Chapter 35
Penny Correa POV
The brown packing tape tore from the plastic dispenser with a violent, screeching rip that echoed off the bare plaster walls of my bedroom.
I pressed the sticky adhesive down across the seams of the third cardboard box, smoothing the tape with the calloused side of my thumb until the cardboard bowed under the pressure.
Thirty-three days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Outside the sash window, a heavy, freezing Adirondack mist hung over Elm Street, swallowing the streetlamps in a milky, suffocating shroud. The radiator beneath the sill was stone-cold, ticking faintly as the furnace in the basement failed to push steam to the fifth floor.
The room was stripped down to the floorboards.
My biomechanics textbooks, my goniometers, my clinical binders, and my winter clothes were sealed inside three heavy moving cartons stacked neatly by the door. On the stripped foam mattress lay my single duffel bag, zipped shut.
A sudden, familiar wave of cold nausea rolled through the bottom of my stomach, rising into the back of my throat.
I dropped to my knees on the braided rug, swallowing against the bitter dryness in my mouth, my left hand moving on pure, involuntary reflex to press flat over the lower curve of my abdomen beneath my oversized flannel shirt.
Five weeks and six days.
The tiny life inside my body was barely the size of an apple seed, but every cell in my bloodstream was vibrating with its presence.
I took three slow, measured breaths through my nose, waiting for the room to stop tilting.
When the nausea receded into a dull, hollow ache, I reached into the back of the open closet to retrieve my snow boots.
My knuckles brushed against heavy, brushed fleece tucked into the corner shelf.
My breath caught in a sharp, dry hitch.
I pulled it out into the gray dawn light.
It was his heather-gray Ironclads training hoodie—the one with the faded black number four stenciled across the chest, the one he had pulled over my head in the carriage house while the blizzard raged outside.
The scent rose from the fabric in a dense, suffocating wave: crushed cedarwood, cold rink ice, and the dark, scalding heat of his skin.
A violent tremor ripped through my collarbones.
My vision blurred instantly with hot, burning tears. My hands buried into the fleece, clutching the thick cotton to my face, my chest heaving in ragged, silent sobs that tore at the lining of my ribs.
I could still hear his ruined voice whispering against my jaw in that freezing tunnel: You were my biggest mistake.
The memory was an open blade twisting in my sternum.
He had looked at my face, looked into the eyes of the girl who had given him everything, and believed I was a mercenary who had traded his trust for an eighteen-thousand-dollar equipment waiver.
I pressed the hoodie to my mouth, stifling the cry behind my teeth until my jaw ached from the pressure.
No.
The command tore through the fog of my grief, cold, sharp, and absolute.
I was not Hector Correa’s daughter, weeping on the kitchen floor while a man packed his truck and drove away. I was not a victim waiting for an enforcer to realize he had broken his own home.
I lowered the fleece.
My fingers were steady as I folded the gray fabric into a tight, neat square. I pulled open the top flap of the center cardboard box, laid the hoodie at the very bottom beneath my research files, and sealed the cardboard shut with two crisscrossed strips of brown tape.
I buried the ghost.
I wiped the wetness from my cheeks with the back of my wool sleeve, stood up on shaking legs, and turned toward the hall.
* * *
The front door of the apartment clicked open, the brass knob turning with quiet care.
Chloe Ross walked into the small kitchen, carrying a cardboard tray holding two paper cups of hot peppermint tea and a brown paper bag of plain bagels from Margaret Street.
She wore her black varsity figure skating jacket, snow dusting the shoulders, her blond hair pulled back in a high, functional braid.
She set the tray on the laminate counter and stopped.
Her pale blue eyes swept over the three taped boxes by my bedroom door, the bare walls, and the duffel bag on the floor. Then her gaze dropped to my face.
She took in the gray pallor of my skin, the dark hollows beneath my hazel eyes, and the way my right hand was resting, motionless and protective, over the front of my waistband.
Chloe didn't ask a single question.
She had shared forty square feet of living space with me for three years; she knew the exact cadence of my breathing, knew the fierce, stubborn pride that kept my chin lifted when the world was burning down around my boots.
She walked across the linoleum, closed the distance between us, and wrapped her arms around my neck.
She held me.
She didn't offer a platitude. She didn't tell me things would work out, or that Justin would come to his senses. She just held on with the solid, immovable strength of an athlete who understood what it meant to take a hard fall on the ice and get back up.
