With the familiar tunes in my ears, I stood to the side and let Dom do his thing without interrupting. If we wanted to have enough time to prepare, we didn't have time to converse. Our attention was already split more than it should be, because we wanted to watch the others skate. But as much as I wanted to be around for the rest of the competition to support Alexa and Seth, I knew it was more important to get limber before my own skate. The most helpful thing we could do would be to get ten points in our free skate. Having two extra people standing around them while they anxiously listened to everyone else's scores wouldn't be very useful. We felt like we could take our time because Elodie wasn't one of the first women to skate. We knew we would hear the ice dance results when we joined everyone else, so we didn't rush ourselves.
Dom and I returned to our team about halfway through the women's event. By way of greeting, Alexa told us, "We came in fourth." There was only the slightest trace of disappointment inher voice, although she didn't sound surprised. Being so close, the emotions didn't surprise me. After all, I had been in the same position at the end of the pairs short programs.
A few minutes later, we all turned our attention to Elodie. She had spent the last four years reliving her ankle injury. She had worked so hard with the hopes of redeeming herself, even though she was the only one who blamed herself for the poor outcome last time. Turning away from her felt wrong, even if her chances at a medal in the team competition could depend on Dom and I being focused.
As she got settled into her position on the ice, her nerves were evident on her face. But with the opening notes to the music, there was no more time for her to overthink and she started skating.
I couldn’t say how many times I had seen parts of Elodie’s skates over the past year, but it was high. I had seen parts of the programs of everyone who trained at the same rink as Dom and I, both in training areas and coming or going from the ice itself. Because of that, I thought I had a pretty good sense of Elodie’s strengths and weaknesses. So when I saw her land the second jump in her combination jump easily before moving onto the next element, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding. She was using her nerves to push herself to her limits.
When she moved out of her ending pose, her vibrantly painted lips were pulled into a big smile. She was still beaming as she waved at us on her way to the kiss and cry. I suspected that her nerves would be back before the individual event, but for now she was revelling in the victory from doing what she had come here to do.
Her score put her second, only behind Olga’s young Russian skater. From the way things were shaping up, it looked like it might come down to us and the Russians. We were on track to get one point less than them in both the ladies and pairscompetitions, but had done better than them in both the men’s and the ice dance. Balanced out, we were barely ahead of them. There was a chance that we would beat them even if Dom and I didn’t do well at the free skate, but I wasn’t willing to bet on that. Now that the competition was narrowed down, they had a better chance at making up ground in the disciplines they had been struggling with. No, it would be best if Dom and I could destroy them. That would give us a little of breathing room and, if things really went well, maybe even throw them off their game when we had to compete against them in the coming days.
Even though Dom never moved from his spot next to me, my eyes kept darting towards him, as though he might disappear. With the desire to win burning in my gut, I knew we should get back to preparing ourselves for the free skate. We were so close after the short program. They were within striking distance. If we had a clean skate, we could put them on their heels before the individual competitions began.
As soon as they began to resurface the ice, Dom’s hand slipped into mine. I watched as he jerked his head to the side and gave a wordless tug. I nodded and we set off together without speaking. There was no need to. We both knew what the other one would say. We had the potential to show the world what we were made of here. If we could get through the next skate cleanly, it would also put us in the right mental state when we were skating without the rest of the team.
It seemed like only minutes before we were called onto the ice to warm up and then like no time at all before we had to go out to skate. It took only the slightest bit more effort than usual to block out everything – the pressure of the team, the crowded stands surrounding us, the dozens of cameras pointed on us that would stream everything we did to millions of people around the world – and to focus on each other.
I pushed myself to my absolute limits, doing everything in my power to have the cleanest skate of my life. It was not easy when the program involved the most difficult elements we had ever attempted, especially newer ones. But if you weren’t willing to risk it all on the world stage, did you really deserve to win? No, I didn’t think you did. Not when the people you were competing against were the best in the world.
