—
At the end of two grueling days of competition, plus the press conference and the medal ceremony and the endless posing for photos, I should have been exhausted. Instead, I felt ready to strap my skates back on and do the whole thing over again.
We finally left the arena well after sunset. Camera flashes still sparked in my vision against the darkened sky over the Seine.
“Let’s go out,” I said to Heath.
“Go out where?” he asked.
“Wherever we want.”
We were young, we were in love, we were in Paris. We’d just won gold medals, plus thousands of dollars in prize money. We deserved to enjoy ourselves.
Back at the hotel, I changed into the strapless minidress I’d packed for the post–exhibition gala banquet. Usually I wore a sensible cardigan over it, and pantyhose opaque enough to cover the scar on my shin.
Not that night. Heath’s eyes went wide when he saw me, and he didn’t stop staring all through our romantic dinner. The maître d’ sat us at a candlelit two-top in the restaurant’s front window, and we ordered a charcuterie board so big it barely left enough room on the table to set our glasses of Bordeaux. As we plucked triple cream Brie and trufflecrisps off the slate slab, I coiled my leg around Heath’s, not caring who might see.
After dinner, we decided to go dancing—realdancing, unjudged and unchoreographed. We wandered through several arrondissements before a flickering neon sign beckoned us down a darkened staircase and into a space more like a cave than a nightclub. Rough brick burst through the vaulted ceilings, strobe lights and disco balls spangling the rugged surface.
Heath and I made our way to the middle of the cramped dance floor, and for the next few hours all we did wasmove.The electronic beat throbbed through my body. Heath danced behind me, hands on my hips, kissing my neck, and I was aware of nothing except heat and shadow and sound andhim.
I have no idea what time it was when we finally stumbled back into the real world. It had started raining, but we were already drenched with sweat. My dress stuck to me like a second skin, and Heath had stripped down to his undershirt, abandoning his button-down somewhere on the dance floor. I slipped off my shoes and ran barefoot through the downpour, giddy, laughing, splashing in puddles all the way back to our hotel.
Before the suite door swung shut behind us, we were already a tangle of limbs, shedding our wet clothes, steam rising from our rain-soaked bodies, tumbling onto the red velvet love seat because we wanted each other too much to make it to the bed.
Heath fell asleep afterward, reclined on the cushions like a classical statue. I tried to sleep too, but I felt like I had lightning in my veins.
I extricated myself from under his arm and retrieved my cellphone from the nightstand. The screen lit up, casting shadows over the damask wallpaper.
Two missed calls, followed by a single text, all from the same number. Sent several hours before, while we were still out dancing—the middle of the night in Paris, first thing in the morning in China. As I read the message, my stomach clenched with dread.
Call me immediately.
Chapter 49
I didn’t want to wake Heath, so I wrapped myself in a robe and took my phone onto the hotel room’s small terrace overlooking the Place du Panthéon. The square was silent and still, but smells of baking bread wafted through the cobblestone streets.
Sheila answered on the first ring.
“I see you’ve been enjoying your time in Paris,” she said.
She sounded even calmer than usual. My heart beat faster.
“Yes.” I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “We—”
“You made a spectacle of yourself.”
“We won.”
Unlike Bella and Garrett, who’d barely held on to bronze at the Cup of China.
“I’m not just talking about the way you skated,” she said. “What were you thinking, carrying on like that all over the city?”
By daybreak in Paris, photos of our night out were plastered all over the internet. A few days later, when our flight from Charles de Gaulle landed at LAX, we were greeted by whole newsstands full of trashy magazines trumpeting our exploits. One tabloid even published a cover story spread on our “Parisian Night of Passion,” complete with quotes allegedly from other guests at our hotel who complained about being awoken by “loud cries of pleasure” and “cracking furniture.” At first I was embarrassed that our private celebration had turned into a public show—but people loved it, just like they’d loved our sexed-up Mozart program. Our off-ice passion was part of the fantasy.
None of that had happened yet, though. There was only one way Sheila could have found out so much so quickly, from the other side of the world.
Veronika Volkova’s voice echoed in my head.You must know how the game is played.
