Chapter 33
Nola POV
The concrete service tunnel beneath Kehoe Pavilion trembled with the rhythmic, concussive thunder of twenty thousand boots hammering the bleachers above.
I flashed my red athletic compliance pass at the arena security guard stationed by the iron turnstile, my boots skittering across the salt-caked floor as I broke into a dead run down the auxiliary underpass.
The air was a freezing, suffocating draft of sharpened skate-blade steel, damp rubber runners, ammonia fumes from the refrigeration plant, and the heavy exhaust of the Zamboni.
My knuckles were bloodless inside the right pocket of my heavy dark wool coat.
My fingers were locked around the white cotton handkerchief wrapped securely around the plastic pregnancy test, clutching the small casing against my lower ribs like a shield against the world.
A sharp, persistent knot of sour nausea clenched the base of my throat, every breath dragging the cold metallic tang of adrenaline into my raw lungs. My pulse hammered a wild, erratic tempo behind my temples, deafening and urgent.
Forty yards ahead, beneath the harsh, buzzing glare of the overhead utility halogens, I saw him.
Chase stood alone outside the coaches' corridor, fully suited in his black-and-gold varsity game sweater, his massive Kevlar shoulder pads blotting out the cinder-block wall behind him.
The gold C stitched over his breast caught the harsh white light, his composite stick resting blade-down against the floor.
A wave of breathless, overwhelming relief broke across my chest.
"Chase!"
My voice tore out of my throat, ragged and thin, echoing off the damp concrete as I closed the distance between us.
"Chase, thank God!"
I stumbled slightly on the seam of the rubber matting, reaching out with both hands, my wool coat flying open as I closed the gap.
Slowly, dragging his weight like an iron monument turning on rusted gears, Chase turned to face me.
The words died in my windpipe.
The relief in my veins turned to liquid nitrogen.
The man who had held me on his living room couch twelve hours ago—the man who had laid his forehead against my collarbone and whispered promises about a home in the mountains—was gone.
In his place stood a wall of dead, unfeeling stone.
His obsidian-gray eyes were hollow, black as pitch, stripped of every scrap of reverence and warmth.
His jaw was clamped so hard the tendon along his throat stood out like wire, the jagged pale scar slicing through his right eyebrow pulled into a vicious, white line.
The hostility rolling off his armored bulk was an arctic gale that stopped my boots dead three feet from his chest.
* * *
The air in the corridor seemed to lose all heat.
"Chase?" I whispered, my vocal cords locking on a dry, painful swallow. "What happened? What’s wrong?"
I took one tentative step forward, my left hand reaching out, my bare fingertips extending toward the black fabric of his forearm.
Chase recoiled.
He didn't just step back; he jerked his arm away with a violent, shuddering revulsion, as if my bare skin were soaked in sulfuric acid.
"Don't touch me," he rasped.
The voice did not belong to the man I loved. It was a flat, ruined scrape of metal dragged across concrete, carrying a cold, vicious cruelty that made my knees tremble beneath my denim.
Between his skate blades, on the wet rubber runner, lay a mangled, crushed ball of blue cardboard and torn paper.
He looked down at the ruined mess on the floor, then his dead gaze dragged slowly back up to mine.
"How much was it, Wagner?" he whispered, each word a slow, deliberate strike against my breastbone. "Forty-five thousand? Or did Miller throw in an extra stipend for sleeping with the subject?"
The words hit my face like an open-hand blow.
A high, shrill ringing detonated in both of my eardrums, drowning out the roaring crowd above. The hallway tilted violently, the white halogen tubes blurring into streaks of blinding static.
"What are you talking about?" I breathed, my hand coming up to press against the collar of my coat.
He kicked the crushed blue folder with the toe of his skate boot. The mangled cardboard rolled across the rubber mat, stopping against the toe of my snow boot.
Through the torn paper, I saw my full name. My senior student ID number. My official digital cryptographic signature.
OFFICE OF ATHLETIC COMPLIANCE – FORMAL ADJUDICATION REQUEST.
Beneath the header sat a printed email thread from my university account, addressed to Director Miller, requesting the immediate release of my grant funds and the expedited processing of my Colorado Springs fellowship in exchange for submitting evidence of Chase's unhealed labral tear and concussion history.
