Chapter 38
Kiyomi POV
The cast-iron door of the small woodstove gave a muffled click as the oak logs settled into the embers, releasing the dry, fragrant scent of seasoned bark and ash.
Four-thirty on Thursday afternoon.
Outside the bay window of the cedar-shingle cottage on Ocean Cliff Road, the Atlantic Ocean was an expanse of churning, iron-gray water.
Fifty feet below the rocky headland, the tide slammed against black, ice-coated boulders, throwing plumes of salt mist into the freezing air before the wind whipped the spray across the spruce boughs.
For eleven days, the only sound in my world had been the steady crash of the surf and the hiss of the woodstove.
I stood by the window, cradling a white ceramic mug of hot peppermint and ginger tea between both hands. I wore an oversized cream wool cardigan over black leggings and thick wool socks, the hem of the knit falling past the middle of my thighs.
Beneath the heavy wool, my left hand rested flat against the curve of my lower abdomen.
The biological reality was no longer an abstract fear.
The persistent morning queasiness had softened into a dull, manageable ache, kept at bay by dry crackers, ginger root, and the deep, unbroken quiet of the Maine coast. My resting heart rate had settled into a steady, elevated rhythm, beating eighty-six strokes a minute against the wall of my ribs.
I was learning to breathe without the sour reek of Zamboni exhaust, without the screaming crowds of the St. Jude Ice Arena, and without the suffocating gravity of Mauricio Leal’s shadow.
I was building an impenetrable fortress of quiet for the life growing beneath my skin.
A sharp, concussive rumble shattered the coastal silence.
It wasn't the surf.
It was the heavy, uneven idle of a modified V8 engine climbing the steep gravel incline from the coastal road.
Tires crunched over the frozen ruts of the driveway, the sound sharp and violent in the stillness.
I pulled the linen curtain back two inches.
A black Ford F-150 swung into the clearing, its front bumper caked in frozen gray slush, steam boiling off the radiator grille in thick, frantic clouds.
The engine died with a shuddering rattle.
My pulse spiked instantly, a sudden hammer blow striking against the base of my throat. My left hand tightened against my stomach, fingers curling into the wool of my cardigan, my jaw locking into an unyielding, defensive mask.
* * *
I set the tea mug on the slate hearth beside the woodstove.
I didn't run to the back door, and I didn't reach for my phone. I drew a slow, disciplined breath into my lungs, feeling the icy composure I had forged over eleven days settle like armor around my ribs.
I walked across the wide pine floorboards, unlocked the heavy wooden front door, and pushed it open, stopping behind the glass storm door.
The driver’s side door of the truck slammed shut.
Mauricio stepped out into the freezing slush.
The sight of him struck my eyes like a physical blow.
The towering, arrogant captain who had commanded the ice sixty feet beneath the arena was gone. In his place stood the ruined shell of a man.
He wore no coat. He wore only a sodden black t-shirt that clung to his broad chest in dark, freezing patches, and dark denim caked with road salt around the cuffs of his work boots.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with freezing rain; five days of thick, untrimmed beard shadowed the hollow planes of his jaw.
His eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by dark purple bruises of sleeplessness that aged his face by ten years. A ragged, half-healed scab split the right corner of his swollen lower lip.
His massive frame was shivering—a violent, uncontrollable shudder that shook his shoulders as he stepped through the sleet toward the porch.
He didn't run. He walked with heavy, dragging strides, his boots thudding against the wet gravel, his hands hanging limp at his sides.
He climbed the three wooden steps of the porch, the wet boards creaking beneath his two hundred and twenty-five pounds.
He stopped five feet from the threshold, his chest heaving in shallow, whistling draws of freezing air. Steam rose from his damp neck in pale, drifting wisps, smelling of road brine, cold rain, and the faint, unmistakable trace of cedar soap.
I pushed the storm door open two inches, letting the bitter Atlantic wind cut between us.
I didn't shout. I didn't weep. I looked at him with an expression of polite, devastating detachment.
"You're trespassing, Mr. Leal," I said.
My voice was smooth, quiet, and cold as the rocks below the cliff.
The words struck him across the face like an open hand. His bloodshot eyes widened, a sudden, ragged gasp catching in his throat as the formal address tore through whatever words he had prepared.
"Chloe gave you an address she had no authority to share," I continued, holding his stare with unbroken composure. "Get back into your truck and leave this point."
* * *
Mauricio didn't argue. He didn't step forward. He didn't reach for the brass handle of the door.
His legs gave out cleanly.
The two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound enforcer collapsed off his feet, his knees slamming into the freezing, wet wooden porch boards with a sickening, concussive thud that sent a vibration straight through the floor beneath my socks.
He stayed there.
Kneeling in the dirty slush, his work boots twisted beneath him, his massive hands resting flat and open on the wet wood on either side of his thighs.
He didn't cross the threshold. He didn't lift his hands to touch my boots.
He looked up at me from the freezing porch, the sleet melting on his long dark lashes, running down his stubbled cheeks in clear, freezing rivulets that mixed with the blood from his split lip.
"I won't come inside, Kiyomi," he rasped.
His voice was a ruined, broken scrape that shook with an agony so absolute it stripped the remaining air from the doorway.
"I won't touch you," he choked out, his chest heaving under his soaked t-shirt, his teeth clicking together against the sub-zero wind.
"I went to Vance's boardroom this morning.
I had the IT forensic logs. Gabriel and I proved Cross breached Hayes's server from New Jersey.
Campus police took Cross out of the building in handcuffs. "
The cold wind whipped the hem of my cardigan, but I stood unmoving, my right hand anchored firmly over my lower abdomen beneath the wool.
"Vance signed an executive exoneration," Mauricio whispered, his voice cracking on a raw, ragged sob that tore through his ribs. "Hayes wrote the recommendation for Colorado. Your record is pristine. Your fellowship is safe."
He lifted his hands from the wet wood, holding his calloused, bleeding palms open toward me in a gesture of total, unshielded surrender.
"I dropped my captain's sweater on Vance's desk," he said, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on his hollow cheeks.
"I told Lindqvist to void my draft clearance.
I don't give a damn about the NHL. I don't give a damn about a contract.
I called you a mistake in that tunnel, Kiyomi, and I was the monster.
I butchered the only pure thing I ever had in my life. "
He bowed his head forward until his forehead touched the freezing, slush-covered boards of the porch, his shoulders shaking with violent, silent sobs.
"You don't have to forgive me," he wept into the wet wood, his voice breaking into raw, ruined pieces.
"You don't ever have to let me touch your skin again.
But I am not getting off these boards. I will stay on this porch in the snow until you tell me how to bleed for you, or until the frost takes me. "
I stood above him in the open doorway, staring down at the broken titan kneeling in the dirt.
My throat closed on a tight, burning ache as my pulse hammered against my ribs, the secret of his child burning like a star beneath my palm.