Page 6 of Steel and Ice

BLAIR

I was absolutely not thinking about Colt Mitchell when I left the grocery store.

Okay, maybe I was. A little.

My hands were wrapped around two large paper bags that crumpled in the humidity. I didn’t normally shop this late at night, but I had to admit the mostly empty store had made it easier to move quickly.

All I could think about was how stupid I’d been for adding ice cream to my cart, as if I were going to sit on my couch and watch something light and normal—instead of letting the Mercer fight crawl back into my head for the twentieth time.

Colt had only been in my anger management group for a couple of weeks.

And yet he lived rent-free in my head.

What kind of therapist am I?

I reminded myself for the thousandth time that this wasn’t merely unprofessional. I’d crossed into downright dangerous. If anyone found out I was… affected by him, I could lose everything important to me.

My license, my career, my credibility, my livelihood.

Worse, I could lose control. And control was what kept me safe in this job.

Colt was a client. A violent, unstable client, and I wasn’t supposed to want to understand or empathize with him beyond his paperwork. His League-mandated hours, his outbursts on ice during games. But every second I held his stare, the earth shifted another inch below my feet.

If I fell, if I so much as wobbled, it wouldn’t just be my job I shattered.

It’d be me.

I took a deep breath, then exhaled and shifted the weight of the bags against my chest as I neared my small car. My Prius was the same unremarkable silver it had been for six years.

Tonight, it was the only safe thing in the parking lot.

I admonished myself for being paranoid when the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly rose.

The lot was empty except for one or two cars scattered under buzzing yellow lights. Shadows from cars and shrubbery stretched long across cracked asphalt. The late-night hour made the world feel hushed and hollow in a way that left me unnerved.

Relax , I thought. It’s just a parking lot.

I reassured myself the area was empty and quiet. Normal. Then I heard footsteps.

Slow, deliberate footsteps.

I glanced up, and what I saw made my stomach drop as though I’d missed a stair.

Travis.

With recognizable tattoos sprawled over his arms, it was impossible not to know it was him. Big, broad-shouldered, his hoodie unzipped enough to show a white tank top underneath that’d probably seen more fights than laundry.

He walked toward me with a smile that didn’t make me feel at ease. I wondered what had happened at Travis’s meeting with his parole officer.

“Well,” he said, dragging the word out, “if it isn’t the good therapist.”

My throat went dry, and I froze. “Travis.”

“Do you shop here?” he asked as his attention flicked to the bags in my arms.

As if to check me for weakness.

My hands were full, my keys were buried somewhere in my pocket, and I had no easy escape.

“I live… in the area,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

My voice didn’t shake, and I was proud of that.

“Lucky me,” he said as he moved closer, slowly.

Close enough I could smell his cheap cologne and the faint tang of cigarettes which clung to his clothes. Plus, an unmistakable stench of whiskey, which told me Travis was drunk.

In his palm was a bent bronze coin that appeared to be an AA anniversary token. He’d rubbed the year clean with his thumb and the whiskey on his breath said he’d lost it tonight.

On his wrist, a plastic band, obviously county issued. Barcode and all. Travis had been in jail. A folded schedule labeled Day Reporting protruded from his pocket, a warning in paper form.

He offered a smug grin. “Small world, huh?”

I fought the urge to shift back, though I had nowhere to go. I was backed up against my car.

“I spent the weekend in a cell because of you,” he said as he picked at his wristband. “County had me for seventy-two hours. Day Reporting for a month. I lost out on a good job yesterday because I was locked up. And now I’ve got a curfew like a goddamned child.”

I couldn’t find any words to respond, but I could see Travis’s anger written across his face, visceral.

“Know what else they gave me?” Travis asked. “A shiny little no-contact order with staff that I’m already breaking.”

“Is there something you need?” I asked as I tried to keep my tone neutral.

No contact included me. If I made it home, I’d have no choice but to write a report and have it on my supervisor’s desk before nine. But Travis didn’t just need my signature anymore. He needed somewhere to put the blame.

His grin widened. “Thought I’d say hello, Blair. Wanted to make sure you haven’t written too many notes about me in your little pad. Judges love their notes.”

My heart thudded once, hard, and threatened to stop altogether.

I was a professional, and I’d dealt with his breed of jerk before. The problem was, most of the time when I faced a man as dangerous as this, I sat across a table from them with a panic button under my finger. Not in a dim, deserted lot with no witnesses.

And no exits.

I forced my tone to remain level. “Sessions are confidential. And if you’ve been issued a no contact order, you’ve broken it.”

I couldn’t understand what Travis’s goal was. But I’d learned not to overanalyze the impulsive behavior of anger management participants. Even so, Travis in particular had a lot to lose. Any harm to me and he’d be in another violation of his parole, which would mean a return to prison.

He leaned closer to me and the stench of cigarettes filled my nostrils.

“You know what I like about you, counselor?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“I like that you listen,” he said. “You look a man in the eye when he talks about losing his cool, his sanity. Most people, they look away. But not you, Blair. Makes me wonder if you’re curious.”

His words crawled under my skin as I shifted my grip on the bags.

I was immediately hyper-aware of how vulnerable I was. My hands were occupied, my pulse raced. I was trapped between a car door and a man who’d bragged about putting someone in the hospital for a month.

Some therapist. Panic button in my office, out here I had nothing but keys and paper bags.

Travis tilted his head as he waited for a reaction I refused to provide.

“Nothing to say?”

I swallowed so hard I wondered if he might hear it. “I think you should go, Travis.”

For a brief second, I thought he’d leave. I hoped, wished, prayed he would.

Travis rocked back on his heels and scanned the mostly empty lot. Checking for an audience.

