Chapter 6
Chase POV
The digital game-film file on my tablet had been paused at the twelve-minute mark of the second period for twenty minutes.
On the screen, Minnesota-Duluth’s left winger was caught three strides out of position along the half-wall, leaving a clear shooting lane from the top of the circle.
I was supposed to be charting the defenseman’s stick angle.
I was supposed to be preparing my notes for the five o'clock special-teams briefing with Coach Hastings.
Instead, the only thing burned into the back of my retinas was the image of Nola Wagner trapped against the laminate counter of the Vault, her lips parted, her chest heaving against my bare skin, whispering my first name into the dark.
My molars ground together until the ache spread down into my collarbones.
I sat at a corner table on the third-floor mezzanine of the Goldthwait Library, the massive three-story glass curtain wall exposing a slate-gray Minnesota sky.
Cold afternoon sunlight poured through the panes, reflecting off the polished terrazzo floor sixty feet below.
The air smelled of roasted espresso beans, old paper bindings, and the faint, dry draft of forced-air heating vents.
I hated this building. It was too quiet, too soft, populated by people who moved through their lives without having to brace for a two-hundred-pound body check every forty-five seconds.
I pressed the heel of my palm against my breastbone, rubbing the spot right over my ribs where her knuckles had dug through my shirt the night before.
The skin still felt hot, an irritating, persistent burn that had nothing to do with bruised cartilage and everything to do with the fact that I had lost control.
Five inches. That was all the distance there had been between her mouth and mine. If she had leaned forward half a millimeter, I would have taken her lower lip between my teeth and dragged her onto that cold examination table until she forgot how to speak.
Discipline. The word was a lead weight in my gut. You lose your grip, and everything turns to scrap.
I dragged in a slow, ragged breath through my nose, forcing my fingers to pick up the stylus to mark the screen.
Then my peripheral vision caught a flash of cream-colored wool on the ground floor.
My head turned before my brain could stop the impulse.
Sixty feet down, cutting across the crowded central atrium, Nola walked with that same sharp, aggressive stride.
She wore an oversized cream sweater that swallowed her frame, dark denim, and heavy winter boots caked with salt.
Her hair was down today, dark auburn waves tumbling past her shoulder blades, catching the cold gray light from the skylights.
She had a heavy canvas tote slung over one shoulder, her left hand buried in her coat pocket, probably spinning that silver ring against her thumb.
My pulse hitched once, hard, against the side of my throat. My grip tightened on the edge of the mahogany table until the varnish creaked under my fingers.
I told myself to look back at the screen. I told myself to study the neutral-zone trap.
I didn't move a muscle.
* * *
She found an empty high-top table beside one of the massive limestone support pillars, setting her bag down with a weary drop of her shoulders. She reached up, brushing a strand of hair from her mouth, her chin lifting as she scanned the café line.
Before she could pull her coat off, a body cut into her space.
Brett Callahan.
Junior attackman for the varsity lacrosse team.
A prep-school legacy from the Twin Cities whose father had his name engraved on the athletic alumni pavilion.
He wore his navy team jacket unzipped, his hair styled in that deliberate, messy wave that girls in the Greek houses fell over themselves to touch.
I knew Callahan. He was the kind of guy who took cheap stick checks behind the referee’s back and cried to the training staff whenever someone laid him out along the turf.
Callahan stepped right up to Nola’s table, planting his right hand flat on the wood, leaning down until his face was barely a foot from hers.
The blood in my ears shifted pitch, rising to a dull, deafening roar.
I watched his mouth move. He was smiling—that slick, entitled smirk that made my knuckles itch to split his lip.
Nola didn't smile back. Her posture stiffened instantly, her spine locking into that rigid, defensive line I knew too well. She took a step back, angling her body toward her open notebook, trying to establish a wall of paper between them.
Callahan didn't take the hint. He laughed, shaking his head, and closed the distance she had just made.
Then his left hand came up.
He reached out and tapped her arm, his fingers lingering on the cream wool covering the crook of her elbow, sliding an inch toward her wrist with casual, practiced familiarity.
Something inside my chest snapped clean through.
The sound of the library atrium—the clatter of coffee mugs, the low hum of five hundred students whispering over laptops, the distant rumble of the ventilation fans—vanished into a dead, pressurized void.
My vision tunneled until the only thing in the universe was that lacrosse jacket and those fingers touching her sleeve.
A red haze flooded the back of my throat, hot as bile, thick with the metallic tang of pure adrenaline.
Down below, Nola jerked her arm out of his grasp, her mouth shaping a sharp, biting refusal. She turned to pack her bag, clearly trying to walk away.
