Archive of Our Own

“—She struggled with that in practice, but tonight she’s completely focused. There’s a real maturity in her skating, not just the jumps, but the phrasing, the musical interpretation.”

“Listen to the crowd— they’re absolutely silent. You could hear a pin drop. That’s when you know she’s got them.”

“Spiral sequence now! Look at that extension! Such beautiful lines, such control. Every move flows right into the next.”

“Final jump— the double axel… yes! Clean, centered, and right on the music. That’s how you finish a program.”

“What a performance. That was pure grace—”

“Fucking shit show. Like hell that one was centered—buy new fucking glasses, for fuck’s sake,” grumbled Nat, her voice rough and low, swallowed by the static hum of the old television set that flickered weakly in the corner of the room, as if it, too, was tired of replaying her failures.

Because she was Nat now. Not Natalie Scatorccio from America—not the bright, burning comet who had once set the rink on fire, not the girl with the sharp eyes and the fearless spins, the one whose name had rolled off commentators’ tongues like a promise of glory. She had been only twenty, still grinning through the exhaustion, still believing that her hands could shape the future, that discipline and hunger could rewrite destiny. Natalie Scatorccio, the prodigy, the golden girl, the newcomer the world had fallen for, the one they had said could carry a nation on her skates.

No.

Not anymore.

Now she was just Nat. Nat, the washed-up ghost of a scandal, the fuckass cheater whose medals had lost their shine, whose name had been crossed out of record books and replaced by silence. She was the story whispered in locker rooms and comment sections, the cautionary tale coaches told their newest recruits when they needed a reminder of what not to become. And maybe they were right—maybe every damn prize should be taken back, every headline, every smile, every ounce of praise. It’s not like she really cares anymore.

She turned off her old-ass television, the one that buzzed and spat static, good now only for playing those grainy recordings of her former self, the high-definition ghosts of a girl who had once believed she was untouchable, and the silence that followed was almost violent, pressing against her ears until she wanted to scream. The remote landed somewhere on the table with a dull clatter, half-buried among old magazines whose glossy covers still showed her smiling face, their edges curling with dust and spilled beer. Empty bottles leaned like broken trophies, cigarette butts drowned in a half-filled ashtray, and in the pale glow of the neon sign bleeding through the window, the room looked like a monument to decay, her own personal museum of almosts and never-agains.

She was back in a crappy home, the kind of place that felt more like a waiting room for ghosts than a shelter for the living, like the one she had once left behind with dreams so fragile they’d cracked the first time she fell. It wasn’t the same prison, not the rusted trailer with its paper-thin walls and the demons that whispered through the night whenever the wind caught the metal just right but now it was an old motel room, dim and stale, with a sticky floor that clung to her bare feet and a single dusty window she had never dared to open, because she wasn’t sure what would be worse: the cold air from outside or the reminder that the world kept moving without her. 

The smell of ash and whiskey hung thick in the air, a permanent fog that wrapped itself around the furniture, seeping into her clothes, her hair, her lungs, until she couldn’t tell where the room ended and she began.

The place was a wreck—and so was she. The wallpaper peeled like scabs, the ceiling buzzed faintly with the sound of dying lightbulbs, and somewhere in the pipes, water dripped in a slow, uneven rhythm, like a pulse that refused to stop no matter how empty the space had become.

She didn’t have anything else, and it almost felt like she had looped back to the beginning, to zero, to that hollow point she’d promised herself she’d never see again. The trophies were gone, the cameras too, and all that was left were her own thoughts echoing inside a head that never quieted down. She could almost laugh at the irony of it all, if laughing didn’t hurt so much, how far she’d gone just to end up back in the same kind of room, with the same kind of silence, waiting for something she couldn’t even name.

Most days, she didn’t even know what day it was anymore, not since her suspension from figure skating, that single headline that had swallowed her whole and left her drifting ever since. Time had dissolved into a blur of cigarettes and half-drunk bottles, of nights spent staring at the ceiling until it blurred into the fog outside.

She knew it wasn’t fair, but then again, life had never been fair to her. And some days—God, some nights—they were harder than the rest, louder too, as if the walls themselves remembered what she’d lost and couldn’t stop screaming it back at her. The silence in between was the worst of all: heavy, thick, stretching until it felt like the air itself was punishing her for still breathing.

She didn’t move—most of the time she didn’t. She just stayed there, folded into that same position for hours, maybe days, her body molded into the shape of the old sofa that had long given up pretending to offer comfort. Time had stopped meaning anything; hunger came and went like a suggestion, thirst was a dull echo somewhere behind her eyes, and sleep was just another version of the same waking blur. The sofa was a pit, a soft, stained crater that seemed to rise from the floor itself, swallowing her deeper each time she sank into it, as if the room had decided to keep her.

She stared straight ahead, to the television that had gone dark only moments ago, its screen still faintly glowing at the edges as if it couldn’t quite let go of the image it had been holding. The ghost of the broadcast shimmered and then faded, leaving behind her reflection, hollow eyes, hair falling limp around her face, the faint shimmer of something that might once have been youth—and for a second she thought the image on the screen was someone else entirely. When the light dimmed to black, she still looked, unable to stop, because the darkness had become something to hold onto, a space that felt both endless and suffocating. Sometimes, she thought she could still see movement inside it, the blur of an arena crowd, the glint of ice beneath her blades, the sudden brightness of applause echoing through memory and she would stare, frozen, wondering if this was all that was left of her: a flicker trapped between what had been and what would never come again.

Figure skating had been her future. It had been her lifeline, her mirror, her language, the only thing that had ever made sense. Every morning she had built herself around it, like ice forming around a scar, certain that the world would always hold its shape as long as she kept moving fast enough. Without it, she was nothing, she wasn’t even Nat anymore. Nat had been someone, once; Nat had had a name worth writing down, worth remembering. Now it was just a word she used so the last few people who still bothered to call her wouldn’t have to face the emptiness of not knowing what to say instead. Most of the time, she didn’t find anything suitable to call herself at all, because what do you name something that no longer exists?

She was a shell, an echo of muscle and memory, wearing the shape of a person she could no longer be. She missed the sound of her blades biting the ice, that clean, sharp rhythm that had once been her heartbeat. She missed the air of the rink, cold and alive, the way it filled her lungs until she thought she might shatter from the sheer force of it. She missed the burn in her legs, the ache in her chest, the blur of the crowd as she spun until the world vanished and she was nothing but speed and light. She missed the winter, not just the season but the feeling, the purity, the clarity, the way the cold had once made her feel like she belonged somewhere.

Now, there was only the heat of stale air, the smell of ash and old whiskey, the distant sound of cars dragging their tires through rain outside. The window stayed closed, the curtains drawn tight, and the world beyond her room felt like another planet, one she had been exiled from long ago. She didn’t move. She barely breathed. She just stayed there, in the dim, trembling silence, waiting for something to change even though she knew, deep down, that nothing ever would.

“Open the fucking door, Nat, it’s raining!” A voice broke through the static and the haze, cutting through the muffled hum of the motel’s old walls like a blade, followed by a series of dull, heavy bangs against the door that rattled the thin wood and echoed faintly through the room. The sound seemed almost out of place in the thick air, like something too alive for a space that had forgotten what movement sounded like.

She knew that voice—she could have recognized it anywhere, even through sleep, even through the months that had stretched and twisted between who she was then and what she was now. Maybe it was the only voice she still remembered clearly, the only one that hadn’t been swallowed by the static that filled her mind whenever she tried to reach back. It was real, undeniably real, in a world where everything else, her memories, her reflection, even her name—had started to feel like a half-finished hallucination.

She didn’t move. She didn’t even turn her head. The sound was distant, as though it came from another life, one she had left behind and never meant to revisit. She heard him—of course she did—but she stayed still, hoping if she waited long enough, if she held her breath and didn’t answer, he’d just give up and vanish back into the rain. That was how things usually worked: people came, people called, and then the silence swallowed them again.

But it didn’t.

“I know you’re in there,” the voice said again, firmer now, muffled slightly by the door but still carrying that edge she remembered too well, the mix of irritation and concern that always made her feel like she was both a lost cause and a child caught doing something wrong. “Don’t be an ass. Open the door.” The banging stopped, replaced by the steady percussion of rain beating against the thin metal railing outside, the sound pooling into the silence like a heartbeat she couldn’t quite ignore.

“Go home, coach,” she said at last, her voice breaking the quiet like something fragile. It came out rough, hoarse, as though it had been unused for too long. She didn’t look toward the door. Her eyes stayed fixed on the black screen of the television, the reflection of her face barely visible in its surface. “Go home,” she repeated, softer this time, as if saying it again might make it true. She hoped he would leave, she wanted him to, needed him to, because facing him meant facing everything she’d buried here in this room.

But she also hoped he wouldn’t.

Not really.

Not this time.

Because some small, dying part of her—some stubborn ember that hadn’t yet gone cold—still wanted to be found.

“I’m not leaving, so you better hurry and open up, Natalie,” he called back, his voice muffled by the rain but cutting through the steady hum of it all the same. The storm had thickened now; it beat against the metal railing, hissed against the windows, pressed itself into the walls like it was trying to get in. “If I end up getting sick, it’s on you,” he added, his tone strained, the words punctuated by a rough, uneven breath. When she focused, really listened, she could hear the wet rasp in his throat, that faint rattle that came from too many cold nights and not enough rest, and she thought, with a strange, distant kind of guilt, that he probably already was sick. And still, he was there, talking to her through the storm, stubborn as ever, refusing to leave.

“Asshole,” she muttered, the word slipping out like a sigh, soft and tired, without anger, without teeth. It was almost tender in its exhaustion. Her body moved before she gave it permission, guided by the weight of something old and familiar, that reflex to obey when his voice broke through the fog. She rose, slow and unsteady, her joints stiff, her muscles protesting, and shuffled across the sticky floor, her bare feet catching on the warped boards. The coffee table scraped slightly as she brushed against it, and a few empty bottles clinked together, a fragile chorus filling the silence that followed. One rolled to the edge and stopped, another toppled over, and somewhere a magazine slid from a pile, pages fluttering open like wings before settling face-down in a puddle of ash. She didn’t bother picking it up.

She reached the door, or maybe it reached her; the distance felt longer than it was. Her hand hovered above the handle, her reflection faint in the brass, blurred by the dim light bleeding through the cracks. For a moment, she just stood there, the air around her still and heavy, the smell of stale smoke and whiskey mixing with the damp scent of rain that managed to slip in through the unsealed edges of the window. Outside, she could almost hear him shift his weight, the wet sound of fabric against fabric, the low shuffle of his boots against the soaked floor.

“Hey.”

The word came out rough, her throat catching on it. It wasn’t meant to sound like anything in particular, but it did, something between surrender and disbelief, a fragile attempt to bridge the silence that had grown too wide between them. Maybe he heard the tremor in her voice, or maybe she imagined it, but for a second the knocking stopped, the air seemed to pause with it, and she wasn’t sure if she was breathing.

She didn’t even realize when she’d turned the handle, when the door had opened. It just did, all at once, the hinge groaning, the rain spilling in as if the storm had been waiting for its cue. And there he was—Coach—standing in the hallway, drenched to the bone, his hair plastered to his forehead, his jacket dripping onto the carpet in small, uneven streams. His face looked drawn, pale under the flickering neon light of the motel sign outside, and there was something in his eyes, a tired kind of worry that she didn’t deserve. He looked miserable. But then again, everything did under that kind of light.

She wanted to believe it was him, the soaked clothes, the late hour, the fatigue that made him look that way. But she knew better. The real misery wasn’t out there, standing in the rain. It was here, inside, in the stagnant air of her room, in her reflection still trembling on the black screen of the television behind her. The truth was that he didn’t look broken—she did. And as they stared at each other, with the sound of rain filling the silence between them, she realized he didn’t have to say it out loud for her to know he saw it too.

“Good to see you,” he said simply, his voice carrying that tired gentleness that somehow managed to sound both familiar and undeserved, and the worst part was that he meant it, like, in the end, it would always be good, no matter what shape she came in, no matter how far she had fallen from the version of herself he used to know.

“You don’t have to say that. It won’t make me feel better,” she hummed, her tone quiet and even, a simple truth spoken without the strength to dress it in cruelty. There was nothing good to see, nothing that could be mistaken for the girl she had once been. Just a shell, and not even a pretty one, not the kind you’d find gleaming on the sand and hold to your ear to hear the sea. No, she was the kind you’d step over without a thought, the one too cracked, too hollow, its edges worn soft and colorless, smudged with sand and years, forgotten at the bottom of the tide.

He frowned, that same soft frown he always wore when he was trying not to show he cared too much. It wasn’t anger, not even disappointment, just that quiet human sadness that lived in the corners of his face. He’d always been like that with her, so painfully human, so unbearably kind and that was what made it worse. Because she knew he meant every word, every look, every patient silence, and somehow, that sincerity burned sharper than pity ever could. And yet, he didn’t argue, didn’t try to correct her or convince her otherwise. He knew better. He knew Nat could always fight harder, sharper, crueler if he pushed. Even now, when there was almost nothing left in her to fight with.

“Then make me feel better,” he said finally, and there was a flicker of humor beneath the exhaustion, a faint spark of something that might have once been light. “Come on, I brought your favorite.” He lifted his hand, and she noticed the tremor in his fingers as he held up a plastic bag, the thin handles stretched near to tearing, the plastic slick with rain. Inside were small white takeout boxes stacked haphazardly, and at the bottom, a dark stain spread slowly, some kind of brown sauce leaking out and dripping onto the hallway floor.

He always forgot the sauces when he ran around this small city. Always had. And somehow, that small, stupid detail almost undid her, the familiarity of it, the proof that even after everything, some things hadn’t changed. The smell hit her before she even realized she’d opened the door wider: fried food gone slightly cold, salt and oil and something sweet lingering beneath it, the kind of scent that pulled memories from the corners of her mind like ghosts she hadn’t invited.

She wanted to tell him to leave, to turn around and go back before he caught something worse than a cold, but the words wouldn’t come. 

And for a moment—just one small, fragile moment—she let herself look at him, really look, and thought that maybe it was good to see him, after all. Even if it hurt. Especially because it did.

There’s no ceremony to it—he just steps inside as she makes that small movement with her head. It’s not an invitation, not really, but it’s the closest thing she has to one, maybe the closest she’s ever had, and that tiny gesture is enough. The air shifts when he crosses the threshold, bringing with him the cold dampness of the rain, the scent of wet asphalt and tired roads.

Coach comes in, quiet, like someone who’s learned to navigate fragile spaces. He doesn’t ask where to sit or what to touch; he just finds his place the way he always did, somewhere between patience and concern. He never needed much more than that to step into Nat’s life anyway—he had always known how to cross the distance she built between herself and everything else, how to pretend it didn’t exist, how to act like she hadn’t already given up on being reached.

It’s funny, in a bitter, broken kind of way, how she used to believe that Coach was the only good thing she’d ever have, the only one who might still see something worth saving beneath the wreckage. And today, that thought couldn’t feel truer. Maybe it’s sad, but then again, everything about her life has been steeped in sadness for so long that it’s almost become comfortable, familiar, like a coat that doesn’t fit anymore but that she still wears because it’s the only thing keeping her from freezing. So she doesn’t fight it. She just sits down, takes the food he brought, and eats in silence.

The room hums with the sound of the rain tapping against the window, the faint buzz of the neon sign outside bleeding its dull red glow across the walls, painting everything in the color of exhaustion. She knows it reeks in here, the sour smell of spilled whiskey, of cigarettes long gone cold, of dust and sweat and something older than both but Coach doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t flinch at the clutter or the stains or the television flickering in the corner, and she’s grateful for that silence, for the way he refuses to make her shame real by naming it.

He just eats too, chopsticks in hand, his posture slightly hunched like he’s trying to make himself smaller, to take up less space in her wreck of a world. The food isn’t good—it never is—but the warmth of it seeps through her fingers anyway, and for a few long, quiet minutes, the two of them just sit there breathing the same stale air, pretending that this moment is ordinary. It’s peaceful, or something close to it, the kind of fragile calm that exists only because both of them are too tired to break it.

It’s great—until it isn’t.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it…” Coach says finally, his voice soft, careful, the kind of tone you use when you’re afraid the wrong word might shatter someone completely. He sets down his chopsticks, his eyes lifting toward her, and she can feel the weight of that gaze pressing against her skin. She doesn’t look up. She can’t. Instead, she keeps her focus on the food, on the rhythm of chewing and swallowing, the small mechanical act that feels easier than breathing.

“You’re right. I don’t,” she says, her voice flat, almost gentle, cutting him off before he can reach her. And she keeps eating, pushing another mouthful past the lump in her throat, tasting nothing, her jaw moving as if the motion itself could drown out the sound of his disappointment.

The silence that follows isn’t empty—it’s heavy, dense, alive with all the things neither of them will say. The rain outside seems louder now, each drop hitting the window like a quiet accusation.

And for a moment, she wonders if this—this shared quiet, this awkward almost-comfort—is all they have left.

“But we need to,” he said simply, his voice just a little louder than the rain, loud enough to cross the small space between them but still soft enough to sound like it didn’t belong to the world outside, like it existed only here, inside these four walls. He spoke as if he believed it more than anything, more than the wind clawing at the window, more than the endless whisper of the city that seemed to hum with every secret she had tried to bury.

Nat chewed harder, her jaw tightening until she could feel the tension echo down her neck, until the muscles there pulsed like something alive. That was her answer, her only one, the single motion she could manage without betraying anything else. Her eyes stayed locked on the box of ramen, unblinking, hollow, as though she could find something there to anchor herself to. The noodles were overcooked, limp, the broth congealed with oil, and in the middle floated a torn piece of lettuce, half-rotted, drowned under the slick surface of soy sauce. She stared at it until it almost looked human, until she could almost see herself in that shapeless, drowned thing.

Coach drew in a long breath, a heavy one that filled the silence like static. She could tell it wasn’t for her, it was for him, for the weight of what he was about to say, for the part of himself that still believed this was worth trying. He’d always done that—breathe like the world depended on it, like if he stopped, she might too.

“I found a way, Natalie,” he said finally, slow and deliberate, each word measured, careful, as if he was afraid they might shatter before they reached her.

That name again. Natalie. The sound of it hit her like a cold wind through an open door, sharp and unwelcome. It was the name of another life, another person, the girl who used to exist under bright lights, the one who had carved circles into the ice and called it art, the one who had made people believe in beauty before she showed them the truth beneath it. That name belonged to the girl who used to be a star, a thing burning so bright she thought the world could never turn away. But it had. They all had. And now she was the ruin of that brightness, the echo of it, floating somewhere between the memory of applause and the silence that had followed her fall.

The air between them thickened, the silence stretching until it felt like something tangible, heavy enough to crush the words before they formed. The rain outside was louder now, the rhythm of it erratic, angry, as if the sky itself was trying to fill the space where neither of them could speak.

Then—

“A way,” she repeated, but the word came out slow, drained of curiosity. Not a question, just a dull acknowledgment, a sound that didn’t quite fit in her mouth anymore. She didn’t want to hear what came next. She didn’t want to know what kind of hope he’d dragged here, soaking wet and trembling, thinking it might save her. If she could have laughed, she would have, it would’ve come out as a short, bitter snort, but even that felt too heavy to lift. Because there wasn’t anything funny about this anymore. Not this, not him, not her.

And yet, somewhere deep in the static hum of her mind, something twitched, something small and sharp, a spark that didn’t belong. Hope, maybe. Or the ghost of it. And that scared her more than anything.

