Chapter 75 CHAPTER 75

Chapter 75 CHAPTER 75
Julian’s POV 

The steel loading-dock door didn’t swing open so much as it shuddered backward into its overhead tracks, letting out a long, screeching scree-clack-clack that rattled the iron water pipes strapped to the concrete ceiling.

Outside, the rain had turned into a thick, gray slush that smelled of river salt, wet asphalt, and the heavy diesel fumes of six charter buses idling along the arena’s lower concourse. Every time a bus driver tapped his throttle to keep the heater running, the exhaust came rolling under the corrugated door in a warm, sour cloud that settled over the floorboards like wet grease.

I didn't take my travel coat off. I stood by the rear bumper of the Cutlass, my right hand buried deep in the wool pocket, my fingers closed around the cold, metal frame of my pocket knife to keep my hand from shaking.

Every stride I’d taken from the passenger seat to the concrete apron had been a quiet, calculated negotiation with my left side. The white zinc tape around my ribs had dried overnight—the cotton fabric stiffened by salt and old sweat until it felt like an iron corset pinned directly into the muscle beneath my third and fourth ribs. If I took a breath deeper than two inches, the floating bone let out a small, sliding click-shiver right against the nerve ending, leaving a sharp, copper taste on the back of my tongue that made my stomach turn over.

"Watch the riser, Jules," Jax muttered.

He was behind me, carrying both of our canvas kit bags slung over his right shoulder. The heavy strap was cutting deep into his navy track jacket, the brass buckle letting out a dry, rhythmic clink-clack against his collarbone with every step he took. He hadn't shaved since Friday morning. The dark, rough stubble along his jawline made his face look hard, carved out of dirty pine, his dark eyes shadowed and narrow as he scanned the wide, cavernous tunnel ahead of us.

This wasn't the Red River Arena.

There were no exposed timber roof trusses here, no wood-burning stoves sputtering in the corner of the gatehouse, and no small, sixty-watt bulbs hanging from green cords in the center of the ceiling. The National Stadium was a massive, six-story vault of poured concrete, steel girders, and yellow safety paint that smelled of ozone, fresh floor wax, roasted peanuts, and twenty thousand wet wool coats drying simultaneously under high-intensity halogen floodlights.

And then there was the noise.

It didn't sound like a crowd. Down in the concrete belly of the building, two floors beneath the ice sheet, the sound of twenty thousand people sitting in the upper and lower bowls didn't reach us as individual shouts or chants. It came through the four-foot-thick foundation walls as a massive, low-frequency vibration—a continuous, heavy thrud-thrud-thrud that made the water in the fire buckets ripple in tiny, concentric circles. It vibrated through the rubber soles of my travel shoes, up through the bone of my shins, and settled right into the center of my chest, pressing against my damaged ribs like a heavy palm.

"Line's through here," Coach Clain said, her voice dry and rasping as she stepped out of the secondary office.

She wasn't carrying her usual paper cup of black coffee. She had her hands shoved into the pockets of her black nylon splash trousers, her old leather clipboard tucked tight under her arm, the wood notched and gouged from twenty years of regional tournaments. She looked at my face for two seconds, her dark, small eyes taking in the gray shadows beneath my lower lids and the tight, flat set of my jaw before she looked down at the floorboards.

"Varsity room four," she said, pointing her thumb down a long, white-tiled corridor that stretched a hundred yards toward the ice ramp. "The association assigned us the visiting bay. The water pressure in the showers is low, and the locker doors don't have latches, but the rubber matting on the floor is clean. Get your gear on. Warmups are in twenty minutes."

"Any press in the hall, Coach?" Jax asked, his voice dropping into that low, mechanical growl that filled the space between us.

"The press is upstairs in the glass boxes, Miller," Clain said, turning her back to push open the heavy double doors of the equipment room. "They're waiting for the puck drop. Don't give them anything to print before you hit the sheet."

I followed Jax down the long, white corridor, my left shoulder trailing four inches behind his right elbow. The white floor tiles were wet, streaked with dark gray mud and salt from the secondary line’s boots, the light from the fluorescent tubes above us reflecting off the polished glaze in long, blinding strips.

