Chapter 30
Justin POV
The roll of black friction tape made a clean, sharp rip as I severed the strip with my thumbnail.
I smoothed the adhesive down the curved blade of my composite Bauer stick, pressing the cloth tight to the carbon weave from the heel to the rounded toe.
I picked up a disc of semi-translucent paraffin wax from the floorboards, working the paraffin into the tape with heavy, rhythmic strokes of my palm, sealing the fibers against the wet freeze of tomorrow’s ice.
The air in the living room smelled of fresh wax, athletic adhesive, cedarwood, and the dry mineral heat ticking from the baseboard radiators.
It was 9:34 PM on Friday in Term Week 11. January 15.
Forty-two days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Outside the casement windows of the carriage house, a zero-degree northern wind howled off Lake Champlain, driving fine grains of frozen sleet against the glass.
By the front entryway, my black equipment duffel stood zipped and packed, two freshly sharpened pairs of skates strapped inside, ready for tomorrow afternoon’s showdown against St. Lawrence.
Raymond Cole would be sitting in the directors' box with the final contract addendum.
For four years at Garrison, hockey had been an engine for violence—a place where I could break bodies along the glass and bleed out the guilt of sitting in a penalty box while Mateo’s spine was crushed.
It was an obligation. A brutal, bloody job I performed to keep the collection agencies from my mother’s door.
Now, the rage was gone.
I looked down at my hands—calloused, bruised across the knuckles, the scarred right wrist wrapped in a strip of white compression tape.
Every stride I took tomorrow, every hit I delivered on the blue line, belonged to the girl sitting five feet away. The game was no longer a penance; it was the foundation of the home I was building around her.
I laid the stick across the hearthstone and looked up.
Penny was sitting in the corner of the dark leather sofa, swallowed inside the heavy cream merino wool throw. Her laptop was closed on the coffee table beside an untouched mug of peppermint tea.
She wasn't reading her gait velocity models. She wasn't typing notes for Dr. Vance.
She was staring into the dying birch embers in the hearth, her body frozen in an unnatural, fragile stillness that made the hair on the back of my arms stand up.
* * *
I stood up from the hardwood, wiped the wax from my palms onto the thighs of my black sweatpants, and crossed the room in two strides.
I didn't ask what was wrong.
I stepped into her space, slid my hands beneath the heavy merino blanket, and hooked my arms beneath her knees and shoulders. I lifted her hundred and twenty-two pounds clean off the leather, turning as I sat down in the center cushions, bringing her down across my lap.
Her body was ice-cold.
Beneath the oversized gray Ironclads hoodie she wore, her slender shoulders were locked rigid, her teeth set tight. Her small hands were curled into fists, pressed flat and protective against her lower abdomen.
A faint, continuous tremor rippled through her limbs, so delicate I could only feel it through the contact of our bodies.
My brow pulled into a hard, protective knot.
I wrapped my right arm around her waist, locking her flush against my bare chest, my left hand coming up to gather her hair away from her face.
I buried my nose into the crook of her neck, inhaling the almond soap on her skin, feeling the frantic, rapid thrumming of her pulse point leaping against my chin.
She was terrified.
I assumed I knew why. Dean Sterling’s five-day deadline was ticking down.
The compliance memo Wade Kozak had sent was hanging over the athletic complex like a loaded gun, and tomorrow’s game against St. Lawrence was being broadcast across New England with scouts from six NHL franchises in the stands.
She thought the walls were closing in on my career. She thought the world was about to take me away.
"Look at you," I murmured, my voice dropping into that deep, gravel-scraped bass that always softened her defenses. "You're freezing, sweetheart."
Penny didn't answer. She leaned her forehead against the side of my neck, her breath coming in shallow, uneven hitches that burned warm against my skin.
My hand moved down her spine in long, heavy strokes, pressing through the fleece of her top, rubbing the knot of tension out of the muscles between her shoulder blades.
"Breathe with me, Penny," I commanded softly, my lips brushing her temple, kissing the cold skin. "Good girl. In and out. You're shaking like it's you skating the penalty kill tomorrow."
