Chapter 30
Coast POV
The sharp, chemical tang of fresh friction tape filled the quiet living room, biting through the smell of curing cedar logs and the dry heat radiating from the cast-iron stove.
I sat on a low wooden stool by the coffee table, a composite stick resting across my knees. With slow, rhythmic pulls of my forearms, I wrapped the blade from heel to toe, overlapping each layer of black adhesive by an exact sixteenth of an inch.
For four years, this pre-game ritual had been an exercise in controlled rage.
I used to tape my sticks like a soldier checking his rifle before an assault, my jaw clenched so hard my molars ached, my skull pounding with the phantom noise of Plattsburgh, preparing to use my body as a battering ram to balance Julian’s ledger.
Tonight, the rage was gone.
My masseter muscles were loose. My resting pulse was a slow, heavy thrum against my ribs, beating at forty-six beats per minute.
Every stride I took tomorrow night, every hit I delivered along the half-wall, had a single destination: Boston.
The ninety-five-thousand-dollar signing bonus that would fund Julian’s trust in Rochester, and the brownstone in Charlestown where Tallulah Barry would never have to work a midnight print shop shift again.
I smoothed a puck of paraffin wax over the fresh tape, sealing the fibers against the wet slush of the rink, then set the stick against the wall beside two others.
I looked across the room.
Tallulah was sitting on the far corner of the leather sofa, buried beneath the oversized navy wool throw I had brought from my bed. She was wearing my faded gray Garrison crewneck, her dark hair pinned loosely with those familiar brass drafting clips.
She hadn't moved in twenty minutes.
She was staring into the red coals glowing behind the stove hatch, her small hands clutched tightly together in her lap, pressed flat against her lower abdomen.
Her face had the pale, fragile translucence of winter parchment, dark purple shadows bruising the delicate hollows beneath her lower lashes.
A sharp, protective ache tightened behind my breastbone.
She had been quiet since I brought her home from the arena yesterday evening. When I asked about her afternoon lab hours, she had given me short, clipped answers, her throat working on dry swallows, her gaze sliding away from mine toward the floorboards.
Nerves, my brain supplied, watching the faint rise and fall of her shoulders. She's carrying the weight of my game. She’s terrified Vane is going to pull her fellowship.
I stood up from the stool, my boots making no sound on the woven rug, and crossed the room.
* * *
I didn't ask. I sat down on the leather cushion beside her, reached out, and scooped her off the sofa into my lap.
Tallulah let out a soft, breathy gasp as her body met mine, but she didn't resist. She collapsed against my chest, her forehead sinking into the crook of my neck, her small frame curling into the bracket of my hips as if she were running out of air.
My arms came around her waist, locking her flush against my ribs, my large hands splaying wide over her back to seal out the draft from the windows.
Her skin was cold. Even through the heavy fleece of my crewneck, a fine, continuous tremor ran through the slender muscles of her arms, her hands remaining clenched against her stomach.
I buried my face in the dark, fragrant thickness of her hair, inhaling the clean almond scent of her scalp, letting the heat of my chest pour into her frame.
"You're shaking, sweetheart," I murmured, my voice a low, gravelly vibration that rattled through her collarbone.
She didn't speak. Her fingers uncurled from her stomach, slowly rising to knot into the cotton of my shirt, her nails digging into the meat of my lats with a desperate, white-knuckled grip that made my breath hitch.
I shifted my weight, bringing my right hand up to stroke down the long curve of her spine, using the deep, rhythmic pressure I used to calm myself before a game.
"Look at me, Tallulah," I commanded softly.
She kept her forehead pressed against my neck, her breathing shallow and fast against my skin.
"Tallulah. Look at me."
Slowly, reluctantly, she tilted her head back.
Her honey-dark eyes met mine in the amber firelight. They were wide, dilated, swimming with a silent, agonizing intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Faint red rims marked her lower lids; the delicate skin over her cheekbones looked paper-thin, stretched taut over bone.
"Good girl," I murmured, my thumb reaching up to brush over the soft, bruised curve of her lower lip. "Breathe with me. Just like that. In and out."
Her chest expanded against mine on a ragged, shuddering inhale, her lips trembling beneath the rough callous of my thumb.
