Chapter 27
Tallulah POV
The paper cup was burning hot through its cardboard sleeve, the dark roast coffee sending up a thin plume of steam into the drafty brick corridor of the science annex.
I had been awake since four, finishing the kinematic acceleration graphs for Friday’s ECAC semifinal against Harvard. My vision felt gritty around the margins, a dull ache throbbing behind my right temple that I attributed to sixteen hours of staring at high-resolution motion telemetry.
I lifted the plastic lid to take my first sip.
The scent of roasted Colombian beans hit my olfactory nerve—and my stomach dropped off a cliff.
A violent, icy spasm seized my diaphragm. The air in my throat turned sour, a thick wave of acidic heat rushing up my esophagus with a speed that knocked the breath clean out of my lungs.
The corridor tilted ten degrees to the left. The linoleum seemed to rise to meet my boots as gray static swarmed the edges of my vision. A slick, greasy cold sweat broke out along my hairline and down the back of my neck.
I shoved the coffee cup onto the top of a metal recycling bin, spun on my heel, and lunged through the heavy door of the private staff restroom beside the faculty lounge.
I barely reached the porcelain basin before my stomach convulsed.
I gripped the cold ceramic rim with both hands, my knuckles turning white as my body dry-heaved in violent, spastic surges that left my abdominal wall burning.
Nothing came up except bitter yellow bile that scalded the back of my tongue.
My knees trembled against the cabinet baseboards, my ribs heaving in ragged, shallow gasps as I struggled to drag oxygen past my constricted windpipe.
The episode lasted forty seconds.
When the spasms finally subsided, my hands were vibrating so hard I could barely turn the chrome tap.
I cupped freezing water in my palms, splashing it over my burning face, letting the runoff soak the collar of my thermal shirt. I dragged a coarse brown paper towel across my mouth, staring at my reflection in the fluorescent-lit glass.
My face was the color of skim milk. Dark, bruised shadows hollowed out the skin beneath my lower lashes; my lips were pale, stripped of all color.
Gastritis, my brain supplied instantly, the clinical defense slamming into place like a steel shutter. Two weeks of skipping breakfast, four cups of dark roast a day, and eighty hours of thesis drafting. It's an acute stress ulcer.
I crumpled the paper towel, tossed it into the bin, and pressed my cold hands to my cheekbones until a faint, artificial flush returned to the skin.
I had a mandatory sensor audit in The Iron Foundry at 8:45 AM. I didn't have time for a weak stomach.
* * *
The subterranean players' lounge outside the training pavilion smelled of damp gear, rubber flooring, and the eucalyptus balm the trainers used on groin pulls.
I walked through the double doors, clutching my diagnostic laptop case against my chest to mask the faint tremor in my forearms.
Coast was standing near the whiteboard in the corner, wearing black training fleece and gray sweatpants, reviewing a printed sheet of Harvard’s neutral-zone forecheck schemes with a dry-erase marker capped in his left hand.
The moment the door latch clicked, his head snapped around.
His pale green eyes locked onto my face—and the marker dropped onto the table with a sharp plastic clatter.
He didn't look at the other two defensemen sitting on the leather sofa. He didn't look at Coach Hayes’s clipboard on the desk. He crossed the room in four long, unhurried strides, his broad shoulders cutting through the drafty air, stopping inches from my boots.
He didn't ask a question. He reached out, his large, calloused hand sliding beneath the strap of my laptop case, lifting the heavy bag off my shoulder with a single, effortless motion.
"You're gray as slate, Tallulah," he rasped, his voice dropping into that low, flat register that brooked no argument.
"I'm fine," I lied, though my voice sounded paper-thin even to my own ears. "I just had a busy morning in the lab."
Coast didn't answer. He caught my left elbow in a firm, warm grip, steering me out of the main lounge into the private video annex behind the coaches' office. He pulled the heavy door shut, clicked the interior latch, and guided me toward the leather bench against the wall.
"Sit down," he ordered softly.
My knees gave way the second the leather met my thighs, my spine sinking into the cushion as a fresh wave of lightheadedness made the room swim.
Coast didn't stay standing. He dropped heavily to both knees on the carpet in front of me, his massive 228-pound frame sinking down until his chest was level with my knees.
He reached out, taking both of my hands into his large, rough palms. His skin was scorching hot, radiating that steady, furnace-level athletic warmth that always cut straight through my chills.
He began to rub my fingers between his hands, working circulation back into my knuckles with deep, rhythmic strokes.
"Your hands are like ice," he murmured, his brow pulling together in a sharp, protective crease. "Your skin is clammy. What happened to you?"
"My stomach rebelled against the coffee," I whispered, the exhaustion finally dragging my shoulders down. "It's just mid-semester burnout, Coast. I haven't slept properly since Sunday."
