Chapter 7
Penny Correa POV
One hundred and two days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Outside the high, wire-reinforced basement windows of the biomechanics computer annex, freezing rain hit the glass in violent, sporadic bursts, rattling like lead birdshot against the panes.
The room smelled of hot dust from the cooling fans of six high-performance workstations, dry paper, and the bitter dregs of a cold hazelnut coffee that had gone sour hours ago.
My fingers were trembling as they hovered over the mechanical keyboard. On the center monitor, three thousand rows of raw torque numbers sat in red text, unformatted.
Because the Noraxon telemetry units were sitting in shattered pieces in Dr. Vance’s evidence locker, I was forced to digitize forty minutes of high-speed video manually.
Every single frame required three manual mouse clicks: acromion marker, lateral epicondyle, thoracic spine.
Frame by frame. Thirty frames per second.
If the symmetry index didn't show Justin's right shoulder tracking within seventy-five percent of his left by two in the morning, Dean Sterling would officially suspend his medical clearance before sunrise.
And if his clearance was suspended, Vance would revoke my Vanderveer Fellowship nomination to balance the department’s audit before the NCAA compliance officers arrived on Monday.
A sharp cramp knotted beneath my shoulder blade. My vision blurred, the white numbers on the black screen swimming together into an illegible smear.
Three hours and forty-five minutes.
A sudden, suffocating panic squeezed my ribs, turning my breaths shallow and dry. I had two hundred more video clips to process, and my left hand was cramping so hard around my silver signet ring that my knuckle was numb.
The heavy oak door of the annex pushed open, the brass latch catching with a sharp snap.
I didn't turn around. I couldn't afford to waste the five seconds. "Lab is closed for reserved clinical processing," I croaked, my throat raw from hours of silence.
"Shut up, Penny."
The deep, gravel-scraped baritone cut through the mechanical hum of the computer fans like a heavy blade.
My head whipped around.
Justin stood in the doorway. He was drenched from the sleet, dark hair curling damply against the nape of his neck.
He wore dark gray athletic pants and a black thermal shirt with the waffle-knit sleeves shoved up past his elbows, exposing thick, vascular forearms corded with muscle.
His canvas duffel bag was slung over his left shoulder, his keys jingling as he tossed them onto the metal mail counter.
The cold lake air rolled off him in a dense wave, carrying that familiar, intoxicating trace of crushed cedar, menthol, and raw body heat.
He didn't mention the concourse. He didn't mention Garrett Shaw, or the way he had pinned me against that granite pillar yesterday afternoon and burned every boundary between us to ash.
He dropped his bag, his dark eyes scanning the three glowing monitors, the scattered force-plate printouts, and the frantic tremor in my right hand.
"Vance texted me," he said, his voice level, grounded, and stripped of the biting sarcasm he usually wore. "Said the compliance audit moved up six days."
"They're reviewing your medical status at seven-thirty tomorrow," I said, the panic breaking through my voice in a ragged edge.
"The automatic sensors are gone, Justin. I have to plot every joint vector by hand. I’m only on clip forty-two.
There are two hundred and eighty clips. The math doesn't work. I can't finish before two."
Justin didn't hesitate. He crossed the room in three long strides, his heavy training shoes silent on the linoleum. He reached out with his left hand, caught the back of an empty rolling office chair, and dragged it across the floor, jamming it down directly beside mine.
The metal wheels slammed against the base of my desk. He dropped his massive frame into the seat, his shoulder brushing mine with a solid, immovable weight that instantly grounded the frantic spinning in my skull.
"Stop clicking," he commanded, his voice dropping into a quiet, absolute register that brooked no argument.
"Justin, the deadline—"
"I said stop clicking, Penny." He reached across the small desk, his calloused fingers wrapping around the back of my hand, physically halting my grip on the mouse.
His skin was scalding hot against my icy fingers. The sheer physical heat of him flooded through my wrist, sending a sharp jolt straight up my forearm, locking the air in my throat.
