Maybe I should have felt awkward after that comment. Dom hadn't brought up anything about the night of his party since immediately after it happened. He hadn't even implied anything. Relief that he had brought it up without averting his gaze washed over me. “I know you meant,” I assured him. “But I don’t even want to think about the implications for tomorrow. The entire program relies on us having chemistry.” While the short program was sexy, the free skate was all about romance. Different, but a problem for similar reasons.
I thought that maybe the conversation was going to go somewhere uncomfortable, but Dom steered it to safer ground. “I wonder if Mark and Olga are regretting their choice of hook yet.” His entire face lit up as he grinned. “I bet they are thinking it is just our luck that after all these years, we suddenly, seemingly inexplicably, lost that spark.”
It wasn’t really funny, but focusing on someone else’s frustration or confusion was preferable to thinking about my own. “He’s probably thinking that he never suspected we would be the ones he was having a problem with.” It sounded cocky, but from an objective standpoint, Dom and I were going into the season with the best shot at winning gold of all of Mark’s skaters. Olga, on the other hand, had two of the three favourites in the women’s event. Even if we did terribly, she could be reasonably confident that one of her skaters would land on the podium.
Dom didn’t stay long, but long enough for it to become clear that we could still relax around each other. It wasn’t as easy as before, but it was a vast improvement to the flights over. When my food arrived, he took the opportunity to say, “I should probably grab a bite to eat myself. Maybe I’ll see you at breakfast?”
I nodded. “Sounds good,” I said. Usually we would eat together, but it felt safer not to push things in this situation. “Try to relax and get a good night’s sleep tonight. We are going to have an uphill battle tomorrow.”
He nodded, his features turning serious. “You too,” he said, offering one last wave on his way out the door.
Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Mostpeopleassumedthatgoing into the free skate when you were far behind the leading pair was discouraging. It would take a lot to catch up from fourth. Maybe it was for some people, but the challenge drove me, no matter how impossible it sounded. It was a long shot to go from fourth to first, but it was technically possible, depending on the programs and how everyone skated. And even if first place was out of reach, that didn’t mean second or third was. At events where medals were up for grabs, those were better than leaving empty-handed.
I had to think of Dom and me as warriors preparing for battle. It would be tough, but we had to believe we could win. It was cheesy, but having the right mentality was important to go in striving for the win. With Dom having dubbed my makeup as war paint, I tried to think of it that way as I made myself up. The look I had to achieve for the free skate was a lot more delicate than the look I had in the short program, so it was a good thing my hand was steady. Rather than cracking under the pressure, I was going to rise to the challenge.
After my makeup was done, I squared my shoulders as I looked in the mirror. I looked fierce, with my fake lashes and dark lips, like I was somebody you wouldn’t want to mess with. When I saw myself like that, things seemed more manageable. The woman looking back at me in the mirror was somebody who knew what she wanted and how to get it.
A couple of days prior, I had found the idea of convincing everyone that Dom and I were a passionate couple impossible to achieve properly, when we hadn’t been able to hold a conversation. The conversation in my hotel room yesterday had helped break the ice between us again, no pun intended. We hadn’t been back to our usual selves that morning, but it had been closer than we had been since the night of his party. Mark hadn't been as concerned about our connection in the free skate, which was to a song about all the little things the singer loved about his wife. Trying to look like we had a deeper connection would be a different sort of challenge than looking sexy, but I was up for it. I would do whatever it took to win, even if it meant pretending nothing had changed between Dom and me.
We hadn’t had the chance to spend much time with Mark or Olga, but it was long enough that they seemed to sense that things were moving in the right direction. When Mark had found us that morning, Dom and I had been chatting about what we thought was going to happen in the next episode of our favourite TV show. Thanks to the holiday break, there was going to be over a month between episodes. Naturally, that meant the show’s producers had decided that the best way to ensure people tuned in when it returned was to end the fall finale with a major cliffhanger where the female main character found out the male main character’s big secret.
Mark had had a cup of coffee halfway to his lips when he lowered it upon hearing us laughing. His eyes darted between us as if he was trying to figure out what was different. During a lullin the conversation, he asked, “How are you two doing today?” Presumably he was asking about skating, but I got the sense that there was an extra meaning behind his words.
I looked up at Dom. “I think we’re okay,” I replied. “Determined.”
It was vague, but it seemed to be enough for Mark. “Good,” he said. He took a sip of coffee with one hand and checked his watch with the other. “I need to meet with Hiroki, but I’ll see you two in about forty-five minutes. You just… do whatever it is you need to do to get in the usual headspace before a competition.”
That conversation hadn’t been more than a few hours earlier, but it felt like it had been so much longer. When we had to cram a million things into the hours before a competition, time flew by. Getting made up for the competition was at the end of a long list of things to do. While I knew I had ticked off everything on my to-do list, it seemed too early to be done.