The visiting locker room was massive—a wide, rectangular box of smooth concrete blocks painted a sterile, glossy cream. There were thirty steel lockers lined up against the back wall, their blue enamel doors standing open, the room smelling of fresh pine disinfectant, wet horsehair pads, and the bitter, metallic tang of the arena’s central refrigeration units.

I didn't choose a locker near the center of the bench. I walked all the way to the far corner, locker number twelve and let my travel bag slide off my shoulder. The canvas gave a heavy, wet thump against the gray rubber matting, the metal zipper catching on the seam as I pulled it back to reach for my blue jersey.

My hands weren't cold anymore. They were warm, sticky with a cold sweat that made my skin feel thin and brittle. I sat down on the narrow wooden bench, my knees locked together, my head down, listening to the continuous, low-frequency roar of the stadium above us as it grew louder with every turn of the minute hand on the wall clock.

The high-intensity halogen lamps above the ice sheet didn't just illuminate the rink; they bleached it.

When I stepped out of the dark, rubber-lined tunnel and onto the ice, the sudden glare was so intense it felt like a physical blow against my forehead. The white paint beneath the three-inch layer of clear, frozen river water looked like a seamless field of salt, reflecting the yellow and white boxes of light from the rafters until my eyes watered, blurring the red center line into a thick, glowing smear.

The roar of twenty thousand people hit my chest instantly.

It was a physical wall of sound, a deafening, chaotic wave of high-pitched whistles, shouting, program pages fluttering, and heavy work boots stomping against the concrete risers of the upper deck. It didn't have the targeted, personal hatred of the local rinks; it was vast, impersonal, and overwhelming, filling every cubic inch of the massive iron dome until the air inside my blue plastic helmet seemed to vibrate against my ears.

I skated three slow, wide circles inside our defensive zone, my steel runners letting out a dry, complaining shhh-crack as they cut through the fresh, unblemished ice.

Every time I turned my left hip to catch the curve of the blue line, the white zinc tape around my torso pulled hard against my skin, reminding me of the floating ribs with every stride. My breathing was shallow, flat, and cautious, my lungs taking in small, cold gulps of the ozone-heavy air that made my throat feel raw and dry.

I gathered a loose black puck near the boards, my stick blade making a soft, metallic click against the vulcanized rubber, and glided back toward the red line to join the secondary line's passing drill.

And then I saw him.

He wasn't sitting in box four with the NHL draft board scouts, and he wasn't standing in the press row behind the glass partitions. Arthur Thorne was sitting in the very front row of the lower bowl, directly behind the home team’s penalty box, separated from the ice sheet by only three inches of reinforced plexiglass.

He was wearing his dark, tailored charcoal overcoat—the one with the hand-stitched silk lapels and the silver bone buttons that didn't show a single line of wear. His gray hair was parted with silver precision, lying smooth against his skull despite the damp air of the arena. Beside him sat the league commissioner, a round, silver-haired man in an expensive navy suit who was holding a white paper cup of coffee, nodding along to whatever Arthur was saying.

Arthur wasn't watching the team’s passing drill. He wasn't looking at Miller or Harrington as they cleared the zone.

He was looking directly at me.

His face was completely devoid of anger, frustration, or disappointment. It was the face he carried into the executive boardrooms at the Merchant’s Trust—a cold, smooth, and triumphant mask of absolute ownership. He held a small, black fountain pen between his long, white fingers, turning it over and over in a slow, rhythmic movement that caught the bright halogen light from the rafters every time the silver cap rotated.

He didn't need the draft board to pull my name from the wire. He didn't need the sheriff’s office to execute the disclosure on my travel account. By standing there—by sitting in the front row with the commissioner at his elbow while twenty thousand people screamed over the iron barriers, he was demonstrating the absolute, unyielding reality of his world.

To him, I wasn't a hockey player standing on the ice before a national final. I was an asset that had failed to clear the balance sheet, a temporary line item that was being liquidated before the noon accounts closed.

My knees went soft for half a second.

