Chapter 16
Chase POV
I gave her sixty seconds before I stepped out of the velvet drape.
My black silk tie felt like a wire noose cinched around my trachea.
The phantom imprint of her mouth, the scalding memory of her skin beneath my hands in the dark of the alcove, pulsed through my blood like a slow-acting poison.
I smoothed the lapels of my charcoal jacket, drew one long, freezing breath of terrace draft, and stepped back onto the parquet of the gallery foyer.
I didn't make it five paces toward the bar.
"Guzman."
The voice was thin, nasal, and carried the greasy weight of generational money.
Harlan Sterling stepped out from behind a carved limestone pedestal, cutting off my path to the main hall.
He was a senior university trustee, the primary benefactor behind the new athletic training pavilion, and the owner of the largest private timber port in Duluth.
He held a crystal tumbler of Scotch in his manicured hand, flanked by Carter Ross—the predatory sports agent who had been circling our roster like a buzzard since October—and two members of the regional draft advisory committee.
I stopped. My boots clicked against the floor, my shoulders squaring on instinct. My hands fell to my sides, my knuckles brushing the seams of my trousers as my posture locked into rigid, defensive alignment.
Sterling took a slow sip of his Scotch, looking me up and down with eyes like wet slate.
"We were just discussing your draft projections with the scouts from Boston, Chase," Sterling said, speaking loud enough to draw the attention of half a dozen donors milling near the double doors.
"A fascinating conversation. Though, of course, the conversation always turns back to the family pedigree. "
The muscle beneath my left ear hitched. I kept my chin level, staring through the bridge of his nose.
"Is that right, Mr. Sterling?" I asked, keeping my voice down in the flat, lifeless register I used for compliance hearings.
"It is," Sterling sneered, tilting his glass so the ice clinked against the crystal.
"A real tragedy, what happened to Declan.
But not surprising, is it? When an athlete relies purely on brute violence, the lack of cognitive discipline catches up eventually.
Your father was the exact same way in the minors. All fists, zero longevity."
He stepped half an inch closer, the smell of peated whiskey washing over my face.
"Some bloodlines simply don't possess the mental architecture for elite pressure," Sterling continued, his voice dripping with aristocratic disdain.
"You're one bad check away from ending up in a motorized chair like your brother, Chase. It makes the university’s investment in your name look remarkably foolish. "
The blood in my ears dropped to absolute zero.
My molars clicked together with enough concussive pressure to send a sharp, splitting ache straight into my temples. The skin across my knuckles stretched white as bone inside my pockets.
Take it.
Marcus’s voice echoed across ten years of bruised ribs and split lips. You open your mouth, you give them the excuse to bury you. Swallow the hit.
I lowered my eyes by a fraction of an inch, my throat tightening until the words tasted like ash.
"Thank you for your perspective, sir. I'll keep it—"
* * *
A rustle of midnight-green silk cut through the foyer like a blade.
Before the second syllable could scrape past my teeth, Nola Wagner stepped directly between us.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't hover on the fringe of the circle. She planted the thin heels of her evening shoes firmly on the terrazzo floor, placing her slender, silk-clad frame directly in front of my chest, blotting out Sterling's line of sight.
The air left my lungs in a sharp, startled hitch.
Nola stood tall, her spine an unyielding rod of iron, her bare shoulders straight and rigid beneath the chandelier glare.
"Mr. Sterling," she said.
Her voice wasn't raised. It was quiet, crystalline, and carried the surgical precision of an incision slicing through living tissue.
Sterling blinked, his tumbler stalling halfway to his lips. "Excuse me?"
"I wasn't aware the university board had expanded trustee privileges to include unlicensed neurological prognoses," Nola said, her hazel-gold eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying brilliance.
"Because if you had actually reviewed the state athletic commission's investigative findings, you would know that Declan Guzman’s cervical fracture was the direct result of a catastrophic structural railing failure on an uninspected commercial property. "
A collective, sharp intake of breath rippled through the circle of surrounding donors.
Sterling’s face turned the color of raw liver. "Young lady, you are out of line—"
"A commercial property owned by one of your subsidiary holding firms, Mr. Sterling," Nola continued, her words landing like sledgehammer strikes on the quiet foyer. "The very case your corporate attorneys settled out of court four years ago to avoid a municipal negligence audit."