Maybe it was a breach, a tremor, a slip in the armor—anything—and Coach took it with everything he had left, the same way he always did, like someone who’d learned to spot the smallest flicker of light in a room where everything else had burned out. He leaned closer over the counter that separated them, though it might as well have been an ocean. His voice came fast, too fast, the words tumbling out before he could catch them, urgent, trembling. “I know you’re suspended—I know, but—just hear me out, what if—”

“What, Ben?” she cut him off, sharp but shaking, the sound coming out in a single jagged breath that almost hurt to release. “I hope you didn’t come here just to fuck me up more with your fucking hope.” The word itself cracked in her throat—hope—like something she hadn’t said in a long time, something too delicate for the room it was spoken in. She looked up then, her eyes wide and glassy, the whites trembling with exhaustion, her pupils blown out like she’d been staring too long at something that never looked back. She hated it, the way hope still stirred in her somewhere deep, like an old muscle memory she couldn’t unlearn. She hated that he could still make her feel it, hated how much she wanted to believe he was right, even when she knew better.

“Listen,” he said again, leaning forward until the edge of the counter pressed into his stomach, his posture that of someone fighting gravity. His voice softened but his eyes didn’t, they burned the same way they always had, the way they did before every competition, before she’d step onto the ice and he’d meet her gaze and nod once, as if to say you can do this, and she’d believe him, if only for a second. That same fire. The one that hadn’t died even when she had.

“This is all I do with you, Ben,” she said finally, her voice level and quiet, drained of everything but fatigue. “And I’m tired of that.” There was no venom in it, no anger, only the soft, empty hum of someone who had run out of sharp edges to throw. “So spit it out before you choke on it.”

He did. “Duo, Natalie,” he said, the words slow but sure, his voice barely above a whisper and yet somehow louder than the rain. “You can still skate in the pairs category.”

And just like that, everything stopped. The sound of the rain dulled, the neon outside seemed to fade, the whole room holding its breath. The silence wasn’t peaceful this time, it was heavy, suffocating, the kind of silence that carried weight and consequence, the kind that meant something was shifting, whether she wanted it to or not.

Then came the laugh, harsh, sudden, raw. It clawed its way out of her chest before she even knew it was there, dry and broken like something scraped from the bottom of a throat that hadn’t laughed in years. She didn’t recognize it, but she could feel it, deep in her ribs, the vibration of it burning her eyes, the sting of tears that she refused to let fall.

“Even if I could learn how to skate pairs before the pre-season,” she said through the remnants of that bitter sound, her voice trembling, thick, “because news flash, Ben—I’ve never done it before, and that shit’s in three fucking months…” She stopped, breathing hard, her jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “Who the fuck would want me as a partner?” she spat, each word hitting like a punch, loud enough to make the light flicker.

The anger felt good, for a second. It filled the hollow space inside her chest where the ache had been sitting for months. But she knew it wasn’t real, not really. It wasn’t anger that made her talk like that, it was desperation, raw and ugly, the kind that clawed up her throat and begged to be disguised. Because anger was easier to hold than hope. Anger didn’t betray you.

And yet, when she finally looked at him—really looked—she saw it in his eyes, the quiet belief, the same old stubborn faith that used to drag her back to the rink every morning before sunrise, the kind of faith that didn’t fade even when everything else did. And for the briefest second, she hated him for it.

But deeper still—she hated herself for wanting to believe him, for letting even the faintest spark of something too close to hope crawl its way through the ruins of her chest, where everything had long since burned out; she hated how easily that voice of his, calm and steady even through the rain, could reach through the static she had built around herself, how easily it could find the little pieces she thought she had buried for good.

That it could somehow work, that it could mean something again, that maybe the world wasn’t done with her yet.

“There’s someone,” he said simply, like it was simple, that fucking simple, and yet in his eyes she could read the kind of determination that used to make her jump higher, spin faster, push through the cold even when her lungs screamed, the kind of faith she had lost but he somehow still carried for both of them.

“Who the fuck would want an ostracized figure skater as their partner? I know you don’t have enough money for that shit, Ben,” she whispered with all her remaining ardor, her voice low but sharp, a blade she didn’t even believe in anymore, her gaze unwavering, unblinking, because if she let herself look away, she might crumble under the weight of what he was really offering, another beginning, another fall.

He didn’t move, didn’t flinch, his face softened by the dim, trembling light coming from the street outside, the kind that turned everything a little more fragile than it should be; and when he spoke again, his words were quieter, heavier.

“Do you trust me?”

It wasn’t a question about the ice, not really, it was about the rest of it, the parts they never said out loud, the cracks, the waiting, the endless trying to fix what could never be fixed.

That was maybe her last chance at life, and she felt it in the way her throat closed up, in the way the air seemed to shift around them, as if the whole room was holding its breath for her answer.

“Terribly so,” she breathed out at last, not as a promise, but as a confession.

~

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to it?” asked Paul as he wiped a plate clean in his hand, his movements slow and absent, like someone who didn’t quite know what to do with his concern, the sound of porcelain against the cloth echoing softly through the kitchen that smelled faintly of coffee and toast, of a morning that was his but not yet hers.

Canada had been confusing—everything had been, really—but Canada most of all, a country too big, too quiet, too polite to make any real sense to someone like her. Ottawa stretched endlessly, its streets folding into each other, all gray and cold and perfect, like a city that refused to let its walls crack, and she felt like a blotch of something too alive in all that stillness. If Nat could have chosen, she would have stayed home, her rink, her ice, the familiar hum of the compressors beneath the floor, the sound of her blades carving through something that felt like belonging, even when it hurt. But that was gone, and what remained were faces she knew too well, voices that whispered too much, people who saw too deep into her failures, who knew too many of the things she wished she had buried under the ice forever.

And sure, this was supposed to be a fresh start. That’s what Ben kept calling it, a new page, a clean sheet of ice. She could almost laugh at the metaphor, but she didn’t, because he said it with that same sincerity that made everything harder to refuse. It’s for the better, Natalie. It’s a new beginning. He’d said it in the taxi, in the plane, even as she stared out the window while the clouds swallowed her past, and again in Paul’s car, where the radio had played something slow and she had almost fallen asleep to the sound of him trying to believe his own words.

New country. New city. New people. New Natalie Scatorccio.

“I’m sure. I want to walk to it,” she said, her voice low, half-swallowed by the clatter of the plate he set down, her fingers gripping the strap of her old, beat-up bag until her knuckles turned white. The bag was heavy, stuffed with worn-out skates, broken laces, the smell of old leather and resin. It smelled like who she used to be, and she carried it like a relic, because part of her didn’t know how to exist without the weight of it.

At least there was Ben. And his boyfriend—Paul—didn’t suck too bad so far, she could admit that much. He cooked, he talked softly, he didn’t look at her like she was a tragedy. The house was big, too big for the three of them, all clean lines and quiet corners, a kind of silence she didn’t know how to fill. It was far from the city center, from the lights and sounds and places that breathed, but that was fine. The rink wasn’t close, but she wanted the walk. She needed it, the rhythm of her steps, the ache in her legs, the illusion of control in a world that had stripped her of it.

It was an old habit, walking to the rink. She used to do it as a teenager, a loser, a freak, cutting through the sharp morning air with her headphones on, counting the cracks in the sidewalk as if they could lead her somewhere better. She remembered the ache in her fingers, the numbness in her face, the silence of a house she left behind, if she could even call it a house.

Home was just a word, a shape made of letters, a definition she could recite but not feel. To her, it had never been warmth or safety, it was a noise, a blur, a place she escaped from until her legs carried her to the ice.

Now, as she stepped outside into the mild Canadian spring, the sky was still gray, though the kind of gray that felt more tired than angry, stretched thin over the city like a veil refusing to lift. The air carried that damp, heavy sweetness of April—half rain, half thaw—thick with the smell of wet pavement and waking trees. She tightened her jacket around her shoulders anyway, not because it was cold, but because the wind still had a bite to it, the stubborn kind that lingered after winter was supposed to be gone. The air tasted faintly of metal and rain, clean but uncertain, like the world hadn’t quite decided to start over yet..

And so she walked. The city stretched ahead, pale and endless, and she thought maybe, if she kept walking long enough, she’d find the part of herself she hadn’t managed to destroy yet.

She doesn’t so much as give Paul a proper goodbye, just a short, awkward nod, the kind that feels halfway between politeness and escape, her lips twisting into a weird, uncertain smile that should probably mean see you later, though she can’t tell if it’s even a smile or just her face trying to mimic something human before she slips out the door. Paul raises a hand, that soft look in his eyes she’s already learned to hate, the one that says take care of yourself without saying it, and she’s already gone before he can.

And then she walks. And keeps walking. 

When she finally stops, she’s standing in front of the center. It looks sterile and bright, all glass and steel pretending to catch sunlight that barely exists, its modern walls reflecting a distorted version of her—the hunched shoulders, the heavy bag, the too-pale face. She stares at it for a moment that feels too long, the thought hitting her all at once, raw and sudden: she needs a cigarette. Right. The. Fuck. Now. It’s the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that would steady her shaking hands, slow down the storm that’s been building in her since Ben first said the word duo.

“You made it,” a voice breaks through the craving, shattering the fragile silence like a blade through ice. It’s Ben, jogging toward her with the kind of optimism that always makes her chest tighten, his breath coming out in uneven puffs, his cheeks flushed pink from the cold. There’s a brightness to him that doesn’t belong in her world anymore, something too alive, too determined, like he’s running on pure belief. She almost resents him for it.

He slows as he reaches her, his smile wide and desperate in its own quiet way. “Hey, how’d you feel? Good? Yeah?” he says quickly, too quickly, not waiting for an answer as if her silence might scare him off if he gave it time to form. He’s already gesturing toward the entrance, his words tumbling out like the rhythm of a coach who’s always halfway between encouragement and command.

“She’s on the ice—you’ll watch her train, then you’ll talk. Be nice, Natalie, okay? She’s great, you’ll see.”

She doesn’t say anything. Her throat feels tight, her chest heavier than it should be. The smell hits her first when they push through the doors, the familiar scent of ice and metal, faintly chemical, mixed with the ghost of chalk and fabric softener from the skaters’ clothes. The sound follows: the sharp shhk of blades slicing through ice, the distant echo of music from the speakers, muffled laughter, a coach’s voice calling something she can’t quite make out.

It hits her like a memory she didn’t agree to remember, this sound, this smell, this feeling of air that’s just a few degrees too cold, enough to sting but not enough to hurt. For a moment, she can almost see herself out there, in motion, spinning, unstoppable, before it fades just as quickly.

She blinks, hard.

And then she keeps walking, following Ben into the cold light of the rink, her reflection vanishing in the glass as the heavy doors close behind her.

She’s supposed to start training tomorrow, today is just for formality, that’s what Ben said, that’s what she keeps telling herself. Just to sign a few papers with the federation, nod at a few people in suits, and say fucking hi to her so-called partner. Partner. She hates that word with the kind of slow-burning fury that lodges deep in her chest, hates that this—this humiliating circus—is her last chance at figure skating, and that it depends on someone else, depends on trust, depends on a stranger. And worse than that, a stranger who will have to touch her, lift her, hold her steady.

Strangers have always been dangerous. Strangers have teeth. They always have. The classmates who whispered, the parents who stared, the teachers who pitied her, the neighbors who smiled with knives in their eyes, everyone was a stranger, and everyone hurt her in their own way, little by little, until the word itself became a threat. Strangers were the kind of people who could destroy you with a look, and she had spent most of her life making sure she never gave them the chance.

The ice never hurt her. The ice was never a stranger. The ice was the only thing that stayed when everything else left—the only thing that listened without talking back, that held her when she fell and didn’t ask why. The ice saved her, again and again. Coach was ice too, steady and cold and grounding, something she could cling to when everything else went to hell. But a partner? A person she has to trust? Fuck that shit.

And honestly, who the fuck would want to pair up with her anyway? With what she’s been accused of, with her suspension still fresh enough to sting, with the headlines that still crawl across Google like open wounds. Who would be desperate—or insane—enough to even consider skating beside her?

She gets her answer sooner than she’s ready for. Too soon. Way too soon.

It was one thing to watch her on videotape. She had done that for days, obsessively, studying the footage that Ben sent her, watching her potential partner move like light through glass, sharp, graceful, impossibly composed. She memorized every turn, every spin, the way her edges bit into the ice with confidence that looked effortless. Nat knew the routine by heart now; she could name every beat, every crescendo, every tiny flick of her wrist. It was clinical, detached, like studying a predator from behind a screen.

But seeing her in person—seeing her—was something else entirely.

She’s here, on the ice, and suddenly the distance collapses. The rink feels smaller, colder, the air too thin. The sound of the blades slicing through ice fills the whole room, sharp and rhythmic, like a pulse. Her partner moves with that same precision Nat saw on the tape, but there’s something different now, something alive, something that doesn’t fit inside a screen. She’s fast, controlled, utterly focused, her hair pulled back, her body cutting through space like a line of light. Every gesture feels deliberate, rehearsed but natural, like she owns every inch of the ice beneath her.

Nat can name the routine, she’s seen it too many times to forget, but now, standing here, watching it unfold just a few feet away, she realizes how much she’d underestimated it. On tape, it was choreography. In person, it’s something closer to command.

And for the first time in months, she feels that twitch in her chest again.

She looks tall, taller than she seemed on tape, and all too strong, her movements measured and deliberate, each lift executed with surgical precision. The girl skating with her is lighter, smaller, and she makes mistakes, Nat can see them instantly, the missteps, the uneven landings, the slight tremor of imbalance in her spins but the tall one never falters, never loses her rhythm, never breaks focus. And even as she corrects for her partner’s errors, even as the routine threatens to waver, she keeps that same impossible expression on her face, a smile, open and bright, the kind of smile Nat just knows is sincere, infuriatingly so.

Nat has never smiled once on the ice. Not once in her too-short, too-intense, too-fucking-serious career. Smiling was weakness. Smiling was distraction. It was vanity, softness, vulnerability—everything she’d been trained to carve out of herself in pursuit of perfection. Figure skating was not joy; it was survival, precision, a war disguised as art. The moment you smiled, you risked falling apart.

She hates her. God, she hates her. Hates the way this woman radiates confidence like she was born with it, the way she moves like the ice was made for her, like the world bends just slightly to keep her upright. Hates how even her mistakes look graceful, forgivable, human. Hates that smile, sharp and easy and unshakable as if any of this were funny, as if this weren’t a battlefield but a stage, as if this were just some weekend pastime and not something that eats you alive from the inside out.

It burns inside Nat, the kind of hatred that isn’t really hatred but recognition, an ache so raw it curdles into anger. Because the truth is, the sight of her—so alive, so unbroken—feels like a cruel joke, a reminder of what Nat used to be before everything cracked.

She stays there, unmoving, sitting on the cold, metal bleachers of the half-empty rink, elbows on her knees, eyes fixed on her like a curse she can’t take back. The air smells faintly of chlorine and frost, the hum of the compressors constant beneath the dull scrape of blades against ice.

She can’t look away. Not from the tall woman, whose long curls are trapped in a high ponytail that swings with each movement, not from the faint scar slashing across her forehead like a deliberate imperfection, not from her eyes, large, focused, too full of light or from her mouth, lips too pink, too full, too alive.

Nat feels something twist in her gut, something she doesn’t want to name.

An hour passes like that, or maybe just a minute, maybe the whole day, it’s impossible to tell. Time folds in on itself, collapsing into the steady rhythm of motion and the hollow thud of her heartbeat. She doesn’t blink. She couldn’t, even if she tried.

And then it’s the end of the routine, of whatever the fuck she’s supposed to call it, because that wasn’t training, not by any stretch of the imagination. That was a show, a performance, a circus act for no one but the ghosts watching from the stands, and Nat just cannot fucking believe that this, this display of charm and theatrical grace, is supposed to be her partner.

Something in her screams, this will never work. It cannot. It’s doomed from the start. Nat is not a team player. She never has been. She doesn’t do partners; she barely does people. She’s built her life out of solitude, out of cold rinks and colder silences, and the idea that she’s meant to share that fragile, sacred thing with someone else, a stranger, a performer, a fucking goof, feels almost like betrayal.

Because the ice is her life, the only thing that ever stayed when everything else fell apart. It’s the one surface that never lied to her, never promised warmth, never gave anything but what she earned. And now she’s supposed to share it, with someone who laughs on it, smiles on it, like it’s a playground, like it’s just another pretty stage for her to shine on.

Even as strong and graceful and technically perfect as the woman had looked, on tape and just now, in this too-short hour, none of it matters. It doesn’t erase the truth that they are fundamentally different creatures. Nat bleeds for the ice. This woman just dances on it.

The ice gives Nat life. For this woman, it’s just amusement, an outlet, a place to sparkle.

“You must be Natalie.”

The voice cuts through Nat’s spiraling thoughts, clear and bright, the kind of voice that sounds like it smiles even before you see the face it comes from. And there she is—the goof herself—standing right in front of her, all too tall even off the ice, shoulders squared, hands on her hips like she owns the goddamn rink, her cheeks flushed from exertion, still catching her breath, and of course, fucking smiling.

“Matthews,” Nat replies, flat and sharp, like her name is a blade she can hide behind. She squints up at the woman, hoping the coldness in her stare is enough to cut through the warmth of that smile.

The woman—Charlotte Matthews—winces, just barely, as if the name stung her pride, but not enough to wipe the grin from her lips. “Lottie,” she says easily, voice smooth, disarmingly soft. “Call me Lottie.” She extends a hand, her palm open, steady. “Nice to meet you, partner.”

The word lands like a slap. Partner. Nat’s mouth twists, not just in discomfort but in something dangerously close to disgust. She doesn’t take the hand. Instead, she mutters, almost to herself, “You looked smaller on tape.”

Lottie laughs, a low, warm sound that fills the space between them. Her hand falls back to her side, but her smile doesn’t falter. “I thought you were blonde,” she counters, a single brow arching in amusement, her tone teasing but never cruel, like she’s already decided not to take Nat’s hostility personally.

For a brief, unbearable second, Nat wants to hate her even more for that, for how easy she makes it all look, for how she refuses to break the tension that Nat clings to like armor.

But then Lottie’s gaze softens—just slightly—and the rink feels warmer than it should.

“All right, see you tomorrow, partner.”

She said it with a wink—an actual, goddamn wink—like some caricature of confidence ripped straight from a bad sports movie, and Nat swore she could feel her blood pressure spike just from witnessing it. Who the fuck even does that anymore? Who winks at people like that, all casual and warm and utterly unbearable?

And Nat, who usually had a venomous comeback ready, who could tear someone down with a single, carefully sharpened syllable, found herself utterly mute. Her jaw locked, her throat dry, her mind blank. She just stood there, frozen, watching Lottie walk away toward the locker room like none of this was strange, like they hadn’t just met under the strangest, most ridiculous circumstances of both their careers, like the world wasn’t quietly unraveling at Nat’s feet. Lottie moved as if the ice, the rink, the air itself bent to her rhythm, and Nat hated her for it—hated her for making it look so damn easy to exist.

~

“It can’t work, Coach.”

Ben wasn’t really her coach anymore, hadn’t been for years, not officially. Now he worked at the same sports center, still coaching figure skaters who hadn’t yet fallen from grace, who still had time to make something of themselves. But to her, he would always be Coach, the one who stayed when everyone else left, the one who knew how far she could push herself before breaking. They came from the same nowhere place, the same small town that reeked of whiskey and people who looked away when things got bad. Maybe that’s why she could never stop calling him that, Coach was safer than Ben, Coach didn’t imply change.

She’d been waiting outside for him, pacing the porch under the gray April sky, cigarette after cigarette burning down between her fingers, each drag a temporary act of rebellion, of defiance, of trying not to care. The air was sharp and wet and smelled faintly of thawing earth, but the nicotine made it bearable.

