Chapter 13
Nick
The engine of the Range Rover hummed, a low, steady vibration that traveled up through the leather seats and settled in my bones. It was the only sound in the world.
Outside the tinted glass, Maine was doing its best impression of a monochrome painting. The sky was a flat, slate grey, indistinguishable from the ocean churning violently against the rocks below. The wind was whipping the stunted pines that clung to the cliff edge, bending them into submission.
It was desolate. It was freezing. It was perfect.
I had driven north for two hours. I hadn’t looked at the GPS. I hadn’t picked a destination. I just drove until the road turned to gravel, and the gravel turned to dirt, and the dirt ended at this precipice overlooking the Atlantic.
Beside me, Jess was quiet.
She had been quiet for the last fifty miles. Not the fearful silence of a passenger worried about the driver’s mental state, but the comfortable, companionable silence of someone who knew that words were currently insufficient.
She was wearing my sweatshirt again. She had pulled the hood up over her messy bun, her hands tucked deep into the front pocket. She was staring out at the ocean, watching the whitecaps crash against the jagged black rocks.
Tomorrow, I would be on a plane to Chicago. Tomorrow, I would step back into the cage my father had built for me. Tomorrow, I would have to be the machine.
But today... today was a stolen frequency. A pocket of time that existed outside the timeline.
I killed the engine.
The silence rushed in, heavier than before. The wind buffeted the heavy car, rocking it slightly.
"We're at the end of the world," Jess whispered, fogging up the glass with her breath.
"It felt appropriate," I said. My voice sounded loud in the confined space.
"It's beautiful," she decided. "In a 'nature is trying to kill you' kind of way."
"That is the only kind of beauty that matters."
I unbuckled my seatbelt, shifting in the seat to face her. My hip gave a dull throb of protest—a reminder of yesterday's collapse in the gym—but it was manageable. The foam rolling session, brutal as it was, had worked.
Jess turned her head. Her green eyes were clear, searching. She didn't look at me with the hunger of the fans or the critical assessment of the scouts. She looked at me. The man behind the stats.
"Why here, Nick?" she asked softly.
"Because I needed to breathe," I admitted. "The air in the penthouse... it’s recycled. It’s filtered. Out here..." I cracked the window an inch. The smell of brine and freezing kelp and snow rushed in, sharp and biting. "It’s real."
She nodded, understanding. She reached across the center console, pulling her hand out of the pocket to cover mine where it rested on the gear shift. Her skin was warm.
"You're scared," she stated. Not a question.
"I am prepared," I corrected instinctively.
"Nick." She squeezed my hand. "We're at the end of the world. You can tell the truth here."
I looked down at our joined hands. Her small, rough, dancer’s hand covering my large, scarred one.
"I'm not scared of the hockey," I said slowly, picking the words with the care of a bomb disposal technician. "I know I can play. I know I'm faster than them. I know I can read the ice."
"Then what?"
"I'm scared that I'll win," I whispered.
The admission hung in the cold air, confusing and heavy.
Jess frowned, tilting her head. "I don't understand. Winning is the goal. It's everything you've worked for."
"Is it?"
I looked out at the ocean. The waves were relentless. They kept crashing, breaking, retreating, and crashing again. An endless cycle of violence.
"Winning means I become him," I said. "It means the plan worked. It means the Vance legacy continues. It validates every terrible thing he did to make me this way. If I succeed, I prove him right."
"And if you fail?"
"If I fail... I'm free. But I'm nothing."
I turned back to her. "That is the trap, Jess. I am engineered for a purpose I hate, but without that purpose, I am obsolete."
Jess unbuckled her belt. She shifted, pulling her legs up onto the seat, turning her body fully toward me.
"Tell me," she said.
"Tell you what?"
"About the terrible things. You drop hints. You talk about 'expectations' and 'pressure.' But you never say it. You never look it in the eye."
She reached up, her fingers grazing the stubble on my jaw.
"Tell me about the scar," she whispered. "The real story. Not the 'hockey accident' PR version."
