"Sign the appendix, June, or I let the collectors take the ice out from under four hundred pensioners tonight."
Torin Black's hand closes over my wrist before I can pull the pen back. Not hard. Just final. Like a door shutting somewhere behind my ribs.
"Get off me." I yank. He doesn't move an inch, and neither does my arm.
We're locked in the penalty box. Actual penalty box, plexiglass walls, cold bench, the smell of rink ice bleeding through the vents. His lawyer's idea of a conference room, apparently — private, soundproof, and the only door in this whole barn that latches from outside.
"You wanted somewhere off the record," he says. "This is off the record."
"This is a box, Torin. You put me in a box."
"You put yourself in it the second you filed the acceleration notice." His voice doesn't rise. It never rises. That's the part that scares me more than shouting would. "You want the whole pension fund vaporized this quarter? Pull the trigger. Go ahead."
I hate that he's right that I could. Bondholders gave me the one thing that matters in this entire miserable restructuring — the acceleration trigger. One signature from me and the whole debt comes due tomorrow morning, and his arena, his team, his family's hundred-year-old barn, all of it gets sold for parts by Thursday.
He knows I won't pull it. Four hundred families' retirements ride on this building staying open. That's the only reason I haven't already.
And he's using it like a leash.
"Read line six," he says, and slides the appendix another inch toward me on the bench between us. Cheap paper, cheaper pen, and there — line six, bolded like he wanted me to see it first.
RESIDENT SPOUSE, MRS. J. BLACK, TO OCCUPY OWNER'S BOX FOR SEVEN (7) HOME GAMES PER COVENANT 14(c).
My stomach drops somewhere past the floor of the box, past the ice.
"You put me on a bond covenant as your *wife*."
"The pension trust needs an anchor occupant listed for insurance and residency purposes to keep the exemption. Family only. That's the language, not mine." He shrugs like it's nothing, like he didn't just draft me into his life with a fountain pen. "You're the trustee's counsel. You're already the only warm body the bondholders trust in this building. It's efficient."
"Efficient." I laugh, and it comes out uglier than I mean it to. "You want me living here. Under your roof. For seven home games. As your wife on paper."
"Seven games," he says. "Then the clause expires and you go back to hating me from a safe distance."
I shove the paper back at him. "Find someone else to fake a marriage with."
That's when he moves.
No warning, no wind-up — one second there's a bench and a stack of paper between us, and the next his palm is flat against the plexiglass behind my head and his knee is on the bench beside my hip and I am back against cold glass with nowhere left to go. The box is maybe six feet wide. I used up all six feet backing away from him and I didn't even notice doing it.
He smells like cedar and leather and something underneath that's just him, sweat and rink chill, and it's close enough now that I can feel the heat coming off his jaw when he leans down.
"There isn't anyone else," he says, low, right against my ear. "There's you, or there's four hundred people who lose their retirement because a lawyer decided her pride was worth more than their pension checks."
"Don't." My voice cracks in a way I didn't authorize. "Don't put that on me."
"I'm not putting it anywhere. It's already yours. You took the trigger. That means you took the weight that comes with it."
His hand comes off the glass and finds my jaw instead, thumb dragging once along my chin, tipping my face up so I can't look anywhere but at him. I should bite him. I think about it. I don't do it, and that's the part that terrifies me — that some idiot piece of me just goes still under his hand like it's been waiting for it.
"Say it," he says. "Tell me you'd rather watch this building go dark than sign one page."
"I'd rather not be owned by a covenant, Torin."
"You're not owned." His thumb presses, just barely, against the corner of my mouth. "You're *scheduled*. Seven games. That's all."
I hear the latch before I understand what it means — a heavy mechanical clunk from the door behind him, the one door, the only door, the one his assistant was supposed to be holding open for me.
It just locked. From the outside.
"Your guy just sealed us in," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
"He didn't seal us in." Torin doesn't even turn to check. He already knew. "He sealed you in. With me. Until you sign line six, or until I decide you've had long enough to think about it."
His mouth is an inch from mine. Less. His thumb hasn't moved off my lip.
"There's no camera in here," he says, quiet, almost gentle, which is worse than if he'd been cruel about it. "No board members. No bondholders. Just you, me, and a door that isn't opening until one of us blinks."
I put both hands flat against his chest to shove him back, and he doesn't budge, and I can feel his heartbeat under my palm, steady, way too steady for a man who just locked a woman in a glass box with him.
"Open the door," I say.
"Sign the page."
I reach behind me for the handle I already know isn't there, and his knee shifts another inch closer on the bench, and the only sound left in the whole box is both of us breathing too hard for two people who supposedly hate each other.