Page 1

Chapter one

Micah

T he axe bit deep. Wood splintered, cracked, and then surrendered with a sound like breaking bones. I yanked the blade free and positioned another log. My breath clouded the air, spectral and fleeting.

Sweat trickled down my spine despite the cold. My thermal shirt clung to my skin, soaked through after hours of the same motion. Split, stack, repeat. My shoulders burned, new strain colliding with old injuries, but the pain kept me tethered to something real. Something present.

The Upper Peninsula sky hung low and heavy, threatening more snow. Marquette, twenty miles north, was expecting a foot of white stuff. Flakes drifted down, melting against my overheated skin. I welcomed them. The sting of cold against heat reminded me I was still alive.

I'd lost track of how many days I'd been at the cabin. Fourteen? Twenty? I escaped just before questions about what I'd do during the term of my suspension.

Time blurred when there was no one watching. No press conferences. No coach's disapproving stare. No teammates pretending not to notice the pariah in their midst.

Just me, the axe, and the violent sound of wood splitting.

Another log. Another swing. I didn't think about the league hearing scheduled for late in the season. Didn't think about hockey. Didn't think about the crunch of cartilage beneath my knuckles or the way his head had snapped back when I drove him into the boards.

The rookies always thought they were untouchable until they weren't.

I had a winter to get through. I positioned another log, widening my stance. My boots crunched in the old snow, treads gripping the hard-packed ice beneath. The rhythm kept the thoughts at bay. The ones that whispered I'd finally crossed the line. That this time, there'd be no return.

At night, I lay awake and heard the crowd's roar turn to shock, then silence. A pool of blood spread across the ice from beneath his helmet. His body was still. Those few seconds before he moved stretched into eternity.

That was the way the media told the story, but here, in the cold and quiet, I could pretend it was just another bad game. Just another penalty.

Another log. Another swing.

I'd come to the cabin because it was safer for everyone if I disappeared. Even Coach had said, "Get your head straight, Keller. Figure out what the hell you want."

As if what I wanted had ever mattered.

I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. My knuckles were split and raw. I couldn't remember whether I'd done that during the game or after, punching the locker room wall while reporters waited outside. It didn't matter anymore.

The forest held its breath around me. Nothing but the rhythmic thunk of steel meeting wood, the whisper of falling snow, and the rasp of my own breath. My voice had grown rusty from disuse. Sometimes, I'd catch myself talking aloud just to remember what words felt like in my mouth.

I raised the axe again, muscles coiled, ready to deliver the blow that would shatter another log into submission.

Then, I heard something.

It was the crunch of tires on frozen gravel, the low purr of an engine fighting the incline to my cabin. The sound didn't belong here. It meant trouble.

I froze mid-swing, muscles locked, blood rushing in my ears. For a heartbeat, I listened. The engine cut off. A car door opened, then closed with a decisive clunk that echoed through the trees.

Nobody knew I was here. Not even Coach. I didn't share my getaway spots, and he'd stopped calling after the first week.

I lowered the axe slowly, fingers tightening around the worn handle. My throat constricted. I rounded the side of the cabin, keeping to the shadows of the porch overhang.

A dark sedan sat in my driveway, its black paint smeared with road salt and slush. Steam curled from the hood into the frigid air. Beside it stood a figure, tall and lean, wearing a navy peacoat that matched the gathering twilight.

He stood perfectly still as if he belonged there. As if he'd been waiting for me to appear.

I stepped forward; axe still gripped at my side, eyes narrowed against the snow flurries. Recognition hit like a sucker punch to the gut.

Noah Langley.

The rookie I'd sent to the hospital at the end of last season.

My lungs seized. No marks remained on his face. He'd at least partially healed. He watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

His coat was too fine for this place—navy wool, probably Italian—and it clung to his frame like a tailored dare. His jaw was sharper, leaner. The bruises were gone, but something haunted clung to his eyes like he hadn't slept right in weeks.

He looked like a shadow of the boy I hit. Or maybe the man I made.

The last time I'd seen him, his skin had been split open along the cheekbone, blood pooling in the hollow beneath his eye. They'd had to stretcher him off the ice.

And now, he was standing in my driveway like a fucking ghost.

I tried to speak, but my vocal cords forgot how to work. My fingers went slack. The axe slipped from my grip, embedding itself in the frozen ground between us with a dull thud.

For several heartbeats, we stared at each other. The flurries intensified, catching in his dark hair and melting on his shoulders. He didn't blink. Didn't shiver.

Finally, he broke the silence.

I need to know what happened." His eyes briefly darted away. "The actual truth."

His voice was lower than I remembered, steady and deliberate. Not angry. Not trembling with emotion or hatred.

My brain scrambled to make sense of it. How had he found me? Why was he here? What truth could he want that wasn't already splashed across every sports network in the country?

Noah took a step forward. Snow crunched beneath expensive boots designed for city sidewalks. He moved with the fluid grace of someone who'd spent his life on the ice, but there was something else in his posture. He'd come looking for something… or someone.

I felt it in my chest—that animal instinct that recognizes when it's being hunted.

"You shouldn't be here," I managed, my voice a rusty growl.

"And yet." He gestured to the space between us, the corners of his mouth lifting in what was almost a smile.