“It will work,” Ben sighed when he saw her, his voice flat from exhaustion, the kind that came not from training but from months of trying to convince her to believe in herself again. He dropped his bag by the door and joined her on the porch, shoulders sagging, eyes soft in that way that made her want to scream.

“I knew it was a fucking bad idea,” she snapped, turning on him, her hands trembling even as she tried to steady them on the railing. “I can’t do partners, Coach. I don’t share the ice. Never have, never will. There’s a reason for that—”

He raised a hand, the same way he always did when she started spiraling, his expression patient but frayed at the edges. “Can you let me put my stuff away before all that?”

She clenched her jaw, exhaled smoke through her nose like a dragon about to burn the whole porch down, and muttered, “Yeah, fine.” The cigarette trembled between her fingers as she took another drag, pretending it helped.

“And stop with the cigarettes, Nat,” he said as he disappeared into the front door, his voice echoing back to her, tired but steady, still clinging to the version of her he thought he could save. “We need you back on the ice, okay? Remember what we talked about.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled, not even pretending to listen, crushing the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray with a slow, deliberate twist. The ember hissed out, and she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hunching over the railing as if she could fold herself small enough to vanish. The smoke still clung to her hair, her hands, her breath.

The night settled around her, and for a long, heavy moment, she stayed there, staring out into the quiet suburban dark, feeling the weight of everything she had already lost, and everything she wasn’t sure she wanted back.

“Charlotte’s a great partner, Nat. I don’t know why you got all worked up,” Ben said as he stepped out to join her on the porch, his hands still damp from washing up, the light from the kitchen spilling faintly onto the wood planks beneath his feet. He leaned against the post beside her, his voice thoughtful, like he was trying to reason his way through the words as he spoke them. “The girl couldn’t be mean if her life depended on it. I’ve seen her deal with the hardest coaches, the most selfish partners, and not once did she ever lose it. Not a single time.”

Nat scoffed, low and bitter. “I don’t give a shit about that,” she snapped, her tone sharp and unsteady. “She could be the best fucking partner alive, she could be the goddamn dream of every duo skater on earth, and it still wouldn’t matter. That’s not the point, Coach. I can’t share it. I can’t share the ice, did you even see her out there? She’s smiling like it’s fun.”

Ben turned toward her, his mouth twitching into something halfway between amusement and disbelief. “Figure skating’s supposed to be a little bit fun, Nat,” he teased gently, trying to soften her edges like he always did. “You can’t blame your partner for smiling.”

“This is not—god, Coach,” she cut in, her voice breaking under the weight of her frustration, “this isn’t fun. This is everything. This is my life. And she’s up there treating it like a fucking game. I saw her, I saw it on tape, I saw it today—she’s playing around, she’s not serious. She doesn’t care. You know what she is? She’s one of those people who never had to fight for it, never had to bleed for it. I made my research, I know who she is, she’s a goddamn nepo baby, Ben. Of course life’s all smiles and sunshine when the ice isn’t the only thing keeping you alive.”

Ben let out a slow exhale, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, his patience thin but not yet gone. “Look, Nat,” he said quietly, voice steadier now, anchored in that calm tone he used when he needed her to actually listen. “Who the hell cares about that? She’s the only one who agreed to skate with you. The only one, Nat. Everyone else said no. She didn’t. She’s the only skater without a partner for next season who didn’t laugh at the idea. And I need you to remember, this is it. This is your last chance to get back on the ice.”

“I know,” she muttered, softer now, almost a sigh, her voice trembling as she looked away into the gray April dusk. “I fucking know. I just—” She stopped, biting down on her lip so hard it hurt, the words curling back down her throat like smoke she couldn’t exhale.

Ben’s tone shifted, quieter, more careful. “You haven’t gone back on the ice yet, have you?”

She hesitated, her jaw working as she stared at the dark of the night. “I couldn’t before,” she whispered, the words barely audible, “so why would I now?”

“Tomorrow,” he said gently, not an order but a promise, or maybe a plea.

“I know,” she murmured again, almost to herself this time, her voice breaking on the edge of exhaustion. “I fucking know…”

She leaned forward on the railing, her shoulders curling in, the porch creaking faintly beneath her weight. Her eyes lingered on the distant city lights, blurred through the fine drizzle of rain that had started to fall, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying more. The world smelled like wet wood and nicotine, and somewhere deep down, beneath all the anger, fear, and denial, something inside her ached, not for the ice, not yet, but for the person she used to be when the world still felt cold and endless and hers.

“When you get back on the ice, everything will be less scary,” he said softly, his voice carrying that worn-out warmth of someone who had repeated the same words too many times, each repetition a little more fragile than the last. “Just… let yourself dive back in, Nat. Everything will make more sense then.” He nudged her shoulder lightly, a small, human gesture against the growing chill, and his mouth pulled into that tired, patient smile he always saved for her, the one that tried to bridge the distance she kept building.

She tried to look back at him, to say something, anything, but couldn’t. Her gaze stayed fixed ahead, past the quiet street, past the narrow strip of porch light, out toward the vague horizon where the city spread wide and restless. Somewhere beyond the blur of rooftops and streetlamps, she could almost picture the sports center, its metal frame, the faint hum of the cooling system, the ice waiting for her like a ghost she had unfinished business with.

“You know,” he added after a moment, when the silence had grown thick enough for the wind to hum through it, brushing the edges of their words, “you used to have fun too. On the ice. Before.”

“Before,” she echoed under her breath, the word catching in her throat, flat and almost voiceless. It wasn’t just a time marker, it was a wound. Before the headlines. Before the shame. Before skating stopped being a home and became a haunting.

Ben exhaled quietly beside her, and she could tell he knew he had hit something inside her, something she wouldn’t touch. He lingered there a few more seconds, hands buried in his pockets, looking at her the way he had when she was a kid, half worried, half proud, always waiting for her to look up. But she didn’t. She never did.

“I’m gonna head back,” he said at last, his voice quieter, careful not to break whatever fragile stillness they had built. “Try to get some sleep, alright?” He looked at her profile one last time, the streetlight catching on her cheekbone, on the tired cut of her expression, then turned and disappeared back into the warmth of the house, the door closing gently behind him.

Nat stayed there, listening to the hum of the city, the way it swelled and faded like a faraway ocean. The night air was heavy with the smell of wet asphalt and old cigarette smoke, the porch railing cold under her palms.

“Before,” she muttered finally, almost like a curse, almost like a prayer, tasting the word as if it no longer belonged to her.

~

“Hey, didn’t peg you for an early bird—”

The voice cut through the hum of her thoughts like a crack in still water, and Nat froze mid-motion, her fingers tangled in the laces of her skates, eyes still fixed on the scuffed tile floor. For a second, she didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, the morning air around her sharp and cold in the silence of the locker room. Then, reluctantly, she raised her head.

Lottie stood there—of course she did—at the beautiful and godforsaken hour of five in the morning, looking entirely too alive for someone who should have been half-asleep. The fluorescent lights overhead caught on her curls, perfectly tied back into a high ponytail, not a single strand daring to fall out of place. Even her training gear looked new, like it had been ironed for the occasion, black and gold with a sheen that made Nat’s worn-out jacket look even sadder. There was a faint trace of perfume in the air too, light, clean, citrus maybe, which somehow made her presence even more unreal. And then there was the smile, bright and open and much too genuine for the hour, the kind of smile that could only belong to someone who had never really been broken by the world.

Lottie didn’t say anything at first. She just stood there, watching, her expression unreadable, like she was trying to piece something together. Her eyes trailed slowly over Nat, lingering too long, and Nat felt the heat rise to her neck, irritation and discomfort twining together like smoke.

“Yeah, well,” she muttered finally, her voice low and dry as she went back to tugging at her skate laces, “I like when there’s no one around. You know. When the ice is mine.”

Lottie tilted her head slightly, still smiling, that infuriatingly gentle look never leaving her face. “You know,” she said after a beat, “I was just pointing something out yesterday. I wasn’t, like, telling you to go back blonde.”

Nat’s hands froze again, halfway through tying her boot. Her jaw clenched. She could feel Lottie’s eyes on her hair, on the pale blonde strands that had replaced the dull brown she had worn for the past year. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing or maybe not. Maybe it had been inevitable.

It had been a long time since she’d seen herself like this, since she’d dared to look like the version of her that belonged to the ice. The day she’d stopped skating, she’d stopped dyeing it too. She had let it fade out, just like everything else about her. The brown had grown dull, tired, like she was trying to disappear into something smaller than herself.

But last night, for some reason, she’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror with the drugstore dye dripping through her fingers, the smell sharp in her nose, the light flickering above her. She’d even cut her bangs, too short and uneven, just like when she was a teenager, back when she’d believed in things like medals and redemption. It looked almost ridiculous now but it felt right, in a strange, painful way. Like reaching for a ghost of the person she used to be.

Maybe, she had thought then, if she could look like that girl again, she could remember what it felt like to belong to the ice. Maybe it would make stepping back onto it hurt a little less.

She pulled the laces tighter, her knuckles white. “Didn’t do it for you,” she said without looking up, her voice clipped and tired, but something inside her trembled anyway because she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

“It looks good anyway,” Lottie said after a moment, her voice softer this time, stripped of the teasing brightness she had carried in with her, replaced by something slower, something that lingered. She was still standing there, hands loosely at her sides, her eyes too open, too steady, watching Nat with the kind of quiet attention that made her skin prickle.

“Fuck off,” was all Nat could manage, the words coming out low and automatic, not even laced with anger, just exhaustion, like she had already used up all her fight before the day had even started. She pressed her palms against her knees, exhaled through her nose, and stood up, the movement deliberate, her muscles tensing like she was bracing herself for something heavier than it looked. Her gloves hung from one hand, limp and half-crushed.

“I guess you’re not huge on compliments, huh?” Lottie said lightly, but Nat caught the flicker of hesitation in her tone, like she wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking anymore. Lottie’s gaze followed Nat’s movements as she bent to grab her bag, the small metal zipper clinking against the bench. Then, with a sigh that sounded almost like defeat, Lottie sat down on the wooden seat, finally bending to lace her own skates, her fingers moving quickly, almost rushed, as if she wanted to make up for lost time.

Nat didn’t answer. She rolled her eyes, though it was more out of habit than irritation, and the sound that escaped her throat wasn’t quite a laugh, not quite a scoff, something brittle and caught in between. She zipped her bag closed, threw it into the nearest empty locker with a dull thud, and slammed it shut with a single sharp motion. The metal latch clicked like punctuation at the end of a thought she didn’t want to finish.

Without looking back, she started toward the exit. The locker room was cold and silent except for the faint squeak of her skates against the rubber mats.

“Not waiting for your partner?” Lottie called after her, her voice cutting through the quiet, soft but steady, like she was trying to sound casual and failing.

Nat froze for half a second, just enough for the sound to catch in her chest—then exhaled sharply and kept walking. “You’re too slow,” she threw over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around, “talk less, Matthews.”

“It’s Lot—”

But the door swung shut before Lottie could finish, the sound of it cutting her words in half, leaving only the faint hum of the rink beyond.

Lottie stayed there for a moment, motionless, one skate half-tied, the cold air brushing her neck, and she smiled again, quietly this time, to herself, before pulling the last lace tight.

Nat wished the locker room were farther from the rink, farther from the sharp, familiar echo of blades against ice, farther from the smell of chill and polish and faint detergent that always seemed to cling to the walls, just far enough that she could think, gather herself, breathe before walking back into the part of her life she wasn’t sure still belonged to her. The short walk left no room for preparation, no time to rebuild the armor she had carefully stripped away in the years since. It felt like being pushed into a reunion she wasn’t ready for, with an old friend she hadn’t seen in so long that she no longer knew whether she could still tell it everything, or if that friend would look back at her with different eyes now, no longer recognizing her at all.

She stood at the entrance, her gloved hand gripping the railing, eyes fixed on the wide, pale expanse ahead of her. The ice stretched before her like a mirror that refused to show her reflection, its pure white surface unbroken and endless under the artificial lights. It always reminded her of winter, not the kind of winter people romanticized, with snowfalls and scarves and laughter, but the real kind, the kind that hurt a little when you breathed it in, that scraped at your lungs and left your fingertips aching. Maybe that was why she loved it so much, or maybe it was the other way around, maybe she had learned to love winter because it reminded her of the ice. She couldn’t tell anymore which came first, the season or the devotion.

All she knew was that the ice had always been her warmth, the only kind she trusted. It dulled the pain when nothing else could; it numbed the bruises that dotted her skin and her mind alike, made the noise fade away until only silence remained. When the trailer she grew up in turned cold, it meant she was alone, and that was peace, in its own twisted way. Cold meant safety. Cold meant no shouting, no slamming doors, no one to leave marks on her body or her heart.

Here, the cold was hers. The rink wasn’t just frozen water, it was her sanctuary, the only place where she could exist without explanation, where everything that had hurt her dissolved into the stillness beneath her blades. The air felt cleaner here, sharper. She inhaled it like a prayer.

And yet, she couldn’t find her way back to peace, not really. It was right there before her, close enough that she could see it, could almost touch it, could taste it on the tip of her tongue like the sting of frost in the back of her throat, but some invisible barrier kept her from stepping forward, from surrendering to the only thing that had ever made sense. Her legs felt heavy, her chest tight, the laces of her skates biting against her ankles as if even they were warning her to stay still. She could see the surface glinting under the lights, that familiar sheen of promise and danger all at once, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to cross the small distance separating her from it.

She stood there, staring like a fool, like someone peering into a past life she no longer had the right to claim. Every nerve in her body ached to move, to step out onto the ice, to hear the blade’s first slice and feel the cold rise through her knees, but her mind kept whispering what if it isn’t yours anymore? What if it had changed while she was gone, warped by time, by absence, by the silence she’d left behind? What if, in her absence, it had learned to belong to someone else?

She found herself frozen in place, her breath fogging faintly in the chill air, staring at the empty rink she had spent countless nights praying to return to. The emptiness was almost mocking, this was what she had begged for, what she had built her dreams around in the dark corners of too many sleepless nights, what she had thought would save her. And now, here it was, waiting. It should have felt like coming home, but instead it felt like standing outside a locked door, hearing laughter on the other side.

Even the things she thought would help, the newly re-dyed blonde hair that mirrored her old self, the worn skates molded perfectly to her feet, the muscle memory still whispering beneath her skin, none of it was enough. They were just relics of a life she wasn’t sure she could inhabit again.

“So you were waiting for me,” came a voice that broke through her thoughts like a stone through glass, light and casual and horribly familiar by now. Matthews—Lottie—her partner. The word still made something clench inside her. Lottie was suddenly there beside her, close enough that Nat could smell the faint sweetness of her perfume, the warmth of someone unbothered by cold. Her presence filled the silence with something unbearable. She looked straight at Nat’s profile, that expectant, too-bright smile carved into her face like she had never once doubted her welcome.

“I wasn’t,” Nat muttered, her voice low, rough, not turning her head, her eyes still fixed on the gleaming surface before them but her focus had already been broken, scattered by the intrusion, by the way Lottie’s calmness seemed to press against the edges of her unrest. And the ice, once her only sanctuary, suddenly felt impossibly far away.

“Sure,” said simply Lottie, and somehow she made it both sound like she believed it and like she didn’t. 

With that, she saw Lottie launch herself onto the ice without hesitation, with that effortless grace of someone who had never known what it meant to hesitate, to freeze, to break. She didn’t wait for anything, didn’t even pause at the edge—she just went, gliding forward like there was no invisible wall to cross, like there wasn’t an entire world between her and the first step. And Nat watched her go, feeling the cold railing under her fingertips, pressing into her skin until it hurt, as if she could somehow anchor herself through the sting.

She traced the tip of her fingers along the metal, slow, deliberate, her tongue rolling against her teeth as if the movement might keep her grounded. Her eyes followed Lottie across the ice, how she cut through the cold like it was hers, how the sound of her blades echoed against the walls with that easy rhythm Nat used to own. Seconds passed, long and painful, stretching in a way that felt infinite. In her head it wasn’t time anymore, it was something else, something endless and collapsing at once, an eternity that lasted the space of a breath.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t do it, why she couldn’t move, couldn’t follow. She knew she could, her body remembered how, but the command never reached her legs. Something inside her refused. It was as though her mind and body had split apart, like one half stood here longing and the other half had already decided that stepping forward was impossible.

And it was fucking her up. She could feel it unraveling inside her, the frustration, the panic, the ache that grew every time she thought about the ice as something that no longer belonged to her. The word run began circling in her mind like a ghost, too loud, too insistent. Run. Run. But that wasn’t her. She had never been the one to run. She was the one who fought, who stayed, who pushed back when everything tried to break her. Yet now, for the first time, it felt like the fight wasn’t against the world, it was against herself. And that kind of battle had no clean ending, no victory, only exhaustion.

“Hey, you good?” The voice shattered her thoughts again, softer this time, carrying concern that didn’t belong in a place like this.

Nat was beginning to understand, painfully, that it wasn’t just her and the ice anymore. There was someone else now, and that alone made the cold feel unfamiliar.

“Do you need to sit down?”

The question hung between them, warm and patient. It made her chest tighten. It was different now—everything was. The rink, the cold, the sound of the blades, it all belonged to someone else too.

“I’m—” her throat felt dry, scraped raw. She tried to swallow, but it only made it worse. Still, she forced herself to lift her gaze, even if she couldn’t bear to look at the ice just yet. So she looked at her instead, at Lottie, standing there on the smooth white, waiting. Waiting for her.

“I’m fine,” she finally said, the words hollow but steady enough to sound true.

And so, she stepped forward, because there was nothing else left to do.

Because this was it, her last chance at figure skating, at reclaiming something that had once been her salvation. And even if she didn’t know how to start again, she knew she couldn’t walk away.

~

“It’s not— it’s not fucking working, put me down!” she yelped, the words bursting out before she could stop them, sharp and ragged as her palms pressed uselessly against Lottie’s shoulders.

Lottie obeyed instantly, lowering her back to the ice with care, her movements steady, deliberate, hands lingering for a second too long on Nat’s waist, as if afraid she might stumble the moment she let go. The touch was warm even through the layers of fabric, grounding and unbearable all at once.

“We talked about it, Natalie,” the coach called from the side, his voice carrying over the cold air, calm but edged with that frustrating patience. He was leaning against the railing now, his posture too relaxed for the storm brewing inside her. “I know it feels strange. You’ve spent years skating alone—giving up control isn’t easy. But you have to trust Lottie.”

Trust. The word stung, slicing right through her like a blade catching on old scars.

It had been a few days of training already, though it felt like months, months of falling, of missteps, of feeling like a stranger in her own body. The ice no longer felt like hers; its rhythm, once so instinctive, now betrayed her at every turn. Every edge, every pivot felt foreign. Her old landmarks, the curves, the pace, the weight shifts, were gone, replaced by a choreography that wasn’t hers to lead. She felt displaced, hollowed out, as if her body had forgotten how to obey her and was now learning to listen to someone else. And that someone else was the problem.

She was used to fighting against the world, not alongside it. Sharing the ice felt like splitting her soul in two.

Lottie was looking at her now, and there it was again, that damn expression. Concern. Not the kind that came from a coach or a rival, but something softer, gentler, personal. Concern for her. It made everything worse, because it stripped away the distance Nat needed to keep functioning. It made her feel seen.

“I know,” she grumbled, her voice low as she shrugged off Lottie’s touch, the warmth of her hands still lingering like a brand.

“You’re too tense in your shoulders—let them drop,” Lottie said, her tone patient, almost tender, and she brushed her fingers lightly over Nat’s shoulder blades as if trying to coax the tension out of her.

