Chapter 10
Mauricio POV
My hand fell away from her wrist like the bone had burned my fingers.
I stepped back from the examination table, the soles of my slides hitting the rubber matting with a dull slap.
The basement suddenly felt ten degrees colder, the damp concrete air rushing in to fill the space where her body had been anchored between my knees.
My chest was heaving, the butterfly bandages across my brow pulling tight against the torn skin, my left ribs screaming in protest under the sudden movement.
Kiyomi stood in front of the table, her hands hanging at her sides, her chest rising and falling in quick, uneven intervals. The pink flush on her cheeks had deepened, spreading down the slender column of her throat to disappear beneath the collar of her navy sweater.
Her eyes were wide, dark, and steady. She didn't look down. She looked at the bare skin over my heart where her palm had been pressed two seconds ago.
I grabbed my black team jacket off the metal rolling cart, dragging it over my bruised shoulders.
The nylon lining was cold against my bare skin, but the chill did nothing to slow the heavy, erratic thudding behind my breastbone.
I pulled the zipper straight to my throat, shutting her out behind layers of down and water-resistant shell.
"We're done for tonight," I said. My voice was a flat, gravelly rasp that scraped the silence raw.
I reached down, grabbed her equipment bag by the shoulder strap, and scooped up my duffel with my other hand.
"I have my own coat," she said, her voice quiet but edged with that stubborn, sharp clarity.
"It's past two in the morning, Blake. There's half an inch of sleet on the asphalt, and the wind off the bay is gusting at thirty knots." I turned toward the iron stairs, not waiting to see if she followed. "I'm driving you to Preble Street."
* * *
The cab of my Ford F-150 was an iron box holding in the dark.
Freezing rain struck the windshield with a relentless, clicking rattle, the wipers dragging heavy arcs across the slush. The heater blew cold air through the vents before the engine block finally reached temperature, sending a wave of dry, artificial heat across our boots.
Kiyomi sat in the passenger seat, her knees angled away from me toward the passenger door, her hands tucked deep inside the pockets of her charcoal wool coat.
Her breath plumed in small, rapid clouds against the side window, fogging the glass until the amber glare of the arena parking lot lights blurred into smears of dull orange.
The truck smelled of cold leather upholstery, cedar shavings, clean soap, and the faint, unmistakable trace of bitter orange and almond that had transferred from her fingers to the collar of my jacket.
My knuckles were white around the leather-wrapped steering wheel. My jaw ached from the pressure of my back teeth grinding together, a sharp pulse thrumming in the vein along my temple.
My mind was a war zone.
I kept feeling the small, steady pressure of her palm against my ribs. I kept hearing that ragged hitch in her breathing when our foreheads had touched in the dim light of the basement. She had stripped my defenses bare in fifteen minutes with a bottle of antiseptic and three butterfly bandages.
That terrified me more than any two-hundred-and-thirty-pound forward bearing down on my blind side.
Emotional distraction was a luxury for guys who didn't have a paralyzed nineteen-year-old brother sitting in an electric chair in Scarborough. If I lost my edge, if I started soft-pedaling my hits because my head was full of Kiyomi Blake’s voice, the Montreal and Chicago scouts would scratch my name off their first-round boards.
The ninety-five-thousand-dollar bonus would vanish.
Rafael’s specialized therapy would stop.
I needed to put the walls back up. I needed to burn the bridge before she walked across it.
"Don't read into what happened down there," I said, my gaze locked on the empty, ice-slick lane leading toward the campus exit.
The words came out harsh, clinical, and deliberately cruel.
"You were doing your job. You saw an injured athlete, and you played nurse because logging emergency care looks good on your fellowship application. "
The cab went dead silent.
Beside me, Kiyomi slowly turned her head.
Through the faint green glow of the dashboard instrument cluster, I saw the hard, dangerous line of her mouth. She didn't look hurt. She looked furious.
"Pull over," she said softly.
"We're three blocks from your apartment, Blake."
"Pull the truck over, Mauricio. Right now."
I hit the brakes. The tires slid an inch on the slush before gripping the gravel shoulder near the southern edge of the athletic complex. I slammed the transmission into park, the mechanical clunk loud in the cramped space.
"What?" I turned to face her, my voice dropping into that lethal, warning register. "You want to give me another speech about force vectors?"
"You are a coward," she said, each syllable landing like a clean punch to my chest.
She unbuckled her seatbelt with a sharp snap, twisting in the passenger seat until her knees were inches from the center console. Her eyes were blazing, dark and fierce, pinning me where I sat.
"You think you're tough because you break people against the glass," she whispered, leaning forward, invading the airspace between our seats.
"You think taking a stick to the face makes you invincible.
But the second someone touches you without wanting something from you, the second someone looks at you and sees how exhausted you are, you turn into a vicious, snarling beast trying to bite the hand that cleaned your blood. "
The air left my lungs in a harsh draw. "You don't know a damn thing about what I carry, Kiyomi."
"I know you're terrified," she fired back, her chin snapping up, her voice trembling with raw, unfiltered fury.
"You're terrified of letting anyone close enough to see that you aren't made of stone.
You'd rather push me into the snow and pretend you're a monster than admit that you wanted my hands on your skin just as much as I wanted them there. "
* * *
The snap inside my head was deafening.
I reached down, tore my seatbelt loose, and lunged across the center console before she could draw another breath.
My right hand shot out, my thick fingers wrapping around the back of her neck, tangling in the soft, dark hair beneath her beanie. I hauled her forward, pulling her across the gap until her chest hit mine, her hands coming up to brace flat against the heavy nylon of my jacket.
The console plastic creaked under my knee.
Her breath hit my mouth—hot, sweet, frantic.
Her pupils were blown wide, consuming the brown irises until only a thin rim of gold remained, reflecting the faint green light of the dash.
Her lips were parted, trembling slightly, her body rigid in my grip but leaning in, meeting my weight with an intensity that matched the storm raging in my blood.
"You think I'm running from you?" I growled, my face half an inch from hers. My thumb dragged firmly across the sharp curve of her jaw, tilting her chin up until her mouth was aligned with mine. "You think this is a game, Blake?"
"I don't think you know how to play games," she breathed, her fingers tightening on the fabric over my collarbones, pulling me down another fraction of an inch.
Her mouth was right there. Two millimeters of freezing air separated our lips.
I could feel the heat radiating off her skin, the wild, suffocating rhythm of her pulse drumming against my thumb on her throat.
Every nerve ending in my body was screaming at me to close the distance, to crush my mouth against hers, to taste the defiance on her tongue until she surrendered.
"You have no idea what you're doing to me," I rasped, my voice breaking on a ruined whisper. "You're getting under my skin. You're taking up room in my head that I don't have to give. I told you to stay away from me."
"Then push me away," she whispered back, her breath brushing across my lower lip with devastating warmth. "Do it, Mauricio. Push me away right now."
She didn't move. She tilted her face up, offering her mouth, her eyes holding mine with an unshakeable, reckless challenge that demanded everything I was trying to hold back.
My head dipped lower. My lips grazed the sensitive corner of her mouth.
A sharp, violent vibration buzzed against the hard plastic of the console cupholder.
My phone.
The screen lit up the footwell with a harsh, blaring white glow, the name Elena Ramos flashing over an automated delivery notification from the Scarborough medical supply depot.
The sound was like a bucket of ice water thrown over my skull.
My muscles locked. The harsh reality of my life slammed back down onto my shoulders with crushing, suffocating weight.
I froze, my mouth hovering a hairsbreadth from hers, my chest heaving against her hands in ragged, choked intervals.
Kiyomi’s eyes flickered toward the glowing phone screen on the console, then slowly rose back to mine.
The silence inside the cab was deafening, heavy with the realization of what we had almost done.
Slowly, agonizingly, I let my hand slide from the back of her neck.
My fingers dragged across her jaw, trailing off her skin like an open wound, leaving a trail of burning heat in their wake. I pulled back, dropping heavily into the driver's seat, my knuckles gripping the steering wheel until the leather groaned beneath my palms.
Kiyomi stayed frozen for three long seconds, her breath still coming fast and shallow, before she sank back into the passenger seat. She didn't look at me. She pulled her coat tighter around her ribs, staring out through the sleet-covered glass into the darkness.
I shifted the truck back into drive, my boots shaking slightly on the pedals as the tires caught the road.
We didn't speak for the rest of the drive. We didn't have to.
The line had been obliterated. The professional distance was dead and buried under the ice, and as I watched her walk up the front steps of her apartment building through my rearview mirror, the cold, terrifying certainty settled into my marrow:
Next time, there wouldn't be a phone call.
And next time, neither of us was going to stop.