Chapter 107: The Hit

NORA’S POV

"Are those actual college students?" I asked, leaning over the cold metal railing of the lower bowl. "They look like heavyweight powerlifters who took a wrong turn into an ice rink."

Priya snorted into her paper cup of hot cocoa, using her elbow to nudge the cardboard placard she had shoved into my hands twenty minutes ago.

"Powerlifters with anger issues and zero regard for human cartilage," Priya corrected, adjusting the pom-pom on her knit beanie. "That’s Boston hockey. Half their roster spends more time in the penalty box than in actual classrooms."

I looked down at the handmade cardboard sign resting against my dark wool coat. Priya had spent an hour yesterday afternoon painting it in bold purple and silver letters: DEFEND THE DEN: #19 ON DUTY.

I wasn’t wearing Knox’s hoodie or his jersey tonight.

After three days of walking around campus draped in his oversized fleece, I had opted for my tailored charcoal coat, black jeans, and a simple Briar purple knit scarf.

If anyone had told me at the start of the semester that I would be this invested in college hockey, I would have scoffed and handed them a syllabus.

Back then, varsity athletes were just loud distractions in lecture halls, and Knox Sheridan was an impossible headache with a precarious GPA.

Yet here I was.

Standing here clutching this ridiculously bright sign against the chill coming off the ice, I felt more dialed into the arena than I ever had before.

Across the red line, Boston’s players were skating warmup drills in their menacing black and crimson sweaters.

One of them caught my eye immediately.

Number twenty-four. Colin Oliver.

He was built like a reinforced brick wall, with thick shoulders and a scowl permanently carved into his stubbled jaw. As I watched, he took a pass in the slot, wound up, and ripped a slapshot that violently rattled the backboards with a sound like a gunshot.

He didn’t celebrate. He just turned and skated along the glass, deliberately slamming his shoulder into the plexiglass to make the front-row Briar students flinch.

"Look at Section 104," Priya murmured, nodding subtly toward the VIP seats situated right behind the penalty box.

I followed her gaze.

While the rest of the arena was a sea of purple and silver face paint, rattling cowbells, and shouting students, Section 104 was an island of stone-faced quiet.

Three men in dark wool overcoats sat in the second row, completely immune to the surrounding noise.

One had the discreet circular emblem of the Chicago Blackhawks embroidered on his lapel; another carried an official leather portfolio stamped with the Montreal Canadiens crest.

They had stopwatches hanging from their necks, radar guns resting on the dasher boards, and open tablets ready to log every single shift.

A tight knot formed in the pit of my stomach.

Knox wasn’t just defending his home ice tonight. His entire future... everything he had worked for since he was a kid skating on his grandfather’s pond in Vermont, was under an intense microscope.

A siren wailed through the arena rafters, shattering my thoughts.

The house lights abruptly dimmed, plunging six thousand fans into darkness before four brilliant purple-and-silver spotlights swept across the ice. ℴ

The student section erupted into a deafening roar that vibrated straight through the soles of my boots.

Leading the team out from the dark mouth of the tunnel was Knox Sheridan.

Number nineteen.

He skated onto the gleaming sheet with that effortless grace that always made my breath hitch. His jaw was set, his expression carved from granite, completely locked into game mode.

As Briar circled the rink for their final warmup laps, Knox cut along the near boards.

His gaze swept over the glass, locking straight onto me standing by the railing.

His eyes dropped to the sign clutched in my hands, then traveled up to my face. For a fraction of a second, the icy captain mask cracked, a faint, private smirk touching the corner of his mouth.

He tapped the blade of his composite stick against the plexiglass right where my fingers rested, then accelerated away into the blue line drills.

When the puck dropped at seven o’clock, the game instantly exploded into a physical war.

Boston didn’t just want to win; they wanted to brutalize.

From the opening shift, Oliver and his defense partners made a point of finishing every check with punishing force. Every time Knox touched the puck behind the Briar net, an incoming black jersey was already barreling toward him.

The violent sound of bodies slamming against the boards echoed through the arena every thirty seconds.

Yet Knox was extraordinary.

He didn’t panic, and he refused to take the bait. When Boston players tried to goad him with slashes and shoves behind the play, Knox simply absorbed the contact, used his body to shield the puck, and launched breakout passes that sliced through their forecheck like a scalpel.

By the end of the second period, the scoreboard was locked at 2–2.

Knox had already played twenty-four grueling minutes of defense. His sweater was soaked with sweat and his lower lip bruised.

With under four minutes left in the third period, the tension inside the building was suffocating.

Briar was pinned deep in their own defensive zone. Boston had dumped the puck into the right-hand corner, chasing it with insane pressure.

Knox was the first man back.

He gathered the sliding puck behind the net, his head up, coolly scanning the ice for an exit. Jake broke open along the half-wall.

With pinpoint accuracy, Knox feathered a saucer pass right over an outstretched Boston stick, hitting Jake in full stride to trigger a clean three-on-two rush up the ice.

The puck was gone.

The play was already crossing the red line.

But Colin Oliver didn’t care.

Coming in like a runaway freight train from the blind spot, Oliver launched himself off his skates, his elbows raised high, targeting Knox with full force.

Knox never saw him coming.

The impact drove Knox’s upper body directly into the unforgiving glass before slamming him down into the boards.

A sickening, hollow crack echoed through the entire lower bowl.

Knox’s stick clattered across the ice.

His body crumpled, crashing onto the frozen sheet, and slid two feet before coming to a complete stop near the goal crease.

He lay face-down... not moving.

The referee’s whistle shrieked, his arm shooting straight up for a five-minute major penalty, but the sound was instantly swallowed by bedlam.

Bear roared in fury, ripping his gloves off and tackling Oliver into the boards, fists flying as both benches spilled onto the ice in a wild, furious brawl.

Athletic trainers vaulted over the boards, sprinting toward the crease with emergency medical kits.

All the air left my lungs in one violent gasp.

The roar of the crowd, the sirens, the screaming students... it all vanished, sucked into a terrifying, deafening vacuum.

Five seconds passed.

Ten seconds.

Knox lay motionless, his helmet crooked on the ice and his body completely still.

The cardboard placard slipped from my numb fingers, fluttering down to the concrete below. I stepped forward, pressing both trembling palms flat against the cold plexiglass, my heart seizing in terror.

"Knox," I whispered helplessly. "Get up. Please... get up."