Iced Out

Chapter 7: Cole Makes His Case

NOVA

The Glaciers’ high-performance weight room at 5:45 AM was a cavern of matte-black steel, mirrored walls, and utter silence. The only sound was the rhythmic, aggressive whir of the rowing machine as I drove my legs back, pulling the handle to my chest, over and over again.

I was burning off the adrenaline of a sleepless night. My hair was tied in a messy ponytail, sweat dampening the collar of my workout tank, my mind running through every possible way this morning could go.

At exactly 6:00 AM, the heavy glass doors pushed open.

I didn’t stop my rhythm, but my eyes snapped to the mirror in front of me. Cole Harrington walked in. He was dressed for a grueling dryland workout, a tight, dark grey athletic shirt that molded to every line of his chest and shoulders, and black mesh shorts. He had a towel draped over his neck, a shaker bottle in one hand, and an expression that looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

He stopped dead when he saw my reflection.

For a second, neither of us moved. He stood by the free weights, staring at my back through the glass. The hostility from yesterday was still there, but beneath the harsh fluorescent lights of the gym, it looked brittle. He looked utterly exhausted.

I released the handle of the rowing machine, letting the chain slide back into the casing with a metallic snap. I unstrapped my feet and stood up, grabbing my towel to wipe my face.

I didn’t wait for him to come to me. I walked across the rubberized matting, stopping a few feet away from where he stood.

“You’re here early, Mr. Harrington,” I said, my voice steady despite the way my heart was hammering against my ribs. “Shoulder keeping you awake?”

His jaw ticked. He tossed his shaker bottle onto a nearby bench. “Diane told me her plan. The proposal.”

He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. Good. Neither would I.

“She told me too,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest. “And I told her it was an ethical nightmare and an insult to my profession. I’m assuming you had a similar reaction regarding your pride.”

Cole took a step closer. The sheer size of him in the empty gym was overwhelming, but I forced my chin to stay level.

“My pride isn’t the issue,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that seemed to vibrate right through the rubber floor. “My career is. Diane thinks you’re the only one who can sell this narrative to the media. The broken, reckless captain stabilized by the brilliant, untouchable doctor.”

“I am untouchable,” I said sharply. “Which is exactly why this is dangerous. I have a contract, Cole. Section 4, Paragraph B explicitly prohibits romantic relationships with players. The clause doesn’t distinguish between real and staged. All it takes is the board deciding what they see in the press looks real, and I’m terminated with cause. License review. Career over.”

I held his gaze. “The better we perform this, the more convincing it looks. And the more convincing it looks, the closer I get to triggering the one clause that can destroy me. Diane’s plan works by putting my career directly in the crosshairs.”

“Then we stay in control,” he said. His silver-grey eyes were locked onto mine, sharp and unyielding. “We keep it clean. Public only. Nothing the board can point to as evidence of an actual relationship behind closed doors. We give them the performance without giving them proof.”

“You think the board operates on proof?” I shot back. “They operate on optics. One candid photo that looks too intimate, one overheard comment that sounds too personal, and the clause is on the table. It doesn’t matter what’s real. It matters what they believe.”

“Then we control what they believe.” Cole took another step forward. We were close enough now that I could feel the heat radiating off his skin. “You’re the psychologist. You read people better than anyone I’ve ever met. If anyone can walk that line, it’s you.”

“You’re asking me to bet my entire career on my ability to fake a relationship convincingly enough for the press but not convincingly enough for my own employer.”

“I’m asking you to bet on yourself,” he said. “The way I bet on myself every time I step on that ice. Every game is a risk. Every shift. You calculate the odds, you trust your preparation, and you execute. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

The bluntness of it stopped me cold. He wasn’t performing. He wasn’t negotiating with charm or pressure. He was standing in front of me at six in the morning, stripped down to something that looked uncomfortably close to honesty, making his case in the only language he knew how: competition, calculation, and controlled risk.

And even as he said it, I watched him shift his weight almost imperceptibly to the right, relieving pressure on his left side. The same compensation pattern I’d catalogued from the viewing box on my first day. He didn’t know I’d noticed. He didn’t know I was still noticing. The man standing in front of me asking me to trust him was carrying something in that left shoulder he hadn’t told anyone about, and the irony of him lecturing me on calculated risk was sharp enough to draw blood.

