CHAPTER 3

Mia POV

I ran.

I told myself I was running because it was my job. Because I was the only medical staff on site. Because if something happened and I hadn't responded, there would be paperwork. I told myself all of that very firmly while my heart was doing something completely different.

I shoved open the door to the medical ward.

Cole was flat on his back on the examination table, one arm draped over his eyes, jaw clenched so hard I could see it from the doorway.

He was lucky I found him when I did. He was lying on the ice like he had all the time in the world, too proud to make a sound, too stubborn to admit he needed anything. In my years of medicine, I had treated exactly two types of patients: those who complained too much and those who would rather die quietly than ask for help. Cole Ryder was aggressively the second kind.

"You really can't do anything without me, can you?" I teased.

Cole didn't move. "Go away, Mia."

"Go away?" I repeated. "I'm the only medical staff on site. You're on my table so you're my problem."

I snapped on the glove. He finally lifted his arm. Those steel blue eyes pinned me with a look that should have come with a warning label. "I didn't ask for you."

"And I didn't ask for my father to hire a fossil with a death wish." I said. A small laugh came out of him. I pulled up a stool. "Let me see the knee."

He didn't move.

"Cole, the knee. Now."

His eyes widened at my tone. No one talked to him like this.

I'd seen the way rookies stammered around him. The way my father's Vincent shiver when Cole entered a room.

But I wasn't a rookie. A legendary hockey player with a bad temper didn't scare me.

He groaned and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Every movement cost him... I could see it in the way he clenched his jaw, gripping the edge of the bed so tight that his knuckles turned white.

I knelt in front of him and rolled up the leg of his practice pants.

My breath caught.

His knee was like a roadmap. Six surgical scars, no seven. Two of them are old enough to have faded, the rest looks newer. The kneecap itself sat slightly wrong, pulled to one side by what must have been years of compensated movement. The muscle on his left thigh was noticeably smaller than his right, the kind of atrophy that happened when a joint was avoided, when the body learned to route around the damage.

But it was one scar that stopped me.

Long, diagonal, running from below the kneecap upward and to the left. I had seen this pattern before, in trauma cases. In patients who had been operated on under emergency conditions or worse, in patients who had been sent back into activity too early, before the tissue could bind.

A good surgeon didn't leave a scar like this, a rushed one did.

"What happened to you?" I whispered.

He shrugged. "None of your business."

I looked at the scar again, something nagged at the back of my mind, something I couldn't place yet.

"Hockey happened," he said, voice flat. "Are you happy now? Can you do the job?”

I looked at his leg, then him. I looked at the way his left leg sat slightly crooked, the muscle atrophied compared to the right. At the exhaustion behind his eyes that had nothing to do with sleep.

You didn't become an assistant coach because you wanted to," I said slowly. "You became one because it's the closest you can get."

I had known it somewhere in the back of my mind since the first time I saw him watching the players on the ice with that expression. The one he wiped off his face the second he noticed anyone looking. You can't play. And it is killing you every single day.

He rolled his eyes. " I became one because your father offered me a job."

"No." I shook my head. "You took it because standing at the edge of the ice is better than standing in a house somewhere pretending it doesn't exist."

His jaw tightened like I had hit something real.

"Shut up!" his hands curled into fists. "You don't know anything about me."

He didn't want to confront the truth or he just hated that I saw through him. I never knew he went through that. Watching others play, must have been killing him.

And yet, he swallowed the pain and never complained.

Cole grabbed my wrist, his hold firm. His thumb pressed against my pulse point, where my heart was betraying me by racing.

"Stop," he snapped. "Whatever pity party you're throwing for me, stop. I hate pity. I hate people looking at me like I'm broken."

He dropped my wrist and sighed, raking his hands through his hair. "I'm fine."

I opened my mouth to fire back. He wasn't fine and he didn't need to pretend with me, he didn't need to wear a mask around me.

But before I could bring the words out, the TV wall blinked on. Someone in the front office must have patched through the feed.

A press conference.