"You're acting like it's you skating forty minutes against Harvard tomorrow," I rasped, trying to coax the ghost of that sharp, wicked smile back onto her mouth. "You think I can't handle a couple of Ivy League forwards?"
A choked, strangled sound broke from her throat—halfway between a laugh and a sob—her eyes closing tightly as a tear slipped over her dark lashes, hot and silent against my thumb.
My hand went still against her jaw.
The humor died in my chest, replaced by an iron-hard focus that pulled my brow into a crease.
"Talk to me," I ordered, my voice dropping into that quiet, immovable register that brooked no retreat. "Is it Vane? Did compliance send another memo to the lab?"
She kept her eyes shut, her head shaking in tiny, spastic motions against my palm. "No. Vane didn't send anything."
"Then what is it?" I pressed, leaning down until my stubble grazed her wet cheek. "What's hurting you, Tallulah?"
"Nothing," she whispered, the word cracking into jagged shards against my jaw. "Nothing hurts, Coast. I just... I want you to win tomorrow. I want you to get everything you've ever bled for."
* * *
The raw, unvarnished devotion in her voice hit my sternum with the force of a high-speed collision, knocking the air clean out of my lungs.
I cupped both sides of her jaw in my large, calloused palms, my thumbs wiping the dampness from her cheekbones with an unhurried, reverent pressure that forced her to open her eyes and look directly into mine.
"Listen to me," I rasped, each syllable heavy with the weight of an unbreakable vow. "Tomorrow night, the final buzzer sounds. We beat Harvard. We move to the championship next Saturday. And the hiding is finished."
Her breath caught sharply behind her teeth, her dark pupils flaring wide. "Coast..."
"I mean it," I growled softly, my forehead pressing against hers, our breaths mingling in the warm, dim air.
"I'm sick of watching you walk past me in the hall like you're a stranger.
I'm sick of having Callahan guard the door while I hold you.
When the game ends tomorrow, I am walking off that ice, I am taking your hand in front of Wesley, in front of the cameras, in front of Hayes, and I am putting you in my truck. "
A ragged gasp tore from her lips, her hands tightening their grip on the back of my neck until her fingers trembled.
"You don't have to carry your family alone anymore, Tallulah," I whispered, my voice thick with a fierce, absolute certainty that seemed to shake the floorboards beneath our boots.
"The Boston contract is sitting on Wesley's desk.
The Charlestown lease is ours on August fifteenth.
No more basements. No more looking over your shoulder.
You belong to me, and the whole damn world is going to know it tomorrow night. "
Tears spilled over her lashes in a silent, blinding cascade, soaking into the calloused skin of my palms.
She looked at me with an expression so raw, so shattered with love and an agonizing, unspoken grief, that my throat locked tight around a knot of sudden emotion.
She didn't argue. She didn't use her sharp intellect to point out bylaws or draft risks.
She surged forward on my lap, her mouth crashing into mine in a fierce, breathless, starving kiss that stole the rest of the oxygen from my chest.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was desperate.
It was wild and frantic, her tongue tangling with mine, her teeth catching my lower lip as if she were trying to pour her entire soul through our joined mouths before the sun came up.
She kissed me like a woman drowning in deep water, her small hands clawing at my shoulders, pulling my heavy weight down into her heat.
A low, guttural groan tore from my chest. I answered her hunger with my own, my arms clamping around her waist, lifting her hips closer, claiming her mouth with an unyielding, territorial fury that promised her the universe.
When we finally tore apart for air, her forehead dropped against the hollow of my throat, her chest heaving in wild, uneven gasps against my ribs.
I held her in the amber shadows of the living room, my chin resting on the top of her dark head, my large hand smoothing down the curve of her back to rest heavy and warm over her hip.
The storm howled outside the timber siding, rattling the heavy glass, but inside the circle of my arms, she was safe.
I closed my eyes, letting the slow, steady thud of my heart match the rhythm of her breathing, absolutely certain that the battle was already won.
Forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours, and I would give her the world.
I didn't know that fifty miles to the north, Arthur Cross was holding an envelope with her name on it.
I didn't know that in the dark of our bedroom, beneath the bathroom counter, a digital test was waiting in the box.
And I didn't know that tomorrow night, the ice beneath our feet was going to split wide open, swallowing us whole.