Chapter 16
Justin POV
The heavy double doors leading from the north terrace back into the Lake Champlain Hotel swung shut, cutting off the bitter draft rolling across the lake ice.
Eighty-one days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
The air in the carpeted foyer was warm, smelling of melting beeswax candles, stale single malt, and the floral perfume of donors drifting from the coat check.
Across the parquet floor, Coach Bradley Hauer and Raymond Cole were finishing their espressos near the grand staircase, waiting for the valet to bring their coats.
I adjusted the cuffs of my tuxedo shirt, my masseter muscles tight, my skin still running fever-hot from the darkness of that curtained loggia.
Then a shadow fell across the carpet, blocking the path to the lobby.
Arthur Shaw stepped into the center of the hall.
Garrett Shaw’s father wore a double-breasted pinstripe tuxedo tailored around a soft, bourbon-thickened waistline.
His silver hair was slicked back, a heavy gold signet ring glinting on his pinky, his face flushed an ugly, mottled red from five hours at the open bar.
Flanking him was Dean Arthur Sterling, clutching a leather presentation folder.
"Hauer," Arthur Shaw’s voice boomed across the foyer, loud enough to stop three passing board members in their tracks. "Before Cole gets in his car back to Boston, let's talk about the first power-play unit."
Coach Hauer paused, his jaw tightening into a grim, exhausted line. "Arthur, this isn't the venue. We have film review on Monday."
"I'm a tier-one endowment donor, Bradley, every venue is my venue," Shaw snapped, his voice carrying clearly toward the coat check.
He turned his bloodshot eyes directly onto me, stepping into my personal space until his breath—sour scotch and stale tobacco—hit the bridge of my nose.
"You're throwing top-unit ice time away on an enforcer who belongs in an iron foundry.
We all know how the Ibarras play. Desperate, reckless, and dirty. "
The silence that fell over the foyer was sudden and absolute.
Raymond Cole stopped on the second step of the staircase, his gray eyes narrowing as he turned back to look at us. Dean Sterling shifted uncomfortably, staring down at his polished shoes, refusing to meet my gaze.
Arthur Shaw took half a step closer, his sneer deepening into pure venom.
"His younger brother learned that lesson in Green Bay, didn't he?
" Shaw sneered, his words dropping like poison into the room.
"Drove his own head into the boards because the family doesn't have the brains to skate clean.
Now the boy sits in a chair in Watertown while the athletic department wastes ninety-five thousand dollars on a thug who's going to end up in the penalty box the second Harvard hits the ice. "
The blood in my veins turned to straight battery acid.
A sharp, blinding heat detonated behind my breastbone, roaring in my ears until the chandeliers blurred into amber streaks. My right hand balled into a fist inside my tuxedo pocket, the lining tearing with a sharp rip of stitching as my knuckles strained against the fabric.
Five years of guilt slammed into my throat, thick and suffocating.
Swallow it.
The command tore through my skull, cold and merciless.
I had been taught this lesson since I was twelve years old: boys from Massena with dirt under their nails didn't get to swing on men with endowment plaques. If I took Arthur Shaw’s jaw off—if I broke his teeth across this parquet floor—the Boston Bruins walked away.
My scholarship evaporated. The two thousand dollars I wired north every month for Mateo’s therapy ceased to exist.
I stood at my full six-foot-four height, locked my jaw until my back teeth ached, and looked straight through the bastard’s forehead with dead, stone-carved eyes.
I prepared to take the hit. I had spent my entire life taking the hit so nobody else had to bleed.
* * *
"Mr. Shaw."
The voice sliced through the foyer like a sharpened blade on fresh ice.
It was quiet, measured, and terrifyingly calm.
The heavy emerald-velvet drape behind us rustled. Penny Correa stepped into the center of the foyer.
The emerald silk of her floor-length dress moved like liquid with every step, her bare shoulders held back with an unyielding, military precision. Her dark curls framed a face carved from porcelain, her hazel eyes glittering with a cold, surgical fury that made the breath hitch behind my ribs.
Under her left arm, she carried a black leather portfolio of biomechanical kinematic files.
She didn't look at Dean Sterling. She didn't look at Raymond Cole.
She walked straight past me, her bare shoulder brushing the sleeve of my tuxedo jacket, and planted herself directly between me and Arthur Shaw.
She stood five-foot-four against his six-foot frame, outweighed by eighty pounds, but she stood like an iron wall, cutting off Shaw’s access to me completely.
"Miss Correa," Dean Sterling began, holding up a frantic, appeasing hand. "This is an internal athletic—"
"Be quiet, Dean Sterling," Penny said, not raising her voice by a single decibel.
Dean Sterling’s mouth clamped shut in sheer shock.
Penny stepped an inch closer to Arthur Shaw, tilting her chin up, exposing the pale line of her throat to the chandelier light.
"Since you're so eager to discuss power-play efficiency in front of the Boston Bruins' Director of Player Personnel," Penny said, opening the leather portfolio with a crisp snap of paper, "let's review the verified kinematic tracking data from the last three matches."
Arthur Shaw blinked, his bloated face flushing darker. "Who the hell do you think you are, little girl? You're a student assistant—"
"I am the Lead Biomechanical Researcher for this athletic program," Penny cut in, her voice flat, cold, and razor-sharp. "And these are the official metrics logged for NCAA compliance."
