Chapter 11
Nola POV
The morning sun reflected off the frozen crust of Lake Superior with a blinding, white glare that made my optic nerves throb behind my brow.
It was twenty past seven. In the narrow kitchen of our rental, the drip machine wheezed, spitting thin, scalding black coffee into a chipped ceramic mug.
My hands shook as I lifted the rim to my mouth, the hot liquid burning the tip of my tongue, but the scald did nothing to clear the fog behind my eyes.
I hadn't slept twenty consecutive minutes.
Every time my eyelids had drifted shut in the dark of my bedroom, my nervous system had jolted me awake with a violent, concussive spike of adrenaline.
My skin felt raw, hypersensitive to the brush of my cotton flannel shirt.
Worst of all was the phantom weight resting against the center of my lower lip—the memory of Chase’s rough, calloused thumb dragging the flesh down, pulling it open to the freezing air of his truck cab.
My pulse jumped hard against the side of my throat, sending a hot wave of blood crawling up my neck into my cheekbones.
Situational hypoxia.
I clamped my molars together, staring through the frost-ferned window at the gray rooflines of Duluth.
That was all it had been. A severe autonomic panic response triggered by sub-zero temperatures, sleep deprivation, and the physical shock of seeing two hundred and twenty pounds of collegiate enforcer covered in his own blood.
The human brain sought proximity during acute stress.
It was a well-documented survival mechanism, not an invitation to ruin my life.
I set the mug down on the counter with a sharp clack, pulling my phone from my coat pocket.
The screen lit up with three incoming notifications from an unsaved number, all logged between three and four in the morning:
Did you get inside.
Check the deadbolt.
Answer me, Nola.
The sight of my first name rendered in plain digital text made my stomach plummet into ice water. I didn't open the thread. I pressed the power button, locking the screen, and shoved the device deep into the bottom of my canvas tote beneath three pounds of orthopedic anatomy binders.
The protocol was simple. I had spent two hours before dawn writing it out in the margins of my research journal:
One: Strict clinical neutrality at all times.Two: Maintain a minimum distance of three feet during all non-palpation assessments.Three: Complete eye-contact avoidance unless logging cranial nerve responses.Four: Zero communication outside the scheduled hours in the Vault.
He was a research subject with cracked ribs and an unstable shoulder capsule. He was my ticket to Colorado Springs, nothing more. If I treated him like an athlete instead of an avalanche, the boundary would hold.
I grabbed my heavy coat, zipped it tight to my chin, and stepped out into the biting wind.
* * *
By noon, the main concourse of the athletic complex was roaring with midday traffic.
Varsity swimmers in heavy parkas moved toward the natatorium; athletic trainers hauled wheeled coolers of ice water across the polished rubber flooring; and overhead, the giant video screens looped highlights from last weekend's series in Grand Forks.
I walked close to the brick wall, my head ducked, clutching a stack of freshly printed electromyography readouts against my ribs like a breastplate.
"Nola, slow down," Maya said, jogging two steps to match my pace as we passed the varsity trophy cases. She had her media pass tucked into her collar, a reporter's notebook wedged under her arm. "You've been walking like you’re trying to outrun an artillery strike all morning."
"I have an orthopedic seminar in ten minutes," I said, keeping my eyes glued to the scuffed floor tiles. "And Hastings needs the updated range-of-motion charts before two."
"Right. And that's why your skin is gray and you’ve checked over your shoulder four times since we crossed the quad?
" Maya reached out, her fingers catching the strap of my tote, tugging me to an abrupt halt beside a glass display honoring the 1998 national championship squad.
"Talk to me. Silas Vance cornered me by the sports desk forty minutes ago asking if I knew what happened between you and Guzman last night. "
The breath locked in my lungs. My fingernails dug through the paper charts into the meat of my palms. "Silas doesn't know anything."
"He knows Guzman showed up to morning skate looking like he wanted to kill someone with his bare hands," Maya countered, her voice dropping into that quiet, forensic tone she used when an athletic director was lying to her face.
"He said Chase has butterfly bandages over his cheek, wouldn't let the team physician touch him, and spent forty-five minutes skating solo bag drills until the ice was gouged to the concrete. Silas thinks—"
Maya’s voice cut off mid-sentence.
Her gaze shifted over my left shoulder, her dark eyes widening a fraction of an inch.
The ambient noise of the concourse seemed to thin out, the laughter and the squeak of sneakers fading into a distant, muffled hum.
My neck felt stiff, the muscles pulling tight as I turned my head.
Thirty yards away, at the intersection of the tunnel leading to the home locker room, Chase Guzman stood with two of his starting defensemen.
He was wearing a black Vandermark Hockey travel jacket, the zipper pulled half-mast over a charcoal thermal.