“I know,” Nat muttered again, louder this time, the sound cracking somewhere between irritation and exhaustion.

Lottie didn’t flinch; she just nodded once, stepping back but keeping her gaze fixed on her with that infuriating calm.

“Try again. Slower this time,” the coach called, voice echoing through the rink.

And Nat, jaw tight, breath short, lifted her chin, the taste of failure already bitter in her mouth. The cold air bit at her cheeks, sharp and familiar, but even here, on the only ground that had ever truly belonged to her, she felt like a trespasser.

They began again, the same step sequence, the same frustrating beginning that Nat knew by heart now. It wasn’t even the hard part, not yet; the steps themselves were simple enough when she was alone, muscle memory guiding her like a rhythm she could still trust. But skating with Lottie was another story entirely. It was like trying to breathe in tandem with someone whose lungs worked on a different tempo, whose heartbeat pulsed to a melody she couldn’t hear.

So she went through the motions, half a beat ahead, half a thought behind, hoping Lottie would follow, and somehow she always did—too perfectly, too easily, like she was reading Nat’s mind and mocking it by keeping up.

But then came the lift. Again. Always the damn lift.

Lottie was suddenly close again, too close, pressed against her in that way that made it impossible for Nat to separate the movement from what it felt like. The closeness wasn’t professional, it was suffocating, human, unbearably intimate. The air between them seemed to hum with static, and the sound of their skates scraping against the ice felt like a pulse.

It looked a bit like dancing, she thought bitterly. Dancing was never meant for her; she wasn’t built for grace that involved someone else.

They’d tried it maybe five times now, maybe more. She’d lost count somewhere between her frustration and her pride. Lottie leaned in this time, her breath warm against Nat’s ear, her voice low but steady:

“If you don’t feel it, tap my shoulder. I’ll put you down in an instant.”

It was meant to be reassuring, but it only made the blood rush faster through Nat’s veins. The thought that Lottie could feel when she panicked—could sense it—was unbearable.

So she did exactly what Lottie told her to the moment those hands landed on her waist. She tapped, sharp and fast, before the lift had even started.

Because she fucking couldn’t.

Her throat was tight, her heartbeat loud, and when her blades met the ice again, she could barely catch her breath. She didn’t look at Lottie right away, because she already knew what she’d see, disappointment, pity, some look that would crush her from the inside out. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to feel that particular weight, not from her.

But when she finally forced herself to look, there was none of that. Just that same damn face, serene, unreadable, patient in a way that felt more painful than anger would have. Lottie didn’t look disappointed. She looked steady, unshaken. As if she’d expected this.

The coach sighed from the side of the rink, rubbing his temple before scribbling something in his notebook.

“I can’t,” Nat rasped finally, bitterness carving each word as she turned toward him, searching for judgment, something solid to push against.

He didn’t even look up. “Right now your body’s protecting itself,” he said, his tone infuriatingly calm. “That’s okay. We’ll loosen that up little by little.”

She hated how soft he sounded, how reasonable. It made her want to scream.

Lottie was still standing there, waiting for her, blades biting into the ice with quiet patience. Nat couldn’t even look at her anymore.

She knew it, this one was going to be hell to make work. There wasn’t enough time in the world, not even three months, not even if she bled for it.

They would never get fucking there.

~

Eventually, the coach called it a day, his voice echoing once more across the empty rink before fading entirely as he gathered his things and disappeared toward the exit, no doubt heading home to his family, to something warm and ordinary and far away from this cold, echoing place. The few other skaters who’d shared the ice earlier had already packed up and gone too, their laughter still faintly clinging to the air like ghosts that hadn’t yet realized they’d left. Even Lottie had gone a few minutes ago, her absence marked only by the lingering warmth where she’d stood at the boards and the faint trace of her perfume, something clean and floral, stubbornly out of place against the biting chill of the rink.

Nat wasn’t exactly alone, there was a janitor by the bleachers, dragging a mop along the concrete floor in slow, methodical circles—but it might as well have been solitude. The sound of the mop’s bristles, the hum of the overhead lights, the occasional groan of the refrigeration system keeping the ice alive, all of it blended into a single, hollow silence that pressed in from every direction.

Still, she told herself, she was back on the ice. That had to count for something, didn’t it? After everything, she was back. The ice beneath her blades, the air sharp in her lungs, those things were real, tangible. She could feel them. That should have been enough.

But it wasn’t.

Everything felt wrong, wrong in ways she couldn’t name. The city, with its vast, indifferent sky stretching endlessly above her, felt like a place built for someone else’s life. Even the air smelled foreign, too clean, too wide.

She exhaled slowly, letting the sound disappear into the cavernous space, then closed her eyes and let her body take over. At first, she tried to run through the steps she and Lottie had been working on all week—each turn, each edge, each carefully rehearsed lift that she still couldn’t manage to trust herself through. But it wasn’t working. The rhythm slipped away every time she reached for it, and after a few failed attempts, like the dozens before them, she gave up. Every landing was half a second off, every spin slightly uneven, every breath heavier than the one before. And besides, she couldn’t do half of it without a partner anyway.

So she stopped thinking about the steps and just moved.

It came slowly, almost shyly, like muscle memory surfacing from the depths of some long-forgotten dream. Her body began to remember on its own, old movements, old sequences, a routine she hadn’t skated in years, one that had once meant everything. She followed it without questioning, her body leading her where her mind had long since stopped trying to go.

God, she had trained those steps into herself once upon a time, over and over until they lived in her bones. She could still feel the rhythm of them even with her eyes closed, the way the edges bit into the ice, the turn of her shoulders guiding the glide, the balance that came from pure instinct.

And for what felt like an eternity—maybe just a breath—she had it again. The ice was hers. Completely hers. The air, the sound, the silence, it all belonged to her in that fleeting moment, and for the first time in months, maybe years, she wasn’t fighting anything. She was just skating.

She didn’t need to open her eyes to see it, every movement lived inside her, every edge and turn carved so deep into her muscles that her body remembered even when her mind didn’t. Each glide, each spin, each breath came as naturally as exhaling, and for a fleeting, aching moment, it was perfect. The kind of perfect she used to chase until her knees gave out and her lungs burned, the kind of perfect that once made her believe that maybe, just maybe, life would stop taking things from her long enough to let her keep one small, shining thing for herself.

If life had ever shown her that mercy, she thought, she would have ended the routine there—one final turn, one elegant stop, the blades cutting the ice with a clean, decisive sound. Then she would have bent down before the invisible jury, head lowered, breath steady, waiting for the applause that always came after the music faded.

It was stupid, she knew that. Silly, even, to bow to no one, to pretend that any of this still meant something beyond the empty echo of her own need to belong somewhere, to something. But it was nice, to play pretend, to have this one small illusion where she wasn’t failing anyone, not even herself.

And then, against all odds, there was applause.

Faint, hesitant. Just two hands clapping together, the sound soft and hollow against the expanse of the rink.

The illusion shattered instantly. Her eyes flew open, her body straightened too fast, the cold air biting at her flushed cheeks and numbed ears as reality came rushing back in all its unwanted clarity.

And there she was. Lottie. Standing at the edge of the rink, hands still half-raised from the applause, her expression open in that way that always felt too earnest, too unguarded for Nat to handle.

“You’re really good,” Lottie said simply, and the worst part was that she looked like she meant it.

Which somehow made everything worse.

The words hit like a bruise forming under the skin, slow, spreading, painful. Nat could feel her chest tighten, something sharp and familiar stirring in her throat, and before she could stop herself, she bit back the only thing that ever came easy.

“Fuck you,” she muttered, voice low, hoarse, because what else was there to say when the person standing in front of her was both the proof of everything she could still be and the reminder of everything she had already lost.

It was easier to be angry. Easier than admitting that what she felt wasn’t hate at all but grief, raw and stupid, for a version of herself she could never seem to skate back to.

“I—” Lottie started, the word hanging awkwardly in the air before she seemed to lose it altogether, her lips parting, then closing again, her expression folding in on itself like she was trying to find something—anything—to say that would make sense of what had just happened. Her brows furrowed slightly, her nose scrunched in that way that made her look almost childlike in her confusion, and god, Nat wished she would just snap already, wished she’d hurl something sharp, something cutting, wished she’d fight back so they could be even again, so Nat could breathe without that awful pressure sitting heavy in her chest. It would be easier if Lottie got angry, easier if she just said something mean, anything to push her away for good, to make her leave, to make her stop orbiting so close to Nat’s fucking life.

But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.

“You’re so—” Lottie tried again, but whatever word she was looking for, it wasn’t anger. There was nothing of rejection in her tone, not even the faintest flicker of resentment. Just that same, impossible patience, that softness that made Nat’s skin crawl because she didn’t know what to do with it. Lottie let out a small breath, the edges of her smile faltering but never disappearing entirely, her eyes searching Nat’s face as if she might find some logic there, some reason for all this venom. “I really don’t get you,” she said at last, the words not sharp, not defensive, just quiet, tired, confused. “Why?”

That single word hung in the cold air between them like the ghost of something neither of them knew how to name.

And Nat—she didn’t know either. Or maybe she did, somewhere deep beneath the noise and the frustration and the walls she kept rebuilding every time someone got too close. Maybe she did know why, but she couldn’t find the words for it, couldn’t make it make sense even inside her own head. All she knew was that something in her twisted at the sound of that question, and she wanted—needed—to make Lottie lose it. She needed to see that perfect, steady composure crack, needed to watch that strange, unreadable calm splinter into something real, something messy, something angry. Because if Lottie could hate her, then maybe Nat could stop hating herself quite so much.

“Why,” Nat repeated, her voice lowered this time, not mocking, not cruel, just hollow, quiet, uncertain. She wasn’t repeating it to throw it back at Lottie, not to win, not to wound. She was asking it too.

Because she needed to know.

Why her.

“I saw it,” Nat said, her voice shaking at first, then building, pushed forward by a tide she couldn’t stop, “I saw how it was working so fucking well with all the others. I saw it outside too, at the rink, with all those figure skaters that swarm around you like you’re the fucking sun they can’t help but orbit. You’re good, Matthews, you’re really fucking good at what you do. Your last season was perfect, bet you had so many fucking offers lined up you could’ve chosen anyone—so why?” The words came out raw, like something tearing loose inside her chest. “Why the fuck did you take me. When I never did duos, when I can’t even let you lift me for the fucking life of me, when I can’t make it good, when all I do is fuck it up.”

She didn’t mean for her voice to break, but it did, cracking right through the center, like ice under too much weight. All of it came pouring out, resentment, shame, exhaustion. The hatred she spat out wasn’t for Lottie, not really; it was for herself, for the person who had ruined every good thing before it had the chance to last. She was standing there, in the middle of the empty rink, her breath coming out in white ghosts, staring at this stranger with the perfect hair and the perfect smile and the kind of ease that made Nat want to scream, not knowing what she could possibly do to make her leave. Because for some reason—God knows why—Lottie Matthews had come here and decided to stay.

“Why, Matthews,” she repeated, louder this time, her throat tightening as her voice echoed off the boards, “why did you fucking accept to take me when you know you’re not going to find any peace, when you know I’m going to make this hell for both of us? Because what then, huh? After the off-season? When we hit pre-season and everyone finds out who you’re paired with this year, everyone’s gonna know you’re skating with a fucking—” she stopped herself, teeth gritted, swallowing the rest, “—an asshole. And I know you know, I know you know why I got my solo suspension, so tell me—why the fuck am I here?”

The silence that followed was sharp, unbearable, like standing too close to the edge of something enormous. Nat’s chest rose and fell, her breath catching, her fingers twitching at her sides.

And Lottie?

Charlotte fucking Matthews?

She smiled.

Not mockingly, not with pity, just that maddening, impossible calm, that soft, steady, almost serene smile that said she’d heard every word, that she understood, that somehow none of it scared her away.

And that, more than anything else, made Nat want to scream. Because how do you fight someone who refuses to fight you back?

“Because you’re good. I mean it,” Lottie said, just like that, simple, unguarded, almost too easy, like she didn’t realize the weight that kind of sentence could carry.

“Cut the bullshit,” Nat replied, but her voice didn’t have the sharpness it should have, no venom, no edge, just a quiet exhaustion that rang hollow against the boards. There wasn’t even anger left in it, not really, only disbelief, a dull ache that had taken the place of fire. But she could see through her, or thought she could, and she needed that—needed to believe that Lottie’s answer was something she could tear apart.

There was a beat. Just one. Not hesitation, not indecision, something slower, like Lottie deliberately gave silence the time to stretch between them. Her gaze drifted over Nat, calm, steady, like she was searching for the right place to land her words.

“I wanted to piss off my last partner,” she finally said, her tone light, like she was admitting to something harmless, a prank. “And my coach…” Her smile faltered then, softening, not vanishing but turning smaller, quieter, like something shy was taking its place. She lowered her voice, eyes slipping away from Nat’s. “My dad, I guess.”

Her words floated out into the empty rink, echoing faintly off the frozen walls. The sound was small, but it stayed, lingering in the cold air, finding its way under Nat’s skin.

“A real fucking nepo baby,” Nat muttered, almost automatically. It wasn’t even an insult, not really, it came out more like a diagnosis, a resigned observation. And yet something in her chest loosened at saying it, like the words had pulled a little of the tension out of her shoulders.

Lottie groaned quietly, rolling her eyes, though there wasn’t much bite in it, more like she was conceding the point. Her gaze drifted past Nat then, to somewhere out over the ice, where faint lines still marked their failed lifts, their missed steps, their chaos.

“Did it work?” Nat heard herself ask, her voice low. It surprised her, that she cared enough to ask, that she wanted to know. 

Lottie blinked, looked back at her, and for a second something alive flickered in her face again. Then she laughed, a real laugh, the kind that filled the air, too bright for this hour, for this place. “Hell yeah,” she said, grinning wide, shaking her head at the memory. “Hell yeah, it did.”

And somehow, against her own will, Nat felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward—just slightly, just enough for the cold air to bite at her teeth.

“I mean, that’s what I do best, isn’t it?” Nat said, the words dripping with a bitter kind of humor, her lips twisting into something that was almost a smirk but not quite. “Pissing people off,” she added, quieter this time, as if the echo might take the sting out of it. Then, after a beat, with that dry exhaustion that clung to every syllable, “So what now?”

“Now?” Lottie tilted her head, like she was thinking about it for real, even though Nat could tell she wasn’t the type to plan too far ahead. “Now we better make this work, don’t we?” she said, voice light, but there was something underneath it, a flicker of intent, a dare. “Everyone would be pretty pissed off if we somehow pulled it off, you and me.”

That smile again. God, that fucking smile. It was infuriating, but also—somehow—disarming. It didn’t mock, it didn’t judge, it just existed, so bright it almost looked out of place in the cold.

Nat let out a ragged breath that fogged in the air between them, her shoulders dropping, the tension uncoiling bit by bit as if the ice itself had loosened its grip around her spine. “You and me,” she whispered back, like tasting the words to see if they could ever sound right, if they could ever belong to her.

“Come on, partner,” Lottie said, her voice warm now, crossing the low barrier that separated the bleachers from the rink. Her hand extended toward Nat—steady, gloved, open—hanging there in the air, an invitation waiting to be accepted.

“Shut up,” Nat muttered automatically, but the fight was gone from her tone, her hand already moving before her mind could catch up. Her fingers slid into Lottie’s, the contact startling in its warmth, her pulse thrumming fast in the cold.

Lottie’s grin widened, soft but triumphant, that same goddamn cheeky smile that seemed to follow her everywhere she went. And Nat thought, maybe this was it, the price she’d have to pay. Maybe the price of getting back what she loved, of returning to the ice, was this stranger with the bright eyes and the endless patience and the smile that refused to dim.

And maybe—just maybe—it was a price she could learn to live with.

~

“If you’re that stiff, she’ll never be able to lift you safely,” the coach said.

Lottie set her back down gently, the blades of her skates scraping softly against the ice as they regained balance. It wasn’t perfect—not even close—but at least now they could make it through the entire step sequence without collapsing into chaos. Better than before, when Nat could barely breathe in Lottie’s proximity without feeling like the air itself had turned against her, heavy and uncooperative, like she was suffocating inside her own lungs.

Things were… going. Not well, not badly either, just going—like a clock ticking through days that didn’t mean much. Maybe that was fine. It had only been a week, one week since she’d put her blades back on, one week since she’d started sharing her world again, her sacred ice, with someone else. Maybe tomorrow would be better. That was what she told herself every night, standing out on the porch while the city whispered below, its lights scattered like fallen stars across the dark horizon. The air was cold, clear, easier to breathe than the one inside, where sleep refused to come no matter how exhausted she was.

“Yeah…” she huffed now, dragging a hand through her hair, her breath visible in the chill as she looked from the rink to the tall woman not far from her, who was adjusting her gloves with maddening composure.

“What can I do?” Lottie asked finally, her tone clipped but serious, her gaze fixed on Nat like the answer might change everything, like maybe if she asked properly, this whole thing could start to make sense.

It was annoying, the way Lottie didn’t seem rattled by anything, the way she stood there all calm and centered, even graceful when she wasn’t moving. Nat wanted to despise her for that, wanted to, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Nothing,” she muttered under her breath, shifting back into position with a kind of stubborn resignation that felt almost comforting.

“Then stop resisting me,” Lottie murmured as she passed close by, her voice low enough to almost blend with the sound of skates on ice, her tone steady, like she wasn’t saying something that made Nat’s entire body seize up for a second.

Nat’s head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing, pulse skipping in a way she didn’t like at all but Lottie wasn’t even looking at her anymore, already focusing ahead, ready to start again like nothing had been said.

“Fucking hell,” Nat muttered, though she wasn’t sure anymore if it was meant for Lottie, for herself, or for the ice that no longer felt entirely hers.

~

But it wasn’t moving fast enough. No matter how many hours she spent with the coach and with Lottie, no matter how many times she tried to fix the curve of her arm or loosen the tension in her shoulders, it never felt like enough. It was as if there was something locked deep inside her, some invisible mechanism that refused to click into place, something wound too tight to let go. The strain lived in every fiber of her being, coiled and unyielding, a constant resistance that kept her from giving in the way she needed to, from surrendering control long enough for Lottie to take over, to lift her without the weight of her own fear dragging them both down.

And Nat wasn’t the kind of person to just stand there and hope things might eventually shift on their own. Hope was for people who didn’t know how to fight, and fighting was the only thing she had ever been good at. She’d fight the ice, the cold, the voice in her head that told her she’d already peaked, that she was wasting time. She’d fight herself if that was what it took to feel that damn click again, to find the rhythm she’d lost somewhere along the way.

“Goodnight, girls,” the coach called, his tone soft but final, the sound of his footsteps already echoing off the room as he headed toward the exit, leaving the sharp smell of ice and the hum of the rink lights in his wake.

That was the cue for Lottie to follow, and she did, graceful, efficient, the sound of her blades slicing across the ice with that effortless glide Nat couldn’t stop noticing. Within seconds, she was already skating toward the gate, the hem of her jacket catching the faint breeze that followed her.

Nat should’ve let her go. That was the pattern, Lottie leaving first, Nat staying behind until the rink emptied completely, just her and the janitor, the scrape of the mop echoing faintly in the vast, hollow quiet. It was late, always late, and she told herself she liked the solitude, the silence after the strain.

But hesitation, as rare as it was for her, caught her then. Just for a breath. And then, like the snap of a nerve, she broke through it. Hesitation had never brought her anywhere worth going.

“Hey, Matthews,” she called out, her voice sharp in the stillness, like the crack of a whip across the cold air.

