She pulled me into a hug.
Brief. Firm. The specific,this-is-not-cuddling-this-is-deploymentembrace of a coach sending an athlete onto the most important ice of her career with the physical imprint of a human being who believed in the outcome before it occurred.
She released me. Stepped back. The coaching posture returning—shoulders squared, chin lifted, the ginger-and-black-pepper scent settling back to its authoritative baseline.
“Go shine like a diamond, Octaviana.”
I laughed.
The sound was wet, rough, carrying tears and warmth, and the specific,you-did-NOT-just-call-me-thatindignation of a woman whose alter ego’s name had apparently migratedfrom private joke to public hashtag. “Please tell me the blog didn’t call me that.”
Foxwood’s smirk was small. Devastating. Carrying the specific,I-have-information-you-don’tenergy that coaches deployed when they were enjoying a student’s discomfort more than their professional standards should permit.
“The hashtag is currently trending.”
#Octaviana. Trending. On the internet. Where millions of people are now using my alter ego’s name—the nickname that Candy invented for the tequila-confident, red-lipstick-wearing, dance-floor-dominating, filter-free version of me that only emerges under specific atmospheric conditions—as a HASHTAG to discuss my Olympic debut.
I am going to kill my best friend.
In the most loving, grateful, she-just-mobilized-an-international-support-base-for-my-comeback-story way possible.
But she is going to hear about this. At length. With visual aids.
Foxwood left.
The preparation room settled into the specific, focused, pre-performance quiet that descended when the coaching conversation ended and the athlete was left alone with the costume, the mirror, and the forty minutes of solitude that separated the present moment from the one where the world would be watching.
I picked up my skates.
Candy’s rhinestone masterpieces. The crystals catching the vanity’s lighted mirror and scattering warm, golden-orange fragments across the wall behind me like a sunrise projected through a prism. The boots were heavier than standard—the additional weight of approximately three thousand individual rhinestones applied by a woman whose dedication to the aesthetic exceeded the engineeringtolerances of common sense. But the weight felt right. Intentional. The physical manifestation of a best friend’s love, carried onto the ice in crystal form.
I took a breath.
Deep. The kind that filled the lowest regions of the lungs where the real gas exchange happened and that carried, on its way out, the last of the preparation room’s nervous energy. The exhale fogged the mirror slightly—a brief, circular cloud on the glass surface that dissolved as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind the reflection it had momentarily obscured.
I looked at her.
The woman in the mirror.
Golden costume catching the light. Peachy-orange lips set in an expression that was less smile and moredeclaration—the specific, determined, I-have-arrived-and-I-am-not-leaving configuration that competition had trained into my facial muscles and that the morning’s events had charged with a voltage that no amount of pre-performance meditation could have produced. The ponytail falling in purple-turquoise-platinum waves behind my shoulders. The father’s gold bracelet clasped back onto my wrist—thin, delicate, the single piece of jewelry I wore to every competition and every party and every hospital visit, the thread connecting me to the man whose coaching had built the athlete and whose love had built the woman. The rhinestone skates in my lap, glittering like captured starlight.
The letters are in the box. The box is on the counter. And the words inside them—the roughly sixty attempts at apology, the four months of a man’s handwritten vulnerability—will be waiting when I come back. They’ve waited five years. They can wait four and a half more minutes.
And when I skate today, I’m skating for all of it. For the letters that didn’t arrive. For the nurse who kept them. For the blog that Candy wrote because she refused to let the truth be buried. For Coach Foxwood, who held my shoulders and told me to be free. For Dad, whose bracelet is warm against my wrist. For Luka, who will be on the ice beside me. For Kael, who wrote on cream-colored stationery because he wanted the paper to feel like effort. For Maddox, who sprinted. For Renzo, who laughed. For every Omega in the stands who bought a ticket because they saw their own story in mine and wanted to witness the ending being rewritten.
I smiled at the reflection.
The expression was confident. Steady. Lit from within by a frequency that had been building since a four-year-old girl sat on her father’s shoulders in a Montreal bar and decided she would be an Olympian, and that had survived the fall and the hospital and the silence and the five years of distance that a man’s cruelty had produced and that a woman’s stubbornness had refused to accept as permanent.
On our way to gold, Octavia.
CHAPTER 33
My Eyes Are On You
~LUKA~
“The save that matters most isn’t the one you make between the pipes.It’s the one you make between two hearts.”