I blinked and saw it again—the moment on the ice. His eyes met mine through the cage of his helmet. There was a split-second of recognition before I'd driven him into the boards with everything I had. Like I'd seen something in him that needed breaking.

"How did you find me?" I asked, fighting to keep my voice level.

He shrugged one shoulder casually like we were teammates catching up after practice. "Your agent drinks too much at hotel bars."

I made a mental note to fire Davis the moment I had cell reception again.

"You drove eight hours through fucking nowhere Michigan for what, exactly?" I bent to retrieve the axe, needing something solid to hold onto. "A fucking apology?"

"I told you. The truth."

I scoffed. It was a harsh sound that scraped my throat raw.

Noah said nothing. He merely watched me with those steel-gray eyes that seemed to peel back layers I didn't want exposed. His silence expanded between us, taking up all the air and nearly suffocating me.

I turned away, stalking back toward the woodpile like the conversation was over. I did my best to dismiss him the way I'd dismissed rookies in the locker room, but my hands shook as I positioned another log, and I knew he saw it.

"You don't get to look at me like that." My voice was harsh, threatening. "Not after what I did. Not after the way youlet me believeyou could take it."

The words slipped out before I could stop them—half accusation, half confession. I hadn't meant to say that much.

I froze mid-swing, axe raised, the admission hanging between us in the cold air.

He didn't answer. Just stood there, steady, watching me with those too-calm eyes like heknew.

"You owe me."

I grabbed another log and positioned it. "I gave you a broken collarbone and took a suspension that would carry over into the next season. That's the end of the transaction."

"None of that is what I came for."

I glanced at him over my shoulder. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, relaxed, like we were having a normal conversation.

"What, then?" I demanded. "Money? The league already has my ass in a financial sling."

"I didn't file a civil suit."

I hadn't known that.

"Then what do you want from me?" I swung the axe again, missing my mark. The blade glanced off the log and buried itself in the stump beneath. I swore, yanking at it.

"I want to know why you looked at me that way before you did it."

I froze. The wind picked up, howling between the trees, finding the gaps in my thermal shirt and raising goosebumps along my sweat-damp skin.

"Most guys," he continued, "they hit without seeing. It's a reflex, an instinct. But you—" He inserted a dramatic pause. "You saw me first. You made a choice."

My hands curled into fists. He was playing some kind of game, and nobody gave me the set of rules.

"You've said your piece." I straightened, turning to face him. "Now go."

Noah didn't move. Snowflakes caught in his eyelashes and on the sharp edges of his cheekbones. His gaze never wavered.

"Not until you tell me why you did it."

Something like a dark, black serpent uncoiled inside my chest. I closed the distance between us in two strides, using my height to tower over him.

"You want the truth?" I almost snarled it. "I really don't think you do."

He didn't flinch. Didn't step back. He tilted his head to maintain eye contact, exposing the vulnerable line of his throat.

"Try me."

For a heartbeat, I thought about grabbing him. Shaking him. Making him understand the magnitude of his mistake in coming here. There were miles of forest where he'd never be found, but that's what had gotten me into this mess in the first place—pure violence.

I probably should have told him to go before the storm made it impossible to get away. Tell him that I didn't want him at my place, but I couldn't make myself lie.

Instead, I watched, stunned, as he walked past me toward the cabin. Like he belonged. Like he'd been invited.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I called after him.

He climbed the three weathered steps to my porch, boots heavy on the wood. He'd grabbed a duffel bag from the passenger side of his car and slung it over his shoulder. My blood ran cold.

"You can't stay here," I said, moving after him, anger sparking in my veins. "This isn't a fucking Airbnb."

Noah set his bag down beside the door. "Storm's coming. Checked the radar before I lost service." His tone was reasonable, almost conversational. "Driving back in it would be stupid."

I grabbed his arm as he reached for the door handle. "You don't get to—"

He turned, slow and deliberate, invading my space. He was so close that the heat of him escaped his coat and tickled my skin.

"Tell me the truth, Micah. Or hit me again, but cut the bullshit about not wanting anything. No way you got it all out of your system last time."

The words slid between my ribs like a blade, finding soft tissue. I let go of him like I'd touched a live wire, stepping back, my pulse hammering in my throat.

He held my gaze a moment longer, something unreadable flickering in his eyes. Then he turned, pushed open the unlocked door, and stepped into my sanctuary.

"There's a guest room down the hall," I said, my voice hollow. "Don't touch anything else."

Noah paused in the doorway, silhouetted against the warm light inside. For a moment, he appeared almost ghostly—a specter from my past come to collect a debt.

"We both know I'm not leaving until I know." It wasn't a threat. It was a fact, delivered with the same calm certainty as everything else he'd said. "Not until we dig up what we buried."

He disappeared inside, leaving the door ajar. An invitation. A challenge.

I stood in the falling snow, staring at the axe in my hand. The blade caught what little light remained, flashing like a warning.

It didn't feel like a tool anymore. It felt like a promise. Or a threat.

I didn't know whether I was holding on to it to protect myself—or to keep myself from letting go.

Inside, Noah moved through my cabin like he already belonged. It was the next chapter in something he'd been writing alone. He'd already told me he wasn't leaving until I helped with his excavation.

And some part of me—dark and quiet and already too tired to resist—believed him.

I followed him in and closed the door behind me. Outside, the storm arrived.