Lottie turned immediately, fast and instinctive, her blades stopping clean against the ice. Her head tilted slightly, those big brown eyes catching Nat’s with a kind of focused intensity that made her heartbeat falter for a second—eyes that didn’t just look at her, but into her, as if trying to read the storm still building there.

“How about—” she began, the words catching halfway up her throat like something half-formed, uncertain whether they were meant to exist at all. She paused for just a breath, long enough to feel the weight of the silence stretching between them, that fragile quiet that always came before a jump before you committed, before gravity made the choice for you. “How about training a little longer,” she finally said, the words pushed out like a gamble, “just you and me.”

At that, Lottie’s face lit up with that ridiculous smile of hers, that unshakable kind of brightness that Nat still hadn’t figured out if she hated or envied. “You’re never going to call me by my damn name, are you?” she teased, her voice carrying lightly across the rink as she started gliding back toward the center, her movements easy and sure, the reflection of the overhead lights chasing her across the ice.

Nat rolled her shoulders, trying to hide the tension that always seemed to live there, and shrugged. “I don’t do names,” she said simply, as if that explained anything at all, as if it wasn’t just another defense she didn’t know how to take down.

“Why not?” Lottie asked, skating up beside her now, the rhythm of her strides soft but deliberate, coaxing Nat to match her pace.

Nat’s gaze fell to the clean, silver edge of Lottie’s blade cutting through the ice—clean, effortless, sure—and for once, she let herself ease into it. “I don’t know,” she said after a beat, her voice lower now, almost thoughtful. “Never really thought about it. Just don’t like it, I guess.”

Lottie hummed at that, not in disagreement, just in acknowledgment, the sound quiet.

And then they were moving together again, not practicing, not performing, just skating. Slow, unmeasured, without the weight of choreography or expectation. There were no coaches watching, no audience waiting to judge them, no one to care but the two of them, suspended in the middle of the rink like the rest of the world had fallen away.

It was different, nothing like the way Nat used to skate, all precision and competition and fire. This was quieter, softer somehow, like something had loosened in her without permission. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t skating against anything. She was just skating.

“Why did you stop hockey for figure skating?” Nat asked after a long stretch of silence, her tone more thoughtful than curious, as if she’d been holding onto the question for days and finally decided to set it free. She didn’t look at Lottie when she said it, she just watched the slow, familiar arc of her own skate gliding over the ice, the faint hiss of blades filling the space between them.

Lottie snorted softly, that quiet, amused sound she made when something caught her off guard, and rolled her eyes with a smile that seemed meant more for herself than for Nat. “You really did your homework, huh?” she said, her voice teasing but light, still facing forward, her attention fixed somewhere just ahead of her, on the vast, empty rink that reflected their movement like a mirror.

“Needed to know who I was going to work with,” Nat replied, her tone clipped, factual, the kind of thing she said when she wanted to sound like she didn’t care, though she did, more than she wanted to admit.

Lottie glanced back at her over her shoulder, her mouth curving into that familiar, infuriating smirk. “And what else do you know?” she asked, coasting closer now, her hair brushing the edge of her scarf, her blade catching the light each time she turned.

“I know that you’re good,” Nat said after a pause, her gaze steady, unwilling to give away more than that. “And that you were also good at hockey.”

Lottie chuckled at that, the sound low and short, not quite humorless but distant, as though the laugh came from somewhere far away. “Yeah,” she said finally, her eyes drifting toward the bleachers, her expression unreadable. “It was nice. I liked it. But then I… met someone.” Her voice softened a little, not sad, not exactly tender, just quiet, like she was talking to the past more than to Nat. “And she needed a partner. I was good enough, so I accepted.”

Nat frowned slightly, her brows knitting, unsure what to do with the pang that settled somewhere under her ribs. “You’re such a people pleaser,” she said finally, her words meant to sound biting, but they came out lighter, teasing almost, though she wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

“Fuck off,” Lottie muttered, shaking her head, but there was no edge to it, no venom, just disbelief, maybe a bit of embarrassment. “I was just… in love.” The admission hung in the air for a moment, suspended like a breath neither of them could quite exhale. Then, after a heartbeat, she added, quieter now, “And… maybe a bit of a people pleaser, yeah.”

They didn’t say anything else after that, not for a while. The rink stayed silent except for the soft scrape of their blades tracing patterns only they could see, two figures circling each other in the dim light, the past and present skating alongside them like ghosts.

“How did you make it work?” Nat asked at last, the words slipping out almost against her will, low and rough like they’d been waiting too long at the back of her throat. “How did you manage to figure skate with someone?” She didn’t look at Lottie as she spoke, just kept her gaze fixed on the faint trail of blade marks beneath her.

Lottie didn’t answer right away. She seemed to really think about it, her brow creasing slightly, her mouth twisting as if she were trying to find the exact right words or maybe trying to make sense of something she’d never really questioned before. And then, softly, almost absently, she said, “I never tried to make it work. Never had to force it, or force the movement. It’s about trust, but…” she let out a small huff of laughter, one that sounded almost self-aware, “I bet that’s not what you want to hear, so… the real answer is that I just felt where she was taking me, and I followed her lead until she gave it back to me.”

Nat frowned, not out of disagreement but out of confusion, her jaw tightening as if she were holding herself together through sheer will. “And then what?” she asked, her voice sharper now, more impatient, because she wanted something tangible, something she could use.

“Then,” Lottie said simply, with a half-smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “I just did what felt right.” She shrugged as if it were the easiest thing in the world, her shoulders rising and falling in a fluid motion that made Nat want to scream, because it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t natural to her, it never had been.

Nat’s thoughts began to spiral, words and fragments running in circles in her head. That was an answer, sure, but not enough of one. It didn’t tell her how to stop freezing at the thought of surrender, how to stop tensing every muscle when someone else reached for her, how to not fuck it up. How to finally get it right, how to be good, how to deserve this.

“It’s not about being perfect,” Lottie said then, interrupting her thoughts like she’d read them right off her face. Her tone was calm, steady, but her gaze was piercing, holding Nat in place. “It’s about finding a balance. Two people, one center.”

Nat swallowed hard, the words echoing in her mind long after they’d left Lottie’s mouth.

Two people, one center.

Two people and their balance.

Two people, one rink.

Her gaze flicked down to Lottie’s lips as the phrase repeated itself in her head, looping like a melody she couldn’t shake. Two people, one center. It sounded simple when Lottie said it, almost poetic, but for Nat it felt like something enormous, something she didn’t know how to hold.

Nat was an only child. She had never learned how to share, not toys, not space, not air. Not control. She had always been her own center, unshakable, solitary. The idea of giving that up, even just enough to find someone else’s rhythm, was terrifying.

But as she stood there on the ice, Lottie’s words still lingering between them, she wondered, just for a second, if balance was really something you found—or if it was something you risked everything to fall into.

“Lift me,” Nat said abruptly.

“What?” Lottie blinked, half-scoffing, half-laughing in disbelief, her mouth already curving into that wide, dumb smile she seemed to have reserved just for moments like this, when Nat caught her completely off guard.

Lottie had a whole collection of smiles, Nat had come to notice, cataloguing them in her mind without even meaning to. There was the nervous one, the patient one, the smug little grin that made Nat want to throw her gloves at her face, and then there was this one—wide and bright and stupid, the kind that felt too real to be anything but disarming. Not that she’d ever admit it. She told herself she was studying her partner. For data. For strategy. This was professional.

“Just lift me,” she repeated, skating closer now, her movements sharp and deliberate. “Come on.”

“What, like— with the whole step sequence?” Lottie’s voice went slightly higher, that telltale mix of panic and disbelief slipping through as she realized Nat wasn’t joking, wasn’t hesitating, wasn’t going to drop the subject. Nat was already moving, gathering momentum, her jaw set in the kind of determination that brooked no argument.

“Matthews,” she said flatly, eyes locked on her, “focus. Just lift me.”

Something shifted then, a silent switch between them, Lottie’s breath catching for half a second, her expression flickering from confusion to concentration, and Nat, for the first time, letting herself trust that shift. It was all instinct after that, all movement and pulse and motion.

When Lottie’s hands found her waist, firm and steady despite the hesitation moments before, Nat felt something in herself give. She gave up the lead—just for that one instant—her hands rising almost unconsciously, one falling against her chest, the other brushing her collarbone as if to anchor herself. The world around her blurred, sound dimming to the dull scrape of blades and the rush of breath.

For a fleeting, impossible second, the air felt weightless between them, Lottie’s strength lifting her clean off the ice, Nat’s body suspended, her trust hanging there in the fragile balance of motion. Her eyes found Lottie’s, and something electric passed between them, too brief to name, too sharp to ignore.

And like that—like it had been waiting all along, they shared it.

Her ice. Their breath.

One rhythm, caught perfectly for a single, impossible movement before gravity reclaimed them both.

It’s breathless that they separate, like the air between them had been holding everything together and suddenly forgot how to do so. Their skates whisper across the ice, slow and aimless, two bodies gliding out of each other’s orbit with the kind of unspoken hesitation that feels almost sacred neither wanting to break whatever fragile thing just existed between them, whatever tremor had just passed through their bones and vanished into the frozen air.

For a moment, all that remains is the sound of their breathing, uneven and shallow, echoing faintly in the cavernous rink. The boards creak somewhere in the distance, the faint hum of the lights fills the silence, and the cold presses close, sharp enough to remind them that this is real, that they’re still standing here, that the world hasn’t stopped even if something inside them almost did.

They don’t know who breaks first, the silence, the trance, but Nat lets out a small, disbelieving snort, the sound clumsy and human and grounding, and Lottie follows a beat later, a soft sniff that turns into a laugh she seems to catch halfway through. Before either of them realizes it, they’re both chuckling, quietly, like the ice itself is in on it. It’s low and slow, nothing loud or freeing, just a shared, exhausted kind of laughter that lives in the space between two people who, against all odds, didn’t fall.

“That was weird,” Nat muttered, her voice still catching on the remnants of her breath, her mouth curling despite herself.

“You’re the weird one,” Lottie countered without missing a beat, though there was no edge in her voice, just warmth, teasing and unguarded.

Nat hummed in response, something softer than her usual tone, her gaze finally meeting Lottie’s. And before she can stop it, before she can rebuild the walls she’s so used to hiding behind, she’s smiling—really smiling—at her.

~

“Hey, I just saw your coach—told me you were getting there. I’m proud of you,” Ben said as he caught sight of Nat standing by the vending machine.

She was taking a break, a can of something sweet and cold in her hand, the condensation wetting her fingertips. The faint smell of ice and disinfectant drifted through the corridor. Her hair was slightly damp from the rink, cheeks still flushed from the cold, pulse still humming with that strange post-skate restlessness that never really went away.

“Don’t say that kind of shit ever again,” she groaned, rolling her eyes, though the protest came out softer than she meant it to. Deep down, she didn’t really mind, it even warmed something small and reluctant inside her, like a bruise that no longer hurt as much as it used to.

Ben laughed quietly, the kind of tired laugh that carried years of knowing her moods and her sharp tongue. “So we’re doing it, huh? This is working. This is good, right?” he said, his voice carrying that hopeful note she knew too well as he placed a hand on her shoulder, steady and familiar.

Nat hesitated, the automatic sarcasm on her tongue softening before it could form. “Yeah, yeah,” she waved him off, pretending not to care, though her lips—traitorous as ever—had been lifting far too easily these days, like they’d forgotten what it meant to stay still.

Must be the Canadian air or something, she thought, the taste of it sharp and cold in her lungs, too fresh, too open, too full of things that could maybe start again.

It’s not like she had a revelation overnight, though she wished it could be that easy, wished for once that change would come to her like light breaking through a storm, sudden and simple and undeniable. But things were never like that with her, never easy, never linear. Still, she could see it now, the faint outlines of progress, fragile but real, like thin cracks in ice catching sunlight. She was skating again. She was standing again. That had to count for something.

She still stayed late most nights, skating long after everyone had left, until the janitor was closing up and the lights dimmed one by one, leaving only the low hum of the compressors and the cold glow of the emergency signs. She always left through the emergency exit, the metal door clanging shut behind her, the night swallowing her whole. But she didn’t mind—it was nice that way. The emptiness. The solitude. The way her blades sounded sharper in the dark.

Learning to share the ice was harder than it looked, harder than she’d ever admit to anyone, even to herself. So having those stolen hours, those moments that belonged to no one but her, kept her steady. It made her feel like she still had something untouched, something that wouldn’t slip away, something that reminded her of who she used to be before all of it. It was what stopped her from cracking, from breaking, from fucking it all up again. At least, that’s what she told herself, and some nights she almost believed it.

“I’m gonna get back to work, see you at home,” Ben said as he waved her off, his voice distant already as he headed back toward the rink, his figure swallowed by the glass reflection of the lobby lights.

Nat watched him go, his silhouette fading between the shadows, before she raised the can of energy drink to her lips and downed it in one long gulp, the cold sweetness burning her throat, sharp and alive.

It was in moments like this, when things felt almost too hopeful, when her chest ached with something that might have been joy if she let it grow, that panic started to crawl back in, whispering its familiar warning. Because what if it didn’t last? What if her heart actually exploded from holding too much at once?

She couldn’t risk that. She needed balance, always balance, something to weigh the hope down, something to keep her grounded before it floated too high.

Anything would do.

“Hey, you got a cig?” she asked, stopping a passerby with that restless kind of urgency that lived somewhere between need and impulse.

“Sure, wait a sec—” the girl said, already digging through her jacket pocket.

But Nat didn’t wait. She never really did. By the time the cigarette was in her hand, she was already moving—past the vending machines, through the side corridor, and straight for the emergency exit. The cold metal door swung open with a squeak that made her flinch, but then she was outside.

She hid there, hidden from Ben, from her coach, from anyone whose eyes might mistake this for weakness or rebellion or both and sank down on the concrete steps, legs drawn close, elbows resting on her knees. The lighter clicked in her hand, once, twice, until the flame caught. The end of the cigarette glowed faintly, trembling against the wind. It wasn’t much—not strong, not good—but it was enough. Enough to slow her pulse, to fill the hollow in her lungs with something other than nerves, to keep her heart from spilling over.

She exhaled the smoke and closed her eyes, her shoulders sinking with it. The sound of her own breathing mixed with the hum of the ventilation fans somewhere above.

It’s not that she was self-destructive. Not exactly. Maybe a little. Or maybe it was just that she’d grown too used to destruction to know better. When you’re born in a crumbling house, it’s only natural that solid ground feels foreign, that stillness feels wrong.

Right?

She’d only ever learned how to walk when the floor was shifting beneath her feet, when the walls trembled, when she had to steady herself between collapses. Maybe that’s why sometimes she needed to fall a little, to lean into the tremor, to remind herself what chaos felt like, just to know she didn’t really miss it. Not entirely.

Her thoughts shattered at the sound of a voice cutting through the quiet, a faint, muffled echo carried by the wind, the tone half-desperate, half-resigned, the kind of sound that doesn’t ask to be heard but still somehow reaches you anyway.

Nat wouldn’t have called herself nosy. She liked to think she minded her own business. But curiosity was a habit that lived in her bones. So when she heard the voice again, she rose, brushing off the dust from her jeans, the cigarette still hanging loosely between her lips, its ember glowing faintly in the half-dark. She followed the sound like a trail, her boots crunching softly against the gravel, the alley stretching narrow and cold behind the skating center.

She heard before she saw.

“I know you’re busy, but—call me back? If you can? Bye, take care.”

And then the voice fell quiet, replaced by the faint buzz of a phone being locked. Lottie’s figure appeared under the weak fluorescent light by the service door—her face pale against the dark, her expression tight, distracted. She stood there like someone caught mid-thought, clutching her phone a little too hard before shoving it deep into her jacket.

“If you want,” Lottie murmured under her breath, almost to herself, and then she turned and nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Fuck!” she gasped, eyes wide, her voice breaking into a nervous laugh when she saw Nat leaning casually against the wall, smoke curling around her face like a halo of defiance.

Nat raised both hands in mock surrender, her smirk half-hidden behind the cigarette. “Just me,” she said, voice low, amused.

“It’s already time? Sorry—I’m coming, I just had… a phone call to make,” Lottie sighed, shoving her phone deeper into her pocket as if she could erase whatever had just happened.

“Nah,” Nat hummed, tilting her head, her eyes catching the faint tremor still sitting on Lottie’s shoulders. “I was just trying to hide.” She took another drag, exhaled slow, and let the smoke drift lazily between them, the distance shrinking under its haze as her gaze lingered, sharp, curious, and maybe a little too knowing.

Nat didn’t need to ask, she knew messy, she was messy. And whatever that call had been, it hadn’t been casual. No one stepped outside into a cold, dimly lit alley just to make a friendly phone call. No one whispered like that unless there was something they didn’t want the world to hear. That was the tone of secrets, of shame, of things that existed only in the dark.

She could’ve called her out on it. Two weeks ago, she would have. Back when she still thought it was safer to put distance between them by throwing sharp words instead of anything else. But now she didn’t feel like doing it. Now, she just stood there, drawing in the smoke until it scratched her throat, letting the burn fill her chest, pretending it was the cold that made her shiver and not the quiet between them.

Lottie seemed lost in thought, her eyes drifting over Nat’s silhouette as though she were tracing the edges of a memory she couldn’t place. If she’d wanted to explain herself, she didn’t. She just moved closer, slow and deliberate, until she was leaning against the same wall, her shoulder brushing the rough brick, her body aligning with Nat’s as though drawn by some gravity neither of them wanted to acknowledge. When she turned her head, their faces were so close Nat could feel her breath, soft and uneven.

“Do you share?” Lottie asked, voice low, her eyes flicking toward the cigarette still balanced between Nat’s lips.

“You look like you need it,” Nat teased, though her voice came out quieter than she meant. Then, without thinking too hard about it, she reached up and plucked the cigarette from her own lips. Her other hand found Lottie’s chin, rough thumb pressing gently against her bottom lip, a small insistence, a motion that undid something tight between them. Then she slipped the cigarette between Lottie’s parted lips, the ember flaring between them like a secret passed from one mouth to another.

When she looked up, Lottie’s gaze was waiting for her, two dark, steady irises catching the faint light from the exit sign above them. And something inside Nat jumped, sharp and involuntary, like her pulse had tripped over itself. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t want to know either.

“You hide here a lot?” Lottie asked after a long silence, her tone casual but her eyes still holding her.

“I don’t know,” Nat replied, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Do you?”

She let herself look then, really look. The beauty mark near Lottie’s jaw, the freckles dusting her cheekbones, the faint crease at the corner of her eyes from smiling too much, and the way one small fang peeked out when she did it again now, exhaling the cigarette smoke in a soft, swirling cloud that caught the air between them.

And when Lottie smiled—at her—Nat felt the air change, the world folding smaller, quieter, until all that existed was that faint curl of smoke and the heartbeat she could suddenly hear too loudly in her ears.

“What are you doing after that?” Lottie asked, her voice soft enough that it almost disappeared into the sound of the night wind slipping through the narrow space between the buildings.

“Walking,” Nat hummed after a beat, her gaze drifting downward until it found the column of Lottie’s throat, watching the way she swallowed her own words, how some of them seemed to stick there, too heavy or too uncertain to ever make it out. It was strange—Lottie had never struck her as the kind of person who hesitated. She’d always moved like she knew exactly where to go, spoke like she expected people to follow. Seeing her uncertain now unsettled something in Nat’s chest, though she couldn’t quite tell if she hated it or needed it.

“Walking?” Lottie repeated, eyebrows raising, the confusion in her tone mingling with the faintest amusement as she tilted her head, squinting a little, like she was trying to decide whether Nat was joking or just strange enough to mean it.

