It takes a while.
I run the second session differently.
No demonstration this time - I made my point last time and I’m not here to perform, I’m here to coach. I take them through edge progressions, one drill building on the next, and I move through the group the way I did before, one correction at a time.
Barrett doesn’t engage. He does the drills with the minimum required effort and looks through me when I address him, not rudely exactly, just with a pointed absence of acknowledgment that makes his position very clear. I note it and move on. I’ve dealt with harder rooms. Mercer, too, is clearly not on board. He pushes back verbally, little comments, nothing aggressive, but testing, and I meet every single one of them so calmly and so directly that by the halfway point he’s actually doing the drills properly, which I suspect surprises him more than anyone.
Russo, however, does everything I ask.
He’s not obstructive. He runs every drill, takes every correction with his expression blank, and his technique is already marginally better than it was two days ago which means he’s been practicing. And it means my correction landed even if he’d rather it hadn’t.
He doesn’t look at me if he can help it.
Which is fine. Completely fine.
After the main session I set them a free skating exercise - work on whatever felt hardest today, no structure, ten minutes - and I move to the boards to make notes while they spread across the ice.
MATEO
The ten minutes of free skating is the most useful thing she’s done so far, which I won’t be saying out loud.
I work the edge progression she ran earlier, the exact sequence that felt wrong, and I do it without making it obvious that’s what I’m doing because the last thing I need is her coming over and adjusting my hip again in front of everyone. I run it four times, five, and by the sixth it starts to feel like a change my body is considering accepting. It’s small, but I know it’ll make a difference.
Around me the team has spread out, doing their own thing, the noise level has risen back to normal now that the structure is off. Barrett is doing the absolute bare minimum at the far end, which I’ll deal with later. Mercer is actually working, which surprised me, though I won’t tell him that either.
Calloway blows the whistle from the bench.
“Good,” he calls. “That’s time.”
We have weights in twenty minutes, so everyone is already drifting toward the gate. Elida is making a note in her book at theboards, and somehow the ice has emptied in a way that leaves the two of us out here which is - fine. Incidental. Means nothing.
I skate toward the boards.
She looks up as I reach her, and there’s a moment where we’re standing on opposite sides of the boards and neither of us says anything. The rink is quiet enough that I can hear the scratch of her pen stopping.
“No demonstration today?”
“Decided to save it,” she says evenly. “Didn’t want to embarrass anyone twice in one week.”
It’s so perfectly calibrated - pleasant but with the faintest edge underneath - that for a second I almost laugh.
“Big of you.”
“I thought so.” She goes back to her notebook, pen moving again, and I get the very clear impression that as far as she’s concerned, this conversation is over and she’s the one who ended it.
5
Chapter 5
MATEO
I walk into the locker room pre-game and immediately know something’s different.
The guys are clustered around Mercer’s phone – Barrett is holding it. Ward is watching with an expression of awe. Even Chen is leaning in.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Mercer looks up. “Did you know she was famous?”
