“Get some sleep,” I whispered. “We’ll figure out the rest in the morning.”
He was asleep within minutes, his breath warm against my collarbone. I stayed awake a while longer, holding him, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest.
He’d come to me. He’d let me in. He’d said it back.
That was enough.
That was everything.
40. Théo
I was lacing up my skates when Coach Miller sat down on the bench next to me.
He didn’t ask about Nico.
The news had broken a few days ago—vague reports about a “medical emergency,” followed by the inevitable speculation that spread across the skating fandom like wildfire. Renaud would have been on me the moment it hit. He had Google alerts set up for all his skaters, past and present, and he treated every headline like a personal affront or a personal victory depending on the content. He would have demanded to know what I knew, how it might affect my training, whether I was going to let this “distraction” derail my progress.
Miller just sat there, steam curling from his cup, waiting for me to speak if I wanted to.
“The Maple Leaf Classic is coming up,” he mentioned casually, sipping the black sludge he called coffee.
I hummed in acknowledgement. I knew this, of course. Sabrina had also mentioned it once, twice, half a dozen times. In every single conversation we’d had since I got back from Toronto.
The Maple Leaf Classic was in Toronto this year.
Toronto. Where I’d collapsed after my free skate and ended up on a stretcher, wheeled past the rink doors into an ambulance while cameras kept rolling—everyone watching me fall apart in real time. Where Nico and I had spent three years hidingour relationship, stealing moments between training sessions and pretending we were just friends. Where Coach Renaud had pushed me until I shattered. Where Nico was now, in a treatment centre outside the city, recovering from what the press was carefully calling “dehydration and exhaustion” but what I knew was a bottle of sleeping pills.
I’d run away from Toronto. Fled to Chicago like a coward, or a survivor, depending on who was telling the story. I’d sworn I was done with that city, done with everything it represented.
And yet it kept pulling me back.
Sabrina wanted me to come even if I wasn’t going to compete.Just to watch,she’d said.To feel the energy again. To prove Toronto doesn’t own you anymore.
But competing was different. Competing meant walking back into the city that had nearly killed me and standing in front of judges who’d seen the footage—who’d watched me flame out spectacularly. It meant the whispers, the stares, the inevitable comparisons to the skater I used to be.
Six months since I’d finished my free skate on adrenaline and spite and then ended up on a stretcher. Six months since my body finally told the truth my mouth refused to.
And now—days after I’d sat in a hospital room holding Nico’s hand, listening to him ask if it ever got better.
It gets different,I’d told him.The bad days don’t disappear. But they get further apart.
I needed that to be true. For him. For me.
I was finding my footing again. Barely. Some days the ice felt like home. Other days the echo of an empty rink hit the wrong frequency—my chest tightening, my throat closing, my hands going cold around my water bottle like I was bracing for impact.
Coach Miller didn’t look at me, he just stared out at the ice. “I’m not saying you should enter if you’re not ready.”
If you’re not ready.The words hung there, patient. Non-judgmental. Somehow that made them worse.
“But if you still want to qualify for the Olympics…” He paused, let the weight of it settle. “This would be step one. You need an international score on the books before the Grand Prix assignments. Maple Leaf Classic feeds into that.”
I knew the path. I’d mapped it in my head a hundred times during the months I couldn’t sleep. Challenger Series to prove I wasn’t broken. Then maybe—maybe—a Grand Prix assignment if I posted a strong enough score. Then Nationals. Then the final selection in January. A narrow window, a brutal timeline, and absolutely zero room for another public implosion.
My fingers worked the laces automatically, pulling them tight. Too tight. The pressure bit into my ankle, sharp and grounding.
The familiar whisper slithered through the back of my mind.You could skip breakfast tomorrow. Clear your head. Light and empty, the way you used to feel before competitions. That version of you could handle this.
I thought about Nico in that hospital bed. The way his collarbones had jutted out beneath the thin gown. The way he’d asked me if it got better, his voice so small and hopeful and desperate.
