Chapter 10
Chase POV
I tore myself out of her hands so fast the butterfly bandage on my cheek pulled against the torn skin, sending a fresh bead of blood down into the stubble on my jaw.
The cold air of the Vault rushed into the space where her chest had been pressed against mine, hitting my bare skin like a bucket of lake water. My lungs seized, struggling to drag in a full breath against the cracked cartilage of my fourth rib.
I didn't look at her. I grabbed my black long-sleeve team shirt off the stool and yanked it over my head with a jerky, violent movement that made my vision blur gray around the edges.
"Put your coat on," I rasped, my back turned as I shoved my arms into the sleeves of my heavy winter parka. The words sounded like dry gravel dragged over pavement.
"Chase—"
"Coat on, Wagner." I zipped the heavy nylon to my chin, my fingers stiff and uncoordinated. "It's past two. The temperature dropped to negative four while you were playing nurse. You aren't walking to Fourth Street."
She didn't answer. Behind me, the rustle of wool and the snap of her bag’s metal latches were the only sounds in the concrete room.
Two minutes later, the iron door of the loading bay slammed shut behind us, the wind off Lake Superior hitting our faces with the force of an open-hand slap.
The cab of my black Silverado was an icebox.
Sleet and freezing pellets drummed against the windshield in a vicious, erratic percussion, driven by thirty-mile-an-hour gusts whipping across the asphalt.
I turned the ignition; the big V-8 engine turned over with a low, guttural roar that rattled the steering column.
The blower vents spat freezing air into our faces as I shoved the gear selector into drive, the transmission clunking into gear.
The silence inside the truck was suffocating.
The scent of her filled the cab, trapped in the narrow space between the dash and the headliner: rain-soaked wool, cold winter air, and that sharp, clean heat from her skin that had burned its way through my sternum ten minutes ago.
Our breath plumed in gray clouds, fogging the passenger glass until the distant amber streetlamps outside blurred into dull smears of light.
My knuckles turned white where they gripped the leather-wrapped wheel. The vein at the left side of my throat was jumping so violently I could feel the collar of my parka twitching against the skin.
Feel that.
The words echoed in my skull, mocking me. I had taken her hand and pressed it over my own weakness. I had let down my guard, bowed my head, and laid my face against her collarbone like a battered dog looking for a place to die.
You lose control for five seconds, and someone’s life ends.
My father’s rule rang through the thrum of the engine, heavy and unforgiving.
Declan had let his guard down for one night in Marquette, and now he lived in a motorized chair with useless legs while my father stared at me to settle the tab.
If I let this girl get under my skin, if I let her hands soften the calluses I needed to survive the Frozen Four, I was going to lose everything.
The draft. The contract. The only reason my father looked at me without disgust.
I had to burn the bridge down right now. I had to salt the ground so nothing could ever grow between us again.
* * *
We hit the deserted access road running along the bluffs, the truck's heavy tires churning through three inches of unplowed slush.
I didn't turn my head to look at her. I kept my eyes pinned to the twin cones of halogen light cutting through the blizzard.
"You got your data, Wagner," I said, my voice flat, cold, and stripped of every drop of the desperation that had choked me in the basement. "Don't flatter yourself into thinking that little charity performance on the table meant a single damn thing."
In the passenger seat, Nola didn't flinch.
Her head turned slowly. Through the corner of my eye, I saw the rigid line of her spine, the way her chin tilted up into that familiar, combative angle.
"A charity performance?" Her voice was low, but each word came out with the sharpness of a freshly honed skate blade.
"You saw an injured player and played Florence Nightingale so you could feel good about yourself," I sneered, pressing the accelerator down, the engine whining as we crested a drift.
"You wanted to make sure your ticket to Colorado Springs didn't get benched on Friday.
Let's not pretend it was anything else."
"Pull over."
"I'm taking you to your apartment."
"Pull the damn truck over, Guzman!"
Her voice cracked across the cabin like a gunshot. Her right hand shot out, grabbing the sleeve of my coat with enough force to pull the fabric taut across my forearm.
The sudden contact sent a hot jolt straight down into my gut.
My jaw locked so hard my molars groaned under the pressure. I stomped the brake pedal.
The anti-lock brakes pulsed violently through the floorboards, the heavy truck fishtailing once through the slush before the front tires bit into the gravel shoulder of the deserted scenic overlook.
