Chapter 27
Penny Correa POV
The paper cup was hot enough to warm my wool mittens, the dark roast carrying the bitter, familiar bite of roasted chicory.
Forty-nine days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Outside the glass facade of Hudson Hall, the temperature hovered at eight below zero, the wind off Lake Champlain driving fine grains of ice across the brick walkways.
The campus had reopened after the holiday intersession, sluggish and half-frozen, the corridors smelling of industrial floor wax and damp winter gear.
I raised the cup to my mouth, preparing for the first scalding sip to shock the sleep from my skull.
The steam hit my nostrils.
My nervous system didn't just reject the scent; it violently recoiled.
The dark roast didn't smell like coffee. It smelled rancid, like burning rubber, sour lard, and copper.
My stomach gave a sudden, violent heave that sent a cold rush of acid straight into the back of my throat.
The tiled floor beneath my snow boots tilted at a sickening, thirty-degree angle, the fluorescent tubes overhead blurring into white streaks.
A cold, prickling sweat broke out across my temples and the back of my neck, my throat clamping shut on a gag.
I dropped the untouched cup into the heavy metal trash receptacle beside the lecture hall doors, the coffee splashing against the plastic liner.
My hand flew to my mouth, my fingers trembling as the horizon spun.
I turned on my heel, breaking into an unsteady, frantic jog down the west wing toward the single-occupancy staff restroom. I shoved the door open, threw the deadbolt with a frantic snap of my wrist, and dropped to my knees on the cold gray tile before the porcelain basin.
My body seized in two agonizing, dry convulsions.
Nothing came up except thin, burning bile that scorched the lining of my esophagus. My ribs ached with the force of the spasms, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as I leaned my forehead against the cool edge of the porcelain, shivering violently.
A high, thin ringing filled my ears.
For three minutes, I didn't move. I stayed kneeling on the floor, waiting for the room to stop pitching like a boat in heavy seas.
Slowly, using the steel plumbing pipe for leverage, I hauled myself up to the sink.
I turned the brass faucet, letting freezing water rush over my wrists, splashing palmfuls over my face and throat.
The girl staring back at me in the mirror looked hollowed out. My hazel eyes were shadowed with dark, bruised crescents, my honey-warm skin blanched to the color of wet chalk, my lips pale and dry.
Gastroenteritis, I told myself, tearing a brown paper towel from the dispenser and pressing the rough paper against my damp cheeks. A stomach bug picked up in the clinical annex. You've worked ninety hours in two weeks, you've slept four hours a night, and you forgot to eat dinner on Sunday.
Clinical logic was my armor. It was an infection. It was seasonal fatigue. It was the physical cost of pushing my body to the absolute limit to finish the Vanderveer kinematic portfolio before Dr. Vance’s morning deadline.
I smoothed down the collar of my charcoal scrub top, adjusted my heavy black parka, and forced my chin up.
I had twenty minutes to reach The Forge before Justin’s morning skate.
* * *
The subterranean athlete lounge adjoining Subterranean Lab 04 smelled of liniment, rubber flooring, and the dry mineral heat of the ceiling blowers.
I pushed the heavy door open, clutching the nylon strap of my satchel against my ribs.
I had applied two layers of tinted balm to my lips and pinched some color into my cheeks in the locker room mirror, but my knees felt like hollow glass, every step sending a dull, vibrating ache into the small of my back.
Justin was sitting at the round oak study table in the corner, an open playbook spread before him, his black Ironclads hoodie stretched tight across the broad slab of his shoulders.
The second the brass latch clicked, his head snapped up.
He didn't glance at my clipboard. He didn't look at my clothes.
His dark, hooded eyes locked directly onto my face with a forensic, terrifying focus that made the breath catch behind my teeth.
The pencil in his scarred hand dropped to the wood.
He rose from the chair in one fluid, silent motion—six-foot-four of moving mass—closing the fifteen feet of space between us in two long strides.
Before I could utter a single professional greeting, his left hand reached out.
He smoothly lifted the heavy canvas satchel off my shoulder, taking forty pounds of textbooks and diagnostic equipment into his own grip without breaking a sweat.
His right hand came up, his warm, calloused palm settling against my cheek, his fingers spanning from my jawline to the corner of my eye.
His skin was fever-hot against my icy flesh.
"You're white as frost, Penny," he rumbled, his voice dropping into that deep, gravelly register that vibrated straight through my breastbone.
"I'm fine," I lied, the words sounding small and paper-thin in the warm room. "The wind off the lake was brutal this morning."
"Don't play dumb with me, sweetheart," he rasped, his thumb sweeping over the dark hollow beneath my eye, his brow drawing into a hard, protective knot. "You're shaking. Your skin is cold as ice."
He tossed my heavy satchel onto the oak table, then caught my waist with both hands, guiding me toward the wide leather armchair by the radiator.
He didn't sit me down and walk away.
