Page 93 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

Alisa blinked, watching closely. “Okay… now I understand why you wanted to see her choreography so much.”

“Exactly. Appreciate the art, baby,” Anfisa murmured, resting her face in her hands, elbows on her knees, watching with open admiration.

The chances of holding first place are slowly slipping away from me, huh?

The figure skater fell on the landing of the triple lutz, and the arena reacted instantly, the energy dropping into something heavy and disappointed, but she didn’t give up, she pulled herself together and carried the program all the way to the end, finishing it with a smile despite everything. Still, it wasn’t enough, her score placed her fifth overall at that moment, close, dangerously close, but not enough to truly threaten Alisa’s position. Alisa remained in her seat, waiting for the others, silently praying that she would hold onto the first place.

One after another, the skaters took the ice, and Alisa couldn’t control the way her body reacted, because every time the announcer paused before revealing the scores, her heart seemed to jump from anxiety and worry. However today everything felt different, as if the pressure of this competition was affecting every skater, because mistakes kept happening, falls, under-rotations, small errors that cost points, and the gap between gold and silver held at around ten points, which was significant and it was as if the tension itself was pulling them down.

And it worked in Alisa’s favor. She hadn’t been perfect either, however she was still leading, she was still on the top, and all she could do now was hope, hope that no one would surpass her, that she would stay there until the very end, until the quota was hers.

Then the Canadian stepped onto the ice.

Alisa tensed immediately.

This was the last skater.

Everything would be decided now.

The arena greeted her loudly, some people even rising to their feet, because she was one of the most well-known skaters in the world, ranked in the top five globally, and compared to her, Alisa—still somewhere in the top twenty—felt that difference sharply.

The Canadian entered her first jump, a triple flip, and then, only seconds later, went straight into a combination of a quadruple lutz followed by a triple flip.

“I think I’m fucked…” Alisa whispered under her breath.

Anfisa’s hand returned to her thigh, gripping it tightly, her long dark nails pressing into the fabric as if grounding both of them, because this wasn’t just about Alisa anymore, this quota meant a chance for all of them, for the possibility of going to the Olympics later.

The audience gasped again when the Canadian executed a clean quadruple axel, and Alisa felt her entire body tightening instinctively—

But then something broke.

The rotation slipped and the axis tilted sending her into a fall, and although she recovered quickly, rising with a practiced smile and continuing the choreography, the mistake had already happened.

And then, another jump.

A quadruple Rittberger.

She fell harder, the impact echoing through the arena, while inside Alisa something shifted, because suddenly it wasn’t perfect anymore, and now there was a chance again.

The Canadian continued, pushing through the rest of the program, but the cracks were visible now, an under-rotation here and a wrong edge there, Alisa noticed everything calculating without even meaning to, understanding that points would be lost.

When the program ended, the arena fell into that familiar silence again as the skater moved to the Kiss & Cry area.

“Well… now everything will be decided… God, I’m so nervous…” Alisa whispered, her heart pounding so hard it almost hurt.

Anfisa took her hand, holding it tightly, and together they stared at the massive screen above the ice, waiting.

“So, our final skater, Josephine Craig…”

It felt as if the entire world stopped.

The numbers appeared slowly, first the components, then the technical score, calculating and shifting toward the final result—

“263 points!”

Alisa stared at the screen, her mouth parting slightly as the overall standings appeared.

She was still first.