Chapter 4
Justin POV
The air inside the varsity locker room was a suffocating fog of boiling shower steam, pine disinfectant, and the sour funk of saturated hockey pads.
From the ceiling-mounted soundbar above the equipment stalls, heavy sub-bass rattled the steel mesh lockers, vibrating straight through the concrete floorboards into the soles of my shower slides.
Half the roster was stripped down, icing groin strains, while freshman goaltender Tyler Hayes stacked rolls of white shin tape in the corner, keeping his head down and avoiding eye contact with the upperclassmen.
I sat on the scarred oak bench in front of stall number four, naked from the waist up, a thick ice bag pressed against my right clavicle. Beneath the melting cubes, my skin was numb, but deep in the joint bed, the torn acromioclavicular ligament burned like an embedded wire.
My lungs still tasted like frost and dry blood from the morning skate.
Coach Hauer had skated me through forty-five minutes of isolated edge-work and figure-eights while the top two lines practiced the umbrella power play.
No pucks. No contact. Just endless laps until my quads cramped, punishment for the fourteen penalty minutes against McGill.
One hundred and nine days until the ECAC Final in Lake Placid.
To my left, Declan Ward slumped back against his stall, unstrapping his sweat-stained shoulder pads with a wet rip of Velcro. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead in damp spikes, a dented can of citrus energy drink clutched in his bare hand.
Declan took a long pull from the can, wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, and kicked my skate boot with his heel.
"Hey," Declan said, raising his voice over the bass thump. "Who’s the little brunette down in Vance’s wing?"
My fingers went rigid against the plastic of the ice bag. The back of my neck pulled tight, tendons knotting like pulled cords. "What are you talking about?"
"The student trainer," Declan said, flashing a lazy, crooked grin.
"Five-foot-nothing, legs that don't quit, hair pinned up with one of those claw things. Saw her down outside the biomechanics annex chewing out an athletic department clerk like she owned the building. Girl’s got claws.
" He took another swig, chuckling into the rim.
"Might go tweak my groin during third period tomorrow just to get her on the table. "
A sudden, blinding flare of heat detonated behind my sternum.
Before my brain could filter the impulse, I dropped the ice bag to the floor. The plastic ruptured against the wet rubber matting, sending melting slush scattering across Declan’s bare feet.
I leaned toward him, my shoulders locking, my shadow falling heavy across his stall.
"Say another word about her," I said, my voice dropping so low and flat it cut straight beneath the music, "and I’ll put you through the drywall in the tunnel."
Declan froze. The grin vanished from his face, his blue eyes widening in genuine shock. He stared at me, his fingers tightening on the aluminum can until the metal crunched between his knuckles.
"Jesus, Ibarra," Declan murmured, holding his free hand up in an uneasy truce. "Take a breath. It was a joke."
"It's not a joke," I growled, the masseter muscle jumping along my jaw until my back teeth ached. "She’s off-limits. She’s medical staff. Keep your eyes on your own line."
Across the aisle, Alternate Captain Garrett Shaw paused with a roll of black blade tape in his hands. His pale eyes flicked from Declan to me, sharp and calculating, cataloging the sudden violence in my posture before he turned back to his stall with a faint, mocking smirk.
I stood up, ignoring the sickening pull in my shoulder, and hauled my clean gray Ironclads hoodie over my head.
My pulse was pounding violently in the hollow of my throat. It was irrational. It was stupid. Declan was my road roommate, the best playmaker on the roster, and I had nearly taken his head off over a stray sentence.
I told myself it was about the secret. If Declan or Garrett started sniffing around Penny, they would find out about the 120 mandatory hours, find out about the Grade Two separation, and Dean Sterling would pull the plug on my senior clearance.
That was the lie I told myself.
The truth was darker, heavier, and coiled tight around my ribs: the thought of any other man’s hands on her skin made the blood in my veins feel like boiling lye.
* * *
The heavy industrial door of Subterranean Lab 04 clicked shut behind me, the latch seating with the hollow finality of a cell door.
Two flights below the ice, the room was cold, damp, and lit by the sickly yellow flicker of overhead fluorescent tubes. The mechanical hum of the ice-compressors vibrated through the foundation, a dull, droning bass note that matched the tempo of the blood in my ears.
Penny Correa sat at the small stainless-steel work desk bolted to the far wall.
She wore charcoal medical trousers and a matching polo, the sleeves pushed up to expose her slender forearms. Her dark, curly hair was twisted up in that tortoiseshell claw clip, leaving the pale, elegant column of her throat completely bare.
She was bent over an open three-ring binder, scribbling notes with a black pen, her silver signet ring flashing under the strip lights as she tapped the metal barrel against the paper.
She didn't look up when the deadbolt engaged. She didn't flinch at the sound of my heavy boots on the concrete floor.
She just kept writing, weaponizing her indifference like a shield.
"Session two," she said, her voice crisp, cool, and detached. "You’re three minutes early, Ibarra. Sit on the plinth and expose the shoulder."
The small room shrank to nothing. The scent of her hit me like a physical shove—clean rain, sweet almond soap, and the crisp trace of winter air clinging to her clothes, completely wiping out the smell of liniment and chlorine.