There was no time to have a proper conversation with Dom, even if I had been inclined to hash out our problems before the skate. Not that I would have, of course, since it would be much too risky. The reward if things went well would be great, but they’d be dwarfed by how terribly things could go if the conversation turned into a fight. It was safer to settle for what we had now. Feeling like we had to tiptoe around each other and focus on positive, surface level things wasn’t great but it was at least neutral. After the chilliness of the long hours of travel, I could settle for neutral. No, not settle. Neutral was a welcome improvement.
While we waited for our turn to compete, Dom came to stand by my side. He didn’t speak, but he looked at me and nodded. He was still a couple feet farther away than usual, so while he didn’t seem to be avoiding me, he was still too far away to reach out to grab. That was okay, though. While we waited, we would each do our own thing to focus.
When our names were announced, I could practically hear what the TV announcers would say in my head. They would say, “Hazel Pierce and Dominic Hughes were favourites coming in, but did not have their best short program. They will have their work cut out for them in today’s free skate if they would like to move up.” There would be speculation about why we had done so poorly in the short program, of course. Maybe some comments that our usual chemistry, the very thing that had made us favourites to begin with, was lacking yesterday. That would lead to comments that if we didn’t get it back, the skate we were about to do would suffer. By now, everyone had seen the program twice, so they all knew how good it could be… if we were in sync.
The cheers of the crowd felt like the push I needed. Even after a subpar short program, at least by our own standards for ourselves, they were cheering for us. Whether it was in encouragement or because they were excited about the routine they all knew was coming, I couldn’t be sure. Because even though I made it a rule for myself to not look up what people had to say about our skates, I had heard from both my mother and my friends that people were talking about the implications of the song selections we had made this year. People were reading into the choices now that they had all had the chance to see it. No matter what the reason for the cheers was, I appreciated it. There was a rush like no other that came from having thousands of people expressing their excitement about you.
At the two previous competitions and even at the skate for our family and friends, I’d been more nervous about the short program. Having that behind us and the one that felt more natural ahead should help. When the music started and I did what I had to do without thinking, it was incredibly freeing. All I was aware of was my body and Dom skating alongside me.
It was only when the music stopped that the world around us came into focus all at once. I was suddenly aware of everything: the crowd, how bright it was, and just how big the surface of the ice was. This time, I didn’t have to look at someone else to know how we had done. I could tell by the look on Dom’s face that he was pleased with our skate. He wasn’t thrilled, but I had already known that we hadn’t been flawless. It was more important that he didn’t seem to be disappointed with how we had done. Knowing that neither of us had messed up was already an improvement from last time.
Our scores did not come as a surprise. They were much stronger than the short program, which was promising. I doubted we could vault all the way into first place. Even second might be out of reach, but there was a strong possibility that we could pull off third place with those scores. We wouldn’t know more until we saw the others. We were currently in first, but that didn’t mean much when there were still three pairs to go.
Dom and I watched the three final skates together. He stood behind me, close enough that I could hear him breathing and sense where he was. After each skate, we would wait in silence for the marks to be announced, silently hoping that they would be worse than ours. Every time Dom’s hands would settle on my shoulders and as the numbers were read out over the speakers, his fingers would dig in. Things were out of our hands, but knowing that he felt the same stress I did and that he was right there with me was comforting.
When the scores of the second to last pair were read, Dom and I let out synchronized sighs of relief. With only one team left, we were sitting in a distant second place. There had never been a real chance of catching up to Evgenia Levedeva and Pavel Sorokin, not with what we’d gotten in the short program. The chance of getting second was slim, but not nonexistent. This wasthe weaker of Yang and Shen’s skates, but even so… we’d had to make up a lot of ground with today’s skate.
Dom’s fingers dug into my shoulder blades as the last notes of Yang and Shen’s skate played. I reached up, wrapping my left hand around his and squeezing back. Very aware of the cameras around the rink, I tried not to move my lips much when I glanced back. “They beat us.”
He pressed his lips together in a thin, grim line. “Yep,” was his only reply.
It took a few minutes before it was official, but the numbers didn’t come as a surprise. After so many years of skating, it was easy to ballpark the scores people would receive. Every time they tweaked the point value of elements, trying to fix perceived problems with how things were weighted, it took some time to readjust, but it was never a big enough change to throw me off completely. I didn't need to guess exact scores to get a sense of where people’s scores would fit in compared to the people who had skated before them.
Sure enough, when the scores were read out, Dom and I were in third place. It wasn’t the finish we had hoped for at the start of the season. We had wanted to have a big impact and to have a strong finish to show everyone that we were here to compete for gold at the Winter Games. But, given the difficulties we’d had in recent days, I couldn’t be disappointed with bronze. Being able to pull ourselves together enough to medal at all was a step in the right direction.