“Yeah,” Nat said simply, her voice flat, unbothered. “I walk. Until it’s morning again. Until I can come back here.” There was no humor in it because there wasn’t supposed to be. That was her day, that was all of it: walking to the rink, skating until her body ached, walking back home through the dark streets, not finding sleep, heading out again, walking until dawn, and then skating once more. The cycle made sense, even if nothing else did.

“That doesn’t sound healthy,” Lottie teased, her tone carrying no mockery, only the kind of gentle disbelief that sounded almost like concern.

“Shut up,” Nat muttered, shaking her head with a half-smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes.

Lottie let out a small breath, a sound that could’ve been a sigh or a laugh, and when her cigarette finally died, she let the butt fall to the ground, crushing it beneath the heel of her boot with a slow twist of her foot. When she straightened again, she stepped closer, closer than before, close enough that Nat could feel the warmth of her through the layers of their jackets, close enough that the smell of smoke and something faintly floral clung to the space between them.

“Can I do it too?” Lottie asked quietly, almost like she was afraid of breaking the moment.

“What?” Nat whispered, her voice low and rough, the word catching in her throat as she blinked at her.

“Walk,” Lottie whispered back, her breath ghosting against Nat’s cheek. “Walk with you tonight. You and me.”

And the way she said it, without expectation, without teasing, made something inside Nat still completely, as though the world itself had paused for her to answer.

“Sure,” Nat said, barely more than a breath, but it was enough.

And so that’s how they ended up walking like that, side by side, late at night, their steps uneven but slowly finding a rhythm, like two songs trying to learn each other’s melody. The streets were empty except for the echo of their shoes scraping the asphalt, the soft hum of the streetlights buzzing above them, and the faint rustle of wind dragging leaves across the road. Neither of them spoke at first; there was a quiet that wasn’t uncomfortable, just full, stretched thin between them like a held breath.

“I had a moment of weakness,” Lottie said suddenly, her voice slicing through the silence but not shattering it, only rippling it slightly. She didn’t look at Nat as she spoke, her gaze stayed fixed ahead, on the long, empty road stretching before them, her posture rigid but her tone calm in a way that felt fragile.

Nat turned her head toward her, studying her profile in the dim light. Lottie was smiling, but it was the kind of smile that hurt to look at, one that tried too hard to stay, even when it should have fallen apart. When was she ever not smiling, anyway?

“I called her,” Lottie continued, dragging a hand through her curls with a sharp sigh, the motion jerky, restless. “I knew she wouldn’t respond or anything, but I just—felt this urge.” The streetlamp above them flickered, pressing awkward bars of light across her face, catching the wet shimmer at the corner of her eyes. For a second, she looked like she was about to cry, and then the light changed, and she was back to smiling again, that same stubborn little smile she seemed to live behind.

“Is it…” Nat started, the question barely formed, her voice uncertain, but she didn’t have to finish it.

“Yeah,” Lottie interrupted softly, and let out a shaky laugh that wasn’t really one. “And it’s fucking—so embarrassing that you saw it.” She still wouldn’t look at her, her eyes glued to some invisible point on the road ahead, like if she stopped moving she might just fall apart right there. “I don’t know why, it’s been months really, I wouldn’t even know what to say to her anymore,” she added, her tone flattening as she turned her face away, the darkness swallowing half her features. “It’s so dumb.”

Nat didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what she was supposed to be right now, friend, partner, stranger, witness. They didn’t really know each other, not enough for this kind of honesty, not enough for heartbreaks and ghosts of old lovers. And even if they did, Nat had never been good at this kind of thing, this soft, human part of life that required words instead of motion, warmth instead of fight.

So she just kept walking beside her, close enough that their arms brushed once, and when Lottie didn’t pull away, neither did she.

“I’m not proud,” Lottie said at last, the words escaping her with a small, wet little chuckle that trembled between a laugh and a confession.

“Me too,” Nat hummed after a beat, her voice low, almost lost to the wind.

Lottie stopped walking, and instinctively, so did Nat. They stood there in the middle of the deserted street, the city around them half-asleep, a soft hum of distant traffic and the occasional flicker of neon bleeding into the night. Lottie turned toward her, that same infuriatingly gentle smile stretching across her face, too soft for the hour, too shy for what she’d just said. It shouldn’t have been there, not when everything felt raw and heavy, but it was, and somehow that made it worse. It made it unbearable.

“I wish you were,” Lottie said quietly, her voice carried by the wind. Her hands were buried deep in her jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, the streetlamp behind her drawing a thin halo around her curls, the light catching in her eyes just enough to make them look almost gold.

Nat snorted, unable to help herself, a bitter little sound that wasn’t really laughter. “You should wish that for yourself first,” she muttered, stuffing her hands deeper into her own pockets, “do you ever put yourself first in anything?”

Lottie tilted her head slightly, considering that, her breath fogging in the cold air. “Putting others first is what makes me put myself first,” she replied after a pause, her tone almost serene, like it was the simplest truth in the world.

“That’s dumb,” Nat said flatly, the corner of her mouth twitching, not sure if she wanted to laugh or bite.

“Maybe you are,” Lottie shot back, a smirk replacing the softness, just for a second, sharp, teasing, quick.

Nat rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she started walking again, her boots scuffing the pavement. “Okay, big shot,” she muttered, but the faintest trace of a smile was pulling at her lips now, one she didn’t bother hiding.

And behind her, Lottie followed, the echo of her steps falling perfectly in sync with Nat’s.

“Can we never talk about it?” Lottie asked quietly, her voice softer than the hum of the streetlights above them. “I want it left in the past— for good.”

There was something in the way she said it, something fragile and desperate, like she was handing Nat a sealed box and asking her never to open it. The wind brushed through her hair, carrying her words into the night, and Nat found herself staring at her for a long moment, her face dimly lit by the orange glow of a distant lamp.

“If we’re digging graves for the past,” Nat finally said, her tone dry but her smirk tugging at something gentler beneath it, “bury mine too.”

And just like that, they were standing in front of her house—Ben’s house, really—its dark windows reflecting nothing but the hollow quiet of the street. The world around them had gone still, the kind of silence that feels almost suspended, like time itself was holding its breath for them to say goodnight.

“Deal, partner,” Lottie said with that goofy smile of hers, and she extended her pinky toward Nat, her eyes glinting with something half-sincere, half-playful.

Nat rolled her eyes, fighting the grin creeping up the corner of her mouth. “You’re such a fucking weirdo,” she muttered, though there was no bite behind it.

“Come on,” Lottie insisted, her hand still hanging there between them, ridiculous and stubborn and warm.

Nat hesitated just long enough for the night air to grow heavy around them. Then she smirked, leaned forward, and instead of linking their pinkies, spat into her palm and offered it as an invitation.

The brunette recoiled instantly, a look of pure disgust contorting her face as she yanked her hand back with a strangled noise. “No way we’re doing that,” she groaned, her nose scrunched in dramatic horror.

Nat’s laugh came out rough but genuine, bubbling up before she could stop it. She didn’t know it yet, didn’t realize how easily this strange woman kept finding ways to win but Lottie had won again, without even trying, just by standing there under the flickering light, smiling like the night wasn’t cold and the past wasn’t heavy.

~

They glide into their midline step sequence together, hip to hip, shoulders aligned like mirrors. They start with matching deep outside edges, leaning into the ice with a quiet fierceness, then carve through a run of intricate turns, rockers into counters into tightly-controlled brackets, all in perfect unison. Their free legs snap into position at the exact same beat, high and sharp, then melt back down into the ice as they transition into a series of synchronized choctaws. There’s a sudden burst of speed as they push through a set of twizzles, rotating with that same cat-like precision, catching each other’s rhythm without even looking. They close it with a sweeping mohawk and a dramatic curve that pulls them almost nose-to-nose, both blades biting the ice in one final controlled edge. The whole sequence feels less like two separate skaters and more like one line of movement, split in two bodies, tight, musical, and perfectly in sync.

“I can’t believe how far you’ve come in just a few weeks. This looks like a real pair now,” the coach remarked, his voice carrying across the rink.

They were both standing still in the middle of the ice, Lottie’s hand still resting against Nat’s waist, their breath mingling in short, uneven bursts that fogged the air between them. 

“The lift was clean, the landing solid, and your timing with her was dead on,” he continued, his tone a mixture of surprise and approval that made something stir uncomfortably in Nat’s chest. “You actually let her lead.”

“I didn’t even think about it,” Nat huffed, still panting. A lock of hair had come loose from her bun, sticking to the damp line of sweat along her temple, and she brushed it back with a shaky hand.

“Exactly. That’s the point,” the coach said, nodding, his clipboard tucked under his arm. “You stopped thinking and started skating together.”

Nat had never thought of him as kind, not really, he wasn’t cruel, just demanding in a way that made kindness feel like something earned, not given. But now, as she looked at him, she saw a real smile, small, quiet, almost reluctant and it struck her more deeply than she expected.

“You’re not a solo skater pretending anymore,” he said finally, his voice softer now. “You’re part of a pair. Good job, girls. This is going to work.”

Nat blinked at that, her lungs still burning, her mind catching up to what he’d said. Her gaze drifted toward Lottie, who hadn’t moved an inch, who still had her hand lingering where it had been during the lift, steady and warm through the layers of clothes.

The fool was smiling, of course. All teeth, all radiance, that damned sharp little fang peeking out from her grin like a secret only she could afford to keep.

“It felt like us,” Lottie said simply, as if that explained everything, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

And Nat, still breathless, trembling from the effort, the cold, and that unspoken ache curling beneath her ribs—found herself staring at her partner, at this strange, maddening woman who had somehow taught her that when you stop fighting the fall, when you stop fearing the act of sharing the weight, the balance, the moment itself, sometimes the ice gives something back.

Something real. Something worth keeping.

“Let’s go again, the whole sequence,” the coach called out at last.

Nat rolled her shoulders once, twice, feeling the tension crackle under her skin, and then met Lottie’s gaze, a small nod passing between them, wordless but heavy with something like trust. She took a breath, deep enough to sting, and pushed herself forward, the world narrowing again to the cold, the rhythm, and the weight of the girl moving in perfect, maddening sync beside her.

Maybe this could actually work. Maybe—just maybe.

~

The off-season ended far too quickly for Nat’s liking, because in just a handful of days it was already pre-season again, the local competitions looming on the calendar like a threat disguised as promise, and behind them the national selection waiting like a lion in the dark, testing if they truly had it in them to reach that far and survive it.

She didn’t really have hope, she didn’t function with hope, she functioned with the deep, feral need to fight and scrape and claw her way out of every second of her own panic, while Lottie, somehow, functioned with hope like it was oxygen.

“There’s no such thing as false hope, Nat. There’s just hope,” Lottie tells her, her face lit up by the yellow streetlamp on the balcony outside, the late June night gnawing at their fingers while the city below sleeps.

Nat doesn’t know when this started, this ritual of staying out late, of lingering when the skating center closes, when the city goes quiet, of finding themselves sitting shoulder to shoulder on this balcony while the hour stretches thin around them, she doesn’t know why Lottie is always so close to her orbit, so near to the center of her gravity, or why they talk like this until the ghosts of dawn begin to show at the horizon, but it happened, and Lottie happened, slowly and inevitably, to her.

“In your world maybe, Matthews, not in mine,” Nat sighed, a small reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her lips, the back of her skull scraping the concrete wall as she tipped her head up and stared at the blank sky that looked like nothing and everything all at once.

“You’re so fucking stubborn,” Lottie teased with a grin, dragging from the cigarette they had been silently sharing, the smoke curling upward in thin ribbons that got swallowed immediately by the heavy night air.

Nat didn’t really feel the need to smoke anymore, not in the same compulsive, self-destructive way she used to but she liked smoking with Lottie, she liked the weight of that shared quiet, she liked the ritual of passing the small burning thing between their mouths, she liked the absurd intimacy of it, even if she refused to name any of this clearly in her own mind because naming things was dangerous, because if she named them they became real, and real things were always terrifying in her world.

She just shook her head with a snort, because she had also learned, without realizing when or how, that she could accept different things when it came to Lottie, and that apparently being stubborn was one of them, because the way Lottie said the word made it sound almost fond, almost soft, almost like it was an endearment and not a criticism, and maybe it was alright to let herself be anything Lottie decided she was, because somehow everything sounded nicer coming out of her mouth.

“Did you have something else before figure skating?” Lottie asked eventually, because apparently now this was what they did, this strange undefinable relationship of theirs where they asked things and shared things and acted like those answers mattered, like their words had meaning and consequence, like this wasn’t just two colleagues killing time, like this had weight. Real partners.

“Not really,” Nat mumbled at first, but then her brain, traitorous as always, spilling truths she had no business sharing, decided to offer something else, “I did try gymnastics before figure skating,” she admitted eventually as she plucked the cigarette from Lottie’s lips, holding it between her own fingers like it was nothing even though it also felt like everything in that moment.

“Why did you stop,” Lottie hummed, her voice low and warm and annoyingly gentle, and the sound seemed to travel straight from her shoulder into Nat’s, because they were sitting so close that their sleeves kept brushing and unbrushing in tiny accidental frictions that felt like static electricity ricocheting through Nat’s bloodstream.

“I guess it didn’t have the same thrill as the ice of the rink,” Nat said, her gaze drifting forward and losing itself in the memory she didn’t even know she still remembered, “when I was doing gymnastics I was just moving around like some tiny little hyperactive monkey, but when I was skating it was… really dancing in a way, even if it was clumsy, even if it was ugly, it had its own kind of grace,” she took a long quiet drag, and for a moment the only sound was the night itself and she could feel Lottie’s too intense gaze burning her profile, “and when I was on the rink, skating and shit, I always liked this feeling of maybe, maybe I will be sick tomorrow, you know? With my throat always burning, my red nose, chapped lips and all of that,” she murmured almost laughing at herself.

“Did you,” Lottie whispered back in a way Nat couldn’t read, couldn’t label, couldn’t separate from the night.

“Never,” Nat grinned as she finally turned her head to look at Lottie, pressing the side of her skull back against the wooden wall behind her, her smile coming out small and private and so intimate it felt like a stolen thing, like the kind of smile she wasn’t supposed to let anyone witness.

Lottie saw it, she saw her in a way people never had before, she understood her both in the sharing of sentences and in the sharing of silence, equally and without fear, and the worst part was that Nat could feel it happening in real time, could feel herself being seen. Lottie was a kind of peace she had never known before in her life, a calmness that didn’t extinguish the volcano inside her but somehow soothed it, lulled it, made the eruption less likely, and day after day, moment after moment, she found herself losing that hatred she carried like armor toward the world, or at least she didn’t hate the world so much as long as Lottie existed somewhere inside it.

It was unnatural almost, because Lottie was a stranger, and Nat never shared any part of herself with strangers, because strangers were danger, strangers were menace, strangers meant problems and bruised hearts and humiliation and disappointment and suffering.

“Are you scared of nationals selections?” Lottie asked eventually, because Lottie asked things constantly, as if the world were a place where questions were safe, and Nat couldn’t bring herself to lie to her, couldn’t not give her the whole truth the very moment she asked with that fucking tiny soft smile of hers, like it was normal to get that naked in front of someone and not be embarrassed.

Nat would never have guessed that soothing the volcano inside her would give her strength instead of taking it away.

“I— I don’t know,” she hesitated finally, because maybe she was scared, maybe not exactly, because the world itself had always been the scary part, but also because Lottie was now part of the world and she didn’t know how to place that.

“I am,” Lottie confessed, and it sounded like she was saying something brutally important, “I’m scared I won’t be enough for you, won’t lift you high enough, they need to see you Nat,” she said it like a vow, like a promise that scared her just saying it.

Nat saw how much she meant it, how much this girl meant every single word she said, how painfully serious she was about that dumb fucking sentence.

“You’re such an idiot,” Nat sighed flatly.

Or maybe she was the idiot in that moment, because the only possible thing left to do was kiss her.

And Nat had never kissed someone like that, never with a trembling hand rising—almost frightened—to cup a cheek, never with a sigh exhaled against soft fragile lips that looked suddenly almost pink under the balcony light; all her past kisses had been collisions, all her kisses had teeth marks and spit and the metallic tang of adrenaline on them, her whole life had been marked by mouths opening like fangs, by voices barking at her, by dogs waiting for the fences to break under their howling.

She had never kissed someone because it felt right, because it felt like this was safe, this was good, this was something she was allowed to have.

She had kissed to persuade herself she could be like everyone else, that this was the thing she was supposed to do to be a person among people, to be recognized as human and not something feral and unshaped climbing out of the dark.

She had skated to songs because that’s what everyone else wanted, because that’s what the judges and the coaches and the parents and the whole fucking world decided was beautiful.

She had not given herself time to doubt that maybe she could choose for herself what was beautiful.

And she didn’t get the chance to doubt now either, because she felt the gentle press back, she felt her partner following her rhythm, following her lead but not submitting to it, joining it, meeting her halfway, until there was neither initiative nor reaction but something shared, until equilibrium existed between them, until her movement wasn’t hers anymore but theirs, until they were no longer two skaters learning to hold each other upright, but one thing, one line, one single motion.

And right then, right there, she knew she could choose the music she liked, just for the span of this gentle press of lips in the night, hidden from the sky, hidden from the world, right at the threshold of dawn.

She opened her eyes first, looked at her partner, this dumb tall-ass woman with wild brown curls and those perfect lips that now had a taste she could recognize instantly ,cherry chapstick and warmth and something sweet that was not candy and with those perfect brown eyes that right now were trying so hard not to look directly at her, and of course with that fucking smile, that stupid devastating little smile with the fang peeking, the one Nat couldn’t name, couldn’t categorize, couldn’t defend herself against.

“You’re lifts are good, by the way,” Nat finally said, because she genuinely didn’t know what she was supposed to say in the wake of that kiss, in the wake of the way Lottie’s pupils were blown wide, huge, dilated like she had swallowed the night sky and was trying to hide it behind those ridiculous lashes.

Maybe that’s why she had always felt like she needed to act, to pretend, to perform humanity, because she had never understood the choreography of being human, the sequencing of the right sentences, the timing of softness, maybe that’s why she had never kissed someone the way she had just kissed Lottie.

And Lottie—Lottie she snorted, a tiny exhale that still somehow felt like a whole laugh in Nat’s throat, and she smiled back, and even her gaze was smiling, even her eyes somehow had a smile in them, like that was possible, like the muscles around the iris could grin, and Nat didn’t know that kind of thing existed, didn’t know that could exist, but a terrifying amount of impossible things seemed to exist when Lottie was the one standing in front of her.

~

They slide into the step sequence almost without warning, like two thoughts forming the same idea at the exact same time. Their blades kiss the ice with that low, dangerous hiss, shoulders almost brushing as they accelerate. They carve matching deep edges, close enough that her breath ghosts across the other’s cheek on each turn. Their feet draw sharp patterns on the ice, rockers and counters in perfect lockstep, like a private language made of steel and balance and timing.

Their arms move with that slow, intentional grace, fingertips tracing the air close to waist and ribs, never touching, but always near. They drive through the choctaws with a little smirk in the hips, a controlled flirt in the timing. Then the twizzles hit, fast, close, wild, their bodies rotating around the same invisible axis, trusting that neither will pull away.

When they finish, they close the sequence cheek-to-cheek, blades still biting into the same shared curve on the ice. For a split second, they don’t look like two skaters anymore. They look like one urge, one breath, one momentum split into two bodies that refuse to let go.

The local competitions had begun, and things were going well, unbelievably well even, almost suspiciously well on the ice and the media, of course, was a little less smooth, because why wouldn’t they try to ruin a good thing.

