“Is this an attempt to get me to change my mind? Because I’m not doing that,” began her sister.
Ari wasn’t there to change anybody’s mind. Or manage anybody’s feelings. Not anymore. She needed to say her piece and leave them to sort things out for themselves.
“Dad, you shouldn’t have left Mom to raise us by ourselves, and you shouldn’t have left Anesu or me trying to figure out how to get you to be involved,” she said bluntly. She heard her sister gasp. “You can’t fix a decade-long absence with plane tickets and a wedding invite.”
He looked startled by her words, but he didn’t have anything to say in his defense.
“Arikoishe, don’t speak to your father like that,” began her mom, who loathed her dad in private but tried to keep up appearances in public. However, Ari wasn’t done.
“Anesu, I’m not going to the wedding with you. But nobody should make you feel guilty for wanting to spend time with Dad. Going behind Mom’s back wasn’t fair, but it’s up to you whether you go or not,” she said softly.
Ari had given up on her relationship with her father a long time ago, but she hoped things would be different for her sister.
“And Mom, I love you,” she said, her voice faltering. “But you’re the mom. I’m your child, not your best friend. I don’t want to take on all your burdens and I can’t keep figuring everything out.”
Ari felt guilty, but she needed to admit the truth. She’d been the fixer for so long that she didn’t know how to operate in her family in any other way. But it wasn’t her responsibility to always ensure everyone around her was okay, especially when they seemed incapable of doing the same for her. She needed to cut the umbilical cord and get them to figure out their own problems for once.
“Okay? Okay. I’ve got to go now, bye,” she said, leaving the call before anyone could draw her back in.
She expected the group call to drop, but the minutes ticked by, and the call continued without her. The people pleaser in her was aching. She wanted to rejoin the call and stay on until everything was resolved. But she was starting to realize that each time she fixed something, she stopped the people around her from learning how to do it for themselves. Maybe her dad would stop inviting her sister to his gatherings after the wedding. Maybe her mom would feel so betrayed that every family dinner for the rest of their lives would be met with dread. Maybe her sister would get to know their dad enough to realize why Ari had tried so hard to keep her from disappointment. Anything could happen. It could all crumble and fall apart. But it wasn’t Ari’s job to be the glue that held her family together anymore. She had to focus on being everything to herself, not to everyone else. She didn’t know who she would become if she closed the tap, but she wanted to find out.
With that problem out of her hands, she couldn’t help butwonder what might happen if she took another leap. If she found her way back to one of the few people in her life who had never needed anything from her. The man who’d borne witness to her mess and complications. Who’d sat on a roof at the edge of a party and talked to her as they waited out the night. Because that moment had been too precious, too real, too importantnotto risk. So, she put her gloves back on and started walking to the canteen, mentally composing a text message to Drew with each step.
But then, just as she was about to turn the corner, she saw a group of guys wearing white, blue, and red uniforms, donning fleeces, winter coats, and branded kit bags. It was the Team GB snowboarding team and Harrison.
41Drew
DAY NINE OF THE 2026 OLYMPICS
Drew jumped straight out of bed to go looking for Ari. He’d spent the entire night tossing and turning as he thought back through their last few conversations and reckoned with his family’s mini intervention. Thandie was right about him. Each time he got close to the life he wanted, he jumped ship to quit on his own terms. His whole life felt driven by his fear of failure. But he didn’t want that to be the thing that made him lose Ari. So, he got ready, stepped out into the snow, and searched the Village for the woman who’d been preoccupying his thoughts since New Year’s Eve.
He knew that she and her teammates usually went out for breakfast at around 8:30 a.m., so he headed over to their canteen. But when he turned the corner and spotted Ari’s bright blue puffer coat, he realized she wasn’t alone. She was standing face-to-face with Harrison Cavendish. Drew stopped in his tracks as he watched Harrison wrap his arms around her and pull herinto a hug. He tensed up and walked toward them, ready to intervene. But his shoulders dropped as he watched Ari wrap her arms around Harrison and hug him back.
They stood there for what felt like a lifetime. Ari showed no sign of wanting to let go.
Harrison looked up, spotted Drew, and locked eyes with him. Drew couldn’t see Ari’s face, but Harrison’s looked satisfied. There was a clearI told you soin his gaze. Drew knew that Harrison was a grade-A asshole. And he knew that Ari had fake-dated him for the specific purpose of getting Harrison off her back.
