet slate.
* * *
Forty minutes later, the bedroom was warm, smelling of cedar steam and clean laundry.
We sat together on the edge of the unmade bed, wrapped in thick cotton towels, the draft from the window muted by the steady clanking of the cast-iron radiator.
Tallulah leaned against my side, her head resting on my bare shoulder, her damp dark curls tucked behind her ear. Her small hand was tracing the three-inch scar over my left clavicle, her breathing deep and even against my skin.
A quiet, domestic peace filled the room—a stillness so absolute it felt like we were the only two people left on the continent.
I wrapped my right arm around her shoulders, pulling her flush against my ribs, and kissed the crown of her head.
"Wesley wants me in Boston on May first," I said, my voice quiet in the room.
Tallulah’s fingers paused against my scar. She didn't stiffen, but the rhythm of her breathing hitched slightly. "That’s early."
"It's when the rookie conditioning camp starts," I murmured, turning my head to look down at her profile. "Northeastern’s biomechanics lab is three miles from TD Garden. I already checked the transit line."
She looked up, her honey-dark eyes searching my face with a mixture of disbelief and quiet wonder. "You checked the transit line?"
"I checked the housing too," I rasped, my thumb smoothing over her temple.
"A two-bedroom brownstone in Charlestown.
Hardwood floors, a bay window for your desk, and ten minutes from the campus hospital.
You won't have to work in a print shop, Tallulah.
You won't have to grade a single freshman paper for rent money. "
Her eyes filled with a sudden, brilliant sheen of moisture, her lower lip trembling slightly. "Coast... that's too much. You can't just—"
"I can," I cut in, my voice dropping into that low, immovable register that brooked no debate.
"I sign that entry-level contract on August fifteenth.
The ninety-five-thousand-dollar bonus clears forty-eight hours later.
Half of it goes to Julian's trust in Rochester.
The other half buys that lease. You're coming with me, Barry.
We're not doing long distance, and we're not hiding in basements anymore. "
A soft, breathy laugh broke from her lips, half-sob, half-relief, as she buried her face in the crook of my neck, her arms tightening around my torso with a strength that rivaled my own.
"Okay," she whispered into my skin. "Okay."
I held her against my chest, closing my eyes, letting the absolute rightness of her presence sink into my bones.
Yet as my gaze drifted past her shoulder toward the frosted bedroom window, where dark, bruised storm clouds were rolling over the Adirondack ridge from the north, a cold, heavy premonition tightened in the pit of my stomach.
The peace was too complete. The silence was too clean.
Out there, forty-one days from the Frozen Four, Derek Mercer was waiting. Arthur was waiting.
And somewhere in the dark machinery of this university, the trap was already beginning to close.