Chapter 9
Penny Correa POV
The low hum of the single fluorescent tube over the far examination table was the only sound left in the bowels of The Forge.
Ninety-six days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
The rest of the athletic complex had gone dark an hour ago, the team buses from the afternoon intrasquad scrimmage long since emptied. The subterranean corridor smelled of dried floor wax, stale mineral water from the drainage trench, and the sharp, medicinal bite of povidone-iodine.
I pushed through the heavy door of Subterranean Lab 04 carrying my clipboard and a fresh roll of two-inch elastic bandage.
My intention had been simple: log the afternoon’s passive range-of-motion metrics, file Dr. Vance’s signature from the morning audit, and walk the four freezing blocks back to my apartment.
Then I saw him.
Justin was sitting on the edge of the black vinyl plinth, stripped to his gray training shorts.
His massive frame was hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his head hanging between broad, corded shoulders that were slick with cold sweat.
Across his left flank and curving over the lower margin of his rib cage, a violent, mottled bloom of plum and dark amber contusion was already rising under the skin—the unmistakable signature of an unpenalized crosscheck against the boards.
In his left hand, he held a dingy white washcloth pressed clumsily to his left eyebrow. Fresh blood had soaked through the terry cloth, leaking a thin, crimson track down the sharp ridge of his cheekbone, dripping onto the concrete between his bare feet.
His right arm hung stiffly against his side, the forearm twitching with microscopic, exhausting tremors as he tried to reach an open plastic bottle of isopropyl alcohol on the stainless-steel cart without engaging his injured shoulder.
Every breath he dragged into his lungs was shallow, hitched, and ragged.
He was hiding. He had stayed behind in this freezing basement cell so Coach Hauer wouldn't see the blood, so Dr. Vance wouldn't see the fresh rib trauma, so no one with authority could write him off the active sheet before Boston’s scouting team arrived.
My feet moved across the floor before my brain could raise a single objection.
The professional distance I had spent weeks constructing collapsed with every step. My clipboard hit the metal counter with a sharp, echoing clatter that broke the room's silence.
Justin’s head snapped up. His left eye narrowed, the right widened in sudden, feral defensiveness. He moved to shove the bloody towel into his pocket, his jaw clamping shut as he prepared to bark an order for me to leave.
I didn't give him the chance.
I reached out, my fingers closing gently over the back of his large, calloused knuckles. His skin was fever-hot, contrasting with the icy draft pooling around our ankles.
"Let go of the towel, Justin," I said, my voice low, quiet, and stripped of all argument.
He looked at me through the blood blurring his vision, his dark, dilated pupils searching my face for mockery or pity. Finding neither, the rigid tension in his wrist slowly gave way.
His fingers loosened. I pulled the saturated cloth away and tossed it into the biohazard bin.
* * *
The laceration sliced two inches through the tail of his eyebrow, the jagged edges weeping fresh blood where a stick blade had found the seam above his visor.
I grabbed a sterile saline wipe and a pair of forceps from the glass jar on the counter.
"Sit up straight," I commanded softly, stepping into the space between his parted knees.
The position was an immediate sensory assault.
Because he was seated on the high examination table, our eye levels were nearly even.
His knees bracketed my thighs, the rough fabric of his training shorts brushing the dark denim of my jeans.
The sheer mass of his bare torso filled my vision—a landscape of heavy, conditioned muscle, pale scars from old blade cuts, and the violent purple bloom over his bruised ribs rising and falling with his strained breathing.
He smelled of crushed cedar, iron, the sharp tang of sweat, and the bitter trace of cooling liniment.
"You should have gone to the team physician," I whispered, pressing the saline pad against the cut.
Justin didn't flinch. The antiseptic had to be searing the raw tissue, but the only reaction he gave was a minute twitch in the masseter muscle beside his ear. His dark eyes remained locked onto mine, unblinking, tracking every breath that hitched in my throat.
"Physician would have written a three-day bench order for protocol," he rasped, his voice deep and rough as gravel dragged through mud. "I don't have three days."
"Garrett Shaw did this during the scrimmage, didn't he?" I asked, my fingers steady as I wiped away the smear of red from his cheekbone.
Justin’s jaw tightened. "Doesn't matter who did it."
"It does matter," I said, my voice shaking with an edge of quiet fury that surprised both of us. "He targeted your right side because he knows you're favoring the AC joint. He's trying to put you out before the scouts get here."
"Let him try," Justin murmured.
As I discarded the wipe and reached for a sterile butterfly bandage, Justin’s hands moved.
He didn't shove me away. He raised both of his large, scarred hands and settled them firmly on the curves of my hips.