"Take a breath," he rasped, his dark eyes locking onto mine, pupils black and steady under the harsh strip lights. "Look at me."
I swallowed against the dry knot in my throat. I looked.
There was no mockery in his face. No hostility. Just an ironclad, immovable focus that felt like a shield thrown over my shoulders.
"You do the plotting," he said, nodding toward the video software. "I know the torque numbers. I know the degrees of rotation because I felt every single millimeter of that ligament pull on the dynamometer. You click the markers; I’ll punch the rotational vectors into the compliance spreadsheet."
"You don't know the coding protocol—"
"Teach me," he interrupted, leaning closer until his jaw was inches from my temple. "We have three hours and thirty-eight minutes. Stop fighting me and let's get to work."
* * *
The computer annex became a bunker.
Outside, the storm intensified, gale-force winds screaming off Lake Champlain and shaking the heavy glass in its iron casement. Inside, the only sounds were the rapid, rhythmic clatter of mechanical keys, the wet squeak of my mouse across the pad, and the low, synchronized murmur of our voices.
Justin didn't take up space like a patient; he worked like an engineer.
He pulled the keyboard toward his chest, his large, scarred fingers moving across the number pad with shocking speed.
Beneath the enforcer who broke opposing forwards on the ice was a player who had spent four years studying opposing systems, angles of attack, and the precise geometry of ice-friction.
"Clip forty-three," I muttered, my eyes burning from the screen glare as I clicked the blue crosshairs over his digitized scapula. "Abduction at forty degrees."
"Torque reads forty-two foot-pounds," Justin rumbled back, his deep voice keeping a steady, hypnotic cadence. "Subscapularis engagement delayed by zero-point-two seconds. Mark it ninety-one percent symmetry."
"Enter."
"Done. Next."
Our chairs were pressed flush together. Every time he shifted to reach the ten-key pad, the hard, conditioned muscle of his left shoulder pressed firmly against mine. His body heat was an unrelenting presence, warming the cold air on my arm until my oversized wool sweater felt stifling.
Under the narrow particle-board desk, our legs were tangled. His right knee rested solidly against my left thigh, a heavy, unyielding contact that should have made it impossible to concentrate, but somehow acted like an anchor, holding my fraying nerves together.
Neither of us pulled away.
At 12:45 AM, my throat hitched on a dry cough. My fingers slipped, misclicking a vector on frame eighty.
I let out a ragged breath, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes until white sparks danced behind my lids. A sharp, burning ache radiated across my neck and down my spine from hours of hunching forward.
A cold plastic bottle touched the back of my hand.
I lowered my palms. Justin had slid a fresh, unopened bottle of water in front of my mouse pad.
"Drink," he ordered softly.
"I have eighty clips left—"
"Drink, Penny. Your lips are dry as paper."
I took the bottle, my fingers brushing his calloused knuckles. The brief contact sent a flutter through the pulse point at the base of my neck. I twisted the cap off with shaking hands and drank, the cold water soothing the raw ache in my esophagus.
While I drank, Justin reached out with his left arm. He grabbed the heavy plastic bezel of my monitor and smoothly tilted the screen down four inches, adjusting the angle.
"Your chin was jutting forward three inches," he said, his eyes fixed on the spreadsheet as he typed another entry with one hand. "You're loading your upper cervical spine. Stop hunching."
I stared at his profile—the sharp, arrogant blade of his nose, the dark stubble shadowing his strong jaw, the jagged white line of the scar through his eyebrow.
He hadn't complained once about his separated shoulder, though I knew the repetitive typing had to be pulling on his inflamed joint. He had stepped into this room and taken half the crushing weight off my back without asking for a single thing in return.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked, the question slipping out before I could clamp down on it.
Justin’s fingers paused on the number pad.
He didn't turn his head, but I saw the masseter muscle twitch along his jaw.
