No federation officials. No coaches. No Velkaryan team staff drifting through the background pretending not to observe everything.
“How do you know this place is open?”
“Because unlike you,” Mila muttered, pushing open the door, “Ioccasionally leave the rink.” She hesitated for half a second before answering. “I’ve been here before.”
The café wasn’t empty. A few people looked up as we walked in. One phone appeared, then another.
I barely noticed.
Mila chose a table near the window and sat down. I chose the one facing her.
She waited until the server had taken our order. Then she folded her arms.
“What happened between you and Foster?”
There was no point pretending I misunderstood the question.
I rested my forearms against the table and stared at my folded hands for a long moment before answering.
“It stopped being simple.”
Mila stayed silent.
That silence worked better than pressure ever would have.
“At first I thought it was distraction,” I admitted. “Then curiosity. Then something I could ignore.” I met her gaze. “I was wrong.”
“How long?”
I frowned. “How long what?”
“How long has this been happening?”
“Since Worlds last year.” Saying it aloud made the timeline feel suddenly absurd. “We barely interacted. We didn’t even speak properly.” My throat tightened. “But I noticed him.”
A simple statement that didn’t even scratch the surface of what I’d experienced.
Mila absorbed that without visible surprise, which meant she had probably guessed already. “And Milan made it worse.”
“Yes.”
The coffees arrived. I wrapped both hands around the cup after the server left, more for the heat than the drink itself.
“And you never told me,” Mila said.
“I thought it would disappear.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.”
The noise of the café swelled around us before fading back into the background again.
Mila leaned back in her chair studying me carefully, and I realized with a strange jolt that she looked tired. The exhaustion sat around her eyes in ways I had somehow missed for weeks.
“That’s why you’ve been missing things,” she said eventually. “You never miss things.”
I almost argued before stopping myself.