I slammed the gear shift into park, killed the ignition with a brutal twist of my wrist, and ripped my seatbelt out of the buckle.
The engine died. The only sound left was the howling wind battering the passenger door and the ticking of the cooling manifold beneath the hood.
"You want to walk?" I rasped, turning my shoulders toward her. "The door is right there."
Nola didn't reach for the handle. She tore off her seatbelt, turning in her seat until her knees were inches from the center console. Her hazel eyes were ablaze, the pupils dilated wide, her pale face flushed bright crimson with a rage that matched my own.
"You miserable coward," she whispered, her chest heaving in rapid, shallow hitches beneath her coat. "You absolute, pathetic coward."
"Watch your mouth, Wagner."
"No, you watch me, Chase!" She leaned forward, closing the space between us, her index finger stabbing toward my chest. "You're not mad that I touched you.
You're not mad that I cleaned your face.
You're terrified because you let someone see you bleed. You’ve spent your whole miserable life convincing yourself that if you aren't an unfeeling wall of muscle, you're worthless.
And the second someone looks at you with an ounce of care, you lash out like a feral dog because you don't know how to exist without a fight! "
Every nerve in my skull snapped clean through.
* * *
I didn't think. I moved.
I launched my body across the center console, two hundred and twenty pounds of fury and battered bone swallowing the air between us.
My left hand slammed flat against the passenger headliner, the vinyl groaning under my weight, while my right hand gripped the side of her throat, my fingers splaying across the soft skin of her jaw.
I pushed her back until her shoulders hit the passenger door with a dull thud, trapping her beneath the sheer mass of my chest.
"You think I'm running from you?" I snarled.
My face was an inch from hers. The words came out in a ruined, gravelly rasp, tearing straight from the dark void behind my breastbone. My breath was a scalding wash against her parted lips, mingling with the rapid, shallow gasps escaping her mouth.
Her fingers came up, but they didn't push me away. They clamped onto the lapels of my open parka, her knuckles digging through the nylon, gripping tight.
"You are running," she breathed, her lips trembling against the heat of my mouth. "You're terrified of this."
"I'm drowning, Nola," I whispered, the confession ripping out of my throat, raw and bloody. "Every time you walk into the room, every time your fingers touch my skin, you drag me down another ten feet into the dark. Why won't you just let me drown in peace?"
My thumb dragged across the soft, wet fullness of her bottom lip, pulling the skin down just enough to expose the white edge of her teeth.
The contact sent a violent, autonomic spasm through my thighs.
Her eyes were black pools in the dim cab, searching mine with a hunger so raw, so stripped of resistance, it made the blood roar in my eardrums like an avalanche. Her chest rose, pressing hard against the bruised wall of my ribs, but the pain didn't register.
Only her.
My mouth hovered a single millimeter above hers. Every muscle in my body, every instinct I possessed, screamed to crush my lips against hers, to drag her across the console and tear away the layers of wool until there was nothing left between us but friction and heat.
A blinding flash of amber light cut through the fogged glass.
A county snowplow crested the rise of the road fifty yards back, its massive yellow rotary beacons sweeping across the cab in slow, rhythmic revolutions, bathing her parted lips and my hand on her throat in sudden, stark relief.
The heavy diesel engine of the plow rumbled past, shaking the truck’s frame as its steel blade scraped sparks off the asphalt.
The intrusion hit me like ice water to the face.
My lungs seized. The survival instinct that had kept me alive on the ice for fifteen years locked my joints, pulling me back half an inch from the brink.
I didn't take my hand off her throat. My thumb still rested against the rapid, leaping pulse beneath her ear, her skin burning hot against my calloused palm.
We stayed there in the dark, suspended on the edge of the blade, our chests heaving against each other in synchronized, ragged gasps as the amber lights faded down the highway.
She stared up at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears, her lips wet from my breath.
"Chase," she whispered, the name a broken plea.
I pulled my hand back, my fingers curling into a fist as I retreated to the driver’s seat, slamming my spine against the leather upholstery. The cold rushed back into the cab, but it did nothing to quench the fire raging beneath my skin.
I reached forward, turned the key, and listened to the engine roar back to life.
The lines were gone. The rules were dead.
And I knew with absolute certainty that the next time my hands touched her skin, nothing in this world would make me stop.