Chapter 8
Justin POV
The slap of vulcanized rubber against the end boards sounded like a shotgun blast in the empty arena.
I picked up another puck from the wooden crate at the blue line, toe-dragged the black disc across the scarred ice, and loaded my weight onto my left heel. The shaft of the composite stick flexed, storing fifty pounds of rotational torque before snapping through the follow-through.
Crack.
The puck slammed into the top-right iron with a violent metallic ring that bounced off four thousand vacant wooden seats and rattled the rusted rafters forty feet above my head.
It was 12:42 AM on a Wednesday in Term Week 3. November 18.
Ninety-eight days remained until the ECAC Championship game in Lake Placid.
The Forge was pitch-black except for a single amber utility bank suspended over the center-ice circle, cutting an eerie oval of light through the gloom.
The interior temperature sat at seventeen degrees.
Frost coated the bottom six inches of the plexiglass, and every breath I dragged into my raw bronchi left my mouth in thick, billowing clouds of white steam.
I was naked from the waist up except for a black sleeveless compression top that was drenched through with sweat.
The cold lake draft slicing through the arena vents should have turned my skin to ice, but my blood was running at a rolling boil.
My right shoulder was wrapped in three tight layers of rigid brown tape, holding the clavicle down against the rib cage, but beneath the adhesive, the torn AC joint was a dull, persistent throbbing that matched the pounding in my temples.
I drove my skate blades into the ice, cutting hard crossover strides back toward the blue line, carving white powder into the air.
I was trying to kill it.
I had skated forty hard laps, taken one hundred and fifty slapshots, and run stair-climbs until my hamstrings shook, but none of it worked. The physical exhaustion couldn't burn out the sensation from twenty-four hours ago in the computer annex.
I could still feel the delicate, frantic flutter of Penny Correa’s pulse point jumping against the pad of my thumb.
I could still see her eyes widening under the fluorescent glare, the fight draining from her face, her lips parting as the air ran out between us.
She had looked at me with that raw, defenseless wonder, and my own mind had turned on me, replaying the sound of her breath until I couldn't stand the quiet of my own room.
A sharp, metallic click echoed from the far corner of the arena.
The latch of the Zamboni tunnel door swung open.
My skates dug into the ice, stopping me dead at the center-ice red line. The blade shaved a long spray of frost across the painted circle.
My head turned toward the gloom.
A silhouette stepped through the threshold, illuminated for a fraction of a second by the amber corridor lights before the heavy fire door slammed shut behind her.
She was bundled in a charcoal-gray wool coat that hit her mid-thigh, a thick cream knit scarf looped twice around her neck, and a black beanie pulled low over her dark hair. She held a manila folder against her chest with both gloved hands.
Penny.
My chest stopped rising. The cold sweat along the back of my neck prickled against the draft. My hands tightened on the composite shaft of my stick until the grip tape twisted beneath my palms.
She shouldn't have been here. Not at midnight. Not alone in an unheated building where the security guards didn't walk their rounds until two in the morning.
I didn't speak. I stood under the amber light, chest heaving in ragged bursts, steam rising off my bare shoulders and vascular arms like smoke from an exhaust pipe, watching her walk down the concrete runway toward the player bench.
* * *
Her boots squeaked on the frozen rubber matting behind the boards. She stopped at the open latch of the home bench, her gloved fingers resting on the top of the dasher boards.
The cold wind off Lake Champlain had whipped her cheeks into two bright patches of rose, her hazel eyes glittering in the amber half-light as she looked across the twenty feet of ice between us.
"You're violating your non-contact restrictions, Ibarra," she said, her voice carrying clear and crisp through the vast silence, bouncing off the wooden ceiling.
I dropped my stick onto the ice with a dull clatter.
I pushed off on my left blade, gliding toward the boards in a long, silent line. The steel hummed beneath my weight, closing the distance until the toes of my skates clicked against the yellow kick-plate right beneath her knees.
I rested my forearms across the wood-capped dasher rail, leaning down until my chest blocked out the light behind me, casting her entirely in my shadow.
Up close, the heat coming off my body rolled over the boards, hitting her face in a warm, suffocating wave. The scent of her—clean almond soap, dry wool, and the crisp frost of the Adirondacks—cut straight through the smell of shaved ice and old rubber.
"What are you doing here, Penny?" I asked, my voice dropping into that deep, gravel-scraped register that made her chin tilt up in immediate, involuntary defense.
"Dean Sterling signed the compliance verification at eight this morning," she said, her voice slightly strained, the words coming out in small puffs of vapor. "Your preliminary symmetry checked out at eighty-two percent. You're cleared for non-contact team skates through Week Four."
