A volunteer jogs toward me, cheeks flushed from exertion and worry. “Alycia, someone saw Kyle go toward the tunnels.”
The words land like a hit to the sternum, not because I didn’t already know he was gone, but because hearing it out loud fractures something I’ve been trying so hard to hold steady. “Okay. Thank you.”
But the moment he turns away, I feel the air shift, heavy and cold, closing in around the edges of my chest. The bright lights overhead seem suddenly too sharp, like everything is too exposed. I take one long, controlled breath meant to steady me, but it doesn’t soothe. It only deepens the ache pressing against my ribs; my precious armor feels paper-thin and useless.
I can’t stay out here another second. I make an excuse—logistics, cleanup, last checks—but I know the truth. I’m looking for him. Even though he owes me nothing and I’m the one who cut the ground out from under us. I slip out of the rink, and the door shuts behind me with a soft click that feels far toofinal. My pulse thunders in my ears as I take the first steps toward the tunnels.
By the time I step into the hallway, the air feels thin in a way that makes it hard to breathe, as if the building itself knows something inside me has already begun to unravel. Disappearing in the middle of a team event is unprofessional. Beneath every rational reason is the truth I can’t admit out loud: I’m looking for him, even though I know the last thing he owes me is a moment of his time.
My heels click softly against the polished floor, the sound too practiced for how violently my pulse is thrumming beneath my skin. For a moment, I almost convince myself that this is manageable, that I’m composed enough to face whatever comes next. And then I turn the corner, and everything inside me stops so abruptly it feels like hitting a wall.
Kyle is standing halfway down the hallway, but the version of him in front of me isn’t the one I prepared myself to see. His posture is caved inward, his shoulders weighed down by something so heavy it pulls the breath from my lungs. His eyes are swollen—red along the edges, like he’s been crying long enough that the tears have carved paths into his skin. It’s grief written openly on his face.
And beside him is a woman I’ve never seen before. Her hand rests on his forearm, gentle, grounding, the kind of touch someone offers when they’re helping hold a person together. She leans toward him with quiet familiarity, her voice low and soothing enough to makesomething inside my chest twist so sharply I feel the echo of it in my ribs.
She murmurs something to him, and the sound of it, though I can’t make out the words, is soft enough to make my chest ache with jealousy and guilt in equal measure. Someone else got to hold him together when I was the one who shattered him. The realization knocks my balance off center. The floor shifts beneath my feet as a hot, humiliating wave of emotion barrels through me. Jealousy comes first, rising like instinct, lighting a match. Then heavy grief follows close behind, dragging at every breath. And threaded through both is sharp, unforgiving guilt, curling around my lungs until it’s hard to inhale without feeling like each breath is a reminder of what I caused.
The woman notices me before he does and steps back almost instantly, her hand slipping off his arm with a quiet, respectful awareness that makes the moment feel even more intimate. She’s someone he trusted enough to fall apart in front of, and I know that says something about what he needed and who I didn’t let myself be for him.
Kyle turns at the shift in her posture. He goes still the second his eyes find mine—not in the polished, PR-trained way people freeze when they’re uncomfortable, but in a way that tells me the sight of me hits him like he’s still bleeding from a wound I left. And I can see everything he’s not saying written across his face.
I should pretend I’m fine and swallow down the ache rising in my throat. I can tell him somethingneutral, but all I can think about is that I wasn’t the one he turned to. I wasn’t the one who got to hold him while he fell apart.
“We’ll need you both for the post-event recap.” My voice barely finds its way out when I finally manage; the edges tremble just enough to betray the storm beneath them. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The woman nods once, giving Kyle another reassuring touch on his arm before stepping back down the hall. He watches her go, then turns back toward me with a look so raw it nearly brings me to my knees. It’s not anger. It’s a hurt so deep and personal that it feels like I witnessed something I was never supposed to see, something he tried hard to keep hidden from me because he understands how much I’ve already been carrying.
He takes one small step forward, and I can feel the moment building between us like pressure under thin ice. “Alycia—” he begins, and the softness in his voice nearly breaks me.
“I’ll… I’ll brief everyone in ten minutes,” I say quickly, before the thread holding my composure can snap. “I just… need a moment to?—”
I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t, not without choking, so I turn away before he can try again. If I stay another second and let him look at me with that bruised, devastated expression, I will crumble right in front of him. Every step away from him feels like peeling away skin, but I force myself down the hall, my heart tearing itself apart with every inch of distance Icreate. And I can feel his gaze on my back like he wants to call after me, even though he knows he shouldn’t, because neither of us knows how to survive this without hurting the other all over again.
By the time I shut my office door, the last of my composure gives a warning tremor beneath my skin. It feels as if I’m holding myself together with the flimsiest threads, muscles locking in place only because I won’t let them fall apart yet. My hands remain curled as though they’re still gripping something solid—his wrist, his jacket, the truth I didn’t say—but of course, there’s nothing there. Just empty air and the echo of the moment he turned and walked away.
The silence closes around me in a way that makes every breath feel unsteady. My phone lights up on the desk—once, then twice, then in a relentless cascade of vibrations that turns the screen into a frantic pulse of notifications. I sink into my chair because my knees simply won’t hold me anymore. Emails. Mentions. Media alerts. Each one carrying a different shade of the same message: a story spinning out of my control.
Trouble in paradise?
Hendrix storms off mid-interview—sources say tension behind the scenes.
Is Alycia Torres losing control?
Perfect couple’s cracks begin to show.
Every headline lands like a blow right beneath my sternum, each one stealing a little more breath until my chest feels stretched too thin to contain any of it. This is exactly what Janine warned me about. When the storystops being a tool and turns into a weapon. When it stops being something I shape and starts being something that shapes me.
I click on one article because apparently, tonight I am the person who picks at the wound just to see how deep it goes. The frozen image loads instantly. Kyle’s face—tired, devastated, impossibly open—in the exact second before he turned away. The hurt sitting there so plainly it’s almost unbearable to witness, let alone know I caused it.
My hand flies up to my mouth to trap whatever sound threatens to escape, but a muted, broken inhale slips through anyway, traitorous and sharp. He looked like he was breaking because he was, and I was the one who broke him. My phone vibrates again, rattling across the wood like it’s desperate to be heard, and a preview flashes:
Elevator Boy
I’m sorry. I couldn’t fake it anymore.
I don’t remember opening the message. One second, it’s a notification; the next, it fills the entire screen, and suddenly my heartbeat is everywhere—my throat, my fingertips, the hollow space behind my ribs—pounding so hard I can barely breathe around it. My eyes fill with tears, blurring the words until they dissolve at the edges. I blink, and more spill over. My vision tilts for a moment, and I grip the arm of my chair to steady myself. He wasn’t retaliating or trying to make a point; he simply reached his limit of pretending.
The sound that leaves me is quiet, uneven, and unlike anything I’ve ever heard come from my body. It’s the sound of something loosening that I’ve held too tightly for too long. A soft knock startles me upright. I swipe at my face even though I can’t erase the redness or hide the tremor sitting deep in my chest.
