Chapter 31
Nola POV
The small bathroom of our rental on East Fourth Street was an icebox.
I sat on the cold hexagonal floor tiles, my back pressed hard against the cast-iron clawfoot tub, my knees drawn up tightly against my chest. The cheap plastic exhaust fan in the ceiling rattled with a harsh, relentless mechanical drone that vibrated straight through the drywall.
From the leaky chrome faucet above the sink, a single drop of water fell every six seconds, landing in the porcelain basin with a hollow, metallic tink.
Outside the small frosted transom window, the bleak, slate-gray morning light of game day filtered through the glass, throwing sharp, pale angles across the linoleum.
My hands were clamped around my shins, my fingernails biting through the heavy cotton of my flannel pajama bottoms into the bone.
A thin sheen of cold sweat coated my hairline, despite the freezing draft leaking under the door.
The back of my throat tasted of copper and dry lime, my mouth parched from another morning of silent, violent dry-heaves over the basin.
On the white porcelain rim of the sink sat the plastic casing of the test, face down on a paper towel.
Beside it, the digital screen of my phone was counting down.
00:42... 00:41... 00:40...
I had spent four years calculating physical variables down to the fourth decimal place.
I knew the mechanical load of a tendon, the exact angle of an articular joint before failure, and the deceleration curve of an athlete hitting the boards at twenty miles an hour.
My entire life had been structured around discipline, preparation, and ironclad control.
Now, every certainty, every plan, and every dream I had ever carried had narrowed down to a three-millimeter strip of reactive paper on a bathroom counter.
Across town at Kehoe Pavilion, the arena was already locked down.
Chase was in the home locker room, his phone sequestered in the coaching safe, his shoulders taped, his focus locked onto the national championship banner hanging from the rafters.
He was five hours away from the final game of his collegiate career, five hours away from stepping onto the ice to claim the future he had spent fifteen years bleeding for.
00:15... 00:14... 00:13...
My heart slammed against my ribcage with a wild, concussive violence that made my vision blur at the edges. My lungs seized, dragging in the sharp, chemical smell of bleach and freezing iron.
00:03... 00:02... 00:01.
The phone on the counter emitted two short, muted electronic beeps.
* * *
I didn't move for three agonizing seconds.
The silence inside the room was deafening, the rattle of the exhaust fan sounding like an aircraft engine in my skull.
I forced my hands to release my shins. I placed my palms flat against the freezing floor tiles and pushed myself upright.
My knees shook with an uncontrollable, violent tremor that traveled straight up my femurs into my pelvis. My joints felt hollow, unmoored, forcing me to slap both hands flat against the cold rim of the porcelain sink to keep my boots from skittering out from under me.
My breathing came in short, shallow hitches, burning the lining of my throat.
I reached forward with my right hand, my fingers trembling so hard they knocked against the chrome faucet with a sharp clink.
I turned the plastic stick over.
Two distinct, dark, unmistakable pink lines burned back at me from the rectangular indicator window.
There was no shadow. No faint evaporation mark. Two thick, dark crimson bars, solid and absolute under the flickering fluorescent bulb.
The floor beneath my feet seemed to drop ten feet into an abyss.
My vision tunneled into a wash of black static, the white porcelain of the sink spinning violently on its axis. A sharp, strangled sound tore out of my windpipe—a raw, broken gasp that emptied every drop of air from my chest.
My knees gave out.
My thighs hit the front of the vanity cabinet as my upper body collapsed forward, my hands gripping the porcelain basin with enough force to turn my knuckles bloodless white.
My stomach convulsed in a sudden, dry heave that pulled at the muscles of my abdomen, leaving me gasping for air against the cold porcelain.
My right hand peeled away from the basin.
Slowly, dragging my shaking fingers down the front of my shirt, my flat palm settled over the lower curve of my stomach.
Beneath the cotton, the skin was flat, soft, and burning with life.
The room went dead.
The cold terror that had gripped my spine didn't vanish, but beneath it, an overwhelming, primal heat surged through my bloodstream, washing away the dizziness in a wave of profound, devastating awe.
His child.
The baby of the man who had looked at me with tears in his eyes on the rug.
The baby of the enforcer who had buried his face in my throat and promised to buy a mountain just to give me big windows.
The life we had created together in the dark of that blizzard, while the world raged outside the brick walls.
A single, scalding tear broke from my lash line, tracking slowly down my pale cheek and dropping onto the back of my hand where it rested over my womb.
A fierce, ferocious protectiveness rose from the deepest marrow of my bones, locking around the life inside me like an iron vault.
* * *
I stood up straight, my spine locking into rigid, unyielding alignment.
I turned the cold tap on full blast, letting the freezing water rush over my wrists until the autonomic tremor in my forearms stilled. I cupped the water in my palms, splashed my burning cheeks three times, and dragged a dry towel across my mouth.
I picked up the white plastic test from the counter.
With meticulous, deliberate care, I wrapped the indicator in a clean white linen handkerchief from my drawer, folding the edges until the plastic was shielded.
I walked into my bedroom, pulled my heavy dark wool coat from the hanger, and slid the wrapped bundle securely into the zippered interior breast pocket, right over the heavy strike of my heart.
Carter Ross’s sneering face flashed across the back of my retinas.
Save his life, or watch him drown in the mud with you.
The memory of the blackmail dossier—the photos, the forged signatures, the threat to burn Chase's first-round draft status before the puck dropped—tightened around my throat like a hot wire.
I was not going to run.
I was not going to pack three cardboard boxes and disappear into the Minnesota snow like a terrified girl, leaving Chase to be devoured by parasites who saw him as an asset on a ledger.
We had made a pact in the dark. He had looked into my eyes and promised that after today, the hiding was finished.
He had the right to know.
He had the right to know that he was going to be a father before he stepped onto that ice.
Together, as an unbreakable front, we would walk into Miller’s office. We would hand the athletic department the truth, expose Ross’s digital theft, and face the compliance committee side by side.
I pulled my wool coat tight across my frame, buttoning each heavy horn button all the way to my throat, wrapping the thick dark fabric firmly over the lower curve of my stomach to shield it from the freezing wind.
I pulled on my heavy snow boots, zipped them tight, and grabbed my leather bag.
I pushed the apartment door open, stepping straight into the howling whiteout of the game-day blizzard.
The sub-zero wind off Lake Superior hit my face like crushed glass, but the fire burning behind my ribs kept the cold from touching my skin.
I marched down the snow-covered sidewalk toward the distant, glowing floodlights of Kehoe Pavilion, entirely blind to the catastrophic trap already detonating inside the building.