My father stood on a podium, a big smile on his face. My hands paused on Cole's knee. Beside him, Harrison Cole, the team owner.

And between them…

My hands stopped moving entirely.

I knew that face before I heard the name. I would know it in any crowd, in any light, in any country I ran to. Clean-shaven, that perfect black hair and that smile, the one that tilted just slightly to the left, the one that made interviewers lean forward and fans cheered and every person in his world believed he was something good.

The smile he had worn while his hand was wrapped around my throat.

"Marcus Webb," my father said into the microphone, proudly, beaming. "Our newest addition."

Marcus Webb.

The name landed in my chest like a stone dropped into deep water.

He knew I was here, he had to know. My father bragged about me to every player who walked through those doors. "My daughter, the doctor." Marcus had heard that exact phrase a hundred times when we were together, always said in the same tone.

This was not a coincidence.

Marcus stepped to the microphone. His voice washed over me like ice water.

No, my father wouldn't do this. He couldn't. He couldn't bring the same man that I complained about to the same vicinity I was. He knew I had been running from Marcus.

He knew that the reason I had done my internship here was because I just couldn't keep running anymore and I was broke.

Yes, he didn't care but this was the worst that he could do to me.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity," Marcus said, eyes glinting with malice. "This is a fresh start, a new family and I can't wait to get on the ice and prove myself."

No. No. No.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them against my thighs to hide it. My breath came too fast. The room felt small. Smaller than the closet last night. Smaller than the car Marcus locked me inside while he screamed about dinner being cold.

"Mia."

Cole's voice, distant at first, like hearing someone call your name from the bottom of a pool.

"Mia, look at me."

I couldn't. The screen was still playing. Marcus was laughing at something my father said. His hand clapped my father's shoulder, friendly. The same hand that had…

"Hey!" Cole's hand cupped my face, turned my head and forced me to meet his eyes. "Whatever you're seeing right now, you're not seeing it alone. I'm right here."

I stared at him, my breath was still coming wrong. But something in those words, the particular way he said them, like a man who knew what it was to be somewhere terrible alone helped me a bit

I held onto that.

I wanted to tell him everything. The bruises. The hospital visits I faked. The restraining order I couldn't afford to enforce because Marcus always found me anyway.

I pointed at the screen instead.

"That man," I said. My voice was very quiet. "I know him."

CHAPTER 4

Mia POV

I saw him before he saw me.

Marcus Webb stood outside my father's office with his phone in his hand and his weight on one hip and an expression that was just relaxed enough to look like someone who had nothing to hide.

That was the thing about Marcus, he always looked like he belonged wherever he was. He had spent years perfecting it. In public he was easy, warm, the kind of man other men wanted to be around and women thought they understood. In private he was something else entirely.

I stopped midstep. My heart was beating so fast I thought I would vomit.

Not here, not now, not after everything.

My brain started running calculations the way it always did when Marcus appeared thinking of the fastest exits, who was nearby, and how long before someone would notice if I disappeared.

I turned around, fast. My shoes squeaked on the floor, I didn't care. I just needed to move, to disappear, to become invisible the way I'd practiced for two years.

I was faced with two options. Taking the stairs which were too long and far away or a long flight down to the lower level. If I ran, he'd hear. If I walked, he'd surely see.

Fuck it. I chose the stairs.

My hand gripped the railing, as I began to skip flights of stairs, my breath came in shallow gasps.

The memory slammed into me immediately. Memory that I had spent years trying to lock away. The first time he backhanded me across the mouth. I'd dropped my phone. He'd stepped on it, a big smile on his face as he crushed it under his heel. "You're not going anywhere," he'd said.

I spent years loving him. I believed that one day he would change and every day I woke up with bruises. Any time I tried to leave, it always got worse until one day that I had added sleeping pills into his drink as I sneaked out.

Two years of me being free but of course, it was just an illusion.

“Mia.” His smooth voice called from behind me. I didn't turn around. I took another step.

"Mia, wait." I heard his frantic footsteps, faster than mine. "I know you heard me."