Even with the intense mental focus that came with performing, where there was no room to do anything but focus on my body and what it was doing next, a thrill went through me when I successfully landed from the quadruple twist. That could be it. Landing that well could be enough to push us ahead of Evgenia and Pavel tonight.
When Dom and I finished, the cheers from the crowd were deafening. We had skated in front of huge audiences before, but the electricity humming through the crowd was more intense than usual. Maybe it was in my head, or maybe Mark had been right all along. Not everyone could pull off choreography that needed the right kind of chemistry. Dom and I could.
The smile on Mark’s face was enough to let me know that Dom and I had done everything he had wanted from us this season. I had been pretty confident that we had, but I hadn’t been willing to rule out the possibility that I was just overconfident because of the atmosphere. It was impossible not to get a little swept up in it all, no matter how pulled together you tried. When you had to wait for years for your next chance if you screwed up, emotions were rampant. I didn’t need to have seen Elodie spiral to know that.
After the scores were read, Dom and I were pulled into hugs by the rest of our teammates. Alexa and Elodie squeezed me between them, while Seth and Dom did that thing guys do where they clasp hands and slap each other on the back. They knew as well as we did that we had just made it very difficult for Evgeniaand Pavel. To beat us, they couldn’t afford to make a single mistake. Not that they did that very often, of course.
I hardly dared to breathe as I watched the other pairs skate. I had studied their programs, both alone and with my entire skating team, but I still tried to absorb some new information. Where did they wobble? Where did they tense up? Did anybody make any last-minute changes to their usual program, either to make things harder or easier? It was like a compulsion. I had to know what everyone was doing so I could know how they would stack up to us before the scores were read. It would only be a few seconds, a couple of minutes at most, but it felt vitally important.
I sensed Dom tense beside me as Evgenia and Pavel skated. Without thinking, I reached for his hand and gripped it tight as they set themselves up for their side-by-side jumps. Evgenia had been uncharacteristically wobbly during her landings during practices and warmups in recent days. I wouldn’t wish for a competitor to screw up just to get myself a win. I wanted to do it because I could beat them at their best, not as a consolation. That didn't prevent a flash of triumph from shooting through me as I saw her hand reach towards the ice as she landed. Tonight, we had bested them.
It was impossible to take everything into account to figure out what their score would be, but after having watched them skate so many times, I had a pretty good idea of what their total would be. I knew Dom was the same way from the way he stiffened beside me. My eyes darted to him, only to find him looking down at me. They said exactly what I was thinking.
We had beaten them tonight.
When the judges’ scores were announced, it confirmed what we had suspected. They were close behind us, but they were still behind us. We hadn’t had the perfect skate either, but tonight it had been enough.
From then on, things would be out of our hands. We had done all that we could do to help our team by pulling the same total points as Evgenia and Pavel. We would have to hope that our teammates could pull ahead.
Chapter 29
Chapter 29
BythetimeGracewas gearing up to skate in the finals, we were already celebrating inside. Nick, Alexa, and Seth had done enough to keep us in a guaranteed medalling position. And, if things went how they had been predicted, Grace could cinch us the gold medal. She didn’t even have to have one of her best skates. As long as she was close to what she had been averaging all year, she would pull it off.
I was surprised by how calm I was as I watched my teammates skate. Maybe it was because this wasn’t the event I had always dreamed about getting a gold medal in. After all, it hadn’t even existed when I had first declared to my parents that I would be a professional figure skater when I grew up. I had been in kindergarten at the time. And while I wasn’t a professional in the strictest sense of the word, I was doing what I loved and what five-year-old me had thought of as figure skating for a living.
The calmness faded away as soon as it became mathematically impossible for us to lose, though. In a flash, our group went from standing and chatting to jumping up and down and flinging our arms around each other.
I laughed as I pulled away from a stunned and blinking Elodie. She was looking out over the ice’s surface, clearly struggling to process what had just happened. “You did it!” I told her, shaking her back and forth slightly.
“Oh my God.” She finally found her voice. “We won?”
“We won!” I assured her.
As soon as I turned away from her, Dom pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. “You’re squishing me,” I protested into his jacket.
