Chapter 2
Justin POV
The skin over my right clavicle was on fire.
Every time my chest expanded to draw in the freezing arena draft, a sharp, grinding pain scraped beneath my trapezius, radiating down into the subscapularis.
I leaned my left forearm against the rusted metal lockers in the private coaches' alcove, teeth grinding together until the pressure sent a dull ache through my skull.
With my left hand, I hooked the collar of my soaked compression shirt, wrenching the fabric over my head. The movement jerked my right arm two inches forward. White-hot agony flared behind my eyes, turning the edges of my vision gray. The metallic tang of copper coated the back of my throat.
Grade two separation. I knew the feel of torn acromioclavicular ligaments. I had felt them pop twice during my second year in the USHL, and the memory of that joint laxity lived in the back of my mind like an open blade.
One hundred and twelve days until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Fourteen penalty minutes in forty minutes of an exhibition game.
Coach Bradley Hauer had ripped into me from the bench before the referee could even finish signaling the game misconduct: Reckless.
Undisciplined. A liability to the crest. He didn't care that the McGill forward had taken three consecutive runs at our freshman goaltender, Tyler Hayes.
All Hauer saw was his senior captain sitting in the box while the penalty kill unit scrambled on the ice.
All Raymond Cole would see when he flew in from Boston in two weeks was an enforcer who couldn't govern his own violence.
A three-year entry-level contract. Nine hundred and fifty thousand at the NHL level. A ninety-five-thousand-dollar signing bonus.
That money wasn't mine to throw away. It belonged to the ramp installed on the porch of my mother’s house in Massena. It belonged to the specialized electric wheelchair Mateo navigated with the partial mobility left in his wrists.
Five years ago. October twenty-eight.
I had been sitting in a penalty box in a junior rink in Green Bay, serving two minutes for a post-whistle scrap that accomplished nothing.
On the ensuing face-off, a late hit drove Mateo headfirst into the awkward angle of the open bench gate.
The sickening crack of C6 and C7 vertebrae had carried over the roar of the siren.
I hadn't been on the ice to put my body between him and the boards. I had been sitting on a pine bench behind plexiglass, watching my seventeen-year-old brother’s legs go permanently limp because I couldn't master my own temper.
I squeezed my left fist until the knuckles turned bloodless white, the tendons straining against the skin.
Control the ice. Control the room. Protect the family.
The locker room door squeaked on its brass hinges, but it wasn't the trainer with the ice wrap. It was the scent that hit me first—clean, sharp soap, wet wool, and the faint, sweet trace of rain cutting through the stench of damp leather and stale sweat.
Penny Correa.
The image of her standing in that subterranean runway flashed across the back of my eyelids. Five-foot-four of stubborn, insolent nerve, wearing scrubs that hung loose on her narrow frame, refusing to yield an inch of concrete to a man who outweighed her by a hundred pounds.
Her hazel eyes had flared golden under the dim halogen, burning with pure, scalding contempt.
Most people on this campus scurried out of my path or tried to ride the coattails of my draft status.
She had slapped three hundred dollars against my sternum and called me a brainless animal without a single hitch in her voice.
My pulse jumped, thudding hard against the base of my throat. The sudden surge of heat in my chest had nothing to do with torn ligaments, and that infuriated me more than the penalty minutes.
* * *
"Ibarra. Get your ass in here."
Coach Hauer’s voice cut through the steam of the corridor like a dull axe.
I grabbed a clean black Ironclads hoodie from my stall, gritting my teeth as I worked my injured right arm through the sleeve first, using gravity to let the fabric slide over the swollen shoulder without engaging the deltoid.
I pulled the fleece down over my torso, masking the asymmetry of my posture, and shoved my left hand deep into the front pocket.
I pushed through the heavy wooden door into the athletic director's satellite office.
The room smelled of burned filter coffee, radiator dust, and damp winter coats.
Behind the heavy oak desk sat Coach Hauer, his gray hair clipped military-short, his jaw set in an expression of suppressed fury.
Standing to his right, leaning against a green filing cabinet, was Dr. Marcus Vance, the chair of sports medicine, his arms folded across a thick manila folder.
And standing directly between them was Penny Correa.
