Chapter 22
Justin POV
The mahogany conference table on the second floor of The Forge smelled of stale lemon polish and cold filter coffee.
Outside the frosted casement glass, the December dusk was setting over Lake Champlain in shades of bruised violet and slate, the wind driving a fine, needle-sharp sleet against the brick facade.
Sixty-eight days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Raymond Cole laid an embossed blue folder on the polished wood, his gold Boston Bruins lapel pin catching the glare of the recessed ceiling spotlights. Beside him, Coach Bradley Hauer sat with his arms folded across his chest, his jaw set in a hard, watchful line.
"The medical logs from your biomechanics researcher checked out with our orthopedic staff this morning, Justin," Cole said, tapping the folder with a blunt forefinger.
"The AC joint shows zero laxity. Your rotational torque numbers on the five-on-five forecheck are higher than they were during your sophomore season. "
"I feel solid," I said, my voice level, stripped of inflection.
Cole opened the folder, spinning an eight-page addendum across the table until it rested in front of my knuckles.
"This is the development rider for your three-year Entry-Level Contract," Cole continued, leaning back in his leather chair.
"Nine hundred and fifty thousand at the NHL level, ninety-five thousand signing bonus upon execution in April. But front office wants a specific off-season trajectory. The day after graduation, you report to our development camp in Red Deer, Alberta, for twelve weeks of heavy functional conditioning. From there, we’re assigning you to our European training partner in Malm?, Sweden, through September. "
He tapped the signature line with a silver fountain pen.
"You spend four months overseas learning the wider ice surface, then you report directly to the main camp in Massachusetts. If you hit your benchmarks, you're on the opening-night roster."
Hauer nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on me. "It’s a direct track to the top four, Justin. Most prospects would kill for an off-season placement like Sweden."
Six months ago, I would have signed the paper before Cole finished speaking. I would have skated on open gravel in Siberia if it meant putting two thousand dollars a month into Mateo’s physical therapy fund.
Now, my fingers rested flat on the cool mahogany, my pulse a slow, immovable thud against my ribs.
My internal compass had realigned.
Penny’s Vanderveer Fellowship applications were bound to the Northeast clinical corridor—specifically the Olympic training facility in Lake Placid and the Boston Sports Medicine Institute affiliated with Massachusetts General.
If she won the forty-five-thousand-dollar grant, she was heading to Boston.
If I was in Alberta or Malm?, she would be three thousand miles away, carrying the weight of her deadbeat father’s debts alone, working eighty-hour clinical weeks with nobody to watch her back.
I reached out with my left hand, hooked the corner of the development rider, and pushed the folder back across the table to Raymond Cole.
"No," I said, the word dropping into the quiet room like a dropped dumbbell.
Cole’s silver eyebrows pulled together in disbelief. "No?"
"I sign the standard three-year ELC," I rumbled, my voice flat, cold, and final as iron. "Nine hundred and fifty thousand, full signing bonus. But I don't go to Alberta, and I don't skate in Sweden."
Hauer sat forward, his brow furrowing in angry confusion. "Justin, what the hell are you talking about? Boston controls your development path."
"Boston controls my roster spot," I countered, looking directly into Raymond Cole’s calculating gray eyes, letting the immovable enforcer take the wheel.
"My off-season training stays in New England.
I will skate at the facility in Brighton, or I will report to Providence.
Nowhere else. If that's a deal-breaker, let the rights lapse on August fifteenth and I'll sign as an unrestricted free agent with the Rangers. "
The threat hung in the room, heavy and dangerous.
Cole stared at me for five long seconds, his fingers tightening on his pen. He had spent forty years scouting collegiate players; he knew when a boy was bluffing for leverage, and he knew when a man was drawing an absolute line in the dirt.
A slow, grim respect touched Cole’s mouth.
"Brighton facility," Cole said softly, pulling the rider back toward his chest. "We’ll adjust the language. You skate in Massachusetts through the summer."
I stood up, buttoned my black wool coat, and walked out of the room without looking back.
I didn't care about the glamour of Europe. I didn't care about Swedish ice.
My only priority in this world was forty blocks away, and I was going home to protect her.
* * *
The drive down Cumberland Avenue was quiet, the heavy tires of my truck crunching over packed snow as the streetlamps flickered to life in the freezing mist.
When I pulled into the gravel drive of the carriage house, the golden glow of the living room lamp was already spilling across the snowbanks from the lower casement windows.
She was there.
The knot of tension that had lived behind my sternum since morning skate released in a long, quiet exhale.
I unlocked the heavy timber door, stepped across the threshold, and kicked the deadbolt shut behind me with the heel of my boot.
The sensory impact hit me like an open furnace. The smell of cold exhaust and rink rubber fell away, replaced by the scent of warm cedar, lavender soap, and the crisp, clean trace of her skin that had permanently colonized the air of my home.
The heat was humming from the cast-iron radiators—I had set the digital thermostat to seventy-four from my phone before leaving the arena so the drafts off the lake wouldn't touch her bare ankles.
Penny was curled up sideways on the dark leather sofa facing the hearth, her legs tucked beneath a heavy cream merino wool blanket I had bought at the dry-goods store on Margaret Street three days ago.
