CHAPTER 11
Octaviana
~OCTAVIA~
“She had two versions of herself:the one who trained for gold and the one who dressed for war.”
“Fuck, girl.” Candy stood in the doorway of my bedroom with one hand braced against the frame and the other pressed flat against her chest, as if physically preventing her heart from evacuating the premises. “I forgot that you actually look badass sexy when you dress up.”
She was shaking her head. Slowly. The deliberate, side-to-side oscillation of a woman confronted with visual evidence she’d been warned about but had underestimated—the same expression I’d seen her deploy the first time she’d witnessed a gymnast execute a triple-twisting double layout in warm-ups and realized the competition bracket was going to be a problem.
“You look like a menace to society.”
She was not wrong.
The mirror confirmed it. The woman staring back fromthe full-length glass mounted to the inside of my closet door was not the Octavia who had sobbed on a shower floor six hours ago, or the Octavia who had performed a throw triple Salchow in a crystal-studded leotard at eight in the morning, or the Octavia who had walked past Angelo Reyes without a glance.
This was theotherversion.
The one who emerged on rare occasions, like a predatory species that surfaced only under specific atmospheric conditions: celebratory mood, adequate sleep, and a level of “fuck it” energy that had crossed the threshold from reckless into liberated.
The red lipstick was the keystone. A deep, matte, arterial crimson that I’d paired with a dark red lip liner one shade darker—the liner applied slightly outside my natural lip line to create a fuller, sharper silhouette that turned my mouth from a feature into astatement.
The combination was specific. Deliberate. A formula I’d perfected during my brief, glorious, pre-injury phase of actually having a social life, and one that I associated so strongly with a particular version of myself that applying it felt less like putting on makeup and more like summoning an alter ego.
Octaviana.
The name Candy had given her—the nocturnal iteration of Octavia Moreau who emerged when the lipstick went on and the hem went up and the carefully maintained composure of a competitive athlete was replaced by a woman who had decided, for the duration of one evening, that consequences were a problem for tomorrow’s version of herself.
My hair was down. Loose, voluminous, the purple and turquoise and platinum strands falling in luscious, heat-setcurls that cascaded past my shoulders and gave my entire silhouette a dimension of movement and body that my competition braids never permitted. The curls were intentional—the kind that bounced when you walked, that caught light in their spirals and threw it back in fragments, that saidI spent forty-five minutes on this and I know exactly what it does to the way people look at me.
And the dress.
The dress was a crime.
Black. Fitted. The kind of dangerously short hemline that rested approximately four inches above my knee and made my legs—twenty years of figure skating’s finest contribution to quadricep development—look like they’d been sculpted by someone who considered modesty a design flaw. The fabric clung to my waist, followed the curve of my hips with a devotion that bordered on possessive, and did a thing to my ass that I could only describe asarchitectural. Structural. A feat of engineering that transformed a body part into a conversation piece.
I rarely dressed like this. Competition life demanded a wardrobe that was functional, athletic, and approximately as provocative as a census form. Training leggings. Moisture-wicking tops. Compression gear.
The sartorial vocabulary of a woman whose body was a professional instrument and whose clothing existed to facilitate its function rather than display its form. But occasionally—on nights when the weight of discipline had been temporarily lifted and thefuck itthreshold had been comprehensively breached—Octaviana got her turn.
And maybe, just maybe, I want to end this dry spell tonight.
The thought was honest enough to make me smirk at my own reflection. The dry spell had been…extensive. Months.Manymonths. The kind of extended involuntary celibacy that happened when you spent your twenties recovering from a career-ending injury, rebuilding your body through rehabilitation, and training at an intensity that left your evenings occupied by ice baths and meal prep rather than the kind of activities that required a second participant and significantly less clothing.
But the power nap had done its work. Two hours of deep, dreamless, post-cry sleep that had reset my nervous system fromcatastrophic overloadtocautiously operational, and when I’d woken to the smell of Candy’s bolognese simmering in the kitchenette and the knowledge—the real, confirmed, certificate-verified knowledge—that I had officially qualified for the Winter Olympics pipeline, the first fully formed thought in my freshly rested brain had been:I deserve a good night. A real one. The kind that involves music and laughter and the attention of people who find me attractive and the specific, intoxicating freedom of being a twenty-five-year-old woman who just achieved the thing she’s been fighting for and wants to celebrate by feeling alive in her body instead of punishing it.
Is that so terrible? To want one night where the only thing I’m performing is confidence?
No. It’s not terrible. It’s overdue.
I laughed—a full, bright, genuine sound that felt unfamiliar in my own throat, like a language I’d been fluent in once and was relearning. “I know you love Octaviana when she comes out to play.”
Candy snorted. The sound was elegant and derisive in equal measure, which was a vocal combination only she could execute. “Oh,no. This”—she gestured at me with a sweeping, prosecutorial hand motion that encompassed my hair, face, dress, and the general atmospheric disturbance Iwas apparently creating—“is theinitialphase. The warm-up. The overture. TherealOctaviana is when you start getting into the tipsy realms and you become an unapologetic bitch who savagely talks everyone down because your filter goes on permanent vacation and your cocky ass decides the entire room needs to hear your opinions at competition volume.”
I groaned. The sound was reflexive, defensive, and entirely performative, because we both knew the accuracy of the description was approximately one hundred percent and my objections were ceremonial.
“I am most certainlynotcocky.”