She had shed her soaked winter coat, revealing a charcoal-gray athletic training polo tucked into black utility trousers.
Her dark hair was wound into a high, messy knot anchored by a plastic claw, a few damp strands clinging to the curve of her neck.
Her posture was rigid as rebar, her hands clasped behind her back, her chin tilted at the exact same defiant angle she had given me in the dark runway.
On the side table lay the battered aluminum flight case, its cracked latches gaping open like a broken jaw. Beside it sat the plastic shards of the Noraxon sensors.
My jaw clamped shut, the masseter muscles knotting beside my ear.
"Shut the door, Justin," Hauer barked.
I kicked the door shut behind me with the heel of my boot, staying near the wall. I kept my weight centered on my left leg, keeping my right shoulder relaxed so the swelling wouldn't pull against the seam of the hoodie.
"You cost us an exhibition win today," Hauer said, his voice quiet, lethal. "And worse, Raymond Cole called my office twenty minutes ago. Boston heard about the game misconduct before the final horn blew."
"McGill was running Hayes," I said, keeping my tone level, stripped of all inflection. "The refs weren't calling the crease."
"I don't give a damn about the crease," Hauer snapped, leaning forward and planting his palms on the desk.
"Boston wants to know if their second-round investment is a liability who belongs in the penalty box or an NHL-caliber defenseman who can play twenty-five minutes of disciplined hockey without taking a suspension. And now I have this."
Hauer gestured violently toward the broken aluminum case.
Dr. Vance cleared his throat, stepping forward. His eyes, cold and analytical behind wire-rimmed glasses, flicked over my right shoulder with diagnostic precision. "Eighteen thousand dollars of diagnostic telemetry, destroyed in a restricted corridor during an uncontrolled altercation."
"It was an accident," I said, my gaze slicing sideways to Penny.
She didn't look at me. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, her jaw set, but the rapid rise and fall of her chest gave her away.
"An accident that happened because you couldn't control yourself," Penny said.
Her voice was steady, crisp, and cutting as a surgical scalpel.
"The Noraxon units were checked out under my department fellowship profile. Dean Sterling’s office has already been notified.
If the telemetry isn't replaced or the research hours aren't logged, my clinical standing is terminated. "
"I offered you cash," I said, my voice dropping into a low gravel that vibrated in the small room. "You threw it on the floor."
"Gentlemen, Correa, be quiet," Vance commanded, his tone brook no dissent.
He tapped the manila folder on the desk.
"Justin, don't play dumb with me. I watched you leave the ice after that check into the corner boards in the second period.
You didn't swing your right arm once on your way to the gate.
You're favoring the subscapularis, and your clavicle is elevated by half an inch. "
My stomach tightened into a hard knot, but my expression remained a blank wall of stone. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Vance said flatly. "You have a Grade Two AC joint separation.
If you take one clean hit along the boards in a regular-season game, that ligament shears through, and you're undergoing reconstructive surgery that sidelines you for six months.
Goodbye senior season. Goodbye Boston Bruins. "
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the hum of the overhead light ballast.
Hauer rubbed his temples, exhaling a long, exhausted breath. "NCAA compliance and university risk management have laid down the terms. Justin, you are barred from all full-contact team drills effective immediately. You will not skate in a game until you are medically cleared by sports medicine."
"Coach—"
"Shut up and listen," Hauer cut in. "Dean Sterling is giving us one path that doesn't involve voiding your athletic scholarship for misconduct or billing Correa's academic account for eighteen grand.
You are mandated to complete one hundred and twenty clinical hours of supervised eccentric scapular stabilization and neuromuscular therapy. "
"One hundred and twenty hours," I repeated, the taste of ash in my mouth. "That's four hours a day, five days a week, for six weeks."
"Exactly," Vance said. "And because the athletic department cannot afford an NCAA ethics leak regarding your unfitness to play, the rehabilitation must take place off the books, isolated in Subterranean Lab 04."
Vance turned his gaze toward Penny.
"Penny will be your dedicated rehabilitative clinician," Vance stated.
"She will log every degree of rotation, monitor every isometric threshold, and manage the therapeutic ultrasound.
If you miss a session, she reports you, and Hauer scratches you for the year.