Her fingers shifted, uncurling slightly from her fists, her nails catching in the dark cotton of my sweatpants.
"Justin," she whispered, her voice sounding raw, strained, and stripped of all its usual clinical sharp edges. "What if... what if tomorrow doesn't go the way you think?"
A low rumble of quiet amusement vibrated in my chest.
"St. Lawrence doesn't have the speed on the breakout," I rumbled against her hair. "We run the trap in the neutral zone, we keep Shaw off the top penalty-kill unit, and we lock down the blue line. We win the game, Penny."
"I'm not talking about the score," she breathed, her forehead pressing harder into the meat of my shoulder, her throat working on a dry, ragged swallow.
* * *
I shifted my weight, bringing my right hand up to frame the side of her jaw.
My broad, calloused fingers spread across her cheek, my thumb hooking beneath the angle of her chin, lifting her face with an unyielding, gentle authority until her eyes were forced to meet mine.
The breath caught in my throat.
Her hazel eyes were wide, dark, and swimming with unshed tears that glittered like shattered glass in the amber firelight.
Her skin was blanched to the color of chalk, her lips parted and trembling faintly, looking up at me with an agonizing, silent grief that pierced straight through my breastbone.
"Penny," I rasped, my thumb smoothing with firm, steady pressure across her cheekbone, wiping away a stray bead of moisture before it could fall. "Listen to my voice."
She stared into my eyes, her chest heaving in rapid, shallow gasps against my ribs.
"Good girl," I whispered, leaning down until our lips were an inch apart, letting the heat of my breath wash over her trembling mouth. "You've been carrying this dread for three days. You think Sterling is going to tear up my sweater? You think some anonymous compliance letter is going to ruin us?"
Her eyelashes fluttered, her hands rising to clutch the fabric over my biceps, holding on with a desperate, white-knuckled grip.
"You don't know what they can do," she whispered, the words trembling with a terrifying, hidden weight.
"I know exactly what they can do," I rumbled, my voice hard and absolute as forged iron. "And I don't give a damn."
I leaned closer, resting my forehead against hers, my dark eyes boring straight into her soul.
"Tomorrow night, when that final buzzer sounds and we take the points against St. Lawrence, the hiding is finished," I promised, each word an immovable vow cut into the silence of the room.
"I am done keeping you in the shadows, Penny.
I am done letting you sneak out of Lab 04 like you don't belong to me. "
A soft, broken whimper caught in her throat.
"Justin, please don't make promises—"
"I don't make promises I don't keep," I rasped, my fingers tangling in the dark curls at the back of her neck, pulling her face upward until our lips brushed with every word I spoke.
"I will walk off that ice tomorrow afternoon.
I will walk past Raymond Cole, past Coach Hauer, and past Dean Sterling.
I will take your hand in front of every camera in that building, and I will tell the entire world that you are mine. "
A single, scalding tear spilled over her lower lid, tracking down her temple to soak into my fingers.
She looked at me through the dark with a devotion so devastating, so raw and wounded, that my chest ached with a physical hunger to crush her into my bones.
"You're my future, Penny," I whispered against her mouth, my soul laid bare in the quiet carriage house. "Nothing on this earth is going to touch you. Nothing."
Penny didn't speak.
She let out a ragged, shattered sob and pulled my mouth down to hers.
The kiss was desperate, tasting of salt, cedar, and an all-consuming, fierce hunger that knocked the remaining air from my lungs.
She clung to my neck with both arms, her body molding flush against mine, returning the kiss with an intensity that bordered on frantic—as if she were memorizing the shape of my mouth, as if she were holding onto a man who was already slipping beneath the ice.
I pulled her deeper into my lap, wrapping my massive frame around her like an iron shield, deepening the kiss until her tremors faded into soft, breathy gasps against my lips.
I held her in the dark while the winter gale battered the casement windows outside.
I had forty-two days until Lake Placid. I had an NHL contract on the table. And I had the woman I loved safe in my arms.
I closed my eyes, entirely confident that our fortress was indestructible, blind to the executioner already standing outside our door.