She held up the manila folder. Tucked into the front pocket was the silver signet pen I had caught out of the air the night before.
"And you left this on the terminal desk," she added, her fingers tightening on the metal barrel.
I looked down at the pen, then dragged my gaze back up to her face. I didn't reach for the folder. I didn't reach for the pen.
"You could have put it in my stall tomorrow morning," I said, leaning another inch closer across the wood, close enough that the hot vapor of my breath mingled with hers.
"You could have emailed the clearance report to Hauer.
It's one in the morning, Correa. Why are you standing in a freezing arena? "
Her throat worked on a dry swallow. The cream scarf rose and fell against her collarbones as her breathing hitched.
"I was in the lab finishing gait analysis," she lied, the words trembling faintly around the edges. "I saw the security floodlights on. I knew it was you."
"Did you?" A dark, dangerous amusement tugged at the corner of my mouth, low and rough. "You knew it was me, and you walked down a dark tunnel anyway."
"I'm your clinician," she fired back, but the clinical armor was paper-thin, cracking under the heavy, magnetic pull of the space between us. "It's my job to make sure you don't do something stupid and tear the acromion off the bone before the Harvard game."
"Is that what this is?" I rumbled, my gaze dropping to her mouth, watching her lower lip part as her respirations turned shallow and quick. "Just clinical duty?"
"Yes."
"You're a bad liar, sweetheart."
* * *
I didn't wait for her to answer.
I reached down with my left hand, hooked the brass latch of the bench gate, and yanked it open with a sharp, echoing snap.
Before she could step back onto the rubber runway, my bare fingers wrapped around the thick wool of her sleeve. I pulled.
She gasped, her boots stumbling over the raised threshold as I hauled her through the gate into the narrow, zinc-taped enclosure of the home bench.
I kicked the gate shut behind her with the heel of my skate, the iron latch dropping into place with the finality of a prison bolt.
The bench was barely three feet wide. With my skates on, I towered over her at six-foot-six, my broad, steaming frame backing her up until the back of her wool coat hit the cold, hard acrylic glass.
I stepped into her space, my knees bracketing hers, planting my left forearm flat against the glass right beside her ear, cutting off the draft, cutting off the arena, cutting off everything.
The heat radiating from my bare torso was an open furnace against the freezing chill of the bench.
"Justin," she breathed, her hands coming up to press against my chest to hold me off.
Her gloved palms flattened against my soaked compression top, right over the violent, heavy hammering of my heart. The cold wool of her gloves burned against my skin like dry ice, but I didn't yield an inch.
"You came looking for me in the dark, Penny," I murmured, my voice a low, gravelly vibration that brushed the shell of her ear.
My right hand rose, the bare, calloused fingers shaking with the brutal effort it took to keep my touch gentle.
I hooked my thumb beneath the sharp line of her jaw, my fingers cradling the cold, flushed skin of her cheek. I tilted her face upward, forcing her to look straight into my eyes.
"Look at me," I commanded softly.
Her breath shuddered in her chest, but she obeyed.
Her hazel eyes locked onto mine, pupils blown wide until the gold flecks were swallowed by ink.
There was fear in her face, but it wasn't the fear of an animal about to be struck—it was the terrifying, breathless shock of someone standing on the lip of a crater, watching the earth crumble beneath her boots.
She didn't push me away. Her fingers curled slightly into the fabric over my ribs, holding onto me in the dark.
"You think this is a game?" I rasped, my thumb smoothing once across her lower lip, feeling the delicate, chapped warmth of her mouth.
"You think you can spend forty hours a week putting your hands on my skin, watching me bleed, looking at me with those eyes, and then walk into my empty barn at midnight like we're just doctor and patient? "
"Justin—"
"I'm barely holding onto this leash, Penny," I whispered, leaning down until my lips were a fraction of an inch from the sensitive skin beneath her jaw, breathing her in until my head swam. "You keep pushing past the glass, you keep coming into my dark, and I’m going to stop holding back."
Her pulse was thumping frantically against the side of my thumb, a wild, trapped rhythm that matched the roar of the blood in my own ears.
"What happens then?" she whispered, her voice trembling, her lips brushing the corner of my jaw as she spoke.
The question hit my bloodstream like an open flame.
I tightened my grip on her chin, my masseter muscle knotting so hard my teeth ached, my forehead resting against hers as our mingled breath plumed between our faces.
"Then I take everything you have, sweetheart," I rasped against her lips. "And I don't give a damn who sees the fire."