Justin guided me into the cushions, then dropped heavily onto both knees on the commercial carpet directly in front of my chair, his massive thighs bracketing my legs, his broad chest filling my vision.
He reached out, gathered both of my small, trembling hands into his large palms, and began rubbing them with steady, rhythmic pressure, working circulation back into my numb fingers.
"Justin, the coaches—"
"Hauer is in the video room," he cut in softly, his thumbs smoothing across my knuckles with fierce, quiet authority. "Sit back against the cushions. Good girl. Breathe for me."
He reached behind him without standing up, opening the small bar-fridge on the credenza, pulling out a sealed bottle of spring water and a sleeve of plain saltines from his personal stash. He cracked the plastic cap with one hand and held the bottle to my lips.
"Take three sips," he commanded, his gravelly voice low and gentle. "Your lips are cracked."
I obeyed. The cold water soothed the raw burn in my throat, settling the lingering tremor in my stomach.
Justin set the bottle down, peeled open the foil of the crackers, and broke a corner off, offering it to my mouth.
"Eat half of this," he murmured, his dark eyes searching my face with an agonizing tenderness that made my throat tighten with unshed tears. "You've been skipping meals to finish that fellowship draft. I told you on Friday, Penny—I don't care about the thesis if it puts you in the ground."
I took the cracker from his fingers, chewing slowly, letting the bland salt dissolve on my tongue.
The sheer physical gravity of him kneeling on the floor at my feet—the captain of the Ironclads, a future NHL enforcer, treating my cold hands like they were made of spun glass—hit my chest with a heavy, sweet ache.
"I'm just tired, Justin," I whispered, leaning my head back against the leather, looking into his dark, dilated pupils.
Justin leaned forward, his forehead coming to rest gently against my knee, his calloused hands keeping a firm, warm grip on my wrists.
"You're not working tonight," he rumbled against the denim of my pants. "You're coming back to the house. I'm putting you in my bed, and you're sleeping for twelve hours. Understand?"
A soft, shuddering breath left my chest. "Yes."
"Good girl," he rasped.
* * *
A sharp, double rap sounded on the lounge door.
"Justin!" Coach Hauer’s gravelly voice barked through the wood. "Five minutes. Power-play special teams in the theater."
Justin froze, his jaw tightening, his thumb stroking once more across the silver signet ring on my thumb.
He rose to his feet, a slow, imposing wall of muscle in the dim room.
He reached for his heavy black wool varsity coat hanging on the back of the chair, swung it around, and draped the thick, cedar-scented wool over my shoulders. He tucked the heavy lapels around my throat, bundling me into his warmth.
"Stay here until morning skate starts," he commanded softly, leaning down to press a firm, lingering kiss to the crown of my head. "Don't touch a single piece of equipment. I'll be back at nine-thirty."
He turned, grabbed his playbook, and walked out the door, the heavy latch clicking shut behind him.
The room fell into silence.
The heat from his jacket wrapped around my ribs, smelling of him—cedarwood, ice, and raw male warmth.
My stomach gave another faint, peculiar flutter, low beneath my pelvic bone. Not nausea this time. A tight, strange heaviness that seemed to pull at my lower back.
My fingers went still against the wool of his coat.
A sudden, cold certainty prickled across the back of my neck.
My hand moved to my satchel, digging into the side pocket for my phone. The screen lit up with the date: Tuesday, January 6.
My thumbs were trembling as I unlocked the screen, swiping past Dr. Vance’s emails, opening the small calendar app I used to log my cycles.
I scrolled back through the grid.
A red dot marked the last entry: November 26.
The day before Thanksgiving break.
My breath caught in a sharp, dry rasp.
I tapped the screen, counting the weeks. My cycle was twenty-eight days, regular as clockwork since I was fifteen years old. It should have arrived on December 24.
I had spent Christmas Eve in his bed on Cumberland Avenue. I had spent that entire week wrapped in his sheets, floating in a haze of relief and domestic peace, ignoring the calendar because for the first time in my life, I wasn't running from disaster.
Four weeks.
It had been exactly four weeks since the night of the blizzard in the carriage house on December 10.
My cycle wasn't two days late.
It had never arrived.
The air vanished from the lounge, the room turning freezing cold despite the radiators ticking against the baseboard. A high, deafening ringing filled my ears, drowning out the muffled roar of the Zamboni scraping the ice two levels above my head.
The nausea in the café wasn't bad cafeteria food.
The bone-deep exhaustion wasn't mid-term academic burnout.
My phone slipped from my numb fingers, landing face-down on the leather cushion of the armchair with a soft, muted thud.
My left hand moved on pure, terrifying instinct.
Beneath the heavy black wool of Justin’s varsity jacket, beneath the thin cotton of my scrub top, my palm flattened against the smooth, flat plane of my lower abdomen.
The skin beneath my fingers was fever-hot.
An icy shock of pure dread, blinding wonder, and suffocating terror tore through my bloodstream, freezing the blood in my veins.
I was carrying his baby.