Chapter 3
Nola POV
The cast-iron radiator beneath our living room window hissed like a ruptured steam line, spitting dry heat against glass frosted thick with Duluth ice.
I sat at the chipped kitchen table, violently sorting diagnostic sensor leads into color-coded plastic sleeves.
Blue for motor unit action potentials. Red for heart-rate telemetry.
Yellow for thoracic expansion. My thumbnail dug into the seam of my thumb ring, spinning the thin band of silver round and round until the skin beneath burned raw.
Maya set a heavy ceramic mug of black coffee onto the oilcloth beside my elbow. The dark liquid sloshed against the rim.
"You're going to snap that plastic in half if you squeeze it any harder," she said.
She leaned against the counter, still wearing her oversized flannel pajamas, watching me with the narrow, calculating eyes that made her the sharpest investigative writer on the student paper. She had three open notebooks on the counter, her media credentials hanging from the breadbox.
"The leads are stiff from the cold," I lied, keeping my eyes glued to the cables. "The copper wiring inside fractures if they aren't coiled with a wide radius."
"Right. And your jaw is clamped so hard I can hear your teeth grinding from the sink.
" Maya crossed her arms, shifting her weight onto one bare foot.
"Silas Vance told the equipment manager yesterday that Guzman came off the ice after the North Dakota review ready to rip someone’s head off with his bare hands.
He threw a water cooler against the penalty box door.
The whole team is walking on eggshells."
My fingers froze over a yellow lead. The phantom weight of Chase’s forearm against my bicep—the memory of his dark, unblinking stare in that third-floor hallway—hit my throat like a dry swallow.
"Silas Vance talks too much," I said, forcing my hands to resume the rhythm of coiling. "And Guzman's locker-room temper isn't my problem."
"It is your problem when you’re locked in an eight-by-twelve concrete bunker with him twice a day.
" Maya took a deliberate sip from her mug, her expression flattening into something deadly serious.
"Nola, listen to me. I've spent two years tracking the athletic department's off-the-record files.
The Guzman family isn't just hockey royalty.
They're scorched earth. Marcus Guzman treats Chase like an investment portfolio, and Chase treats the entire campus like collateral damage.
What happened to his brother Declan didn't just end a career.
It broke whatever soft wiring that family had left. "
"I know the file," I said, snapping a rubber band around the bundle of cables with a sharp crack.
"Knowing the file isn't the same as being in the room when he snaps," Maya countered, leaning forward until her face was inches from mine.
"He's six-foot-four, two hundred and twenty pounds, and he has a first-round NHL contract hanging on whether his body holds together for the next eight weeks.
He will drag you under before he lets anyone see him break. Miller is using you as a shield."
"Then I'll be a shield," I said, looking up to meet her gaze.
The words scraped against my dry throat, hard and resolute.
"Miller holds the pen for the Olympic Training Center fellowship. Colorado Springs clears my mother’s medical balances before the state puts a lien on her house.
If I have to spend two hours a day in a basement measuring the heart rate of an arrogant, overpaid Neanderthal to get that signature, I will do it without blinking. "
Maya stared at me for three long seconds. She saw the white tension in my knuckles, the rigid line of my spine, and the dark circles bruised beneath my eyes.
"Just don't drop your guard," she whispered softly. "Not for a second. Men like that don't know how to take half-measures."
* * *
The sub-basement of Kehoe Pavilion did not have windows.
It sat twenty feet below ice level, past the roaring industrial compressors and the salt-caked drainage sumps that handled the rink’s daily runoff. The corridor was narrow, bare cinder block painted a sickly municipal gray, lit by bare fluorescent tubes that hummed at a low, maddening sixty hertz.
At the end of the hall was a reinforced steel door with a digital keypad.
I punched in the four-digit access code Miller had scrawled on my intake sheet: 4-1-8-8.
The magnetic lock released with a heavy, pneumatic thud that echoed down the empty passage. I pushed the door open, stepped inside, and let it swing shut behind me. The lock re-engaged instantly, sealing the silence.
The Vault.
The room was eight feet wide by twelve feet long, smelling sharply of medical-grade chlorhexidine, freezing concrete, and the faint, bitter ghost of menthol liniment from seasons past. A vinyl-padded examination table occupied the center, bolted directly into the floor.
Along the back wall sat a stainless steel instrument cart, a rolling stool, and a locked metal cabinet containing the department's diagnostic telemetry hub.
Overhead, through the thick slab of the ceiling, a rhythmic, low-frequency vibration rattled the light fixtures. The varsity squad was finishing their early morning skate; every hard stop, every body check against the boards above, sent a dull shockwave traveling down through the concrete.
I unzipped my fleece, hung it on the single wall hook, and pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. The snap of the rubber against my wrists sounded like small pistol shots in the quiet box.
I laid out my equipment with surgical precision: the heart-rate monitor chest band, the digital skin-fold calipers, the alcohol prep pads, and my department tablet displaying Chase Guzman’s baseline physiological profile.
His numbers were absurd. Resting heart rate of forty-two beats per minute. Peak anaerobic power in the ninety-ninth percentile of collegiate athletics. And stamped across his left shoulder profile, an unaddressed grade-two labrum tear flagged with three consecutive missed post-game medical reviews.
The digital lock on the heavy door buzzed.
The handle turned downward, and the door swung inward against the concrete stop.
