Thedaddything—yeah. That.
It shouldn’t have landed the way it did. It should have been a casual thing, the kind of thing people said to dogs all the time without thinking and somehow when it came out of Théo’s mouth in that low, slightly raspy voice it had shot through me like a live current.
I wasn’t attracted to him. I couldn’t be. Before Mackenzie, I’d dated other girls. Fooled around. Mackenzie had been my first and—at this point—only real sexual partner. I’d been around plenty of good looking men and never felt even a flicker of that kind of pull.
No, that couldn’t be it.
I was just fascinated. He was interesting to watch—the technical brutality of the jumps, the way he moved between them like he was making choices about how to occupy space. Grace and power that shouldn’t have worked together but somehow did.
Off the ice he was…
I thought about his face in the doorway—hair falling into his eyes when he’d bent to let Aspen sniff his hands, the way he’d shoved it back behind his ear without thinking. Up close, his features were almost delicate, fine nose, full lips that naturally tipped down at the corners so he always looked mildly unimpressed.
But his eyes didn’t match the rest of him. His eyes were dark and serious, the kind that didn’t just look—they assessed. His face was still young—smooth, almost boyish in certain light—but his gaze had this tired, seen-it-all weight to it. Like the youth stopped at his cheekbones and the rest of him lived behind his eyes.
His voice had that low softness that made you lean in. Not because he was timid—because he was precise. His sentences were blunt, trimmed to the bone. And he went through most interactions like they were an inconvenience he (barely) tolerated.
I often felt slightly off-balance around him. The usual shortcuts didn’t work—he didn’t volley back the small talk, didn’t offer the easy warmth that kept conversations moving. He wasn’t rude, exactly. He just didn’t give much away.
Except sometimes, he did.
A near smile while skating. A softness when he thought no one was looking. Offering to watch Aspen like it cost him nothing, when I suspected it cost him quite a lot.
Those moments felt earned. And after Mackenzie, I’d learned to value earned over easy.
Théo didn’t give trust away. He made you work for it. So when he let his guard slip—even a crack—it meant something.
It made me want to be worthy of more.
On screen, Théo landed the quad axel. The music peaked. Aspen’s legs twitched against his bed.
I watched it twice more and then locked the screen.
We were leaving for Detroit tomorrow. First road game of my comeback season. I needed to be locked in, focused, proving to the fans and my teammates and myself that the A on my jersey wasn’t just legacy. That I’d earned it again.
I looked at the fireplace. At Aspen’s sleeping, twitching form.
“You’ll be good for me while daddy’s away?”
I picked the iPad back up.
Watched it one more time.
12. Théo
I cut my skate time short.
Another frustrating session—the triple still wrong, that stubborn, unreliable wobble in my centre of gravity. I knew what would fix it. I knew it the way I knew edges and timing and air: someone watching, correcting, giving me drills and reference points, an external eye to recalibrate against. My body had lost its internal map. It needed someone to hand me a new one.
Calling Coach Miller meant letting someone see what I’d become. The jumps I couldn’t land. The stamina I’d lost. The gap between who I used to be and who I was now, measured in rotations and seconds and all the small failures I’d been cataloguing alone. At least when I was the only witness, I could pretend it wasn’t that bad.
Mostly, I wanted to feel in control of my own body again.
I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had.
On the Blue Line, I nibbled a protein bar with my skate bag wedged between my feet and my backpack on my lap. Outside the windows, the city slid by in grey blocks and glaring sunlight. Inside, the train was freezing—air conditioning cranked up to combat the lingering heat. I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and hunched into myself. My body had never been good at holding warmth and lately it was worse. One more thing recovery was supposed to fix eventually.
My mind wandered the way it did on transit—loose and unfocused, snagging on random things.