“You need this job,” Cole continued, his voice losing its harsh edge, shifting into something quieter, something infinitely more dangerous. “I read your resume. Stanford. Top of your cohort. You could have gone to any private practice in the country, but you chose a hockey franchise in Chicago. Why? Because you’re ambitious. Because a success story here writes your ticket anywhere.”

He leaned in, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back to my eyes.

“If Raines fires you, you leave with a failure on your record,” he said softly. “If you help me, I make sure you get whatever you want. Access. Resources. Endorsements for your clinical work from the biggest names in the league. You help me keep my ‘C’, and I will personally ensure your career is bulletproof when you leave.”

I stared at him. He was arrogant, yes. He was commanding. But looking up into those silver-grey eyes, I finally saw what Diane had seen. I saw what Coach Brentwood saw.

I saw a man who was drowning.

The hostility was just armor. Beneath it, Cole Harrington was desperate. He wasn’t doing this to save his ego. He was doing this to survive. The tension humming through his frame wasn’t anger; it was the terrifying vibration of a man holding up a collapsing ceiling with his bare hands.

*I’ve seen this before,* something whispered in the back of my mind. The desperation. The casino photos. The way he carried the weight of his brother’s legacy like a physical load. I couldn’t connect it yet, couldn’t see the full shape of whatever was crushing him, but the pattern felt familiar in a way that made my stomach tighten. It reminded me of Marcus. Not the man I’d seen on the laptop screen, but the man behind the data. *Someone in too deep, trying to hold it together alone.*

A strange, sharp ache bloomed in my chest. Five years ago, I had tried to save this franchise by burning it down. Now, I was standing in front of the collateral damage.

“It’s three months,” Cole said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. He wasn’t begging. He would never beg. But the plea was there, written in the rigid line of his shoulders and the dark shadows under his eyes. “Three months. Public appearances. We smile for the cameras, we sit in the owner’s box, we pretend we can stand each other. And then we walk away.”

I looked at him. Really looked at him. The man who was carrying a ghost, a hidden injury, and a media scandal, asking me to jump into the fire with him.

“If I do this,” I said, my voice finally breaking the heavy silence. “We do it on my terms.”

The relief that flashed across his face was so fast, so visceral, it nearly knocked the breath out of me. He didn’t smile, but the brutal tension in his jaw fractionally released.

“Name them,” he said.

I squared my shoulders. “We sit down today. We draw up the rules. Every public appearance is pre-planned and controlled. Nothing spontaneous. Nothing that gives the board ammunition to question whether this has crossed a professional line. And if you ever speak to me the way you did in my office yesterday, the deal is off, and I will personally hand Victor Raines the scalpel to dissect your career.”

A slow, dark smirk tugged at the corner of Cole’s mouth. It was the first time I’d seen him look genuinely amused, and I immediately wished he’d go back to being hostile. The hostile version was easier to negotiate with.

“Deal, Doctor,” he murmured.

He held out his hand.

I looked at his large, calloused palm. *This was the point of no return.* I reached out and placed my hand in his.

His fingers closed around mine. His grip was firm, warm, and sent a jolt of electricity straight up my arm that I had absolutely no clinical explanation for. He didn’t let go immediately. He held my hand, his thumb brushing the pulse point at my wrist, his eyes locked on mine.

The air in the gym crackled. The boundaries I was about to spend the rest of the morning meticulously building suddenly felt like they would need to be stronger than anything I had ever constructed.

Not because of the board. Not because of the media. Not because of the contract clause hanging over my head like a guillotine blade.

Because of the way his thumb felt against my pulse. And the terrifying suspicion that the hardest part of this arrangement wouldn’t be convincing the world it was real.

*It would be convincing myself it wasn’t.*

“My office. Noon,” I told him, pulling my hand back before he could feel my pulse spike. “Don’t be late.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Nova,” he said.

Hearing my first name on his lips felt like crossing a very dangerous line. I grabbed my towel and walked out of the gym without looking back, terrified that if I did, he would see exactly how much trouble we were both in.