His dark hair was damp from a post-skate rinse, clinging to the back of his neck, and the white medical tape on his right cheek stood out stark and violent against his dark stubble.
He held a composite stick loosely in his taped right hand, the blade resting on the floor.
He wasn't listening to the defenseman talking beside him.
His head was turned directly toward me.
His obsidian-gray eyes were locked onto my face with a terrifying, unblinking focus that pinned my boots to the floor.
There was no greeting in his expression.
No polite acknowledgment of a classmate.
It was the raw, predatory gaze of a hunter tracking movement across open tundra, dark and heavy with the promise of violence.
His jaw muscle clenched once, a sharp, visible twitch beneath the stubble.
Silas stepped out of the training room doorway, spotted me, and raised a hand in an easy, friendly wave.
Chase didn't look at Silas. But his left shoulder dropped half an inch, his frame shifting forward by a fraction of a pace, his eyes narrowing on mine until my throat went dry as sand.
"Okay," Maya whispered beside me, her breath hitching slightly. "Whatever happened between you two in that basement, it wasn't just physical therapy. Walk. Right now."
I didn't need to be told twice. I pivoted on my heel and practically sprinted down the north corridor toward the safety of the stairs.
* * *
At one-forty-five, I ducked into the sub-basement.
I was fifteen minutes ahead of our scheduled afternoon session.
My plan was simple: set up the telemetry receivers, lay out the cold-compression wraps, log the initial resting metrics into the system, and leave the door propped wide open with a rubber wedge so we wouldn't be sealed in the concrete box alone.
I punched 4-1-8-8 into the digital keypad.
The latch clicked open. I stepped inside the Vault, dropping my heavy canvas bag onto the rolling stool, and reached for the light switch.
The heavy steel door didn't swing shut on its pneumatic hinge.
A thick, calloused hand caught the edge of the metal slab, stopping it dead six inches from the frame.
The door was shoved inward with quiet, terrifying force.
Chase stepped across the threshold, kicked the rubber wedge across the floor with the toe of his boot, and let the heavy barrier slam shut behind him.
The magnetic lock engaged with an echoing, concussive thud.
The room shrank by eighty percent in the span of a single heartbeat.
He had stripped off his travel jacket, wearing only the charcoal thermal that hugged the broad shelf of his chest. His breathing was slow, even, but his eyes were hooded, black with an intensity that made the pulse in my jugular spike into a wild, runaway rhythm.
"You're early," I managed, my voice coming out thin and brittle. I backed up two steps, my hips hitting the edge of the examination table. "I haven't set up the impedance calibration yet. Wait in the hall."
Chase didn't stop. He crossed the concrete floor in three long, unhurried strides, closing the distance until his boots were touching the tips of my sneakers.
He didn't speak. He planted his left hand on the examination table right beside my hip, his massive arm boxing me in against the vinyl padding.
The heat radiating off his chest was an oven, carrying that dark, intoxicating scent of cold ice, cedar shavings, and the sharp bite of menthol.
"You didn't answer your phone, Nola."
His voice was a low, scraping rasp that vibrated straight through my ribs into my spine.
I forced my chin up, digging my fingernails into the vinyl behind my back. "I was in class. And we have an agreement. Communication is restricted to clinical hours."
"To hell with the agreement," he whispered.
He stepped closer, his heavy thighs brushing the denim of my jeans, blotting out the fluorescent light overhead until his shadow swallowed me whole.
His right hand came up.
His fingers, rough and scarred from years of hockey tape, didn't grab me. They rose slowly, deliberately, the backs of his knuckles brushing the soft skin of my jawline, tracing the line down from my earlobe to the point of my chin.
A violent, involuntary shudder tore through my frame at the contact. My breath caught in my throat, a sharp, ragged gasp that parted my lips.
Chase’s eyes tracked the motion of my mouth, his gaze darkening until the gray of his irises was swallowed by pitch.
"You ran from me in the concourse," he rasped, his knuckles skimming over the frantic flutter of the pulse jumping beneath my jaw. "You hid behind your roommate like a scared little bird."
"I wasn't hiding—"
"Look me in the eye, Wagner."
He dropped his hand, his thumb hooking under the center of my chin, tilting my face up until our noses were barely an inch apart. His breath was hot against my lips, smelling of mint and raw exertion, his dark pupils reflecting the panic in my own.
"Look me in the eye," he commanded, his voice dropping into a dark, ruined register that made my knees tremble beneath my weight, "and tell me you didn't spend all night thinking about how close my mouth was to yours in that truck."
My lips parted on a shallow, broken breath.
I tried to summon the clinical words. I tried to summon the anger, the pride, the ironclad rules that had protected me for three years.
Nothing came.
My vocal cords locked behind a dry swallow as my eyes dropped to his mouth, realizing with sickening terror that the space between us was already gone.