“You love me for it.”
I did. I really, genuinely did.
“How’s training?” I asked, redirecting.
She let me. She told me about her new program, about the quad salchow she was working into the free skate, about the music cut that wasn’t quite right yet. I listened and asked questions and felt the particular ache of missing something you used to do together, the shared language of it.
When we hung up, I sat with Aspen for a long time, staring at Coach Miller’s contact in my phone.
Then I opened my message thread with Derek instead. Read our previous text exchange for the fifth time.
I smiled at my phone and set it facedown and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow. I would think about it tomorrow.
17. Derek
We lost the pre-season game against Buffalo. It shouldn’t have mattered—pre-season losses didn’t count, they were for working out systems and getting legs under you—but it sat wrong anyway. We’d been sloppy in our own zone, the power play had looked disjointed, and Morrison had said exactly four words in the locker room after, which was never a good sign.
Some of the guys had gone out for a commiseration drink. I’d gone with them, nursed a beer, listened to Petrov complain about the officiating with the kind of creative profanity that transcended language barriers. But everyone had called it early. Road trip fatigue, early flight to Nashville in the morning, the particular exhaustion of a loss that felt preventable.
I was back in my hotel room before 11 p.m.
I should have been watching game tape. I had my laptop open, the file queued up, ready to go through my shifts and catalogue everything I’d done wrong. That was the routine. That was what you did after a loss.
Instead I was staring at a photo of my dog.
Or more accurately, I was staring at Théo’s reflection in the window behind my dog.
It was barely visible—just an outline, the suggestion of a figure, the teal and black of my Frost hat on his head. You had to zoom in to really see it, which I had done. Multiple times. More times than I cared to admit, even to myself.
He looked graceful even standing still. That was the thing that kept catching me. The particular way he held himself, coiled and ready, like even walking a dog on a Chicago sidewalk required the same controlled precision he brought to the ice. Like a snake ready to strike, all that power held in check until the moment it wasn’t.
I had moved on from watching his jump compilations.
That had been phase one. The quad axel, the technical breakdowns, the legitimate athletic interest in what a human body could do when pushed to that level. Educational. Appropriate. The kind of thing you could justify as genuine curiosity.
Now I was watching… other things.
Fan edits set to slow music. Compilations of him in sheer competition costumes. Thirst traps. I didn’t need YouTube titles to tell me what they were.
They were everywhere. Clips of Théo landing quads in slow motion, the camera shamelessly tracking the snap of his rotation, the flex in his arms through spins, the clean arch of his back when he hit a position like it was nothing. Spliced with behind-the-scenes footage from photo shoots—fitted black clothes, bare throat, all lean lines and elegance. Personal videos he’d posted over the years, casual and unguarded in ways that felt almost intrusive to watch.
I had watched them anyway.
And it wasn’t just curiosity anymore. It wasn’t even really about the videos. Half the time I wasn’t looking at the screen—I was replaying the real thing. Théo in person at the rink, blade biting into ice. That almost smile he didn’t know he wore when something finally clicked. The way he moved like gravity was optional.
The way my body reacted.
Ever since he’d sent that photo this afternoon, it had gotten worse.
Looks better on me, don’t you think?
Yeah. It did. It looked unfairly better on him—and something dumb and primal flared in my chest at the sight of Théo inmyclothes. Like my brain took one look and went: mine.Possessive, caveman nonsense. A reaction I had no business having and even less idea what to do with.
I sat on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, telling myself I was just unwinding after an embarrassing loss. One more clip. One more replay.
Just killing time.
