Chapter 29
Penny Correa POV
The Third-Floor North Reading Room of Feinberg Library was dead quiet, swallowed by the dust motes hanging in the pale gray Adirondack light.
Outside the high leaded glass arches, a brutal January sleet lashed the masonry, the frozen pellets rattling like thrown gravel against the panes.
Forty-two days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
I sat alone at a scarred, sixteen-foot mahogany study table, surrounded by open folders of scapular kinematic graphs and force-vector calculations. Beside my laptop, an open paper cup of chamomile tea sat cooling, untouched.
My stomach rolled with another slow, cold heave of nausea, the sensation rising into the back of my throat like bile. The dry, dusty scent of the aged reference volumes three feet away made my gag reflex contract, forcing me to swallow hard against the dryness in my mouth.
My left hand rested flat, warm and protective, over the lower curve of my abdomen beneath the thick knit of my dark green sweater.
Five weeks.
It had been thirty-six days since the night of the blizzard in the carriage house on Cumberland Avenue.
I hadn't bought the digital test from the pharmacy on Margaret Street yet. I had spent six days hiding behind excuses—telling myself that missing a cycle was normal under intense academic strain, telling myself that the sudden dizziness when I stood up from my desk was just low blood pressure.
Every cell in my body was shouting the truth.
Across campus, inside The Forge, Justin was locked in the theater for special-teams walkthroughs ahead of tomorrow’s critical ranking match against St. Lawrence.
He had kissed my forehead at dawn, his scarred hands tucking the quilt around my shoulders, making me promise to eat before my eleven o'clock clinical meeting with Dr. Vance.
His protection was an unyielding shield.
Then the heavy double oak doors of the reading room groaned on their brass hinges.
Heavy, squeaking rubber soles moved down the center carpet runner, deliberate and slow, heading straight for my secluded alcove.
* * *
A navy Garrison letterman jacket filled the edge of my peripheral vision.
The chair directly across from mine was dragged back with a sharp, screeching scrape that broke the silence of the library.
Garrett Shaw dropped into the seat.
Our senior alternate captain leaned back, his blond hair combed into ruthless order, his varsity letterman unzipped to reveal a crisp gray polo. He didn't have books. He didn't have a backpack.
On the polished mahogany between my spreadsheets, Garrett dropped a thick, glossy manila envelope with a dull, heavy slap.
"Morning, Correa," Garrett said, his voice a smooth, venomous purr that made the skin along my neck turn to ice.
My fingers went rigid against the edge of my laptop. "This is a quiet study wing, Shaw. Move."
"You're going to want to look at the paperwork first," he replied, resting his forearms on the table, tapping the brass clasp of the envelope with his thumb.
When I didn't reach for it, Garrett pulled the string himself. He slid three glossy eight-by-ten color photographs and a folded sheaf of paper across the mahogany.
My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped beast.
The first photograph was taken through the wire-reinforced glass of the exterior fire exit of Subterranean Lab 04.
The image was sharp, high-resolution, and unmistakable: Justin sitting on the edge of the examination plinth, shirtless, his massive hands clamped possessively to my hips, my face tilted upward, our mouths locked together in the dark.
The second photograph showed Justin lifting me into the cab of his black pickup truck outside Hudson Hall, his wool coat wrapped around my shoulders, his face buried in the crook of my neck.
Beneath the photographs lay a stamped copy of the formal NCAA compliance inquiry Dean Sterling had received on Thursday, signed with an affidavit from Wade Kozak detailing the thirty-thousand-dollar cash loan from Green Bay.
The blood in my ears began to roar, a high, deafening rush of adrenaline that made the mahogany table seem to drop two inches.
"My father has friends on the Board of Trustees, Penny," Garrett whispered, leaning forward until his breath—sweet mint and stale energy drink—brushed my knuckles. "And Kozak was more than happy to provide the Wisconsin paperwork once Dad agreed to cover his legal retainers."
My throat contracted on a dry swallow, my fingernails digging into the underside of the table until the wood bit into my cuticles.
"You stalked us," I whispered, the words shaking with a cold, scalding fury.
"I protected my draft status," Garrett countered, his smirk curdling into pure malice.
"Justin Ibarra has been sucking up first-line power-play minutes for two years because Hauer thinks he's an enforcer deity.
But Boston doesn't sign thugs who take illegal booster payouts.