If she fails to produce the documented strength symmetry by January, her Vanderveer Fellowship nomination is permanently revoked. "
My gaze snapped back to Penny.
She was looking at me now. Her hazel eyes were wide, the pupils constricted, a faint flush creeping up the pale column of her throat. She looked like she had just been handed a death sentence, but beneath the shock, the cold iron of her pride remained unbent.
"I don't need a student trainer," I said, looking directly at Hauer, letting the threat rumbling in my chest bleed through. "Give me the team physician."
"The team physician doesn't have four hours a day to baby a defenseman who acts like a street brawler," Hauer countered coldly.
"Correa is the top biomechanics student in this university.
She knows the shoulder girdle better than my assistants know the playbook.
You will report to Lab 04 tomorrow morning at six o'clock, Justin.
Or you can hand in your sweater right now. "
* * *
The latch of the office door clicked shut behind us, cutting off the low murmur of Hauer and Vance inside.
The outer stairwell was dim, smelling of cold concrete and ancient dust. The yellow emergency bulb cast long, harsh shadows down the metal steps.
Penny took two quick steps toward the exit, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, her fingers white around the handle of her ruined aluminum case.
I didn't think. I moved.
Two strides closed the gap. I stepped in front of the door frame, planting my left forearm against the concrete lintel, using my frame to cut off her exit completely.
She pulled up short, barely four inches from my chest. The scent of her—rain, clean soap, and that sharp, wild adrenaline—flooded my senses, making the air in my raw lungs feel thick.
"Get out of my way, Ibarra," she said, her voice dropping, taut as a wire.
"Walk away from this," I growled, leaning down until my mouth was level with her temple. "Go back in there. Tell Vance you have a conflict of interest. Tell him you can't stand the sight of me. I don't give a damn what lie you use, but you don't take this assignment."
Penny didn't shrink back against the wall. Instead, her chin snapped up, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that burned straight through my skull.
"You think I want this?" she whispered, her words razor-edged. "You think I want to spend four hours a day trapped in a windowless basement with an entitled, violent Neanderthal who thinks he owns the ground everyone else walks on?"
"Then refuse it," I rasped, crowding her closer, my massive chest hovering inches from hers. I wanted her to flinch. I wanted her to show one shred of the fear that every other person on this campus showed when I lost my patience. "Drop the case, Correa. You don't know what you're stepping into."
"I am not throwing away my Vanderveer Fellowship because you don't know how to behave like a civilized human being," she spat, her breath warm against the bare skin of my throat.
She took a deliberate step forward, closing the remaining space until the stiff fabric of her polo brushed the front of my hoodie.
The tip of her shoe bumped against my boot.
She didn't have a weapon, she didn't have an ounce of leverage, but she looked up at me as if she were the one holding the axe.
"Let's get something straight, Number Four," she said, her voice low, measured, and dangerously calm.
"You don't frighten me. Your size doesn't impress me.
And your draft status means nothing to my grade point average.
Tomorrow morning, six o'clock sharp. You will be on the table in Lab 04.
You will strip off your shirt, you will keep your mouth shut, and you will do every single exercise I tell you to do. "
A muscle in my jaw jumped so hard my molars clicked.
"And if I don't?" I asked, my voice dropping to a lethal, guttural whisper.
Penny's gaze dropped to my right shoulder, then flicked back to my eyes, a cold, predatory satisfaction curving the corner of her lips.
"Then I log a non-compliance failure with Dr. Vance," she whispered back, her hazel eyes glittering like shattered glass. "And I watch the Boston Bruins tear up your contract."
She didn't wait for my response. She shoved her shoulder past my left side, slipping beneath my arm with fluid grace, and pushed open the stairwell door.
The heavy steel slammed shut behind her, the metallic reverberation ringing through the cold stairwell.
I stood in the dim light, my heart pounding violently against my ribs, the blood roaring in my ears like a freight train. My right shoulder throbbed with a vicious, sickening heat, but it was nothing compared to the dark, suffocating realization settling into my gut.
One hundred and twenty hours. Locked in a concrete basement with a woman who held my entire life in her small, capable hands—and who looked at me like she wanted to watch me burn.
It was going to be absolute torment.