"You think I'm going to let some bureaucrat in a suit steal your fellowship because I broke your toys in the hallway?" he murmured, the gravel in his voice scraping low and rough.
"You didn't have to stay," I whispered.
Justin turned slowly. His dark, hooded eyes locked onto mine, burning with a quiet, fierce intensity that made my lungs constrict.
"There's nowhere else I’d rather be," he said.
The air between us grew thick and dangerous, the hum of the computers fading into a distant, meaningless white noise.
Then he tapped the monitor with a scarred knuckle. "Clip eighty-one, Correa. Time is running."
* * *
1:56 AM.
On the center display, the green progress bar reached one hundred percent.
UPLOAD COMPLETE. COMPLIANCE DOSSIER #04-IBARRA SUBMITTED TO DEAN ARTHUR STERLING AND DR. MARCUS VANCE.
The confirmation window flashed once, then locked the screen.
The silence that followed fell over the small lab like a collapsed roof.
The adrenaline that had been keeping me upright for five hours vanished in a single, brutal wave. My spine lost all its tension, collapsing back against the vinyl chair. My lungs emptied on a long, shuddering exhale, my heavy eyelids fluttering against the harsh fluorescent glare.
My right hand went limp on the desk, my fingers slipping from the mouse.
The silver signet pen I had been using to track clip numbers rolled off the edge of the laminate desk.
Before it could strike the linoleum, Justin’s left hand shot out, snatching the metal cylinder out of the air with effortless athletic reflex.
He didn't drop the pen.
His fingers didn't retreat.
Instead, his large, warm hand shifted, his calloused fingers sliding slowly around the back of my right wrist.
My breath caught in my chest.
He didn't grip me hard. His touch was slow, deliberate, and devastatingly gentle. He turned my arm over until my palm faced the ceiling, his thumb settling directly into the hollow at the base of my hand, resting against the thin, blue vein of my inner wrist.
Under the rough pad of his thumb, my pulse was hammering—wild, frantic, and completely exposed.
The air in the room vanished.
Justin didn't look at the computer screen. He didn't look at the files. His dark eyes stayed fixed on my wrist, watching the skin jump beneath his touch, before dragging upward, inch by agonizing inch, until they collided with mine.
His pupils were blown wide, consuming the brown irises, black and fever-hot.
He shifted his weight, leaning across the small space between our chairs until his broad chest cut off the overhead light, enveloping me in his shadow. The heat radiating off his body was an open flame, the scent of cedar and rain filling my senses until my head spun with dizziness.
He was so close I could see the tiny gold flecks in his eyes, could feel the hot draft of his breathing washing over my parted lips.
"You worked yourself to the bone tonight, Penny," he whispered, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp that scraped over the exposed nerve of my neck.
My fingers curled involuntarily against his palm, my nails lightly pressing into the hardened calluses of his hand. I couldn't pull away. Every muscle in my body felt heavy, fluid, and paralyzed by the sheer gravity of his presence.
"We had to," I managed to whisper, but the words were weak, breathless, lacking even a shred of the clinical armor I had worn for two weeks.
Justin’s thumb stroked slowly across the inside of my wrist, a gentle, possessive rhythm that sent a shuddering heat straight into the pit of my stomach.
He leaned in another fraction of an inch, his lips hovering a breath away from the sensitive skin just beneath my ear.
"Tell me something, sweetheart," he rasped, his voice a dark, raw murmur that vibrated straight through my collarbone. "Why are you still looking at me like I'm the enemy?"
My throat locked on a dry swallow.
I looked into the dark, exhausted, beautiful wreckage of his face. The arrogance was gone. The contempt was gone. The hostility that had kept us at war was nothing more than ashes scattered on the floor.
I had spent two weeks convincing myself that I despised him, that he was nothing more than an arrogant enforcer who threatened my survival.
The realization hit me with the force of an unyielding check: the hatred had never been real. It was just a lock on a door I had built to keep myself safe.
And Justin Ibarra was already standing on the inside.