My forehead sank into the cold nylon of her shoulder, a single, shuddering exhale rattling through my lungs before I pulled myself together.
I stepped back, smoothing the front of my shirt. "Did you talk to the registrar?"
"Yesterday afternoon," Chloe said, her voice low, level, and fierce as iron.
"I bypassed Dr. Vance and the athletic wing entirely.
I walked the emergency medical leave petition directly to Dean Sterling's provost liaison.
Your credits for the semester are frozen, not canceled.
The Vanderveer nomination is officially vacated due to 'undisclosed family medical leave.
' Brianna Diaz can have the grant. You're off the books, Penny. "
A heavy, suffocating knot of relief loosened in my throat. "And Vance?"
"Vance doesn't know where you're going. Sterling doesn't know.
And the Ironclads don't know." Chloe picked up a paper cup, tearing the plastic lid off, handing the steaming tea to me.
"My aunt’s cottage in Kennebunkport is unlocked.
The woodstove is stocked with birch, the pantry has dry goods, and the salt air is four miles off the turnpike.
Nobody from northern New York is going to find you on the coast of Maine. "
I took the tea, the hot paper warming my numb fingers. I forced down two sips, the peppermint cutting through the metallic taste on my tongue.
Chloe took a bagel from the bag, broke it in half, and pushed it into my hand.
"Eat," Chloe commanded softly, her eyes dropping once more to my abdomen with a quiet, sacred understanding that needed no words. "You have two lives to feed now, Pen."
My breath hitched, my eyes meeting hers in the pale morning light.
There was no judgment in Chloe's face. No pity. Only the fierce, unshakeable loyalty of an anchor holding fast in a storm.
"I'm keeping it, Chloe," I whispered, the words dropping into the kitchen like a vow forged in steel.
"I know you are," Chloe replied, her mouth curving into a small, unbreakable smile. "And you're going to be brilliant at it. Now eat the bread before we carry these boxes down five flights of stairs."
* * *
The station wagon's rear suspension groaned as we slid the third heavy cardboard box into the cargo bed beside my duffel.
It was 6:42 AM.
The gray Adirondack mist had turned into a steady, freezing drizzle that coated the windshield of Chloe's Subaru in a thin skin of ice. The campus of Garrison University was dead silent, the brick dormitories dark, the sidewalks deserted under mounds of dirty road slush.
I climbed into the passenger seat, pulling the heavy black Garrison parka around my frame, clicking the seatbelt into place.
Chloe slid behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and put the car in reverse.
The tires crunched over the packed ice of the alleyway as we pulled out onto Elm Street, heading south toward Route 9 and the ramp for Interstate 87.
I turned my head, looking out the side window.
Two miles to the east, the rusted iron trusses and green-painted roof of The Forge rose through the freezing fog like an industrial fortress.
Behind those brick walls, Justin was sleeping in the carriage house on Cumberland Avenue, or lacing his skates for morning recovery drills, holding the division banner, preparing for his NHL contract, believing that I had sold him out for an eighteen-thousand-dollar waiver.
He had won his game. He had defended his draft standing.
And he had lost his child.
I reached into the pocket of my coat, pulling out my phone.
The screen glowed with the message thread: Justin.
The last text from Friday night sat on the glass: I've got you, Penny.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
My pulse was slow, heavy, and steady as iron.
I didn't send a parting accusation. I didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow when his anger turned to ash.
I deleted the message thread.
I pulled an earring post from the collar of my shirt, jammed the thin metal into the pinhole on the side of the phone, and ejected the tiny plastic SIM card tray.
I took the microchip between my thumb and forefinger and snapped the plastic cleanly in half.
I dropped the broken pieces into the empty coffee cup in the console between our seats.
The line was dead.
The car accelerated down the on-ramp, the tires humming over the wet asphalt of Interstate 87, heading south and east toward the gray Atlantic coast.
The brick towers of Garrison University shrank in the side mirror, dissolving into the freezing white mist until there was nothing left behind us except empty highway.
I leaned my temple against the cold passenger glass.
Both of my hands slid beneath the down of my parka, pressing flat, warm and immovable, over the lower curve of my belly.
"Just you and me now," I whispered into the quiet hum of the heater. "I've got you."
The storm was behind us.
And the silence of the void swallowed the road ahead.