I rolled onto my side and reached for my phone before I could stop myself.
Messages crowded the screen: texts from teammates, notifications,headlines I refused to open. I scrolled past all of them, past a string of increasingly unhinged messages from Noah. Past a photo Mom had sent of Dad asleep in a chair.
Your father is thriving, as you can see.
Normally that would’ve made me laugh. Tonight it barely registered.
On impulse, I Googled Luka, and what came up were videos going back years.
The footage was grainy and badly lit, clearly filmed from somewhere high in the stands at a junior competition. No dramatic arena lighting. No Olympic polish. No impossible pressure hanging over every movement.
Just Luka, younger.
I watched him push onto the ice with that same controlled elegance he still carried now, every movement precise even then. But there were differences too, tiny ones. A hesitation before a turn. A smile after landing a jump that looked spontaneous instead of composed for cameras.
God.
My chest was so fuckingtight.
I watched the clip twice, then a third time, not because of the skating, but because of the person hidden inside it.
All of a sudden, all I could think about was Luka alone tonight somewhere else in the Village, trying once again to fold himself back into the shape other people needed him to be, careful, controlled… safe.
The thought hurt in a way I hadn’t expected.
Because even then—even younger, less polished, not yet carrying himself with that impossible Olympic precision—he was still Luka. Still beautiful. Still careful.
That was what undid me in the end. Not the flirting, the kisses, the sex jokes, the stolen nights, or the way my body reacted whenever he walked into a room. Not even the sight of him standing in my room, looking as if he was trying to hold himself togetherthrough sheer force of will while admitting he didn’t know how to survive this.
Alone in the quiet, I finally understood.
I didn’t want Luka to destroy himself trying to be brave for me.
I watched the old video again.
Luka landed a jump, smiled to himself, then immediately looked away as though he’d remembered somebody might be watching. The smile lasted less than a second.
Somehow that made it worse.
I thought about Kristof. Empty lockers. A fifteen-year-old boy learning what happened to people who took up the wrong kind of space.
My chest ached.
I didn’t want Luka brave.
I wanted him safe.
The realization settled heavily into my chest.
Somewhere between Montreal and Milan, between conversations at the rink and nights spent teaching each other pieces of ourselves, the question had changed without me noticing.
It wasn’t whether I loved him.
I did. That wasn’t even a question anymore.
I love him.
I stared at the tiny screen. Luka crossed the rink beneath old arena lights, younger and somehow already carrying too much on his shoulders.