And the NCAA doesn't allow student trainers to sleep with their assigned patients. "
He tapped the glossy photograph of Justin’s hands on my hips.
"NATA Code of Ethics, Section Three," Garrett said, reciting the regulation with sickening relish.
"Conflict of interest, clinical exploitation, and gross professional fraternization. If this file hits Dean Sterling’s desk at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, Justin is provisionally suspended before the team bus leaves for Canton.
Boston drops his draft rights on August fifteenth. His pro career dies before it starts."
He paused, letting the silence crush the air from my chest.
"And Dr. Vance?" Garrett sneered. "Vance will expel you from the kinesiology department by noon to save his clinical accreditation.
Your Vanderveer Fellowship goes straight to Brianna Diaz.
You'll leave this campus with eighteen thousand dollars of broken telemetry on your student debt and a black mark that keeps you out of every medical school in North America. "
* * *
The threat hung in the freezing library air, absolute and ruinous.
A wave of sour nausea surged into the back of my mouth, my vision tunneling toward the photograph of Justin’s hands on my hips.
I am the weapon.
The realization struck my sternum like a lead pipe. They weren't using his hockey stats to destroy him. They weren't using his penalty minutes.
They were using me.
Every touch, every stolen kiss in that basement, every night I had spent curled against his chest in the carriage house had been gathered, cataloged, and turned into the blade that would slaughter his lifelong dream.
"What do you want, Garrett?" I forced out, my voice flat, holding on to my iron composure by a thread.
Garrett leaned back, crossing his arms over his varsity letterman.
"You resign from his case today," Garrett commanded, his eyes cold and triumphant. "You submit a signed statement to Vance claiming personal conflicts, and you take an emergency leave of absence from Garrison by five o'clock. You pack your bags, and you get out of this town."
"And Justin?"
"You cut him off," Garrett said. "You don't answer his calls.
You let him think you walked away. If he's off-balance, he blows his assignments against St. Lawrence, and Hauer puts me on the top unit where I belong.
As long as you disappear, this file stays in my locker.
If you're in that arena tomorrow night, I hand it directly to Raymond Cole and Dean Sterling. "
My knees were trembling violently beneath the table, the adrenaline flooding my extremities with an icy numbness.
I looked down at the photograph of Justin’s face—the raw, reverent gentleness he only ever wore when we were behind closed doors.
Then I looked back up at Garrett Shaw.
The coward who couldn't beat Justin on the ice, hiding behind a camera and his father’s checkbook.
The tremor in my jaw vanished. The cold iron of my pride, forged over twenty-one years of surviving men like my father, snapped back into place.
I didn't cower. I didn't weep.
I tilted my chin up, exposing the pale line of my throat to the gray window light, my hazel eyes narrowing into two sharp, lethal blades.
"You're a pathetic third-line coward, Garrett," I said, my voice quiet, steady, and so cold it stripped the smugness clean off his face.
"You have spent three years watching Justin skate circles around you, and you know that without your father’s endowment plaque, you wouldn't even make the travel roster.
You think this makes you look like an NHL prospect?
You're a peeping tom with an open wallet. "
Garrett’s jaw bunched, a mottled red flush creeping up his neck.
He lunged forward, planting both hands flat on the mahogany table, his face six inches from mine.
"Twenty-four hours, Correa," he spat, his voice trembling with humiliated rage. "Five o'clock today. You submit that withdrawal to Vance, or Justin Ibarra's entire life burns to the ground before the puck drops."
He snatched the manila envelope, leaving the photographs scattered on my notes, and stalked down the aisle.
The heavy double oak doors of the reading room swung shut behind him with an echoing, hollow thud.
The silence collapsed over the alcove.
My hands gave out.
My knuckles slipped from the edge of the mahogany table, my knees buckling beneath my weight as my spine hit the back of the wooden chair.
A violent, convulsive heave ripped through my diaphragm, forcing me to lean over the armrest, gasping for air that felt like pure frost. The room spun in dizzying, sickening circles, the gray light fracturing behind my eyelids.
Twenty-four hours.
The trap had closed around our throats.
My left hand moved on pure, frantic instinct, pressing through the green wool of my sweater, flattening against the smooth, hidden curve of my lower belly.
A broken, breathless sob hitched in my throat, hot tears finally spilling down my cheeks in the dark library.
I was running out of time.
I had to confirm the truth inside my body before I decided how to burn down the world to save him.