She was wearing my oversized gray Ironclads hoodie, the cuffs pushed up to her forearms, her dark curls bound in a messy knot held by a gold clip.
On the cedar coffee table sat an open jar of loose-leaf peppermint tea, three highlighters, and two thick stacks of printed kinematic gait charts for her Vanderveer defense.
She looked up when the deadbolt clicked, her hazel eyes softening as she watched me shed my heavy wool coat.
"You're late, Number Four," she said, her voice quiet, carrying that gentle, teasing warmth that made the skin over my collarbones prickle with heat.
"Meeting ran long with Cole," I rumbled, kicking off my boots and crossing the dark hardwood in my wool socks.
I didn't head to the kitchen. I didn't check my messages.
I dropped down onto the leather cushion directly beside her hip, crowding her workspace, filling the empty room with my frame.
I reached beneath the merino blanket, found her bare feet, and hauled them into my lap. Her arches were cold against my palms, her toes curling slightly at the contact.
"Your feet are freezing, Penny," I murmured, my large, calloused thumbs immediately settling into the hollow beneath her heel, applying slow, firm pressure to work the blood back into her skin.
Penny let out a long, shuddering sigh, her head tipping back against the leather cushion, her textbooks momentarily forgotten. "The wind was coming right through the clinic doors this afternoon. Brianna Diaz spent two hours complaining about the heating vents."
"Diaz talks too much," I rasped, my hands moving with steady, rhythmic strength, massaging the ball of her foot, feeling the tight tendons loosen under my callouses.
She opened one eye, looking at my hands—broad, scarred, the knuckles raw from morning drills—working with infinite patience over her skin. A faint, knowing smile curved her mouth.
"An NHL enforcer giving foot rubs in front of a fire," she whispered, her voice laced with soft mockery. "If Garrett Shaw saw this, he’d faint."
My thumbs stilled for a fraction of a second, then pressed deeper into the arch of her foot, drawing a soft, breathy gasp from her lips.
I leaned forward until my chest was inches from her knees, my dark eyes locking onto hers in the amber light.
"You think I let anyone else sit in my space like this?" I rumbled, the gravel in my voice thick with possession. "You think another soul on this earth gets to touch my clothes, drink my tea, and put their feet in my lap?"
Penny’s smile faded, replaced by that dark, breathless awareness that always made her pulse jump beneath her throat.
"No," she whispered.
"Good girl," I murmured against her skin, my thumb smoothing along her ankle bone. "Now keep talking. Tell me about the torque numbers."
She leaned back, her cheeks flushed a delicate rose, her voice filling the quiet room as she read through her notes, her small body completely relaxed under the heavy weight of my hands.
* * *
By 8:40 PM, her voice had slowed to a gentle murmur.
The birch logs in the hearth had collapsed into a bed of deep orange coals, casting long, quiet shadows across the ceiling.
Penny’s laptop screen had gone to sleep, the blue light fading from her face. Her head had slowly, naturally slipped from the cushion down onto my lap, her cheek resting against the coarse flannel of my pants, one arm draped over my knee.
She was out cold.
The exhaustion of her sixteen-hour days had finally caught up to her, her breathing turning slow, deep, and rhythmic against my thigh.
I sat completely still for ten minutes, watching the soft rise and fall of her ribs beneath the gray fleece of my hoodie.
A stray curl rested against her mouth; I reached down, my scarred thumb delicately brushing the strand away, marveling at how small and peaceful she looked when she wasn't fighting the world.
I slid my left arm beneath her shoulders and my right beneath her knees, flexing my quads as I rose smoothly from the leather sofa.
She didn't wake. She let out a tiny, contented sigh in her sleep, her forehead rolling into the crook of my neck, her fingers curling on instinct into the cotton of my shirt, holding onto me in the dark.
I carried her down the short, shadowed hallway into my bedroom.
The room was cool, the air smelling of clean pine and winter frost clinging to the casement glass. The amber light from the harbor streetlamp cast a soft, muted glow across the dark linen sheets and the charcoal wool quilt.
I laid her in the center of the mattress, my movements slow and deliberate so the transition wouldn't jar her awake.
I pulled off her gray socks, tossed them aside, and drew the heavy charcoal quilt up over her shoulders, tucking the edges securely around her back, sealing her into the warmth.
Penny shifted slightly under the weight of the bedding, her cheek sinking deep into the down pillow, her face serene, untroubled by the debts, the scouts, or the threats waiting outside our door.
I stood by the edge of the mattress, looking down at her in the dim light.
A heavy, terrifying ache settled into the center of my chest, thick and absolute as iron.
For five years, I had believed my only purpose in life was to be a blunt instrument—to skate hard, take the dirty hits, and bleed out on the ice so Mateo’s bills were paid and my family stayed afloat. I had viewed my future as a transaction, a debt to be settled with broken bones.
Standing over this bed, watching Penny breathe under my roof, that lie turned to ash.
She was my future.
I didn't care about the Bruins front office. I didn't care about Dean Sterling’s ethics board, Arthur Shaw’s money, or Garrett Shaw’s petty jealousies.
I would tear down my contract, my draft rights, and my own name before I ever let a single person on this earth lay a hand on her.
I reached down, smoothed the hair from her temple one last time, and whispered the silent vow into the dark room:
You're safe with me, sweetheart. Always.