His new curfew probably dictated he be home by nine. But if the late hour was any indicator, he didn’t care.

His smile returned—lazier, and meaner than before.

“I wanted to see if the good therapist looks calm and collected when he’s not hidden behind his precious little circle of chairs.”

My grip tightened on the grocery bags and the thin paper crumpled under my fingers.

I hated how my palms were slick, and my ears rang relentlessly.

Travis advanced, closer, and closed the last few feet of space between us. He didn’t touch me, but his body loomed over mine. I could smell the sour scent of sweat beneath the cloud of cologne around him.

“You seem nervous,” he said. “Relax, Blair, I told you; I just wanted to talk to you.”

To my surprise, my back hit the car door. I hadn’t realized I’d inched backward. The metal was cold against my skin, and a shiver ran up my spine.

I forced myself to swallow so my voice wouldn’t crack. “It’s late, Travis. You should go home.”

He leaned in closer to me.

“Home’s boring,” he said as his voice dropped lower, rougher. “But you, you listen. I prefer when people listen.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but words failed me. My brain frantically scrambled for something remotely professional. Magic words that would de-escalate him the way they might have in my office.

But my office had walls, locks, and people within shouting distance.

This lot had flickering lights and concrete.

Morning would bring new rules, new sanctions, more paperwork, phone calls. But paper couldn’t stand between the two of us in a barely lit lot.

Travis’s gaze shifted and raked over me as he measured me, noting every flinch.

Every tremor.

His smirk grew wider. “You’re shaking.”

True. My hands, knees, my entire body.

I gripped the paper bags tighter and prayed for the shuddering to stop.

“I think you need to leave,” I managed to force out, my voice thin and hushed.

“Or what?” Travis asked with a low chuckle. “You’ll write me up and report me? Tell the judge I said boo in a parking lot?”

His hand reached out and grabbed my wrist where it held the paper bags. My fingers tingled under the sudden pressure of his grasp. The pain was sharp and immediate. His thumb found my tendon, deliberate and practiced. As if he’d learned the spot that makes men compliant with him.

Travis squeezed as though he wanted to see how much he could make me squirm. Air rushed from my lungs and my bag tilted dangerously as a carton of eggs shifted inside.

“See?” Travis grumbled as his smirk curled. “You’re paying attention now.”

Hallway, bag strap. Parking lot, wrist.

Escalation had a shape, and a name.

My chest tightened as the sharp edges of fear and the humiliating rush of adrenaline coursed through my veins and flooded my body. I tried to pull my wrist back, to yank it away from him.

But his grip tightened, and his fingers dug into my skin hard enough to make me wince.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

A distant movement caught my eye, and for a second, I thought I’d imagined it. But near the light pole, a shape moved. A shadow closed in, pressing forward from the darker outlines across the lot.

My stomach dropped again, this time for an entirely different reason. Because the shape that emerged from nowhere was big, heavy-shouldered, and moved with an unmistakable pent-up energy.

Colt.

He didn’t say a word at first, but his presence pushed like wind. The sound of his boots against asphalt was enough to pull every ounce of air from my lungs as night remained silent around us.

Travis froze then snapped his head toward the sound. “What the hell was that?”

Colt appeared in the faint yellow glow, a tornado given shape. Hoodie, jeans, shoulders an impenetrable wall. His face was defined by shadows, but his gaze was locked on Travis with a laser-sharp focus that made my skin shiver.

“Let go,” Colt demanded, his voice low.

Lethal.

Travis’s smirk momentarily disappeared. “We’re just talking here, bud.”

“Let. Go.”

Colt didn’t raise his voice or drift another inch forward. He didn’t need to. He’d issued a command that wrapped around the spine and squeezed until the recipient complied.

Travis hesitated for a moment as his eyes flickered from Colt to me. Then back again.

“I’m here to make sure the counselor understands the consequences of his actions,” Travis snarled.

Colt didn’t respond.

“You following Blair?” Travis asked. “That’s fucked up.”

Colt moved closer and closed the space with deliberate steps.

Travis hesitated for a moment but gripped harder on my wrist. As if by reflex, a stubborn, smug show of control. His fingertips drove into my flesh so hard my knees shook. Pain flared through my arm, and I called out.

Colt moved.

He stepped between us and wedged two fingers under Travis’s thumb before he peeled it back. The hold broke with a shocked shout from Travis. My skin was red and flushed where his hand had been and my wrist ached.

Colt’s body became an impenetrable wall in front of me.

Travis reached to reassert himself, but Colt advanced a single step and grabbed his forearm. He pushed it firm to his sternum and used it to guide him back.

Travis lost his footing and stumbled backward into some shopping carts. Metal screeched across the empty lot. A loud, clanging alarm for anyone within earshot.

My heart thudded as adrenaline flooded my veins.

“Colt!” I shouted.

I hoped the sound would be enough to make Travis think twice about what he was doing. But Colt glared at Travis, daring him to move.

“Touch him again,” Colt said, his voice a low, commanding snarl, “and you won’t touch anything for a while.”

Travis clutched his wrist. His eyes were wide and watery; all of his swagger drained into the lightless night. He mumbled something low and unrecognizable—a curse or a promise—and staggered off into the void, his footsteps uneven as he wobbled.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

My entire body locked with tension, caught between the echo of fear and something heavier.

Heat, coiled low in my stomach, hidden from polite view.

Colt turned and faced me. His chest lifted and fell, the rhythm of a man just off the ice after a hard game.

He glared at me. “You need to be more careful.”

My throat finally worked, and I swallowed. “Were you… were you following me?”

Colt’s eyes held mine for a long, burning moment. But he didn’t answer.

And somehow, that was worse than yes.