I didn't sit on the plinth.
I crossed the room in three deliberate strides, stopping at the edge of her small metal desk.
I dragged the spare rolling stool out with the toe of my boot, planted it right beside her chair, and dropped into it, leaning forward until my forearm rested on the stainless-steel surface, invading her space until my shadow covered her paperwork.
Penny’s pen paused. The black ink pooled on the clinical chart, a tiny dark circle spreading into the paper.
She turned her head slowly, her hazel eyes meeting mine with a frosty, unyielding glare. "I said the plinth. We have thirty minutes of passive manual traction, followed by twenty reps of eccentric internal rotations with the yellow band."
"Maybe I don't feel like moving to the table," I said, leaning an inch closer, letting my size swallow her perimeter. My voice was a low rumble, thick with gravel. "Maybe I like it right here."
A faint, dusky rose flush crept up her neck, coloring the skin above her collar, but her chin tilted up with that same stubborn, infuriating insolence.
"You're dripping sweat on my baseline data," she said, her voice razor-sharp.
"And this isn't a social visit. You have one hundred and eighteen hours left of this mandate.
You can spend them cooperating, or you can spend them failing.
Dr. Vance doesn't care which one you choose, and frankly, neither do I. "
"You care," I murmured, watching the rapid, shallow rise and fall of her chest under the dark polo. "You care about that forty-five-thousand-dollar Vanderveer check. You care about walking out of this dump with a clean record so you never have to come back."
Penny’s jaw tightened. "I care about my career. Which is why I'm not going to let a reckless enforcer who can't keep his fists to himself drag me down."
"Then why didn't you take my money in the hallway?" I asked, my voice dropping lower, rougher, the words scraping out of my chest. "Three hundred bucks. You could have walked. Could have told Vance the case was compromised."
"Because I don't take handouts from bullies," she whispered, her gaze dropping to my mouth, then snapping back to my eyes, her pupils black and blown wide. "And you couldn't afford me anyway."
* * *
The insult hung in the freezing air, sharp as broken glass.
Penny reached across the desk to grab the coiled yellow resistance band resting on the shelf, her body shifting forward in a sudden, sharp movement.
Her right knee slammed directly into my left thigh under the cramped steel desk.
Neither of us pulled back.
The heat of her leg through her trousers pressed flush against my quad, a sudden, searing point of physical friction that sent an immediate jolt of adrenaline straight to the base of my spine. The air left my raw lungs in a hard, silent hitch.
Penny froze. Her hand hovered mid-air, inches from the rubber band.
Under the table, the heavy, impact-hardened muscle of my thigh remained locked against hers. I could feel the delicate tremor running through her leg, could feel the sudden, chaotic jump of her breathing as she realized what she was touching.
The clinical detachment cracked down the middle.
"Move your leg, Ibarra," she whispered, but the command lacked its sharp bite. Her voice was breathy, strained, her vocal cords tight.
"You hit me, Correa," I rumbled, leaning down until my mouth was two inches from the shell of her ear.
My left hand left the table. My fingers wrapped around the cold, stainless-steel edge of her chair, trapping her between my body and the desk. Veins stood out along my forearm, thick and corded, straining against the dark fleece of my sleeve.
"You want me to move?" I asked, my gravelly rasp brushing over the sensitive curve of her jaw, close enough to feel the fever radiating off her skin. "Make me."
Her breath hitched in a sharp, shuddering gasp. The pulse point in the hollow of her throat was hammering like a trapped bird, frantic and wild against her pale skin. Her eyes, gold-flecked and wide, locked onto mine.
She didn't pull her leg back.
Instead, she leaned in half an inch closer, closing the tiny sliver of air between us until her lips were hovering just beneath my chin, her breath washing hot over my throat.
"You think you're the only one who knows how to take a hit?
" she whispered, her voice trembling not with fear, but with a pure, reckless defiance that set my blood ablaze.
"I've dealt with men like you my entire life, Justin.
Big, angry, and terrified that someone will see how fragile they actually are. "
My chest stopped moving. The masseter muscle in my jaw jumped so hard my molars groaned under the pressure.
Fragile.
No one on this campus, no one in this league, had ever dared to use that word in my presence.
She sat there, trapped beneath my frame, her knee pressed against mine, daring me to cross the line, daring me to break the fragile boundary holding us apart. She didn't want to run from me. She wanted to stand in the wreckage.
A dark, feral realization settled deep into the hollow of my stomach, cold as pond ice and heavy as iron.
I was done trying to scare her out of this basement. I was done trying to intimidate her into walking away.
I wanted to keep her right here, locked in the dark, until every shred of that sharp, stubborn armor was stripped away—until the only sound in this room was her voice begging me for mercy.
"Take off the hoodie, Justin," she whispered, her hazel eyes glittering with challenge. "We have work to do."
I held her gaze for five agonizing seconds, letting the silence crush us. Then, slowly, I let my hand drop from her chair.
"Fine," I rasped, my throat raw. "Let's see what you've got, sweetheart."