Callahan stepped sideways, his broad frame cutting off her path around the pillar. He reached out again, his hand hovering near the small of her back, close enough that the leather of his watch strap nearly brushed the knit of her sweater.
My chair hit the floorboards behind me with a sharp, violent crack that echoed across the mezzanine.
* * *
I didn't take the stairs one at a time.
My boots hit the stone treads with concussive force, clearing four steps on each descent. Students on the landing took one look at my face, saw the black line of the scar pulled taut over my eye, and pressed themselves flat against the brass railings to get out of my way.
I didn't feel my boots hitting the floor. I didn't feel the dull throb in my torn labrum. The only sensation was the brutal, rhythmic hammering of my heart against my ribs, driving me forward like an enforcer chasing a hit behind the net.
I crossed the polished floor of the concourse in six long, heavy strides.
Callahan was still talking down to her, his head tilted, his hand coming back up toward her shoulder.
I didn't say a word. I didn't warn him.
I stepped directly into the gap between them, dropping my shoulder as I moved. Two hundred and twenty pounds of forward momentum struck Callahan’s chest like a blindside check.
The impact knocked the lacrosse player back three full paces. His sneakers skittered across the waxed floor, his arms windmilling until his lower back slammed against the edge of a trash receptacle.
"What the hell—" Callahan choked out, his face red with sudden shock as he pushed himself upright.
He looked up. The anger on his face died the instant his eyes locked onto mine.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, the black canvas of my team jacket hanging open. The veins along my neck were swollen, pulsing hard enough that I could feel the blood hammering in my jaw.
"You're in my way, Callahan," I said.
The words didn't come out as a shout. They came out as a low, scraping rasp, cold as the ice on Superior, dead and stripped of mercy.
Callahan swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. He looked at my split knuckles, looked at the height advantage, then glanced past my shoulder to where Nola was standing frozen by the pillar.
"We were just talking, Guzman," he muttered, raising his hands in a weak, placating gesture. "No need to go psycho."
"Walk," I growled, stepping half an inch closer.
Callahan didn't argue. He grabbed his bag off the adjacent chair, shoved his hands into his pockets, and hurried toward the library exit without looking back once.
The immediate circle of study tables was dead silent. A dozen students were staring, their eyes wide, whispering behind their hands.
I didn't give a damn about any of them.
I turned on my heel.
Nola was pressed against the limestone pillar, her bag clutched against her stomach like a shield. Her hazel-gold eyes were wide, the pupils dilated until they swallowed the gold flecks, her chest rising and falling in fast, uneven hitches beneath the heavy cream wool.
For two seconds, she looked startled. Then the shock shattered, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated fury that flushed her pale cheeks bright crimson.
"Have you lost your mind?" she hissed, stepping toward me instead of away, her voice trembling with rage. "Who do you think you are?"
I didn't answer. I stepped into her, using my reach to trap her against the cold stone of the pillar. My left arm came up, my palm slamming flat against the limestone six inches above her head, boxing her in.
I leaned down until my breath stirred the loose hair at her ear. The scent of her—clean rain, vanilla, and the hot prickle of adrenaline—washed over my face, burning away the last shreds of my rational thought.
"What was he doing?" I demanded, the words tearing out of my chest, rough and low.
"He was asking for notes from my biomechanics lecture," she spat back, her chin tilting up, her eyes blazing straight into mine. "Not that it's any of your business. You don't own this building, Guzman. And you sure as hell don't own me."
My other hand came up, gripping the edge of the stone pillar right beside her hip.
I hovered over her, so close the fabric of my jacket brushed the front of her sweater, feeling the frantic, hammering rhythm of her pulse radiating through the narrow space between us.
"You're in the Vault with me twice a day, Wagner," I whispered, my voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that made her breath catch hard in her throat. "Your hands are on my skin. Your name is on my clearance sheet."
"That's an academic assignment!"
"I don't give a damn what Miller calls it.
" I lowered my head another inch, until my lips were brushing the soft skin of her earlobe, feeling the violent shudder that ran through her frame at the contact.
"You belong in my perimeter now. Anyone else puts their hands on your skin, they answer to me. Understand me, Nola?"
Her breath hitched on a sharp, broken gasp as my first name left my mouth. Her fingers curled into the wool of her sweater, her eyes searching mine with a terrifying mix of defiance and raw, helpless awareness.
The line wasn't just blurred anymore.
It was gone. Crushed beneath the ice, leaving only the two of us standing in the wreckage.