“I’ll tell her eventually. It’s in Toronto this year.”
Avery’s chewing slowed. He didn’t say Nico’s name but it hung there anyway.
“I know,” I said quietly. “I really can’t escape that wretched place.”
“Théo...” He set his sandwich down. “When you flew out there—when you came back—you didn’t really tell me whathappened. I mean, I saw the news about Nico but you never actually talked about it.”
I pushed the noodles around my plate with my chopsticks. He was right. I’d come home that night and gone straight to Derek’s. And then the Frost left for their road trip and I’d buried myself in training. Avery and I had circled around it, both of us too awkward to breach the wall I’d built.
“Nico and I were together,” I said finally. “On and off. For almost three years. I broke things off while I was in rehab.”
Avery blinked. “I knew there was something but I didn’t realize—”
“No one did. That was the point.” I took a breath. “Coach Renaud is his uncle. If anyone found out, it would have been a disaster. For both of us but especially for me. Renaud made that very clear. So we hid it. Snuck around. Pretended we were just training partners who happened to be close.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.” I set down my chopsticks. “And it was toxic. We were competing against each other for the same spots, the same medals, the same attention from Renaud. We loved each other but we also resented each other. And we were both so fucked up about food and pressure and perfection that we just... enabled each other’s worst habits. Called it understanding.”
Avery was quiet, listening in a way he never used to when we were kids.
“When I collapsed after Worlds, it wasn’t just the pressure of competing. It was everything. The secrecy. The starving. The feeling like I was disappearing and no one even noticed because I was still landing my jumps.” My throat tightened. “Nico noticed. But he was drowning too. Neither of us could save the other.”
“Is that why you ended it?”
“I ended it because I was a disaster.” The word came out flat. “The kind that leaves wreckage everywhere it touches. He kept trying to help me and I kept dragging him down. Every time he reached out, I pulled away. Every time he tried to get me to eat, I lied about it. He deserved someone who wasn’t—” I stopped, swallowed. “Someone who wasn’t so broken.”
Avery shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable but not looking away. “You’re not... I mean, you’re not a disaster, Théo. That’s a bit—”
“It’s how it felt.” I cut him off. “Maybe still feels. I don’t know.”
He was quiet for a moment, picking at a piece of carrot on his plate. “I mean it.” He looked up, brow furrowed like he was working through a problem he didn’t have the vocabulary for. “You’re... you’ve been through a lot of shit. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person who’s been through shit.”
“Eloquent.”
“Shut up, I’m trying.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just saying—you came here. You’re working on it. That counts for something, right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure it did.
“Anyway.” I pushed on before he could keep stumbling through his pep talk. “I couldn’t handle things in Toronto anymore so I came running here. Nico and I didn’t talk for months.”
“Until now?”
“Until he took too many sleeping pills and ended up in the hospital. That’s confidential by the way.” I swallowed. “He said he just wanted to sleep. That he wasn’t trying to—but it doesn’t matter what he was trying to do. It matters that he got that desperate.” My voice cracked. “And I kept thinking... that couldhave been me. That almost was me. And maybe if I’d stayed, if I’d been better, he wouldn’t have—”
“No.” Avery’s voice was sharper than I expected. “No, you don’t get to do that.”
I looked up.
“I don’t know much about this stuff,” he said and his hands were gripping the edge of the counter like he needed something to hold onto. “But I know you can’t—you can’t take responsibility for someone else’s... for what they do when they’re that low. That’s not how it works.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if it worked that way, then mom would be responsible for what happened to you. And she’s not. Right?”
I stared at him. I didn’t have a response to that.
“Look, I’m not—I’m shit at this.” He let out a breath. “But you’re my brother. And I’m not going to let you sit here and convince yourself you ruined someone’s life when you were barely keeping yourself alive.”