The ice beneath my skates seemed to tilt, the white sheet stretching out into a wide, terrifying void where the lines didn't matter and the rules of the game had no weight. My left hand, the one holding the upper grip of my Sherwood stick, went entirely numb, my fingers losing their purchase on the leather wrapping until the butt end of the shaft slipped two inches toward the ice.

I couldn't hear the crowd anymore. The roaring of twenty thousand voices dropped into a high, ringing silence inside my ears, leaving nothing but the sound of my own heart hammering against the white zinc tape on my chest: thud... thud... thud...

I tried to turn my shoulders to skate back toward the bench, but my body felt heavy, waterlogged, as if the canvas of my jersey had been filled with gray river mud. I stood near the red line, my boots glided to a halt, my eyes locked onto that cold, silver pen turning in Arthur’s hand behind the glass.

"Ten seconds to clear!" the linesman’s whistle blew, a sharp, metallic pip that cut through the haze in my head without dissolving it.

I didn't skate to the center of the ice to join the starting line. I turned on my heels, my blades letting out a dull, scraping crunch against the ice, and glided slowly toward the home bench. My left side was burning, a sharp, hot needle of pure friction where the edge of the zinc tape was pulling away from the raw, bruised skin above my hip bone.

I stepped through the open wooden latch of the bench door, my boots landing heavily on the thick black rubber matting.

The locker room tunnel was dark compared to the blinding glare of the ice, the yellow overhead bulbs casting long, distorted shadows across the blue-painted walls. I sat down on the low wooden bench near the back wall, my travel bag sitting between my boots, my Sherwood stick resting across my knees.

My hands were shaking.

It wasn't a small, subtle tremor. My fingers were trembling violently, a uncontrollable, muscular spasm that made the wooden shaft of my stick hit the iron frame of the bench with a dry, rhythmic clack-clack-clack.

I reached into my kit bag for a roll of black cloth tape, my fingers clumsy and stiff as I tried to find the end of the adhesive. My thumb slipped off the edge twice, the roll dropping onto the floorboards and rolling three inches into the gray slush before I could catch it. When I finally pulled six inches of the black tape off the roll, the cloth tore unevenly, leaving a jagged, frayed tail that stuck to my palm instead of the wood.

"Dammit," I whispered.

My voice didn't sound like mine. It was a thin, dry rasp that barely cleared my lips, sounding like an old lath breaking in an empty room.

I tried to wrap the blade of my stick, starting from the heel and moving toward the toe, but my hands wouldn't obey the simple, mechanical habit I’d practiced ten thousand times since I was six years old. The tape bunched up in thick, irregular wrinkles across the wood, the adhesive catching on itself until the blade looked sloppy, unpolished, and completely ruined.

Every breath I took was a battle against my own ribs.

The weight of the moment, the twenty thousand people screaming in the upper bowl, the cold ghost of Arthur Thorne sitting behind the glass, the erased draft forms, the twenty-four dollars sitting on the nightstand at the River-Side Court, seemed to collapse inward, settling directly onto my sternum. I couldn't expand my lungs. The air coming into my throat was thin, cold, and dry, leaving me gasping in short, shallow hitches that made my chest protector rise and fall in a frantic, uncoordinated rhythm.

I was going to fail.

Not because the State College defense was too heavy, and not because my third rib was floating out of its slot. I was going to fail because the system had already decided the outcome before my boots had even cleared the gatehouse. The Thorne name had erased me from the registry, and no matter how hard I skated, no matter how many shots I blocked with my bare chest, the ledger was always going to be balanced by men in charcoal coats who held the pens.

My vision went blurry around the edges, the white tiles of the corridor running together into a long, gray smudge. I dropped my head forward, my chin pressing into my collarbone, my forehead resting against the cold wood of my stick, my hands still shaking as they held the ruined roll of black tape.

A pair of heavy, grease-darkened leather skates stopped right between my boots.

The steel runners didn't make a sound on the thick rubber matting, but the massive, two-hundred-and-ten-pound frame standing over me shut out the light from the corridor completely, dropping me into a wide, warm shadow that smelled of wet wool, coal dust, and zinc oxide.