I broke into a run. My ankle twisted on the fourth step. I caught myself on the railing, pain shooting up my leg, but I kept going.

He was faster.

His hand closed around my elbow, firm enough that I knew...I knew...he could snap my arm if he wanted to.

I squeaked.

"Where are you going?" He barked, pulling me to a stop on the landing between floors. The stairwell was empty, just the both of us and my legs shook. "You didn't even say hello."

"Let go of me, Marcus," I whispered.

His hand tightened on mine. He stepped closer. His cologne, the same brand he'd worn for years, filled my lungs like poison. "I came back for you. You know that, right? This whole trade, the new team...I did it for you."

The worst thing about Marcus was never the anger, the anger I could brace for. It was moments like this, when he looked at me with something that actually resembled love and expected me to be grateful.

My throat tightened. "I didn't ask you to."

"You never had to ask." His free hand came up to my face. His fingers traced my jaw. My skin crawled. "You look good. Tired. But good. Stressful job?"

I flinged his hand away. "Don't touch me."

He chuckled. "I've touched every part of you, Mia. Don't act like a stranger now."

He pushed me against the wall. Concrete scraped my back through my shirt. His body pressed against mine, heavy, familiar, sickening. His hand moved to my hip, gripped hard enough to cause a bruise.

"Stop." My voice broke. "Stop it."

"You used to like this," he drawled.

"I used to be afraid of you."

"Same thing." He smiled. That left-tilted smile that made everyone think he was charming. "You're still afraid, I can feel you shaking."

I was. My whole body trembled. My vision blurred at the edges, the stairwell spun. I was twenty-two again, locked in his apartment, watching him pace because I'd looked at another man for too long.

But I wasn't twenty-two anymore.

"Get off me," I said. Louder this time. "Get off me now."

He leaned close, his lips brushed my ear and I closed my eyes and thought about the stairs. About the door at the bottom and about how many steps.

"Scream," he said pleasantly. "Go ahead, your father is upstairs choosing which of my press photos to use. Your assistant coach is down on the ice somewhere trying to pretend his knee isn't finished."

He pulled back just enough to look at me. "I asked around about Ryder, by the way, sad story. Coaches who can't walk fast enough to get to you aren't really much of a plan."

The smile never left his stupid lips. "No one is coming, Mia.”

I screamed anyway. "LET GO OF ME!"

Marcus laughed, actually laughed with his hand moved to my throat. "That's not going to..."

For a second, just one, nothing happened. My scream echoed off the concrete and died.

Then I heard footsteps, slow and uneven. The sound of someone climbing stairs.

"Step back."

The voice came from below the stairs. Cole.

Marcus turned his head but didn't move his body. "This doesn't concern you, old man."

"I said step back."

Cole climbed the last few steps. His limp was worse than this morning. His face was pale from the pain, but his eyes were on fire.

He had heard me from the bottom. He had come up anyway, on a knee that had already been through enough today to justify staying down, and he was looking at Marcus the way a man looks at something he has already decided to destroy.

Marcus finally pulled away from me. Held up both hands in mock surrender. "Relax. I was just catching up with an old friend."

"She told you to let go. I heard her from the bottom of the stairs."

He scoffed. "She plays hard to get."

Cole's jaw twitched.

Marcus faced Cole fully. "What are you going to do, Ryder? Blow out your other knee trying to fight me? I've seen you walk. You're a cripple. Always has been. You couldn't..."

Cole's fist connected with Marcus's face. The crack echoed off the concrete walls. Marcus stumbled back, hand flying to his nose. Blood dripped between his fingers.

Cole didn't say anything. He just stood there, breathing steadily, and waited.

"You hit me," Marcus said, eyes widening.

"Get up," Cole said.

Marcus got up and swung back.

His fist caught Cole in the ribs, the same side from the practice fight. Cole grunted but didn't fall. He grabbed Marcus by the collar and slammed him against the opposite wall. Marcus kneed him in the thigh. Cole's bad leg buckled. He went down on one knee.