I closed my eyes. I leaned into her touch. It would be so easy to lie. To give her the sanitized version. To protect her from the darkness that lived in my bloodline.
But she had saved me yesterday. She had pulled me off the floor. She deserved the truth.
"I was sixteen," I began, my voice low. "Junior year. The most critical year for scouting. I had the flu. A bad strain. Fever of 103. I could barely stand up."
I opened my eyes, staring at the dashboard, seeing the memory play out like a film reel.
"We had a showcase tournament. My mother..." I paused. The word felt foreign. "My mother tried to stop him. She told him I was sick. She locked my equipment bag in the car."
"She stood up for you," Jess said softly.
"She tried. My father broke the car window with a 9-iron to get the bag out."
Jess gasped softly. I didn't look at her. I couldn't.
"He dragged me out of bed. He told me that champions don't get sick. He said sickness was a mental weakness. He drove me to the rink. He made me dress. I was shivering so hard I couldn't tie my own skates. He tied them for me. He pulled the laces so tight my feet went numb."
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
"I played. I scored two goals in the first period. I was running on delirium. In the second period... I blacked out. Just for a second. I was going into the corner for a loose puck. I lost my edge."
I unconsciously rubbed my left thigh.
"I went down. The other player... he couldn't stop. His skate went over my leg. It cut through the pants. Through the muscle. I didn't even feel it at first. I just saw the blood on the ice. It was so red against the white. It looked like paint."
"Oh my god, Nick."
"I woke up in the hospital. My mother was crying. My father was on the phone with the scout, assuring him it was a flesh wound. He didn't look at me. He looked at the doctor and asked for a timeline on the stitches."
I turned to Jess. "That was the day my mother left."
Jess froze. "She left... because of the accident?"
"She left because she couldn't watch him kill me anymore," I said. "She gave me a choice. She packed a bag. She came into my hospital room while he was in the cafeteria. She said, 'Nick, come with me. We'll go to your aunt's in Vermont. We'll leave him.'"
"And you stayed," Jess whispered. Her eyes were shimmering with tears.
"I stayed."
"Why?" The word was a plea. "Why would you stay?"
"Because of the math," I said simply. "My mother was weak. She had no money. No power. If I went with her, he would have hunted us down. He would have destroyed her. He would have dragged us through courts for years."
I looked at my hands. The hands that were worth millions of dollars.
"And... I thought if I stayed, I could protect her. I thought if I gave him what he wanted—the perfect son, the hockey star—he would let her go. He would leave her alone. I traded my life for hers."
Silence filled the car. It was heavy, suffocating.
"So I became the machine," I finished, my voice breaking. "I cut out the parts of me that felt pain. I cut out the parts that wanted things. I just played. And I won. And every time I win, I pay the rent on her freedom."
I waited for the pity. I waited for her to look at me like I was a victim.
I felt movement.
Jess scrambled over the center console. It was awkward and clumsy in the confined space, but she didn't care. She climbed into my lap, straddling my legs, ignoring the steering wheel digging into her back.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. She held me with a ferocity that shook me.
"You are not a machine," she sobbed into my shirt. "You are the bravest person I have ever met."
"I'm a coward," I corrected, my hands coming up to grip her waist, holding her like a lifeline. "I was too scared to leave."
"No. You were a child protecting his mother. That is love, Nick. That is the purest kind of love. You sacrificed yourself."
She pulled back, framing my face with her hands. Her cheeks were wet. Her eyes were fierce.
"But the debt is paid," she said intensely. "Do you hear me? You're twenty-two. You've given him everything. You don't owe him your soul anymore."
"He holds the mortgage," I reminded her weaky. "He holds you."
"Let him try," she spat. "Let him try to take me. I'm not your mother, Nick. I don't run. I fight. I'm from the gutter, remember? We fight dirty."
A laugh bubbled up in my chest—a broken, ragged sound. "You do."
"I do. And I'm fighting for you." She leaned her forehead against mine. "So you go to Chicago. You play his game for two more weeks. But you don't do it for him. You do it so you can get the signing bonus, buy your own freedom, and tell him to go to hell."