“You were fantastic Ms. Scatorccio out there, truly electric, you were a major name already in the solo scene last year before your suspension, but this… this was next level, how did you make it work, especially considering you’re known for not being very compatible with your peers—”

Every single time, after every skate, it was the same fucking interrogation, the same loaded questions dressed up as compliments, never once truly caring about the intricacy of that step sequence she and Lottie had just executed with frightening synchronicity, never caring about the miracle of what their bodies had just pulled off seconds ago on fresh ice; in just one week she had found herself resisting the urge to insult at least ten journalists, and considering that she had never been particularly liked by them, now she had somehow become the goose that laid the golden tabloid eggs, and they were pushing, prodding, trying to break her composure, trying to remind her loudly and publicly of who she used to be.

You cannot always reconcile your past when the world is so monstrously hungry for your failures, your problems, your sicknesses, your bruises.

They like to poke at your scars just enough to make sure you can still feel the pain, even when you had finally convinced yourself you had gone numb.

“Hey,” she heard Lottie’s voice rise from somewhere deeper in the locker room, the soft echo of it brushing against the metal doors and the smell of cold sweat and hairspray.

Nat couldn’t bring herself to look at her, not even if they had just won, not even if technically she should be happy, happy to have taken the whole damn tournament, happy to think of the next step, the next score, the next climb but she couldn’t hide the hurt, couldn’t hide how deep those questions pushed inside her ribs like rusted nails, couldn’t hide how hard it was to not erupt back, to not let the volcano roar out of her chest like she always used to.

So she stared at the ground instead, stared at the trembling muscle in her thigh twitching under her skin like every nerve was misfiring in panic, and in the corner of her vision she could see Lottie standing there, still, patient, waiting for a look that refused to come.

Because Nat was ashamed—ashamed of who she used to be, ashamed of her mistakes, ashamed of being reminded again and again by strangers with microphones that her past existed like a loaded gun under the table, ashamed of the knowledge that she could still fuck all of this up, that all it would take is one wrong question, one wrong breath, to tear herself apart in public again, and ruin everything before she even gets the chance to make it better.

“I can’t do it,” she whispered at first, the words barely more than a rasp in the locker-room air, not because she couldn’t skate, her body still remembered how to move, still knew the lines and the weight and the breath but because she knew, with a cold, certain dread, that she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together much longer; sooner or later one of those reporters would say the wrong thing, or push the wrong button, and she’d lose it, punch a mic, scream in someone’s face, wreck everything and that thought tasted like rust in her mouth.

“I’m going—to fucking kill one of them—” she cracked, the sentence tearing out of her like a thing she’d been holding under water too long, her eyes stinging and welling up as she forced herself to look at the woman standing in front of her, the woman she’d learned to trust in ways that still frightened her. “I can’t— I’m gonna fuck it up again, Lottie,” she said, her lips trembling in a way that made the sound of the words feel small and helpless.

Her lips did that so close to Lottie; they used to tremble from cold, from rage, from the animal, defensive fear that had kept her alive, but now they trembled for a different reason because they felt exposed and fragile and naked in front of someone who wasn’t waiting to punish her for breaking, someone who didn’t flinch at the sight of her unraveling.

And Lottie, she did not look at her with the same thin, clinical worry Nat had grown used to from coaches or journalists or strangers who’d watched her fall apart before; Lottie’s face didn’t fold with fear or calculation. Instead she looked at her with something like stubborn kindness, with an eyebrow arched more in challenge than pity, and that damned smile, quiet, steady, impossible, curving at the corner of her mouth in a way that Nat hated because it undid her, and needed because it felt like the only honest thing left in the world.

“You won’t,” Lottie said simply, as if she already knew it to be true, as if she’d felt the future and decided to stake a claim on it, and Nat, who wanted to believe but had been burned too many times, let herself hope, thin, ridiculous, clinging, that maybe she did know.

And her smile—her smile, her fucking smile—her smile that Nat both hated and needed at the same time, the smile that cut through everything she had built around herself, that reminded her of all the people she despised, all the failures and the mistakes and the cruel eyes that had haunted her, and yet, somehow, she needed it, needed every fraction of it, every tiny curve of those lips, every glint of mischief and warmth and stubborn life in her eyes, because in that impossible, infuriating smile was the only piece of the world she could trust and she needed all of it. All of her smile.

Her hands found Lottie’s waist, sliding with a familiarity born from countless hours on the ice, from the endless repetitions of step sequences and lifts, from skating together until muscle memory became instinct, until every touch knew exactly where to land, where to grasp, where to feel and where to ask permission without a word; she looked up like a fucking pathetic idiot, eyes probably brimming because Nat could barely keep herself from plummeting over the edge of everything she held back, her fingers tugging at the fabric of Lottie’s clothes, her mouth gasping, not for air, not really but for Lottie, for the impossibly human warmth she had grown to crave.

And Lottie, she just smiled, that infuriating, disarming, all-consuming smile, and her hands found Nat’s neck, because they just knew, just always knew, the same way she somehow always knew exactly how to cradle Nat’s body, guide her, anchor her in the right place at the right time, and in that smile, in that touch, Nat felt herself folding, cheek pressing against Lottie’s stomach, letting her sighs settle against her like she was exactly where she belonged, like the ice itself had somehow condensed into this single, breathing, living form.

She closed her eyes, letting out a ragged sigh as Lottie’s hands swept over her face, tracing the creases of tension and anger, untangling the rage from her chest, soothing her heart even as it continued to hammer wildly beneath her ribs.

Sometimes your heart beats the hardest when it feels the softest.

“I almost thought you didn’t know how to say my name,” Lottie whispered, her voice low, teasing, carrying that quiet weight of familiarity that Nat had never expected to hear from anyone, the kind of words that linger like the echo of blades on ice long after the music stops.

And Nat, somehow, impossibly, against every rational part of herself, against all the tension and cold and exhaustion that had been coiled tight in her chest, fucking laughed, a short, ragged, uncontainable sound that felt like it had been waiting inside her for years, a laugh that escaped even there, even now, despite the world and the cold, despite everything.

~

“Skate Canada is pleased to announce the athletes selected to compete at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships of this year...”

Nat had heard good news before. As rare as they were, she had felt it before, the brief spike of joy, the rush of pride but somehow, it had never tasted like this, had never landed so full and deep, like the sweetness of it was made for her alone, and for Lottie. There was their coach, even Ben, and a few others crowded around the television, eyes bright and expectant, but when the announcement came, it was Lottie she looked at, and all else fell away. She didn’t know what she herself must look like, but she could describe Lottie perfectly.

Still fresh from the ice, hair in a high ponytail, curls damp at the edges from the effort, skin still flushed from exertion, Lottie’s smile was bright, wide, uncontainable, and her eyes mirrored it, glowing with that impossible ease of someone who could carry the joy of another person as if it were her own. She wore her black and purple sports gear, skates still laced tight, her posture lit with an effortless confidence that Nat could only admire and ache for.

“You and me,” Lottie whispered close to her ear, and Nat felt it in the same way she felt her on the ice, solid, grounding, essential, like her rhythm and weight and breath belonged together, like gravity had shifted just to hold them.

Nat didn’t know why, didn’t need to, but she responded anyway, soft, certain, with a weight she had never carried before: “Us,” because maybe—just maybe—she believed in them like that.

~

“How did you make that scar,” she asked, her fingers hovering just above Lottie’s skin, wanting to trace the faint line, hesitant, unsure if she should, leaning closer, both of them pressed against the balcony wall, bodies inches apart, the night wrapping around them like a soft, dark blanket that made the world shrink to just the two of them.

It was night, always night, the hours she liked best, when the city’s harsh lights softened into pools of amber and shadow, when the sun and its relentless glare seemed to vanish from existence, when she could let the day’s demands and all its sharp, unyielding expectations slip away and dissolve into the quiet, and really, who needed the sun at all when she had Lottie there, close enough to fix her gaze on, to get lost in, to focus on, as if the night itself had been waiting just to frame her.

“It’s dumb,” Lottie giggled, a sound that rolled softly over the balcony, her eyes flicking to Nat with that usual impossible warmth, the way she always looked at Nat, even when she seemed to look nowhere at all, as if she carried Nat in her gaze like a secret map only she could read.

“Come on, tell me,” Nat nudged her shoulder lightly, letting the words hang between them, soft and teasing, but with an undercurrent of curiosity that felt almost too vulnerable.

Lottie’s eyes shifted, tracing the edge of the balcony railing before she finally met Nat’s gaze again, “Okay, but promise you won’t mock me.”

“When have I ever?” Nat gasped in faux offense, exaggerating the indignation, but her heart was ticking faster than usual, the nearness of Lottie making every breath feel too big and too small all at once.

“Really? Is that a real question?” Lottie deadpanned, her voice calm, sharp, and infuriating all at once, like she’d anticipated this exact reaction.

“Okay—” Nat laughed, throwing up her hands, “you deserved that one. In my defense, who the fuck eats their cereal with water, Lottie?”

“You’re such a hater,” Lottie shot back, her voice light but precise, “that’s exactly what you are!”

And for a heartbeat, they just laughed together, the sound soft and low, echoing across the quiet night, their shoulders brushing, the space between them shrinking, and Nat felt, somehow, that this—these moments—were enough to make the world disappear outside the balcony rail.

“Okay, so— it’s not some epic story, really,” Lottie began, her voice trailing as she leaned back, the night air brushing across her curls, “I was, like, what? Five? Six? Something like that… I was having a hard time making friends at school, desperate, I guess, for someone, anyone, to notice me, to care about me, to see me for more than whatever weird little kid I was, so there was this talent show my school had organized, and in pure desperation, I decided I’d sign myself up and do, like, a magician’s act. I was such a nerd for magic tricks when I was little… anyway, it was my turn, and I was mortified, so scared to go up in front of the whole school, and when I finally mustered the courage to step onstage, I missed a step and fell face-first off the stage,” Lottie groaned, burying her face in her hands as if the memory still burned.

“So… did it work?” Nat asked, curiosity lacing her quiet voice as she tilted her head, leaning closer, the soft glow of the streetlight catching the edges of her eyelashes.

“What?” Lottie peeked between her fingers, blinking through the shadows.

“Did you… make friends?” Nat pressed gently.

“Not a single one,” Lottie sighed, letting her hands fall to rest on her legs, a fond, almost wistful chuckle escaping her lips, “but… people did see me, I guess.”

“That’s rough,” Nat hummed, the words soft, almost reverent, as she exhaled into the night.

“Kids are… hard on each other,” Lottie murmured, shrugging, as if the weight of that memory had settled into her shoulders like an old coat.

“Yeah… they are,” Nat agreed quietly, her eyes drifting across the balcony, catching the distant glimmer of the city, but always coming back to Lottie.

“I think it’s badass, the scar, from the second I saw you for the first time,” Nat admitted simply, the words falling out like they were obvious, effortless, as if all the rest of the world’s noise had finally quieted and only this truth remained, and somehow, Lottie was rubbing off on her.

Lottie’s smile grew, slow and beautiful, stretching across her face like sunlight through clouds, “So in the end, it did work, huh? Only took me fifteen years, but thanks to it… I did make a friend,” she teased, a soft laugh escaping her, light and warm in the night air.

There was a beat, not heavy, on the contrary, weightless, almost suspended, and Nat’s head tilted slightly as she studied Lottie’s face, tracing the line of her jaw, the curve of her lips, the way her lashes caught the dim light, “Is that what we are,” she whispered, hesitant, searching for a name for whatever fragile thing was building between them, “friend?”

Lottie’s gaze fell to her lips, hungry, deliberate, her own breath catching quietly, “Partner?” she tried again, the word soft, teasing, as she nipped at her own bottom lip, the movement slow and intimate.

Nat let out a dark, low chuckle, more a short gasp of air than a laugh, her eyes following every subtle motion of the brunette next to her, every tiny shift of her lips, “Try again,” she whispered, leaning closer, their foreheads nearly touching, feeling the warmth of her skin, the proximity making her pulse stutter.

She could feel Lottie’s shallow, struggling breath against her own, see the dilation in her eyes, the tiny shiver of anticipation that ran through her, and it was strange, because Nat didn’t let strangers in her life, didn’t let anyone in, and yet, god, she needed this one, needed Lottie, needed her closeness and her warmth, her certainty, her presence.

Not because she thought it was what she should do, or what anyone expected of her, but because she wanted it, because she wanted Lottie, because the world could wait and be ignored for a moment, and all that mattered was this, here, now, and her.

“I am whatever you want me to be,” Lottie whispered, a soft confession carried on the night air, her nose brushing against Nat’s, their lashes flicking together in a delicate, almost imperceptible caress.

Nat couldn’t remember what it felt like to breathe air that she didn’t share with Lottie, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to remember the emptiness of space that once separated her from this woman, the absence of touch, the cold, unshared air, the hollow ache of not being so close, of not being able to lean into someone who made her feel simultaneously exposed and safe.

She would have given her rink, her ice, the freezing bite of her own skin, sooner, she would have crossed oceans, come to fucking Canada earlier if she had known that Lottie would burn it so beautifully, that Lottie would make every shared moment worth the risk, worth the chaos of letting someone in.

Nat probably broke first, or maybe it was Lottie, she couldn’t place it, but it didn’t matter anyway; on the ice, she resisted the urge to kiss her out of decorum, out of professional restraint, but here, under the quiet weight of the night, there was nothing to stop her. Nothing to stop the raw frustration, the clawing need that ran across every inch of her skin, up to the tips of her fingers, that made her heart thrum and her blood hiss, demanding release, urging her hands to press against Lottie’s dumb t-shirt, urging her lips to press to hers, to taste the cherry chapstick, to feel the sweetness smeared across her own lips, mingling with spit in a way that scrambled her thoughts and made her feel deliciously, stupidly undone.

“I want a us,” she gasped, the words escaping between ragged breaths as she pressed herself harder into Lottie, straddling her lap, feeling Lottie’s hands settle at her waist with a certainty that had always been there, as if they had always known exactly where to be, how to hold, and in that moment, nothing else existed but the heat, the friction, and the dizzying, beautiful impossibility of them.

“I always believe in you and me,” Lottie giggled against Nat’s cheek, her warm breath tickling her skin as her hands trailed down, pressing her palms firmly into the back pockets of Nat’s jeans, feeling the rigid pull of muscle and the heat beneath.

“Fuck,” Nat groaned, grinding down against the emptiness of Lottie’s lap, her back arching slightly as she looked up at the dark sky, tracing constellations she couldn’t name before her gaze fell back to Lottie, her thumb brushing the delicate rim of her ear, a teasing, intimate gesture that made her shiver, “confidence looks hot on you,” she slurred, her lips ghosting over the scar on Lottie’s forehead, not sweet, not innocent, but claiming, her breath hot and insistent against her skin, her hands cupping Lottie’s face, anchoring it to hers as if she could press the world out of existence.

Lottie closed her eyes, letting out a sharp, wet pant, squeezing Nat’s ass harder under her palm as if to say she belonged there entirely, “I wanted you from the moment I saw you on the fucking ice, Nat. I’m your biggest fan, Nat, your biggest fucking fan,” she choked out, a laugh buried deep in the back of her throat, wet and full of longing.

“Shut up,” Nat rasped, her breath ragged, fighting back a laugh she couldn’t contain as she kissed her way down Lottie’s face, over temples, cheeks, jaw, her lips and tongue urgent and starved, eyes closing to let sensation guide her, to let the desire that had been building all day, all week, all months, pour out through touch alone.

“Sometimes,” Lottie whispered, her hands tightening, nails digging in slightly with every new kiss and nip, “sometimes it terrifies me, how much I want you, how much I care about you,”

At that, Nat paused against the soft curve of her neck, drawing in a shaky, ragged breath, looking up at her through heavy-lidded eyes, the dark warmth of arousal and fear mixed in a way that made her pulse feel like it might shatter her ribs.

They looked at each other, panting, the night surrounding them, quiet except for the sound of their synchronized breaths, the only music to which they were attuned.

And the silence? It was heavy, yes, impossibly heavy, but heavy not with tension or dread, only with raw, unfiltered need, the weight of want, the greed of desire rising like frost from the ice they had once shared, saturating every nerve ending between them.

“I care so much about you, Lottie,” Nat murmured, words caught in her throat, nearly lost in the ragged inhale and exhale of their shared urgency.

Another beat stretched between them, thick, nearly tangible, their breathing louder than the wind, louder than the distant hum of the city, a rhythm of its own, possessed by them alone.

“You better take me to your fucking bed,” Lottie finally rasped, voice breaking, raw, desperate, the madness of need spilling from her chest like wildfire, and Nat felt it, felt the claim, the pull, the inevitability of it, knowing—knowing—that nothing else would ever matter quite like this.

She doesn’t know how they managed it, but somehow, impossibly, they did, back inside, in her room, Nat nestled between Lottie’s thighs, tracing a path down her body with lips and tongue, tasting, exploring, claiming, letting the heat between them grow unbearable and yet somehow still needing more.

“If you like magician tricks, I do have a magic wand in the bedside table,” Nat teased, fingers lifting Lottie’s shirt just enough to graze the hot, soft skin of her stomach with a nip that made Lottie jerk slightly, the unexpected contact sparking a delicious shock through her.

Lottie gasped, a sound that was part surprise and part arousal, her voice catching as she tried to scold, “I can’t believe you just said that—” but the words dissolved into a low, wine-like giggle as her hands came up to cradle Nat’s face, guiding her, feeling the gentle pressure of teeth grazing skin, the friction both sharp and intoxicating, and the heat pooling deep inside her.

Nat only giggled into her skin, pressing further, letting her tongue explore the curve of Lottie’s waist, dragging lightly along the waistband of her jeans, her lips hungry for more, tugging at the fabric that stood in the way of her desire, teasing, pulling, tasting.

“I’m sure I can show you magic with my hands, though,” Nat murmured against her, arms wrapping fully around Lottie’s thighs, holding her close, pressing her warmth into Lottie’s core, her hands exploring and claiming as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

“Oh my god, if you don’t shut up, I will make you, Nat,” Lottie groaned into the cushions, her hips grinding against nothing, rubbing against the empty air in frustration, her heat pressing up through the confine of her clothes, the ache inside her growing unbearably, suffused with want and need.

“Make me,” Nat breathed back, voice low and ragged, pressing her lips hungrily against the inside of Lottie’s still-covered thigh, letting her tongue trace patterns, her hands tightening, holding her steady, claiming her, and tasting everything Lottie was offering, as if she could make the night itself pause around them.

“Fuck— I can’t— Nat, eat me out— I need your mouth,” Lottie gasped, crude and urgent, impatient as ever, and Nat felt her pulse stutter at the words spilling from those cherry-tinted lips, the desperation woven into each syllable like fire, raw and unfiltered, and in what mad, impossibly tempting world could she ever say no to that.

So she pressed her mouth hard and fast against the denim covering Lottie’s heat, lapping, sucking, dragging her tongue across the fabric, tasting the faint musk and the warmth that radiated beneath, letting the scent and friction guide her, letting herself be utterly consumed by the need pressing between them.

“Nat,” Lottie whined, her hips rolling and grinding against her mouth uncontrollably, hands tangling in her hair, forcing her closer, holding her face down against the taut fabric, every movement desperate, frantic, echoing the fire building low in her belly.

“More— I can’t—” she panted, sweat beading along her temple, chest heaving, her core soaked, the wetness spreading through the denim, Nat’s touch and her own juices mingling in a slick, warm mess that made her shiver in both despair and craving.

“Yes, you can, pretty girl,” Nat murmured, voice low and teasing, sliding a pad of her finger over the wet patch, pressing just enough to torment, to tease, to remind Lottie exactly how much she could take, how much she wanted.

