ANNA: Don’t freak out, but Peter is in our apartment.
My vision tunnels for a second. The letters might as well be carved into the glass.
Another message follows quickly, as if she’s trying to cushion it:
ANNA:He says he wants to return the money he owes you. If you’re home soon, I can let him in?
Just his name is enough to send a cold shiver down my spine. My body remembers things my mind pretends not to: the way my stomach used to knot before we met, the way my voice went smaller around his impatience.
I check the time. We’re less than an hour from Prague now. Close enough.
I do need the money. I do want that chapter closed. I am so, so tired of ghosts.
I can tell her to send him away, that I’m not ready to meet him. But the new me knows better. If I could brave the storm of snow, the sneers of girls ten years younger and ten times better than me, I can brave this meeting.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. This, right here, is the hinge: run from it or face it. Keep my life messy and undefined, or start cleaning up the wreckage properly.
I type:
ZLA: Let him in. I’ll be there soon.
And I know, with a strange, painful clarity, that this is the real decision. Not the text to Fabio. Not the calendar. This. Choosing to walk back into the old battlefield not to stay, but to pack up what’s mine and leave it on my terms.
The phone buzzes again—Fabio.
FAB: I’m not him. Stop pushing me away like I am.
He’s right. He’s not. And yet I can feel the same old pattern winding up inside me, ready to play out with a different man in a different sport. If I don’t break it now, I never will.
My hands move before my doubts can catch up.
ZLA: I know you’re not Peter. That’s why I’m doing this. I need to fix the part of me that keeps twisting itself around men before I can stand next to you without resenting you. Maybe you also need to stop pushing so hard when someone says “not yet.”
I stare at the screen. It’s probably unfair. It’s also brutally the closest I can get to the truth right now.
I send it.
Outside, the landscape shifts; suburban edges start to appear. I close my planner, shove it back into my bag, and stand up to get my things from the rack. My legs feel shaky, like I’ve skied too many runs.
The train pulls into Prague. The brakes scream; the carriage shudders. People start moving, jostling, collecting luggage.
My phone is still in my hand. No new messages yet. Maybe he’s furious. Maybe he’s thinking. Maybe he’s done. Maybe he finally realized that I’m too much of a mess for his own good.
But it does not matter for now. For the first time in years, I’m not making my next move based on what a man on the other end of the line might do.
The doors hiss open. Cold city air floods in. I step onto the platform, heart pounding, into a life that is suddenly, terrifyingly, mine to sort out.
Chapter 14
The Old Battlefields
Prague, Czechia
ZLATA
Every step up the stairwell burns my quads, a slow, sour ache that has nothing to do with the gates I skied this morning and everything to do with what waits at the top. Each stair feels steeper than the last, as if the building is trying to warn me off. My hands shake around the strap of my race bag, stupid little tremors that make me hate myself a bit. Hate that a man who used to be my whole world can still make me feel like this inmy own home.
I make myself stop outside the door, inhaling until my lungs sting. Keys, lock, turn. I force my fingers to steady, to be competent at something as basic as getting inside my own apartment. The door opens with its familiar soft creak. I set the race bag down carefully, as if it contains explosives instead of damp gear, and loosen my boots and step out of them. Socks on cool hallway tiles. One more breath.