The temperature in the room plummeted as the draft from the corridor rushed in, but the space immediately shrank by half.
Chase Guzman stepped across the threshold.
He didn't bother looking around. He pushed the heavy door shut with the flat of his palm, the lock engaging with that same violent, final click.
He was wearing a sleeveless gray Vandermark Athletics compression shirt that looked painted onto the wide, dense shelf of his chest, paired with black workout shorts that stopped above heavily scarred knees.
His hair was damp, dark strands curling against the nape of his neck from a hasty post-skate shower, and drops of cold water clung to the jagged pale line of the scar splitting his right eyebrow.
His forearms, thick and corded with vascular tension, were wrapped from mid-palm to wrist in fresh, clean white athletic tape.
He radiated heat—a dense, suffocating furnace of body warmth that immediately pushed back the clinical chill of the basement. The scent of him followed, sharp and heavy: crushed cedar shavings, clean ice, friction, and the dark, bitter tang of male exertion.
He didn't speak. He walked directly to the examination table, planted his hip against the edge, and crossed his arms over his chest. His long legs stretched straight out, his heavy training sneakers crossing at the ankles, completely blocking the eighteen-inch walkway between the table and my instrument cart.
He looked down at me from beneath the shelf of his brow, his obsidian-gray eyes hooded, unreadable, and utterly dismissive.
The room was so small I could hear the slow, measured drag of his respiration through his nose.
"You're late," I said. My voice was crisp, but my vocal cords felt like dry twine.
Chase’s eyes tracked down to my gloved hands, then slowly crawled up the length of my torso, lingering on the open collar of my scrub top before settling on my lips.
"0600 on the dot, Wagner," he rasped, his voice scraping the low register. "The Zamboni is still on the ice. Take your readings so I can get to team breakfast."
* * *
I refused to look down at his boots blocking my path.
I picked up the black elastic telemetry strap from the stainless steel tray, gripping the sensor pod firmly between my thumb and forefinger.
"Move your legs, Guzman."
He didn't shift an inch. The corner of his mouth twitched, not into a smile, but into a tight, mocking smirk that sent a hot spike of blood directly into my cheeks.
"You're the biomechanics expert," he said, his voice dropping another fraction of an octave, vibrating through the small room. "Navigate the terrain."
My chest hitched. The urge to ram the edge of my clipboard into his uninjured shin flared behind my eyes, but I swallowed the bile down. I took one firm, deliberate step forward, planting my sneaker directly into the narrow pocket of space between his splayed knees.
Our proximity collapsed instantly.
The sheer wall of his body was overwhelming.
The heat rolling off his bare shoulders warmed the air against my cheeks.
I could see the pale spatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the dark stubble shadowing the sharp angle of his jaw, and the slight, involuntary flare of his nostrils as he caught the scent of my skin.
His breathing didn't hitch, but the muscles along his collarbones pulled tight, rising a fraction of an inch.
"Chest strap," I said, holding the black band between us like a physical boundary. "You need to pull the shirt off."
"No."
I stared at him, my fingernails biting through the thin nitrile of my gloves into my palms. "The protocol requires direct dermal contact across the fifth intercostal space. I can't calibrate the sensor over compression fabric."
Chase leaned forward off the edge of the examination table.
The movement was slow, deliberate, and entirely predatory.
He closed the remaining inches between us until his broad chest was hovering an inch from my scrub top.
He planted his right hand flat on the stainless steel cart right beside my hip, his thick knuckles pressing into the metal, caging me between his arm and the examination table.
The air in my lungs locked behind my ribs.
"You want my shirt off, Wagner?" he whispered, his head tilting down until his mouth was level with the shell of my ear. The rough gravel of his voice sent an autonomic shudder skittering along the surface of my collarbone. "Then take it off yourself."
My pulse hammered against the base of my throat like a trapped animal. The heat radiating off his throat, the faint scent of cedar and iron, made my vision narrow down to the pulse point jumping beneath his jaw.
He wants you to flinch. The thought rang clear through the roar of blood in my eardrums. He wants you to back out the door and run to Miller.
I didn't back down. I forced my chin up, turning my face until my lips were barely three inches from his rough jawline.
"I'm a scientist, Guzman," I breathed, my voice trembling with adrenaline before I slammed it back under cold control.
"Not your personal valet. If you're too weak to lift your own arms over your head because of that torn shoulder, just tell me.
I'll note your physical incapacity in the medical log right now. "
The word incapacity hit him like an open-hand slap.
Chase’s jaw clenched so violently the tendon along his throat stood out in stark relief. His obsidian eyes flared, the pupils dilating until the gray iris was swallowed in darkness.
His other hand came up, moving faster than my eyes could track, his calloused, tape-wrapped fingers closing around my right wrist.
The grip wasn't painful, but it was absolute—an immovable clamp of muscle and bone that locked my arm against his chest. Through the thin blue nitrile of my glove, my knuckles pressed directly against the center of his sternum.
His skin was burning hot through the thin fabric. And beneath the dense wall of muscle, his heart wasn't beating at forty-two beats per minute.
It was slamming against his ribs in a wild, frantic rhythm that matched my own.
His gaze dropped to where my hand was pinned against his chest, then dragged slowly back up to mine, dark and dangerous.
"Careful, sweetheart," he rasped, his thumb pressing lightly into the hollow of my inner wrist where my own blood was racing. "You push that button again, and I might just show you exactly how much capacity I have left."