"Is that the plan?"
"That is the plan. We build our own empire. A quiet one. With no 9-irons and no blood."
"A quiet empire," I tested the words. They tasted like hope.
"Yes. Maybe a house by the water," she whispered, looking out at the grey ocean. "But not this water. Warmer water. And a dog. A really big, dumb dog that drools on the furniture just to spite you."
"I would hate that."
"You would love it."
She kissed me.
It wasn't a sexual kiss. It was a seal. It was a promise. It was the deepest form of intimacy I had ever experienced. It was her soul reaching into the dark, cold cavern of mine and lighting a fire.
"I'm going to miss you," I whispered against her lips. "Chicago. It's going to be hell."
"I know." She brushed her thumb over my cheekbone. "But I'll be right here. In your pocket."
She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. She pressed it into my hand.
"What is this?"
"Open it on the plane," she said. "It's... motivation."
I closed my fingers around the paper.
"Jess," I said, looking at her. The need to say the words was overwhelming. I love you. It clawed at my throat.
But the fear stopped me. Not fear of rejection, but fear of the universe. If I said it now, here, at the edge of the world, it felt like tempting fate. It felt like giving the gods one more thing to take away from me.
So instead, I showed her.
"Make me forget," I whispered, my hands sliding under the sweatshirt to touch her warm skin. "Make me forget everything but this."
"Okay," she breathed.
She shifted, adjusting her position on my lap. The space was tight, the steering wheel pressed against her back, the gear shift digging into my hip. It was uncomfortable. It was perfect.
I kissed her, pouring all the grief, the anger, and the desperate hope into the movement of my lips. I worshipped her mouth. I drank her sighs.
My hands roamed her body, reverent and possessive. I touched her not to arouse, but to memorize. I memorized the curve of her spine, the softness of her waist, the frantic beat of her heart under my palm.
"Nick," she whimpered as I trailed kisses down her neck.
"I'm here," I murmured. "I'm right here."
We moved together, a slow, agonizing friction of denim against denim, heat seeking heat. There was no frenzy this time. No rushing toward the cliff. We lingered on the edge, savoring the vertigo.
I slipped my hand between us, finding the button of her jeans.
"Wait," she whispered.
"What?"
She looked at me, her eyes dilated, unguarded.
"If we do this here... if we make a memory here... you can't taint it. You can't let him win, Nick. Because if he wins, he takes this too."
"He will never take this," I vowed. "This is off the books. This is ours."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
She nodded, satisfied. She lifted her hips, allowing me to slide the denim down.
In the back of a Range Rover, overlooking a freezing, hostile ocean, we made love.
It wasn't sex. It was an excavation.
Every touch was a confession. Every kiss was an apology for the years I had spent empty. She filled me up. She took the broken shards of my history and smoothed the edges.
When I was inside her, looking into her eyes, seeing my own reflection staring back not as a machine, but as a man, I realized the terrifying truth.
I wasn't just fighting for my freedom anymore. I was fighting for her.
And that made me dangerous.
Later, as the light began to fade from the sky, turning the grey to a bruised purple, we sat in the car, watching the ocean.
Jess was tucked under my arm, her head on my chest. I was stroking her hair.
"We have to go back," she murmured. "You have to pack."
"I know."
"Two weeks," she said. "Fourteen days. 336 hours."
"You did the math."
"I'm good at math when it counts."
I tightened my arm around her.
"Jess."
"Yeah?"
"When I come back... things are going to be different. I'm going to fix it. With my father. With the money."
"I know you will."
"And then," I said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, "we get the dog."
She laughed, a soft, sleepy sound. "Okay. We get the dog."
I started the engine. The heater kicked back on, chasing away the chill.
We drove away from the edge of the world, back toward the city, back toward the lights and the noise and the expectations.
But as I drove, I felt the piece of paper in my pocket. And for the first time in sixteen years, the scar on my leg didn't throb.
I had an ally. I had a secret. And I had a plan.
Chicago didn't stand a chance.