I pushed off again, slower now, letting the rink open around me. My edges deepened naturally through the curves, no choreography dictating placement, no audience waiting for perfection. Halfway through the next lap I leaned farther into an outside edge than I everwould during competition, reckless enough that centrifugal force pulled sharply through my ribs.
The blade hissed beneath me, and for the first time in years, skating felt separate from performance. I jumped again simply because I wanted to.
Laughter escaped me, sudden and startled in the emptiness of the arena, and then without warning tears burned behind my eyes hard enough that I had to scrub angrily at my face with the sleeve of my training jacket.
I was exhausted from spending years surviving elegantly enough that nobody noticed survival was slowly hollowing me out.
The tears kept coming anyway, cold against overheated skin while I circled the rink once more beneath dim maintenance lights.
Eventually I drifted back toward the boards where my Velkaran jacket rested folded beside the gate, white, crimson and black with the gold dragon stitched over the chest. I picked it up.
I loved my country.
Velkarya was not only fear and federation oversight and careful silence. It was my language. My childhood. Frozen mornings before sunrise walking into rinks with numb hands and aching feet. My mother wrapping scarves too tightly around my throat before competitions. The first time I understood the sound blades made cutting across untouched ice.
Home could wound you and still remain home.
I wiped my face roughly with the sleeve, then folded the jacket again and placed it back where it had been.
Across the arena, pale light stretched endlessly over empty Olympic ice.
I could not return to the person I had been before Milan. Even if I tried, the attempt would destroy me slowly enough that perhaps nobody else would notice until years later.
But I would know.
I inhaled deeply, cold air filling my lungs, then pushed into one final lap around the rink—not as Velkarya’s perfect symbol, not as aman editing himself into acceptability every waking second, but simply as Luka, alone on the ice with nobody watching him anymore.
When I finally slowed, I glanced over at the jacket, at the dragon staring back at me.
National champion. Olympic medalist. Pride of Velkarya.
Standing there alone beneath the darkened rafters, I finally understood why the last few weeks had felt so unbearable.
Everyone kept talking as though a choice was inevitable, as though loving Dean automatically meant abandoning everything else I loved. As if those things could not exist together.
Maybe they were right. Maybe the world would force the issue eventually. But for the first time, I found myself angry at the premise.
I did not want one life instead of the other.
I wanted my country.
I wanted my skating.
I wanted Dean.
I wantedallof it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
February 16
Dean
By the timeNathan and Brooke cleared the ice, I’d checked my phone often enough to become embarrassed about it.
Still nothing from Luka. No message, no missed call.
What’s going on, baby?