"No!" I grabbed Cole's shoulder. "Stop, both of you, stop!"

Marcus lunged. Cole caught him by the throat. They crashed into the railing. I pulled at Marcus's arm. He shoved me aside. I hit the wall, my head cracked against concrete and slid down.

Cole saw me fall and something in him snapped.

He drove his forehead into Marcus's nose. Blood sprayed. Marcus roared. They traded punches, ribs, and jaws.

"COLE!" I screamed his name, he didn't hear me or didn't care. Then footsteps pounded from above.

"What in God's name is going on here?"

My father.

He stood at the top of the stairs, face red, tie loosened, eyes wide. Behind him, the assistant GM, and two security guards.

Cole froze with his fist raised. Marcus shoved him off and staggered backward, blood pouring down his chin.

My father looked at Marcus, at Cole, then at me, as I slumped against the wall, crying, my shirt torn at the collar.

"Someone," my father said slowly, "had better start talking. Now."

Mia POV

My father's office felt like a courtroom, and I already knew the verdict.

I sat in the guest chair with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to get my hands to stop shaking, trying to figure out which version of the truth would be small enough to say out loud without being dismissed. I had done this before, sat in a room with authority, and tried to explain something that left no marks, and I already knew how it ended.

Cole stood by the window, his back to the room, shoulders so tight I could see the tension from across the room. Marcus had been taken to the medical ward with a bag of ice and a story about tripping on the stairs. My father's assistant GM had written it down without looking up.

No one had asked me what happened. No one had come to check on me in the stairwell. My father's first move had been to ask the security team to keep it off the arena cameras.

That told me everything I needed to know about how this meeting would go.

"What happened?" My father's palms hit the desk. "I want an answer. Now."

I opened my mouth and closed it.

The last time I had tried to tell him about Marcus, I was twenty-two years old and sitting in this same chair with a bruise on my jaw that I had covered with concealer. He had listened for four minutes.

Then he had told me that I had always been too sensitive, that I misread situations, that Marcus was a good man with a bright future and I should think very carefully before I said something I couldn't take back.

Then he had offered Marcus a ticket to the season opener.

I had nothing new to say that would change any of that.

There was no proof that Marcus had hit me. Only Cole's knuckles were bloody, and Marcus's face was swollen. He wouldn't believe me, especially when he had already chosen his side the moment he traded for Marcus.

"Mia." His voice sharpened. "I asked you a question."

"I tripped," I said.

"You tripped," he repeated.

"I tripped, and Cole was coming up the stairs, and Marcus was there, and they got into some argument. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention."

My father stared at me for a long moment. Then he turned to Cole.

"Ryder. What happened?"

Cole didn't turn around. His voice was low, uninterested. "It won't happen again."

"That's not what I asked," he slammed his hands on the table, and I flinched.

"I know what you asked, but what happened doesn't matter. I said it... It won't happen again." Cole insisted.

My father's face reddened. He walked around the desk and stopped inches from Cole's back. "You punched our new franchise player in the face. In a stairwell. Where anyone could have seen. Do you understand what would happen if this got out?"

"Then maybe you shouldn't have traded for a piece of garbage who puts his hands on women."

Silence. I stiffened.

My father's jaw tightened, and he looked at me, then back at Cole. Something passed between them... something I didn't understand.

"I don't know what game you're playing," my father mumbled slowly. "But I'll tell you what's going to happen. You, Ryder, are going to be Marcus's personal coach. Skating drills. Conditioning. One-on-one. You're going to fix whatever this nonsense is by spending time together."

Cole turned around slowly.

His face was the kind of pale that came from pain, not fear. His knuckles were split and swollen. There was blood on the collar of his shirt that I didn't think was his.

He looked at my father for a long time.

"No," he stated firmly, with so much authority.

My father blinked. He was not used to that word from people who worked for him.

My father shook his head. "It wasn't a suggestion."

Cole's hands curled into fists. "I said no."

"You don't have a choice." My father smiled, thin and mean. "You're the assistant coach. He's a franchise player. You will train him, or you will spend the rest of your career looking for a team willing to hire a coach who can't get through a practice without going down on the ice."

