Her exhale shakes like a building about to collapse. “This isn’t just about teaching some hockey players ballet, Liam. This is my life. This is everything I’ve worked for. And now? It might be gone. Because of something so—so—”
Another bitter laugh escapes. “So trivial, so…stupid,” she says.
“Stupid?” I say.
She freezes.
“Helping me was stupid?” My voice goes quiet.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says.
“Really? Because that’s exactly what you said.”
“It was stupid to think we could get away with it.”
“You regret it, then?” I ask, voice low, each word carefully measured.
Her chin lifts, defiance mixed with desperation. “I regret not thinking about what could happen.”
“Right. So, it wasn’t worth it?”
The muscle at her temple pulses.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“But it’s what you mean.”
“Liam.”
“No, seriously. Was it a waste of time? Were the lessons a mistake? Was I a mistake?”
Her nostrils flare with the type of frustration of someone being misunderstood on purpose. “You’re twisting my words.”
“I’m repeating them.”
She takes a breath like she’s trying to prevent an explosion. “You’re not listening.”
“Oh, I’m listening. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.”
Her hands curl back into fists, knuckles white. “You don’t understand what this means to me.”
“I don’t understand?” The words explode out of me. “I gave up everything for hockey! You think I don’t know what it’s like to put your entire life into something? To sacrifice for it? To be terrified of losing it and then to actuallyalmostlose it?”
Her breath hitches, but the anger doesn’t fade.
I continue. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to have people doubt you? To feel like you’re one mistake away from everything crumbling?”
“Then you should understand why this is different,” she says.
“How?”
“Because hockey will always have your back. Your teammates, your coaches, they rallied behind you. They supported you.” She steps forward, voice trembling with barely contained emotion. “But me? I’m alone in this. I don’t have a team to back me up. I don’t have a locker room full of people telling me it’s all going to be okay. I have Nilas telling me I should’ve taken the Saint Petersburg offer, and a fellow company member actively trying to sabotage me.” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “And I have you, standing here, trying to tell me that this is a good thing when I am watching everything I have ever worked for slip through my fingers.”
A silence follows.
Then I say it—the thing you can’t take back: “Maybe this was a mistake. The moving in. Maybe it was too much. Too soon.”
The temperature drops to absolute zero. Her expression wavers for a heartbeat, long enough for me to realize I’ve just lit a match in a room full of explosives.