My breath caught in my throat.
His grip was heavy, possessive, and unyielding. The heat of his calloused palms burned straight through the thick denim of my jeans, scorching the sensitive skin over my pelvic bones. His fingers spread wide, resting against my lower back, anchoring me firmly in the notch between his thighs.
"Justin," I breathed, my heart executing a frantic, chaotic leap against my ribs.
"Keep working, Penny," he rumbled, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating against my sternum. "Your hands are shaking."
I swallowed dryly. My knuckles were indeed trembling as I peeled the backing from the adhesive strip.
I leaned closer to align the edges of the split skin, my chest coming within three inches of his bare collarbone.
My left fingertips settled against the side of his temple to steady his head.
Beneath my skin, his temporal artery was pounding with a violent, heavy rhythm that matched the chaos in my own veins.
I pulled the skin taut and pressed the butterfly closure down, smoothing the adhesive with the pad of my thumb.
Justin didn't look at the wall. He didn't close his eyes.
He watched my mouth, his gaze heavy and dark, his pupils swallowing the brown irises until they looked like black ink.
His breathing turned deep and slow, his chest expanding until the rough cotton of my sweater brushed his bare skin with every inhalation.
The silence between us was suffocating, charged with a magnetic, volatile heat that made the hair on my arms stand up.
"Ribs," I managed to say, my voice sounding breathy and strange in the small room.
I lowered my hands from his face, letting my palms rest lightly against the purple contusion along his left rib cage.
Justin’s abdomen snapped taut as iron under my touch, a sharp intake of air hissing through his teeth.
"Does it hurt when you breathe deep?" I asked, gently palpating the intercostal spaces, feeling for the sickening click of broken bone.
"Everything hurts, Correa," he rasped, his hands tightening on my hips, pulling me half an inch closer until the heat radiating from his torso felt like an open furnace. "You're not helping."
"No crepitus," I whispered, my fingers skimming over the bruised tissue, feeling the heat rising off his inflamed muscle. "The bone is intact. It’s a severe soft-tissue contusion. You need ice, compression, and three days of immobility."
"I'm skating Monday," he said, the stubborn, unbending pride ringing in every syllable.
"You're an idiot," I countered, my voice cracking with an emotion I couldn't name and couldn't stop.
* * *
I finished the examination, my fingers lingering against his side longer than clinical protocol ever allowed.
I went to take a step back, to break the dangerous, suffocating gravity holding me pinned between his knees.
Justin didn't let me.
His left hand left my hip. In a movement so fast it defied his exhaustion, his fingers closed around my right wrist.
His grip wasn't painful, but it was absolute.
He pulled my hand upward, drawing it away from his side, and pressed my open palm flat against the center of his bare chest.
My breath seized in my throat.
Under my palm, his skin was feverish, slick with sweat, the dark hair sparse and soft beneath my fingers. But beneath the surface, his heart was slamming against his ribs like a trapped beast—violent, ragged, and terrifyingly fast.
The heat of his chest seemed to burn right through my hand, racing up the nerves of my arm until my whole body was tingling with it.
"Justin, let go," I whispered, but my fingers didn't pull away. They curled slightly against his skin, pressing deeper into the hard muscle over his sternum.
"Feel that," he rasped, his voice dropping into a dark, raw register that stripped away every lie, every defense, every piece of armor we had spent weeks building.
He didn't release my wrist. He held my palm pinned over his racing heart, his dark eyes burning into mine with an unhinged intensity.
"That's not from forty minutes of skating, Penny," he whispered, each word scraping over my sensitized nerves. "That's you. Having you stand between my legs, having your hands on my skin—it hurts worse than getting checked through the glass."
My throat constricted until I couldn't pull in a full breath. The room, the fluorescent light, the ice arena above us—all of it faded into a distant, meaningless blur.
"Then let me go," I whispered, the words trembling on my lips, hovering inches from his face.
Justin leaned forward.
His forehead came down, resting gently against mine, his hot, shallow breath washing over my mouth, smelling of cedar and mint and adrenaline. His fingers tightened over my wrist, holding my palm against his pounding chest like an anchor.
"I can't," he rasped, the confession tearing out of him, rough and destroyed. "I've tried for three weeks, sweetheart. I can't let you go."
A sharp, breathless sob caught in my chest.
I looked into his bruised, beautiful, broken face, and the final stone of my fortress crumbled into dust. I didn't want to step back. I didn't want the safety of my empty apartment or the cold comfort of my clinical textbooks.
I was caught in his orbit, drowning in his heat, terrified by the realization that I had completely lost the power to walk away.
We were standing on the lip of the abyss, and neither of us had the strength to step back.