“More, please,” Lottie whimpered into the cushions, yet she didn’t stop moving, pressing herself harder against Nat’s mouth, her hips frantic, her thighs trembling, every motion pushing Nat deeper, every nerve ending alight with fire, the crude friction of the denim only intensifying the ache at her core, a burn she both cursed and craved.

“You smell so good,” Nat groaned into the warm skin of Lottie’s inner thigh, her breath ragged and uneven, her face so close she could practically drown in the heat radiating from her partner, and she pulled back just a fraction, just enough to look at her, to take her in, to catch that look in Lottie’s eyes that said everything and nothing and too much all at once.

Lottie let out a strangled sound at the sight, she could have folded right there on the spot, could have fallen apart immediately if it wasn’t for that stubborn part of her that needed to hold on, to stretch this moment out, to let it exist as long as it possibly could, because God, there was something in Nat’s eyes that made her feel like she was being seen down to bone and breath.

“I want you to come like this,” Nat whispered, voice hoarse from want and nerves and whatever lightning was cracking inside her chest, “ please,” and her voice broke, cracked open around that single word that sounded like surrender, like offering, like the most dangerous kind of vulnerability she had ever allowed anyone to hear from her.

“Yes,” Lottie breathed, nodding without even thinking it through. Maybe she was too easy when it came to Nat, but maybe that was okay, maybe wanting someone like this didn’t have to be shameful.

Nat leaned in again, breathing her in like she needed oxygen from her body alone, and it was a mess, it was a hopeless, beautiful, human mess, nothing like the precision and choreography they could summon on the ice together, no grace, no perfection, just want and trust and the raw reckless belief that this moment was something neither of them would regret.

Maybe, maybe sharing the ice had never been about the ice at all, maybe it had always been about this— the place inside someone where fear stops being a threat and becomes fuel, where movement stops being a performance and becomes a language, where two bodies stop being separate and start becoming one long line of intent moving toward the same point in space.

Here, in the dark, in the heat of each other’s breath, that was the only music that mattered.

Lottie came, trembling and gasping, shuddering from Nat’s mouth and fingers, because Nat wanted it, because she had taken the lead and carved a path only she could, and because Lottie, could not resist her, could not stop herself from surrendering to the pull of Nat’s hands, the insistence in her lips, the way she moved with certainty and fire, and even in that moment, in the heat and chaos of it, Lottie knew she would follow Nat anywhere, anywhere at all, because Nat had found the place inside her that always had been hers to find, and so does Lottie, and now it was theirs, tangled, raw, and impossibly alive.

~

“He’s not here,” Lottie breathed out eventually, standing there in her skates, looking straight across the empty expanse of white ice toward the bleachers beyond the rink, like she was seeing someone who never came.

Nat raised her eyes from herself, from where she was adjusting the thigh strap of her costume,  she tried to look at what Lottie was pointing at, though of course she couldn’t, you can’t see something that isn’t there, you can’t see an absence, so she looked back at Lottie instead.

“Who?” she said simply, even if the answer had already crawled into her bones.

“My father,” Lottie whispered back, and she said it with that same gentle simplicity, like it could be that simple, like it should be that simple, even if Nat knew it probably wasn’t, even if nothing ever was, not with the lives they lived before they touched each other’s.

When they stepped onto the ice for the program itself, they entered the step sequence with that same brutal synchronicity they had built over months, blades carving the ice in parallel, edges deep and matched, free legs sweeping in mirrored timing, arms rising and folding in the shape of the choreographic sentence they had memorized together, and from the distance of the stands it was seamless: tight rockers, clean counters, sharp choctaws locking to the beat like two minds finishing each other’s thought in the same breath.

But if you looked closer at Lottie— something in her was off, not in the legs or the feet or the spine or the blade, she hit every placement, every timing, every damn rhythm, but the light in her eyes was somewhere else entirely, fogged and far away, like she was skating through a memory instead of music.

Nat feels it immediately, because she always feels her, in the tiny delays, the extra microsecond she needs to wait before she initiates the next turn, the slight resistance in the shoulder frame connection when Nat opens her upper body for the next transition, the breath that comes not quite at the same time as hers, just a fraction too late, like she is here in body but late in soul.

Still— they keep going. They always keep going. The blades keep singing across the frozen white, and Nat holds them steady like she always does, because sometimes the only thing you can do, when the ghosts are close, is skate hard enough to drown them.

They hit the twizzles dead-on, spinning so close their fingertips almost brush like a phantom touch, the rotations sharp and lethal in their precision, almost violent in the way Lottie flings herself into speed like she’s using centrifugal force to outrun whatever is clawing at the inside of her ribcage, whatever grief or ghost or memory is chewing her alive.

And when they close the sequence, the final edges etch a perfect pattern on the ice, like a clean signature, like two blades writing the same sentence in mirrored cursive, like proof that they exist on the same line of reality.

But as they glide out toward the next element, Nat sees it, the tiniest tremor in Lottie’s jaw, not enough to disturb a single position, not enough to show the judges or the cameras, but enough to show that there is emotion right under the polished surface, like a faultline waiting for the quake.

The audience doesn’t see it.

The judges don’t see it.

But Nat does, because Nat sees her.

And in a way, the whole run was beautiful— maybe because nothing could pervert what they had become together on the ice, maybe because their bodies were shielded by glass and cold and motion from the ugliness of the world beyond it, maybe because when they skate together the world stops being a place that hurts and becomes a place that hums under their blades like it was made for them.

There was applause, loud and bright, the kind of applause Nat used to chase like oxygen, but Lottie’s eyes didn’t stay for it, didn’t stay for the adoration or the validation or any of it, they were already fleeing, away from the stands, away from the judges, away from everything in here.

And Nat saw the exact moment Lottie broke posture and skated off toward the exit, not even waiting for the music to finish fully in her mind.

So Nat didn’t think, didn’t analyze, didn’t even give herself the grace of a second thought, because the instinct was louder than logic, louder than fear, louder than her own name, she just followed her partner.

She found her there, skates already off, sitting on the cold concrete steps in front of the exit door, the one that leads behind the skating center where the industrial air smells faintly like metal and exhaust and winter now.

“He never came,” Lottie simply said, without turning around, she didn’t need to see who was behind her.

Somehow she just knew.

Nat let the heavy door swing shut behind her with a dull thud, and then she lowered herself slowly onto the steps beside her partner, like she was afraid any sudden movement would break whatever fragile tension was holding Lottie together.

“Sometimes— sometimes I let myself believe that he would come someday,” Lottie exhaled, and then there was a tiny dry chuckle that sounded like paper being torn.

Nat could see her face in profile, the way the overhead security light carved her cheekbone, the way the half-smile sliced across her lips like a weapon more than an expression, because this one tasted different than all the others, this one wasn’t soft or alive, it was forced, brittle, a smile she nailed onto her own face like a mask, bitter and exhausted.

“Sometimes, I swear I catch his silhouette out of the corner of my eye, like maybe he’s standing, watching, and then there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, just this familiar disappointment sinking through me again,” she murmured, dragging her thumb clumsily across her cheek, brushing at tears that weren’t even spilling.

“I wish he would come, even just so he could be disappointed,” she added, another tiny broken laugh, or maybe a hiccup, it was hard to tell where the laugh ended and the wound began.

“I tried everything, my best, my worst, every version of myself I could possibly invent just to be someone he might want to look at twice, and nothing works, nothing ever works, he will never come, never,” she whispered through trembling lips that barely managed to form the words.

And then finally she turned to Nat, turning that smile toward her, that terrible smile, and of course she’s smiling, of course she is, because Lottie has always been able to wrap pain into something palatable, shape it into something digestible, like she believes she needs to hide the raw wound and even though Nat loves her smile, loves it like oxygen in her lungs, right now it’s nothing but ugly and violent, and it hurts Nat to look at it because it’s the kind of smile someone builds when their heart has been starving and cracking open for far too long, the kind of smile that feels like it could bleed if you touched it.

Nat doesn’t know how humans work, she doesn’t know the script people seem to follow in moments like these, she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do or supposed to say or supposed to give in order to make any of this better.

But she knows what she likes on Lottie’s face and she knows what she can’t bear to see on it anymore.

So her arm reaches out, slow and careful, until it’s around Lottie’s shoulders, and then she cups Lottie’s face and she gently guides her toward her own shoulder, offering the simplest shelter she has, her own body as a place to collapse, and Lottie lets her, she surrenders, sighing into the still-cold fabric of Nat’s costume like she has been cold for years.

“Don’t smile,” Nat whispered into her hair, which is strange because she loves that smile so deeply, but right now Lottie doesn’t need to wear it like armor, she needs to set it down, she needs to stop performing strength.

She doesn’t know if Lottie listens with her brain, but she hears something else, she hears a different kind of hiccup pressed into her shoulder, she feels Lottie’s fingers clawing at her costume as she curls into Nat’s body like she is finally letting gravity drag the truth out of her bones.

She doesn’t know because she sees it, she knows because she feels it, Lottie is not smiling anymore.

She is crying, and maybe this is beautiful too.

~

“Sometimes it’s really hard not to kiss you when we’re on the ice, and your lips are just there,” Lottie slurred, naked in Nat’s sheets, her skin all warm and golden under the muted amber light of the bedside lamp behind her, like she was painted in honey and soft shadow.

Nat’s eyes are devouring her as she sits up, as naked as the morning she was born, cigarette hanging loose between her lips like she forgot she was holding it, like every muscle in her face was too busy studying each subtle shift in Lottie’s expression. She just smiles through the smoke, and when she exhales it curls up in front of her like a ghost neither of them wants to banish.

“One day, I will not be able to stop myself,” Lottie continued, her voice low and almost lazy, her fingers dancing across Nat’s thigh like a whisper of intention, like she’s signing her name on her skin in invisible ink.

“Maybe I don’t want you to stop yourself,” Nat teased back, grinning like an idiot, or maybe she is one, because she can’t imagine ever wanting to resist anything that comes from this woman.

“Maybe I won’t then,” Lottie replied as she kept caressing the skin under her fingertips, slow circles, soft pressure, like she could sculpt the future with only that touch.

Nat took one last drag, exhaled the smoke like a sigh that felt too heavy, then pressed the butt into the ashtray beside the bed, the little ember dying with a faint hiss.

“What are you going to do after,” she asked quietly at last, her voice suddenly softer, like she wasn’t sure if the question would break something if she pushed too hard.

“After…” Lottie trailed off, like the word itself had too many doors behind it and she didn’t know which one she was supposed to open.

“After the competitions, after the nationals, after this,” Nat breathed out, her eyes lingering on the stretch mark peeking from the sheet over Lottie’s hip, then drifting down to the beauty mark on her stomach, and then finally rising back to meet her gaze again, because God she’s so beautiful, so stupidly beautiful that it hurts.

Lottie opened her mouth, then closed it, and then a smile drew itself on her face at last, soft, just soft, like a petal settling on water, and always beautiful, always her, “I don’t know,” she said, almost like she liked the weightlessness of not knowing.

She doesn’t know what is so incredible about not knowing but she doesn’t, and she likes that she doesn’t.

“You don’t want to finally go back to hockey?” Nat proposed, because maybe the uncertainty is still a little scary for her, still a little too wide, too open, like a dark road at dusk.

“You would want me to do that?” Lottie simply asked, never stopping the slow movement of her fingertips across Nat’s skin, like she was tracing constellations she could read better than any star chart.

“I would want you to do what you like,” Nat shrugged, even though she feels something tighten in her chest just saying it.

Lottie seemed to think about it, eyes unfocused for a second, “I like the ice, I like figure skating, I like hockey, I like our duo…” and then after just a beat— not one of reflection, but one of mischief, the corner of her mouth rising in a little wicked arc, she added, “I like us.”

“Fucking asshole,” Nat snorted as she rolled her eyes, because she can feel the heat rush to her face and she hates how easy Lottie makes it happen.

“What?” Lottie asked with all the faux innocence in the world.

“I like skating with you too,” Nat said, trying to sound flat, failing miserably.

“You wanted something else?” Lottie teased, voice all honey and sharp teeth.

Maybe she does, and maybe she is also a bit scared, because things are scary when they’re said out loud, when they become real instead of lingering in the safe limbo between breath and thought.

“I want you to shut up,” she muttered, and then she leaned down, catching that beautiful smile between her own lips, swallowing it whole.

~

The day came too fast, the day of the Grand Prix Final, too fast for her nerves to catch up, too fast for her body to understand that this was real, real again, and suddenly she was facing the rink boards again, hearing the announcer’s voice, seeing all the other duos perform before them, and her heart was running, running fast and hard like it was trying to break out of her chest altogether, and she didn’t know why it was now, why today was sharper, heavier than all the others.

She was scared of not winning, scared that everything they had done, how far they had made it, every bruise and every hour and every night they had bled for this would not matter in the end, scared that something would finally go wrong, would finally fuck it all up when they were this close.

Losing would mean she wasn’t enough, that all the days and nights and aching muscles and swallowed emotions were not enough, and losing it all would feel like a death she wouldn’t survive.

But this time, she wasn’t facing the ice alone.

She felt it on her skin, on her spine, in the very marrow of her bones, warmth. She never felt warm on this ice. The rink was always a void, always cold, always teeth and smoke and pressure.

But she did feel warm now, with Lottie’s hand in hers, grounding her like a heartbeat.

“I’m here, no matter what, it’s together,” she heard at her ear, a whisper, a breath so hot it burned her all the way through, like a brand pressed directly on her soul.

She was made of ice, always has been, cold mind, cold discipline, cold fear frozen under her ribs like a block.

Next to Lottie? She was something else entirely— she was a human being, a woman of blood and nerve and desire, and it had never felt so good, so terrifying, so undeniable.

She finally dared to look back, and it struck her, through all her nights, all her days, she had been made of ice and steel and the quiet vicious discipline that kept her alive, but somewhere in that blinding landscape, there had been Lottie’s smile, that singular beam of human heat cutting through her cold, her smile.

“You and me,” Nat whispered, low, steady, like she was setting a blade on the line she would die for, “partner,” she finally said, fucking finally, like she was claiming a truth she had been circling around for months.

Lottie’s radiant smile broke across her face then, so luminous it could have melted every frozen fear inside Nat’s ribs, “Us,” she said, like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

They slid into the step sequence as the bandoneón spilled that low, slow, dangerous tango line across the rink and their bodies locked into the rhythm immediately, shoulders angled toward each other, hips turned just enough to imply heat without touch, without breaking the narrative, without losing the blade clarity; their skates snapped into deep outside edges in a perfect match, like two knives carving the same electric pulse into the ice. Every rocker, every counter, every bracket was precise but heavy with intention— like they were circling each other, testing for weakness, testing for surrender, testing for who would drop the guard first.

The tango built, coiling tighter under their feet, and their steps became sharper, boots cutting through choctaws with that cat-like flick you barely see but absolutely feel in your spine, like a shiver that starts at the ankle and ends somewhere under your tongue; they got closer and closer and closer until their chests almost brushed, until their breath mingled on the turn, until their matching twizzles felt less like an element and more like two predators orbiting the exact same spark.

They finished the sequence with a slow, deliberate curve, faces inches apart, breath shared, eyes locked like a question no one dared to answer out loud because answering would mean igniting the fuse they were both holding between their teeth. And the whole rink felt like it was holding its breath— not because the skating was perfect, though it was, but because the music had turned them into one single dangerous line, stretched between desire and control, between violence and devotion.

And in that moment, the ice didn’t even look like ice anymore.

It looked like the floor of a smoky Buenos Aires dance hall— and it was theirs.

When the music stops, it isn’t the applause or the roar of the world outside that they attune to, it isn’t the MCs screaming through the mic or the rustle of the arena rising to its feet in some collective animal exhale, it’s each other’s breath, each other’s pulse, each other’s eyes, pressed chest to chest with the thin fabric of their costumes sticking to damp skin, hands and fingers interlacing or grazing along the curve of ribs or the back of wrists or the trembling slope of a shoulder blade, breath mingling fast and uneven like two engines that forgot how to slow down, like two storms that collided and refused to pull apart.

“I like ice, Nat, I like the ice but fuck—” Lottie panted and murmured in a quiver, under the light, under the applause, under the eyes of the world that suddenly felt like a thousand watt spotlight and yet not nearly as blinding as the heat blooming behind her ribs.

“I like you,” Nat interrupted in a pressed whisper, not even letting the sentence fully form because she couldn’t bear the agony of delaying it anymore, because saying it felt less like confession and more like necessity, like survival, like oxygen.

It’s liking, it’s loving, it’s everything she ever feared and everything she ever wanted to live long enough to feel, it’s a universe opening in her sternum and she’s terrified that one wrong move could collapse the whole thing.

She hates that fucking smile, she hates it so much because she loves it, because it slices her open and fills her up and it’s unbearable, because she wants to devour it, because every time it blooms it makes her feel like she could melt right through the ice and drown happily in whatever ocean waits beneath.

Behind them, the presenters are losing their minds in the booth, the applause keeps rising and rising like a tide that refuses to recede, but Lottie is looking at her like Nat hangs the fucking stars in that vast frozen night, and honestly who gives a shit about the world when someone looks at you like that, like you are the whole point of the universe.

“I was supposed to say it, asshole,” Lottie grinned hard, pressing her forehead against hers like she needed the contact to stay upright, like her bones would collapse without Nat’s body propping her into existence.

“You’re too slow, Matthews,” Nat huffed, with a grin so big it stretched her entire face like she suddenly had more muscle mass for joy than she ever had for rage, like she’d been training her whole life for this and didn’t know it until now.

Lottie’s eyes zeroed in on that grin, on this stupid reckless happiness they had just conjured in the middle of a stadium lit like a cathedral of ice and steel, her chest rising harder all of a sudden, not because of any step sequence, not because of any fucking GOE, but because of something else, something that takes you by the throat and drags you toward the edge of a precipice you swore you would never approach again, something that feels like the edge of a cliff you’ve always been terrified to jump from and suddenly you want nothing else but to jump, to leap, to freefall into the unknown that has somehow become the only place that feels like home.

“Do it—” Nat barely had the time to breathe the words, barely had time to finish the exhale that carried them.

Lottie was already kissing her, mouth to mouth, skin to skin, on the ice, in front of the judges, the audience, the coaches, the whole entire world and none of it mattered, none of it ever mattered, because the only thing that ever mattered was this, this fire, this madness, this impossible alignment of two broken people who somehow fit together like teeth in a lock.

Lottie’s smile— god it matters, it matters when it blooms on her lips, when it curves like that in a soft vulnerable half-crescent that looks like surrender disguised as victory, when it softens her whole face like the world just suddenly makes sense, it matters in a way that makes Nat’s pulse trip and fall and sprint all at once, it matters like oxygen, like gravity, like the sound of blades carving into fresh untouched ice after a snowfall.

“I like you, god I love you,” Lottie said directly into her mouth, like it was a vow meant to be swallowed, to be tasted, to be absorbed into blood.

And that matters. She matters. She matters in every way that Nat never knew someone could matter, she matters in a way that collapses every former definition of desire she ever had, she matters like the only safe place in a world built to chew you apart.

It worked, they worked together, their bodies, their timing, their minds, their hands, their rage, their softness, all of it, all the ugly and all the brilliance, braided tight into something fierce and sharp and beautiful— and maybe they will win, maybe they will lose, maybe the world will crown them or spit on them, and honestly it doesn’t matter, none of that matters, the ice matters but not like Lottie matters, the sport matters but not like love matters.

Lottie matters so much it hurts, so much it burns, so much it feels like the only thing that could kill her and the only thing worth dying for.

“I love you too,” Nat whispered back, and for once the words didn’t feel dangerous or impossible, they felt earned, they felt true, they felt like the final clean landing after a lifetime of falling.