She pointed a slender, steady finger at the top sheet.
"During the McGill exhibition, Alternate Captain Garrett Shaw conceded seven defensive-zone turnovers along the half-wall during five-on-four situations," Penny stated, reciting the numbers with clinical perfection.
"Those turnovers resulted in four high-danger scoring chances against our freshman goaltender and two shorthanded breakaways.
His pass-completion percentage under pressure was forty-one percent. "
Arthur Shaw’s mouth twitched, his jowls trembling. "That was an exhibition match—"
"Last season, Garrett logged eighty-two minutes on the top unit and produced three primary assists," Penny continued without pausing for breath.
"Justin Ibarra, playing with a healing joint, has maintained an eighty-two percent puck-retrieval efficiency along the boards.
In eighty minutes of five-on-four hockey, he has zero turnovers, leads the ECAC in net-front clearances, and hasn't drawn a single penalty minute in three weeks. "
A dead, suffocating hush smothered the entire hall.
Coach Hauer crossed his arms over his chest, a ghost of a grim smile touching the corner of his mouth. On the stairs, Raymond Cole pulled out a silver pen, making a note in his pocket ledger.
Penny took another step toward Arthur Shaw, her hazel eyes narrowing into lethal slits.
"Suggesting that catastrophic cervical spinal trauma is a family trait isn't athletic analysis, Mr. Shaw," she whispered, the words hitting the older man like lead weights.
"It is the pathetic, desperate slander of a booster whose son cannot earn first-line minutes on his own merits.
And if you'd like me to project Garrett’s turnover index onto the ballroom screens for the entire Board of Trustees to review tonight, I have the files ready on my tablet. "
Arthur Shaw stood frozen, his mouth opening and closing like a landed bass, his face drained of all color, humiliated in front of the university's top donors.
"You're out of line, Correa," Shaw choked out, his voice cracking around the edges.
"Then file a complaint with Dr. Vance," Penny said, closing her portfolio with a sharp slap. "Have a good evening, gentlemen."
She turned on her heel, her emerald silk swirling around her ankles, completely dismissing him.
My lungs seized. The pulse thrumming in my temples was deafening, the tightness in my chest expanding with an ache so violent it made my vision swim.
In twenty-two years, no one had ever stood in front of me. Coaches had used me as an enforcer. Teammates had hidden behind my fists. My family had leaned on my back.
She had just stood between me and a millionaire with an open checkbook and torn him to shreds with nothing more than her intellect and her unbending pride.
She had protected me.
* * *
Arthur Shaw muttered an incoherent curse, turning on his heel and retreating toward the bar with Dean Sterling scrambling behind him.
I didn't wait for Raymond Cole to speak. I didn't acknowledge Coach Hauer’s nod.
My left hand shot out.
My fingers wrapped gently but undeniably around Penny’s wrist, just above her silver signet ring.
Her head snapped up, her hazel eyes wide, still flashing with the embers of the fight she had just fought for me.
I didn't say a word. I pulled her across the foyer, through the side exit, and out onto the freezing, deserted terrace overlooking Lake Champlain.
The sub-zero Adirondack air hit our faces, the wind whipping loose curls across her cheeks, the emerald silk of her dress rippling against her thighs.
I didn't care about the cold.
I backed her up against the frosted stone balustrade, trapping her within the perimeter of my body, blocking the wind with the width of my black wool coat.
My hands rose.
They were shaking. Two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of conditioned muscle, and my hands were trembling as my calloused palms came up to frame her face, my thumbs resting on the sharp ridges of her cheekbones.
"Justin," she breathed, her teeth chattering faintly from the sudden drop in temperature.
"Why did you do that?" I rasped, my voice thick, raw, and completely wrecked.
Her eyelids fluttered, looking up into my dark, dilated eyes. "He was lying. The numbers—"
"To hell with the numbers, Penny!" I broke in, leaning down until my forehead pressed hard against hers, my breath coming in ragged, shallow bursts.
"He’s a tier-one booster. He could have gone to Sterling.
He could have pulled your Vanderveer nomination before breakfast tomorrow.
Why would you put your neck on the line for someone like me? "
Penny went dead still in my grip.
Her hands came up slowly, her slender, cold fingers wrapping around my forearms, holding onto the heavy wool of my tuxedo sleeves.
She didn't blink. She didn't hesitate.
"Because you have spent your entire life bleeding for people who only care what you can carry," she whispered, the words cutting straight through the roar of the wind, landing deep inside my chest like iron bolts.
"And I am not going to stand in a crowded room and watch anyone treat you like you don't matter. "
A violent tremor ripped through the corded muscles of my neck.
My throat clamped shut on a knot of emotion so heavy, so devastating, that I couldn't draw a breath.
You matter.
No one had ever said those words to me. Not when Mateo went down. Not when the bills piled up. Not when the Bruins scout arrived with a contract that felt like a prison sentence.
I looked into her gold-flecked eyes, and the final wall I had spent five years building behind my ribs collapsed into absolute dust.
The rules were dead. The fear was dead.
My hands slid from her face down to the back of her neck, my fingers tangling in the soft, dark hair at her nape, pulling her face upward until my lips hovered a millimeter from hers.
"You're going to ruin me, Penny," I rasped against her mouth, my soul laid bare in the dark.
"Then let me," she whispered.
I closed the distance, and the entire world disappeared under the snow.