It's never enough when the problem isn't your body. When the problem is that something inside you keeps trying to reach for a life you don't believe you deserve.
I grab my towel and head out. I don’t head back to the chalet, or to her.
Anywhere but there, because the voice I can’t escape is my father’s:You're just like me, son. You’re not made for love. You’re made for results.
The rink is quieter than the gym, and that's why I came here next.
The ice doesn't care about women with sharp mouths and soft eyes and a stubborn refusal to back down, even when you want them gone.
I lace my skates as I have for most of my life, the leather creaking, my fingers sure. The moment my blades touch the ice, something inside me settles—not peace, exactly, but focus.
A place I bury the noise.
I grab a bucket of pucks and drag it to the circle. There’s no distraction of music or teammates, or a coach blowing whistles. Just me and the boards and the net and the clean crack of impact.
First shot.
The slapshot explodes off my stick, the puck hits the back of the net with a satisfying thud.
My shoulders loosen. This is exactly what I needed. My breath turns rhythmic. My body falls into the groove like it was built for this and only this.
I shoot until my wrists ache. Until my thighs burn. Until sweat drips down my spine for the second time this morning and soaks the collar of my shirt, as if I’m trying to sweat her out of my system.
Still, my head won't shut up.
Natalia's voice repeats in my mind—We can barely stand each other… right?
Her tone when she said it. Like she wanted me to deny it, like she wanted me to admit the truth. The truth is—she's wrong.
I can stand her… I can stand her too well, and that’s the problem.
She doesn’t know that I’ve wanted her since I saw her in the back of that media room, her press pass dangling from around her neck. I couldn’t stop watching her, wanting to know her name, where she’s from, if she grew up with a Siberian Husky named Mishka, too. How I’ve been intrigued about her ever since, but tried to keep a reasonable distance. Or how I haven’t gone home with a single woman since that day in the Hawkeyes stadium when she stopped me, the shape of her hand against my chest permanently etched on my skin, like a ghost of a tattoo that no one but me can see and feel.
I tried to scare her away for her own good and mine. But then she showed up here, forcing me to face something I’ve been running from my entire life.
The idea that love only makes you weak, that no one can be trusted, and that, despite my best efforts, I might be more like my father than I want to admit.
I rip another slapshot so hard the puck rebounds off the inside post with a metallic ring.
I skate hard to chase the puck down, letting speed replace thought. I dig my edges into the ice as I sprint back and forth on the ice until my lungs are burning. This is the only kind of control I understand.
My father used a different kind. He didn’t use speed or skill… he used fear and disappointment. He’d pull back his attention as punishment.
When I was a boy, he used to stand at the edge of the rink during my practices back in Moscow, coat collar up, eyes flat, watching like I was a business investment he expected returns on.
When I played well, he nodded once—approval like a stamp. When I made a mistake, he didn't shout. That would've been too normal. He'd just look… disappointed, and I knew that he’d use weeks of his silence to teach me never to embarrass him again.
I skate to the boards, breathing hard, the image of my mother in bed, pale skin almost translucent, his hand holding hers like he was capable of tenderness. Like he knew how to love.
I remember being stunned by it. A monster with a soft palm… but only for her. A man who could order pain on his enemies and on me, and yet still stroke a dying woman's hair like she was sacred.
I didn't understand it then, and I still don't. That he was capable of love… but not for me, and not for my sister once he could no longer control her.
That he could hold my mother's hand and then ruin other people's lives without blinking? I shove off the boards and skate faster. If love didn't make him better, what the hell would it do to me?
My phone vibrates against the bench where I tossed it. I ignore it, but then it buzzes again, and then again. There’s onlyone person who calls like that. Relentless, stubborn, refusing to accept silence.
My sister.
