The rink is empty. Silent. Perfect.
I lace my skates in the locker room and step onto the ice. First glide. First cut. First deep breath I’ve taken all day. This is the only place I feel like my body is mine.
I start skating laps, slow at first, then faster, pushing until the air burns my lungs. I fall into the rhythm. Blades slicing the ice. Muscles firing. The sound of my own heartbeat drowning out everything else.
I’m halfway through another sprint when I hear the scrape of a blade.
My head snaps up.
Mikhail Volkov stands in the shadow of the players’ tunnel, skates on, stick in hand, hair messy like he got out of bed and came straight here.
He steps onto the ice like it belongs to him. It doesn’t. Not tonight.
“I knew you’d be here,” he says.
I don’t stop skating. “How?”
“You’re predictable.”
I snort. “You’re annoying.”
He smiles, pushing off into a smooth glide that irritates me just by existing. “Couldn’t sleep,” he says.
“Maybe try being less dramatic.”
He circles around me, humming under his breath. He does that when he is thinking too much. I know that now.
“You always skate when you’re angry,” he says. “I figured if I couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t either.”
He’s right, which pisses me off more than if he were wrong.
“Whatever,” I mutter.
He swings his stick lightly into mine. “Want to warm up?”
“I’m warm.”
“Then race me.”
I frown. “Why?”
“Because you hit hard,” he says. “But I’m faster.”
The challenge hits exactly where he wants it to. I push off immediately. He curses and takes off after me. We race. Two laps. Three. Four.
We skate until our legs shake. We push each other without speaking, trading the lead back and forth until neither of us knows who’s winning.
On the fifth lap, he cuts me off too close and I check him. Hard.
He slams into the boards and laughs. Actually laughs.
“You’re a menace,” he pants.
“You’re fragile,” I say.
He grins. “Come hit me again, then.”
I do. This time he pushes back. And suddenly we’re not racing. We’re wrestling on skates, trying to knock each other off balance, checking, shoving, grabbing jerseys, laughing in that breathless way boys do when pain finally feels like relief.
