Chapter 28 Théo
One of the reasons I had picked Chicago—besides the free rent—was to get a fresh start.
Toronto had too many ghosts. Every rink, every café, every street corner held a memory I’d rather forget.
I was the worst version of myself there.
And everywhere I turned, I was reminded of all the ways I had failed.
The weight I couldn’t lose. The jumps I couldn’t land. The people I couldn’t love right.
During my secret relationship with Nico, we would hook up and then I would leave or I would send him on his way.
We’d steal hours between training sessions, sneak into each other’s beds after competitions, and then I’d be out the door before the sheets cooled.
I told myself it was because we couldn’t risk getting caught—his uncle would have destroyed me—but really, I just didn’t know how to stay.
Nico had been my first real relationship and it was doomed from the start.
We were both vying for the top spot on the podium in a sport where individualism and cutthroat behaviour was typical.
How could we build a foundation on trust when we were taught to claw each other’s eyes out?
Both neurotic about food, counting calories and skipping meals and pretending we didn’t notice when the other pushed dinner around the plate.
We enabled each other’s worst impulses and called it understanding.
But Nico did get me to stop cutting. It was hard to explain fresh marks when you were always undressing for the same person.
He never made me feel ashamed about the old scars, just held my wrists sometimes and pressed his lips to the faded lines like he could kiss them away.
I didn’t deserve that kind of tenderness. I told him as much when I ended things.
My instinct after hooking up with Derek was the same as it had always been. Run, run, run. To put my clothes on and get out before the intimacy settled in. