Chapter 22
Mauricio POV
The fluorescent light in Henrik Lindqvist’s office flickered with an irritating, high-frequency hum that set my molars on edge.
Four-thirty in the afternoon. Outside the second-floor plate glass overlooking the empty main sheet, January dusk was settling over South Portland like bruised iron, the temperature already dropping toward single digits.
Across the metal desk sat Lindqvist and Ronald Briggs, the Eastern scouting director for an NHL franchise based out of Western Canada. Briggs had a thick manila dossier open between his forearms, the pages covered in black-and-red line charts tracking my defensive metrics.
"Your draft stock climbed four spots after the holiday showcase, Leal," Briggs said, tapping a thick forefinger against a printed scouting summary.
"Number six overall on our North American board.
We hold the fourth and eighth picks in the first round.
If you're on the board at eight, our front office is prepared to pull the trigger. "
Lindqvist leaned back in his swivel chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes gleaming with the pride of a college coach about to produce a top-ten selection.
"The plan is straightforward," Briggs continued, leaning forward. "We sign you to the entry-level maximum in June, then send you straight to our primary development affiliate in Red Deer for twenty-four months. High-intensity western conditioning. Minimal media distractions. Total isolation."
A dead, flat silence fell over the room.
Three months ago, I would have signed that paper without reading the fine print. Red Deer, Edmonton, Anchorage—it wouldn't have mattered. I would have skated on broken ankles in the Arctic Circle if it meant locking in the ninety-five-thousand-dollar bonus to clear Rafael’s clinical debt.
Now, the air in my lungs moved with slow, absolute calm.
My pulse sat at forty-eight beats a minute, heavy and unhurried.
I looked at the map in my head. Red Deer was two thousand miles from New England. More importantly, it was two thousand miles from Colorado Springs, where Kiyomi’s fellowship interview was scheduled for the spring.
"No," I said.
Briggs paused, his pen hovering an inch above his legal pad. He blinked, as if he had misheard the word. "Excuse me?"
"I won't sign a tender with an organization that assigns my development rights to western Canada," I said, my voice level, stripped of heat, carrying the blunt force of an iron bar dropping onto wood.
Lindqvist’s chair snapped forward with a violent creak. "Mauricio, what the hell are you talking about? That's an original-six franchise holding a top-ten pick."
"They can draft who they want, Coach," I said, holding Briggs’s stunned gaze.
"My representation will inform your front office that if you take my rights at eight, I will play my full senior season at St. Jude and sign as an unrestricted collegiate free agent next spring.
I play in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, or Chicago. Nowhere else."
Chicago had the national sports science biomechanics headquarters. Boston and New York were an hour’s flight from Scarborough and within direct transit lines of every major orthopedic institute on the continent.
Briggs stared at me, his jaw tightening with genuine disbelief. "You're trying to dictate geographical terms to an NHL general manager before the combine?"
"I'm telling you how it is," I answered, pushing back my wooden chair and rising to my feet.
I stood six feet, four inches tall, my broad shoulders casting a shadow across Briggs's paperwork. I didn't care about the prestige of their logo, and I didn't care about their front office pride. My life was no longer an open auction.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," I said, and walked out of the office without a single backward glance.
* * *
The drive south along Cottage Road was quiet, the heavy tires of my truck gripping the packed snow with steady, predictable traction.
Earlier that morning, between video review and weight training, I had driven Kiyomi’s silver Civic to Sullivan Tire on Main Street.
Her front treads had been worn down to the wear bars, slick enough to send her into a ditch on the coastal curves.
I had handed the mechanic four hundred and twenty dollars in cash from my seasonal equipment stipend, stood by the bay while they mounted four studded winter radials, and filled her washer fluid reservoir with de-icer.
She hadn't asked me to do it. She probably wouldn't notice the new rubber until she hit an icy patch on Preble Street and didn't spin out.
I didn't need her to notice. I just needed her wheels on the road.
I turned into the gravel drive of the carriage house. The sight of her car parked by the stone wall made the tight knot beneath my sternum loosen completely.
I climbed the porch steps, pushed the timber door open, and stepped inside.
The brass deadbolt was already turned back.
The apartment was warm, the radiators clanking their steady, familiar rhythm against the winter dark. The air smelled rich and comforting: seasoned pine logs from the small fireplace, toasted bread, and the subtle, clean scent of her almond soap and bitter orange shampoo.
My home had ceased to be a place where I collapsed between hits; it had become an impenetrable fortress holding the only thing that mattered.
I tossed my keys into the ceramic dish, kicked off my boots, and walked into the living room.
Kiyomi was curled up on the charcoal sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, drowned in my heather-gray Sentinel hoodie.
The sleeves swallowed her hands, the cuffs pushed back just enough to expose her fingers as she turned a page in an open textbook.
Spread across the low coffee table were four biomechanics journals, a stack of color-coded force-plate graphs, and the heavy white folder for her Colorado Olympic fellowship proposal.
A yellow highlighter was tucked behind her ear, dark strands of hair falling loose from her clip to brush against her throat.
The sound of my socks on the pine floorboards made her look up.
Her honey-brown eyes softened with an unguarded, immediate warmth that hit me straight in the center of my ribs.
"You're late," she whispered, her voice raspy from hours of reading in the quiet room.
"Meeting ran long with Lindqvist," I rasped back, walking over to the sofa.
I didn't take off my jacket. I stepped around the coffee table, sat on the edge of the cushion beside her hip, and reached down, sliding my large, calloused hands under the hem of her sweatpants to cup her bare feet.
Her skin was like ice.
"Your toes are freezing, Kiyomi," I murmured, pulling her feet onto my lap and wrapping my palms around her arches, slowly working friction into the cold flesh.
She let out a soft, breathy sigh, her head dropping back against the sofa cushions, her eyelids fluttering half-shut as the heat from my hands sank into her skin.
"I was running the regression models on your lateral edge tests," she murmured, her hand reaching out to rest on my knee, her fingers curling loosely into the denim of my jeans.
"Your deceleration speed is up fourteen percent, Mauricio.
Hayes is going to sign off on the final sixteen compliance hours next week. "
"Forget Hayes," I said, my thumbs pressing firm, deliberate circles into the balls of her feet, loosening the tightness in her arches.
She smiled, a tiny, teasing curve of her lips that made the blood in my neck run hot. "Look at the fierce enforcer of the Eastern Conference. Handing out foot massages on a Wednesday night."
I leaned forward, my broad frame crowding her space until my shadow fell over her textbook. My hand slid from her foot, moving up the soft flannel of her pants to settle on the side of her neck, my thumb tilting her chin up until her lips were parted beneath mine.
"You think I let anyone else sit in my space like this?" I growled softly, my voice a low, gravelly vibration against her mouth. "You think another soul has ever had a key to this door?"
Her breath hitched in her throat, her honey-brown eyes dark as midnight as she held my gaze.
"No," she breathed.
"Good girl," I murmured, brushing my lips against the warm skin of her jaw. "Keep reading."
* * *
By nine o'clock, the only sound left in the room was the crackle of the dying fire and the howling draft pushing against the high sash windows.
Kiyomi had stopped turning pages twenty minutes ago.
Her heavy textbook lay closed on her lap, her yellow highlighter resting on the rug.
Her head had drooped sideways, coming to rest heavily against my shoulder, her cheek pressed into the soft cotton of my thermal shirt.
Her breathing had slowed to a deep, rhythmic cadence, her small chest rising and falling in unbroken peace.
One of her hands was still curled into the fabric of my sleeve, holding on even in sleep.
I sat unmoving for a long time, letting the weight of her head anchor me to the sofa. The domestic stillness of the room was terrifying in its absolute purity.
Slowly, carefully, I slid my left arm behind her back and my right arm beneath her knees.
I lifted her in a single, fluid motion.
She weighed almost nothing. She murmured something unintelligible in her sleep, her face turning into the hollow of my throat, her forehead warm against my collarbone as she nuzzled closer to my heat.
I carried her down the dark hallway into the bedroom.
The room was cool, washed in the blue snowlight filtering through the frost-rimmed glass. I laid her down gently in the center of the mattress, the sheets rustling softly under her weight.
I knelt beside the bed. With infinite care, I reached up and slipped the yellow highlighter from behind her ear, setting it on the nightstand. My fingers found the plastic claw clip at the back of her head, releasing the spring, letting her dark, silky hair spill across the white linen like ink.
I loosened the drawstring of the sweatpants so the fabric didn't pinch her waist, then pulled the thick charcoal duvet up over her shoulders, tucking the heavy edges securely around her neck to seal out the winter draft.
She let out a soft, contented sigh, her lips curving into a faint smile before she drifted deeper into slumber.
I stood up, resting my hand on the heavy oak bedpost, looking down at her in the dim light.
A fierce, territorial ache expanded behind my ribs, violent and unyielding.
In six weeks, the regular season would end. The draft combine would pull me to Buffalo; the Olympic committee would call her to Colorado Springs; scouts like Julian Cross would keep circling, waiting for a fracture to exploit.
None of it mattered.
I looked at the woman sleeping beneath my quilt, bearing my scent, guarded by my walls, and the vow carved itself into the deepest marrow of my bones:
I would tear my own future to pieces before I ever let the world touch her.