Coast let out a low, rough sound from his chest.
He reached into his duffel bag on the floor, pulling out a sealed plastic bottle of ginger ale and a small sleeve of saltine crackers he kept for post-skate sugar crashes. He cracked the seal on the bottle, holding it to my lips, his hand steadying the plastic while I took two small, cool swallows.
Then he unwrapped two crackers, pressing one gently between my fingers.
"Eat the cracker, sweetheart," he commanded, his gravelly voice dropping into a thick, tender rasp that vibrated against my kneecaps. "Good girl. Just half of it. Breathe for me."
I chewed the dry saltine, the bland starch settling the residual acid in my throat.
Coast reached up, unzipping his heavy navy Garrison varsity hoodie, peeling the fleece off his broad shoulders, and draping the thick, warm fabric over my frame. The scent of him—clean cedar, sharp friction tape, and his skin—engulfed me, wrapping around my senses like an iron blanket.
He stayed on his knees, his large hands resting flat against my shins, looking up at me with an unmasked, ferocious vigilance that made my eyes sting with sudden moisture.
"You're not going to the print shop this afternoon," he murmured, his thumbs smoothing over the fabric of my trousers. "You're going home to my bed. You're going to sleep until six o'clock, and I'll bring dinner from the diner."
"Coast, I have thirty pages of freshman exams to grade—"
"I don't give a damn about freshman exams," he rasped, leaning forward until his forehead rested against my knee. "Look at you. You're running yourself into the ground for this university, and you're shivering in a heated room. Let me take care of you today."
A choked, ragged breath caught in my throat. I rested my hand against the nape of his neck, my fingers burying themselves in his dark, damp hair. "Okay," I whispered. "Just for a few hours."
* * *
A sharp double-knock sounded on the frosted glass of the annex door.
"Stuart," an assistant coach called out from the hallway. "Hayes needs you at the video monitor. Second-period penalty kill review. Two minutes."
Coast lifted his head, his jaw tightening with irritation, but the urgency in the coach's tone was clear.
He stood up from the carpet, towering over the bench, leaning down to press a firm, lingering kiss to the center of my forehead. His lips were hot against my cool skin.
"Don't move from that bench," he ordered softly, his pale green eyes locking with mine. "I'll be back in five minutes to walk you to the truck."
"I won't move," I promised.
Coast slipped out the door, the latch clicking shut behind him, leaving me alone in the quiet, dim room.
I leaned my head back against the wall, drawing the heavy fleece of his hoodie tighter around my chest. The nausea had receded to a dull, heavy ache low in my abdomen—not a cramp, but an unfamiliar, dragging weight that felt strange against my pelvic bones.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone to cancel my afternoon lab hours.
I unlocked the screen, opening my calendar app to check next week’s regional travel schedule.
My thumb hovered over the digital display.
Below the schedule was a small, circular icon: my personal cycle-tracking widget.
A red exclamation point sat in the center of the ring.
My breath stopped.
I tapped the icon, the application expanding to show the monthly calendar grid.
CYCLE STATUS: 4 DAYS OVERDUE.
LAST ESTIMATED ONSET: FEbrUARY 6.
PREDICTED CYCLE START: MARCH 1.
My heart gave a single, violent, concussive leap that slammed hard against the base of my skull.
The room went dead silent.
The hum of the ventilation shafts, the distant rumble of skates on ice, the sound of coaches shouting in the main hallway—all of it vanished, swallowed by a high, piercing ring that filled my ears like a siren.
I stared at the screen, my vision blurring, my fingers going completely numb.
I did the math.
My cycle had never been late. Not during the bankruptcy, not during finals week, not during sixteen-hour lab shifts. It was a twenty-eight-day clock, mechanical and unyielding.
I scrolled back three weeks on the digital grid.
Friday, February 14.
The night of the blizzard.
The timber bedroom. The down comforter. Coast’s 228-pound frame hovering over mine, his scarred hands pinning mine above my head, his voice ruined and ragged in the dark as he claimed my body for the first time without a barrier.
11:45 PM.
Exactly twenty days ago.
My hand left the phone.
Slowly, in absolute, paralyzed terror, my trembling fingers slid down beneath the heavy navy fleece of his hoodie.
My palm flattened over the soft curve of my lower abdomen, resting against the denim of my trousers, right above my womb.
Beneath my hand, deep within the muscle and tissue of my body, the strange, dragging warmth hummed with undeniable, cellular authority.
It wasn't an ulcer. It wasn't the flu. It wasn't burnout.
My chin tilted down, my lungs refusing to draw air, my pulse pounding with a terrifying, deafening rhythm that seemed to shake the timber walls of the arena.
I was carrying Coast Stuart's child.