The room went completely black around the edges of my vision.
Carter Ross.
The library archives. The extortion dossier.
The pieces slammed together in my skull with concussive, shattering force.
"Chase, no," I choked out, the air leaving my lungs in a ragged, desperate sob.
I fell to my knees on the wet rubber, reaching for the paper, looking up at his towering frame with wide, terrified eyes.
"No, this isn't real! Carter Ross ambushed me in the library yesterday morning.
He stole my login credentials. He falsified this data—"
"Stop lying!"
The roar ripped out of his chest like a shotgun blast, bouncing off the concrete blocks with concussive violence.
Chase stepped forward, towering over where I knelt, his chest heaving beneath his shoulder pads, his fists trembling inside his black leather hockey gloves with a terrifying, suppressed fury.
"Your cryptographic signature is stamped on the file, Nola!
" His voice was a broken, bleeding growl, vibrating with a ruined agony that shredded my soul to pieces.
"The timestamp is from your private cloud portal!
You sat on my couch last night. You let me hold you.
You cried on my chest about being disposable, and you had already delivered the kill shot to the compliance committee four hours earlier! "
A violent wave of cold nausea surged up my throat. I clamped my forearm over my mouth, gagging softly on the sour bile, my free hand flying down to press flat against the lower curve of my abdomen beneath my heavy coat.
"I didn't send it," I wept, the words tearing through my clenched teeth, tears blurring the jagged line of his scar. "Chase, look at me! Look at my face! You know me. I would never hurt you. I came here to tell you—"
"I don't know you at all," he cut in, his voice dropping into a register so cold, so dead, it felt like an execution. "I was an assignment to you. A broken piece of equipment holding the sensors until you got what you wanted."
* * *
"That's not true!" I cried, scrambling to my feet, my boots slipping in the meltwater as I reached for his chest. "Chase, please! I love you! There’s something inside me—"
"Shut up," he rasped.
The words were an iron wall.
"Don't you ever say that word to me again."
A harsh, mechanical blast detonated overhead.
The three-minute warning horn blared through the underpass, its industrial wail vibrating through the pipes and concrete, signaling the team lineup.
At the far bend of the tunnel, the iron gate clattered open. Coach Hastings and Silas Vance appeared around the corner, leading twenty varsity players in black game sweaters toward the ice.
"Guzman!" Hastings’s voice boomed down the hall. "Captain on the ice! Let's go!"
Chase didn't look back at his coach.
He looked down at me one last time. His obsidian eyes were an abyss, stripped of every memory of my touch, every kiss, and every promise we had ever made in the dark.
He stepped forward.
His broad, armored shoulder clipped mine as he brushed past, his sheer mass spinning me half an inch on the rubber matting.
He leaned down, his mouth brushing the edge of my hair, his voice a low, gravelly whisper that drove a rusted spike through my heart:
"We're done, Nola. You were the biggest mistake of my life."
The breath froze in my throat.
"Pack your things from my loft," he murmured, his breath hot and toxic against my skin. "If you're still in my building when this game ends, campus security will throw your boxes into the snow."
He pulled away.
He didn't glance back. He didn't hesitate by half a stride.
Chase skated down the rubber runner toward the glaring white portal of the rink, his composite stick gripped in his right hand, his chin held high as he led his roster through the gate.
The arena bowl exploded.
Twenty thousand voices roared in a deafening, unified wave of thunder as Captain Number Nineteen hit the ice, the concussive vibration shaking the ceiling dust down onto my shoulders.
I stood alone in the dim, empty underpass.
My right hand pressed flat over the zippered breast pocket of my wool coat, where the plastic test sat wrapped in white linen, burning like a brand against my ribs.
My knees gave out.
My back struck the cold cinder-block wall, sliding down the rough mortar until my hips hit the wet rubber runner.
I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping both arms tightly around the lower curve of my abdomen, my forehead dropping to my shins as silent, dry sobs racked my frame.
He was gone.
The sanctuary was ash.
And as the crowd screamed for his name above, I sat in the dirt and the dark, holding his baby in silence.