Jax didn't sit down on the bench. He stood right between my knees, his broad shoulder pads locking together to create a solid wall between my face and the rest of the tunnel.

He reached down with his right hand, the big, heavy leather glove with the split seam near the thumb, and laid his palm straight over my trembling fingers. He didn't just touch my hand; he closed his fingers over mine, gripping my knuckles with a slow, crushing pressure that forced my hand down onto the wooden shaft of the stick until the bones in my palm let out a small, sharp click.

The shaking stopped instantly.

The raw, physical force of his grip was so solid, so unyielding, that it cut straight through the panic in my nerves like an iron bar dropped across a spinning gear. I could feel the rough texture of the leather glove, the thick padding over his knuckles, and the burning, intense heat of his hand beneath the gear, running straight into my cold, numb skin.

"Look at me, Jules," he growled.

His voice wasn't a shout, and it wasn't a whisper. It was a low, heavy rumble that came straight from the bottom of his chest, a sound that carried the weight of the Cutlass's engine frame, the cold mud of the parking lot, and the seventy years of county keyways that held our locker room door shut.

I didn't want to look up. I wanted to keep my head down, my eyes fixed on the ruined black tape on my stick, but his left hand came up, his big, bare fingers catching my jawline, careful, his split thumb avoiding the small cut behind my ear and lifting my chin until my eyes were forced to meet his.

Jax wasn't looking at the corridor. He wasn't looking at the wall clock, and he wasn't looking at the door that led to the ice.

His dark eyes were wide, clear, and completely locked onto mine. His face was gray with sweat, his jaw set into that flat, indestructible line that had never backed down from a Saginaw defenseman or a precinct clerk. There was no fear in his face, no doubt, and not a single trace of the erased draft numbers from the morning wire.

"Look at me, King," he whispered, his thumb pressing into the corner of my jaw with a firm, grounding heat. "Not at him. Not at the glass, and not at the men in the charcoal coats."

"Jax... the registry..." I choked out, my voice catching on the dry lath in my throat. "Arthur... he's sitting with the commissioner. He has the pen."

"Let him keep his pen," Jax growled, his grip on my hand tightening until I could feel the solid wood of the stick pressing deep into my palm. "He can write whatever he wants on his blue-lined paper, Jules. He can erase our names from the wire, and he can take the sixty-thousand-dollar contract back to the Merchant's Trust. But he doesn't own this sheet. He doesn't own those Graf skates on your feet, and he sure as hell doesn't own the line we're taking today."

He leaned his forehead down until it was pressed straight against the front of my blue plastic helmet, his wire cage brushing my brow, his hot, heavy breath meeting mine in the tiny space between our mouths.

"We play our game tonight, Jules," he whispered into my skin, his voice carrying that raw, indestructible steel that no family estate could ever purchase. "You and me. We take the ice, we clear the lane, and we leave everything we’ve got right on the sheet. If they want to take the trophy away from us after the buzzer, they’ll have to come down to the rubber matting and drag it out of my bare hands."

I looked into his eyes through the shadow of the wire cage.

The high-frequency ringing in my ears died completely. The cold, suffocating weight on my chest lifted, leaving behind a clear, sharp, and icy calm that settled into the very marrow of my bones. My lungs expanded, slowly, deliberately, taking in a full, deep breath of air that pulled against the white zinc tape without a single flinch of pain.

The "Disgraced Prince" was gone. The Thorne trust fund was gone.

There was only the ice, the black rubber disc, and the massive, grease-stained mechanic standing between my knees with his gloved hand locked over mine.

I tightened my fingers around the wooden handle of my stick, returning his grip until my own knuckles went white against the leather.

"Clear the lane, Jaxom," I whispered.

Jax let out a short, low growl that sounded like an engine catching on the first turn of the crank. He released my jaw, stepped back toward the tunnel door, and brought his Sherwood stick up onto his shoulder with a heavy, deliberate clack.

"The lane’s already clear, Jules," he said, turning toward the bright, blinding light of the arena. "Let's go take our sheet."

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