He let that sit.

"Good luck with that.”

I stood up. "Why can't someone else train him? Why does it have to be Cole?"

My father's head whirled toward me. His eyes narrowed. "What is it to you?"

The question hung in the air. What is it to you?

I couldn't say he's the only person in this building who came running when I screamed. I couldn't say he climbed those stairs on a knee that should have kept him flat on his back, and he did it because of me, and that is the first time in years that anyone has done something that cost them anything for my sake. I couldn't say any of it.

So I picked up my bag and headed towards the door

"Mia." My father's voice called out with a warning.

I walked out.

"Mia!" My father screamed. I didn't turn back, but the moment the door closed behind me, my legs gave out.

I made it to the equipment storage room. The one at the end of the hall, where old jerseys and broken skates went to die. I locked the door. I slid down the wall. And I cried. Everything was falling apart, and I had nothing to do about it. I tried to stop the tears, but it just kept on coming.

My nails dug into my palm. I shouldn't let Marcus get to me.

The door opened.

I didn't even look up, I didn't need to. The particular quiet of the way he moved, the uneven weight of his steps, I knew who it was already. That was a terrible thing to know about a person. That was the kind of knowing that meant something you weren't ready for.

Cole.

"Get away from me," I said, my voice hoarse.

He didn't get away.

He crossed the room in three limping steps, lowered himself to the floor beside me, and pulled me into his chest.

I pushed against him. "I said..."

"I heard what you said." His arms didn't loosen. "I'm not listening."

I stopped pushing. My body betrayed me. I collapsed into him... my face against his chest, his heartbeat under my ear, his hand cradling the back of my head.

"What happened?" he asked quietly. "All of it. No more lies."

And I told him everything.

The first time Marcus backhanded me. The way he apologized with flowers and tears. The second time. The third. The night he broke my wrist and told the ER doctors I'd fallen down the stairs. The restraining order didn't matter because he always found me. The hospitals I transferred to. The cities I fled. The way I stopped sleeping with the lights off.

"I'm scared," I whispered. "I'm so scared. He's here. He's never going to leave. And my father...my father is going to make you train him. He's going to make you spend every day with the man who..."

Cole tilted my chin up, his thumb brushed the tears from my cheek. His face was so close I could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes, the scar above his eyebrow, the pain he carried that matched mine.

"Listen to me," he said.

I looked at him.

"Marcus Webb is never going to touch you again. Not while I am alive and standing. You understand me?"

"Cole, you can't promise…"

"I can." His jaw was set. "I will."

His forehead came to rest against mine.

"I have spent eighteen months in this building watching everything I ever worked for collect dust," he said quietly. "I have come in every day and coached players who are half as good as I was and twice as careless, and I have gone home every night to an apartment that doesn't feel like anything. I stopped wanting things a long time ago because wanting things hurt too much.”

It felt like I was holding my breath.

"And then you walked through that office door at eleven o'clock at night and told me I didn't know shit about you." The corner of his mouth moved. "And I thought, she's right, I don't, and I wanted to.”

I held my breath.

"Mia." His voice was very quiet.

I waited.

"I don't know what any of this is," he said. "I don't know what I'm doing. I've been telling myself to stay away from you since the first time I saw you leave his office at midnight with your keys in your hand and that look on your face like you were already somewhere else."

He exhaled.

"But I'm done pretending I don't see you. If that's going to be a problem for your father, for the team, for anyone, I genuinely do not care." He pulled back just far enough to look at me properly. "I just need you to know that you are not alone in this building. Whatever happens next, you are not alone, ok?"

My chest ached.

"Okay," I said. It came out barely above a breath.

"Okay," he repeated.

And neither of us moved.

Then I heard my father's voice come through the door, from somewhere down the hall, flat, impatient, already irritated.

"Mia? Where are you?" I closed my eyes, my breath became irregular.

Cole's hand, which had been resting against my cheek, didn't move, neither did I.