Veronika Volkova:I might find it amusing, were I not such a professional.
Garrett Lin:But I’d never seen my sister so upset. Bella wouldn’t come out of her room for at least a week, and she wouldn’t let anyone in. Not even me.
Ellis Dean:Karma’s a bitch, and so is Isabella Lin. She thought she was going to take out her competition, and instead she fucked herself out of the Olympic Gamesandout of a partner.
Garrett Lin:I thought our mother might…I don’t know. But she left us alone for the most part. I think she could tell we were punishing ourselves more effectively than she ever could.
Ellis Dean:Josie and I were the ones actuallyonthe Olympic team, but no one gave a damn about us. All they wanted to talk about was Shaw and Rocha.
Garrett Lin:I couldn’t understand why people were so interested in Kat and Heath. But the story was everywhere. All those awful pictures too.
A montage of tabloid articles and gossip blog posts covers the saga so far, with images of Katarina prone on the bloodstained ice, then leaving the hospital in St. Louis.
Garrett Lin:I was just glad the focus wasn’t on me. All I wanted was to be left alone.
Ellis Dean:The Olympics are so overblown anyway.
Francesca Gaskell:Oh, alternates don’t actually get to go to the Games—I wish! That’s a common misconception. But it’s still atotalhonor.
Ellis Dean:Like this one competition every four fucking years is supposed to define who you are? It’s ridiculous.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Josie Hayworth and Ellis Dean perform their free dance to Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.” They’re out of sync, behind the music, stumbling over the ice. As they hit their final pose, they lose their balance, ending the program in a heap.
Ellis Dean:Not to mention the corruption behind the scenes, the expense and damage inflicted on the host cities. You have to wonder why we keep this antiquated tradition going.
In the kiss and cry, Josie and Ellis can’t even meet each other’s eyes. Their scores appear, putting them in last place out of 24 teams.
Ellis Dean:Anyway, after Torino, I decided it was time to move on to new opportunities. My competitive career might have been over, but I knew I still had plenty to offer the sport. Whether they liked it or not.
Chapter 43
In the Midwest, we call the first warm spell of the year “Fool’s Spring,” because we know from bitter experience the lovely weather can’t last. Another cold snap lurks right around the corner, ready to lunge as soon as we shed our winter coats.
That doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy every minute of it, though.
In late March, it hit 60 degrees, and I made it to the ten-week mark in my recovery—which meant I was finally allowed to do a real workout again. Heath and I jogged through the woods to the stable, then sprinted back to the house.
We still had the place all to ourselves. The flood of invoices from a Lake County law firm helped us figure out where my brother had disappeared to. He was in prison, serving a sentence for drug possession with intent to sell—his second time behind bars, apparently, following a misdemeanor DUI a few years prior. Lee being in prison wasn’t a shock, but the fact that he’d attempted a business venture, however illegal and ill-advised, did surprise me.
Heath kept pace with me as we ran, weaving between maple trees spotted with spiky crimson buds. Red-winged blackbirds, just returned from their southern migration, trilled overhead as if they were cheering us on. I lengthened my stride, overtaking him.
It felt so good to push my body, to feel my muscles responding, the satisfying burn spreading through my legs. As an athlete, you come to appreciate all the different flavors of pain. Some are unbearable, others a kind of delicious, aching pleasure.
The house came into view, specks of mica in the gray stone facade glittering in the sun. Heath had caught up, running right at my shoulder again. But I had something to prove.
I stretched forward with all the strength I had left, seizing a photo finish victory across the tree line. We both flopped down on the winter-browned lawn, breathing hard.
“You better not have let me win,” I said.
Heath grinned. “Never.”
I felt charged, vital, adrenaline arcing through me. My injuries were a distant nightmare—though I had shiny pink scars across my palm and shin to spark my memory. The first few weeks after Nationals had been the worst: headaches, brain fog, the slow torture of my skin knitting itself back together.
But since then, I’d gotten better, progressing from limping around the house to gentle walks along the lakeshore to today’s flat-out run. Heath and I had progressed too, from cautious lovemaking to the sort of athletic, passionate sex we’d always had to hold ourselves back from during our forbidden liaisons in the Academy dorms, or our rushed, exhausted hotel room encounters between flights and full days of competition.
Heath didn’t touch me carefully anymore. He knew what I could take.
Every time I brought up returning to the ice, though, he hesitated.The next season doesn’t start for months,he’d say.We don’t need to decide right away.If I made any reference to our time apart, he’d change the subject entirely.