Carter Ross took half a step backward, smoothly disconnecting himself from Sterling's elbow. The two draft committee scouts exchanged a swift, uncomfortable glance.
Nola didn't yield an inch of ground.
"And as for Chase Guzman’s durability," she said, her voice dropping into that razor-sharp clinical cadence that had once made my own blood boil, "his bilateral neuromuscular reaction times are currently operating in the ninety-ninth percentile of Division One collegiate athletics.
His physiological indices show zero baseline degradation.
The only demonstrable liability in this foyer, Mr. Sterling, is a trustee who weaponizes settled corporate negligence to mask the fact that his own booster endowment is down forty percent this fiscal quarter. "
Silence crashed over the hall like a dropped steel shutter.
Sterling opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His jowls trembled with a mixture of furious shock and utter humiliation.
Behind her, I stood frozen.
I looked down at the top of her head, at the delicate auburn sweep of her pinned hair, at the pale, fragile line of her bare neck exposed to the room.
My pulse roared against the bone of my jaw, so loud and violent it drowned out the hum of the chandeliers. A sharp, searing ache opened behind my breastbone—a deep, visceral blow that knocked the oxygen right out of my lungs.
My entire life had been defined by absorption. When Declan broke, I took the guilt. When my father raged, I stepped into the punch so my mother wouldn't have to. I was the shield. I was the disposable wall built to take the punishment.
No one had ever stepped in front of me.
No one had ever placed their body in the line of fire to keep the blade from touching my skin.
"Wagner," Sterling finally spluttered, his voice cracking with rage. "I will have your departmental grant revoked before the registrar opens on Monday—"
"You will do nothing of the sort, Harlan," Director Miller’s gravelly voice cut through the crowd.
The athletic director stepped through the circle of donors, his face set in stone, his eyes darting between Nola and the crimson-faced trustee.
"The president is looking for you in the reception suite. Let's move this along."
* * *
Sterling turned on his heel and shoved his way through the murmuring crowd, followed closely by the silent scouts.
I didn't wait for Miller to speak.
My right hand shot forward, my calloused fingers closing firmly around Nola’s slender wrist.
The heat of her skin burned straight through my palm. I turned her toward the exterior threshold, pulling her through the heavy double French doors out onto the high stone terrace.
The heavy glass shut behind us with a muffled click, locking out the music, the whispers, and the suffocating air of the gala.
The terrace was deserted. The sub-zero wind off Lake Superior hit us instantly, a ferocious gale tearing across the dark bluffs, whipping the green silk of her gown against her legs.
I moved on pure, unadulterated instinct.
I stripped off my charcoal suit jacket in one violent, fluid motion. I stepped into her space, draping the heavy, heated wool over her bare shoulders, hauling the lapels together at her throat to block out the freezing mist.
My hands came up.
My palms, rough and trembling with a violent, autonomic tremor I couldn't suppress, framed both sides of her face. My thumbs pressed into the soft, burning flesh of her cheekbones, tilting her face up to meet mine beneath the cold moonlight.
My breathing was a ragged, ruined hitch in my chest.
"Why did you do that?"
The words tore out of my throat, cracked and raw, vibrating with a desperation that made my vision blur.
Nola didn't flinch from the cold. Her small hands rose, her fingers clutching the front of my vest, anchoring herself to my chest as the wind howled around our ears.
"Chase—"
"You put your neck on the block," I rasped, my thumbs stroking the curve of her jaw with an agonizing, frantic urgency. "You put your fellowship on the line in front of the entire athletic board. For me."
She looked straight into my eyes. Her hazel-gold irises were wide, bright with unshed moisture, reflecting the dark sky and the jagged scar on my brow.
"Because I will never stand by and watch anyone treat you like you don't matter," she whispered, her voice steady and clear against the roaring wind. "Not him. Not your father. Not anyone in that building."
The final wall behind my ribs disintegrated.
The steel, the concrete, the five years of isolated silence—it all turned to dust, blown away into the dark waters of Superior.
I dropped my forehead against hers, my eyes shutting tight as a broken, shuddering breath tore from my throat.
She owned me. Every scar, every broken bone, every drop of blood I had left.
I was on my knees without ever hitting the ground.