“Kyle,” he says again, softer now, coming closer. “Hey. Look at me.”
I finally drag my gaze up, and whatever he sees in my face stops him cold. His expression flickers—shock, recognition, something like sorrow—before he masks it with that steady calm he always uses when I’m in freefall. “Okay, just breathe for a sec.”
But the thing inside me is still tearing free, and breathing feels impossible. My arms go slack at my sides, my shoulders shaking with the force of everything I’ve been swallowing down since the gala.
“I can’t—” I choke out, the words breaking apart before they reach the air.
He steps forward, hands partly out like he wants to reach for me but isn’t sure if he should. That’s when a softer voice cuts through the moment. “Kyle?”
Michele must’ve come down with Cole. The two of them must have followed me when I stormed off the ice like a storm about to break. She stops the second she takes in the wreckage. Not the broken equipment, but the broken me.
“Kyle,” she repeats, quieter now, like she’s talking me down from a ledge. “I’m right here.”
Cole sees something shift in me and nods once toward her before slipping out silently, closing the door behind him. He knows exactly what I need most at this moment, and it isn’t him. The minute the door closes, she crosses the room and wraps both arms around me, gripping like she’s afraid I’m going to collapse right here in front of her.
I don’t even have time to decide whether to collapse because my body makes the choice for me. My forehead drops to her shoulder, my breath breaking against the fabric of her jacket, and the fight just drains out of me in one staggering wave. Her hold on me tightens, and it feels like she is the only thing stopping the ground from giving out beneath my feet.
“I’ve got you,” she whispers. “Let it go. You’re safe.”
Every locked-up feeling snaps free all at once: the rage, the grief, the bone-deep heartbreak of loving someone who’s terrified of loving me back.It all shudders out of me in quiet, shaking breaths as I grip the back of her jersey like it’s the only tether I have left in the world. For the first time in days, I stop pretending I’m okay. I stop trying to be the good son, the steady brother, the unshakeable player who can take the hit and keep skating. I let someone see exactly how badly Alycia broke me.
Chapter Thirty-One
Alycia
The moment Kyle turns away from me, the world doesn’t stop so much as it tilts. It shifts just enough to make everything inside me slide into the wrong place. His skates carve a sharp line through the ice, slicing straight through me, as well. His shoulders are stiff in that way I’ve only seen a few times—when he’s holding something in so forcefully it’s a miracle he doesn’t crack from the pressure—and watching him skate away feels like watching something vital be pulled out of me with every stride.
For a beat, the rink holds its breath. The entire arena seems suspended in the echo of his absence. Then the noise rushes back in like a wave I can’t brace for. Reporters shuffle uneasily. Camera operators murmur into headsets with clipped urgency. A few parents glance between Kyle’s retreating form and me with confusion and sympathy. The whole place exhales, but my lungs do the opposite.
I can’t take my eyes off the tunnel he disappeared into. It’s pointless—he’s gone and not coming back out—but my gaze stays locked on the tunnel anyway. I saw the look on his face. I felt the moment something in him broke and knew, with horrible clarity, that I was the one who dealt the blow.
My knees nearly give out beneath the weight of that knowledge, but before they can, I force myself upright. My spine stiffens as I drag on the polished version of myself—the one built of restraint and strategy and precisely placed smiles—and pray it holds.
“Should we… follow him?” someone asks behind me, voice hushed but urgent, unsure of which course of action is safest.
I know I should answer the way I always do, but for the briefest moment, my throat closes. My heartbeat is pounding so fiercely I’m convinced it’s visible through the front of my blouse. I manage a slow inhale and school my expression into something so steady it feels like a betrayal of everything inside me.
“No,” I say carefully. “We keep the program running. Redirect the cameras to the kids’ area. No angle toward the exit tunnel.”
The rink lights shimmer against the ice, scattering onto my skin like shards of whatever’s left of my composure. Each reflection feels like a reminder: hold it together, hold it together, hold it together.
“Alycia, you need to see this.”
Someone places a tablet in my hands, and the video plays instantly. The screen is bright enough to force my eyes open, even when every instinct tells me to look away. I watch myself laughing lightly at the reporter’sjoke—poised, polished, perfect—and then I watch Kyle’s façade splinter. The flicker of hurt in his eyes is sharp and unguarded, and it punches something deep in me. Then he mutters “longevity” in that tight, breaking voice before storming away.
The pain that hits me is sharp, and I almost collapse in on myself. I knew I hurt him, but I didn’t realize I’d humiliated him until this moment, seeing the entire moment replayed in full color proof for the whole world to see.
A swell of heat gathers behind my eyes, threatening to rise into tears I absolutely cannot allow. Not here in the middle of an event I’m responsible for keeping afloat, and my composure is the only thing standing between order and chaos. I swallow the emotion down so forcefully it burns all the way to my stomach.
“What do we do?” an intern asks, voice tight with worry.
You fix it, Alycia. That’s your job. You fix everything, even when the thing breaking is you.
“We continue,” I say, offering a small nod that feels like lifting a weight much heavier than my head. “We keep everything on schedule.”
My voice is the only part of me that isn’t trembling. The next stretch of time blurs in that strange way moments do when you’re on the edge of breaking but can’t afford to fall apart. I guide photographers. I direct families. I answer sponsors’ questions with a practiced calm that feels like it belongs to someone else. But beneath each task, pain drags like an undertow.
Each movement is automatic, the muscle memory of a job I’ve lived in for years, but underneath it all is a pulse of pain that keeps building and building, threatening to fracture straight through me. Every time someone mentions his name, something inside me flinches. Every time someone asks if he’s okay, I feel the lie lodge deeper behind my ribs. Every time my eyes drift, against my will, toward the tunnel he disappeared through, the ache tightens until breathing becomes a conscious effort.