But maybe there was more to the story than he thought. Ari had known Harrison for years, after all. They played on the same team, knew the same people, and shared the same world. Harrison and Ari made sense. They looked good together, had the same interests, and belonged to the same group of friends. Like Ari, Harrison was athletic, ambitious, and accomplished. Plus, Harrison had been in arealrelationship with Ari. Which was more than Drew could say.
Maybe the plan had been to make Harrison jealous the whole time, and now that their arrangement was over, Ari was free to spend time with whomever she wanted to. He didn’t want it to be true, but the longer he saw them together, the more accurate it seemed. Drew wanted to walk over to them and say something, in the hope that his suspicions weren’t true. But Ari had made it clear from the get-go that she didn’t want him to interfere. So, he turned around and walked away. After all, Drew hadn’t come to Switzerland to chase after her, he’d come to pursue his professional dreams.
He had no idea whether he was going to go back to college or apply for the Leitner Productions job, but he did know that he was still on assignment with Zeus. He needed to edit all therecent photos he’d taken and head to a figure-skating competition that afternoon. So, he did his best to scrub the image of Ari and Harrison from his memory and get through all his tasks for the day. Focusing felt like a nearly impossible task, because while he was supposed to be editing, he kept replaying their conversations in his mind and wondering what she would think of each athlete he’d photographed that day. He walked to the ice rink for that afternoon’s competition, hoping it would take his mind off of things. But he quickly realized that thinking it would distract him from Ari had been a mistake. Why? Because ice dance was romantic as hell.
Drew watched from the sidelines as sparkly-costumed skaters glided across the ice with the strength of hardened athletes and elegance of classically trained dancers. He snapped photos of each detail and watched each dance with pained admiration. His breath caught as each athlete skated through the air, and he gritted his teeth as he watched them land spins that were just as beautiful as they were terrifying. But it wasn’t the fragile bones and unforgiving moves that wowed him. It was the couples on the ice. The intense stares into each other’s eyes, the subtle emotions on their faces, the confidence it took to trust each other with their lives. He knew they were athletic partners, not usually romantic couples. This was all for show. But each dance was a story. A mesmerizing symbol of what it was to love and be loved. Putting oneself on the line, entrusting the most vulnerable parts of oneself to somebody else, jumping with the faith that they would catch your fall.
Or at least believing the dance was worth the risk.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Hans Leitner as the dance ended and the audience took a break. Hans was standing just a few feetaway in the press pit. But Drew had been so distracted thinking about Ari that he hadn’t even noticed.
“It is,” Drew said solemnly as he gazed out at the ice rink. His first impulse was to be embarrassed by his emotion, but Hans seemed to pick up on how Drew was feeling.
“I met my wife on an ice-skating rink. It was the Lake Placid Winter Games in 1980,” Hans said, gazing out at the ice rink, his eyes wistful. “It was my first Olympics, and I’d spent the entire first week walking around, all wide eyed. Once my competitions were over, I drove to the next town over. I wanted to get away from the crowds for a moment, and that town has a lake that freezes up every year,” Hans said with a faraway look, as if he could see the memory with complete clarity in his mind. Drew put his camera down and looked at Hans. He’d been trying to get some behind-the-scenes photos of the skaters as they awaited their turns, but he was so distracted that he decided he was better off listening to the story Hans had to tell.
“I was skating and taking photos of the scenery when I noticed her. She had one of those smiles that lights up a room, and I could see it from the other side of the lake as she skated around with her friends. But I was a quiet man back then, way too shy to talk to her. Even now, I prefer using my camera to having an actual conversation.”
“Me too,” said Drew, thinking of how much more comfortable he’d felt around Ari that first night with his camera around his neck. “So, who was the woman on the ice?”
“Eliza,” Hans said with a twinkle in his eyes. “While she looked graceful and majestic from a distance, she had never been ice skating before. She was trying her best, but the lake was on a bit of a slope, so once she started skating downhill, she couldn’t stop. Next thing you know, she was screaming and skating at full speed down the lake,” he chuckled. “Kids were running away,and families were jumping off the ice so as not to get caught in her path. But I didn’t, I couldn’t. I had my camera out and kept pressing the shutter because she looked so mesmerizing in the early-morning light.”
