Air.
There was no air.
I couldn’t breathe.
Lukas wasn’t moving.
My heart was pounding hard in my chest—rapid quick beats that I felt in my whole body. The pounding echoed loudly in my ears. Distantly, I could hear Zara’s panic. I could hear someone talking to me. I could feel hands on my shoulders, my face, but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see past Lukas lying motionless on the side of the mountain.
I couldn’t see past Asher lying there lifeless.
I pressed my hand down to move myself away, and that’s when I felt the warmth over the cold. I brought my hand that had been trapped between our bodies up to my face and saw the red. My body started to shake. From shock, cold, fear—I didn’t know. But drops of red shook from my hand as I held it up in front of my face. My brain went back to being fuzzy, back to not understanding what was in front of me. Maybe someone screamed, the sound tearing from their throat in raw agony, but I couldn’t be sure.
A million things were trying to piece themselves together in my head. I could hear people calling for medical, for the EMT on standby. Their voices were a distant echo. Then came this sudden realization that had dread forming a lead ball in the pitof my stomach. I didn’t care about the pain in my own body, I moved, and scrambled and froze.
I couldn’t tell if my heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to escape from my chest, or if it had stopped all together. My breaths sawed in and out, ragged gasps that made me lightheaded.
Like a gory perverse halo, blood pooled behind his head. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
I thought my knees gave out, but someone’s hands and arms caught me as blackness started to crowd the edges of my vision. My eyes were still glued to the screen, to the medic team that had finally arrived on site.
CHAPTER 42
aimee
Day of the Fall
Asher grabbedmy hand and we skated out into the middle of the ice, smiling and waving. His hand was warm in mine, and as we looped around to get into position, I let him bring mine up to his lips and he pressed a kiss into the back of it. Warmth and confidence bloomed in my chest, and this time when I smiled at him, and he smiled back, his eyes shone. The crowd cheered at the display—Brennan really understood what made spectators fawn, and that was romance.
We came to a halt in the center of the ice. Six feet separated us—not the furthest apart we’d be during this routine, but it may as well have been. It felt like miles.
Asher and I breathed in unison and went still, waiting for the music to start. Like the song, I felt like it had been a thousand years waiting for this moment. I pushed back my shoulders, straightened my posture, and raised my right hand in front of me, reaching for Asher—he mimicked my pose. We stared at each other with open longing, the emotions ofwanting and waiting clear in our faces, in the way we held each other’s gazes, and in the lines of our bodies.
The music started over the speakers, a piano softly queued us in and Asher and I fell into the rhythm. We circled around each other clockwise and then counterclockwise, moving closer so our fingers touched, and then pushed back from each other.
We were mirrors of each other as we looped towards opposite ends of the rink—every press of our skates, flourishes of our hands and yearning of emotions in sync. It was a risk—to not actually be touching in tandem, but perfectly in sync on separate sides of the rink. Brennan didn’t think the judges would dock us points—and while it wasn’t a hard rule Pairs skaters had to follow, it was sometimes enforced. It had taken some convincing to get me to agree to a minor rule break.
A violin and guitar joined the piano as we flew, and as we came back towards the center, where we’d meet, we both took three running steps on the points of our skates before gliding into each other’s arms. We met in a spinning collision. His arms wrapped around my waist, and we spun. My hands were braced on his upper thigh, and I’m balanced there as we spin, my feet leaving the ice.
We spun and glided over the ice. It’s a game of cat and mouse—he chases me around the ice, catching and throwing me, spinning me out and around. He pulled me close and pushed me away We were telling the story of waiting for years for the perfect person, of falling in love—of overcoming obstacles and somehow always finding our way back to each other.
We danced like magic, letting the music and endless hours of practice carry us. We acted out the love story Brennan choreographed.
I set up for my quad and landed it perfectly—right as the music crescendos for the second time and then fell back intoAsher’s embrace. We fell into twizzles and spins, and he chased me around again, picking up speed as we moved in complete unison. He pulled me into a death spiral, and it’s perfect. We painted the story, ignited the sparks, the emotion. It was easy as breathing, we didn’t really have to act, it’s natural because it’s us.
Asher played the part of the guy who’d waited a thousand years for his true love to appear, and he had me believing every hope filled, glorious expression that crossed his face. His hands landed on my hips and just before the music rose into crescendo, he lifted and threw me.
I landed with the clash of symbols and we skated off, spinning and twirling and clinging to each other. He spun me out and caught me. We looped the rink again, and I fell into him as he dropped me into a death spiral—we had two of them in this program.
He was about to lift me—our last big skill before the end of the dance. It was an intricate aerobatic move, another risk, but the perfect finale for this program. The music rose as he lifted me, the piano, violin, guitar and drums building, and if we timed it right, I’d be in the air and we’d be spinning right as it peaked.
I was in the air with Asher having to lift and flip me, so that my feet pointed away from the ice. I’d come down from the lift with him flipping me back around as the song plays its last notes, and I’d slide down the length of his body, him holding me close.
We spun over the ice. The lights were bright, the end so close, the applause amplified in the rink. I was at home, Asher was with me, he had me.
Then, I felt it.
The catch in the ice.
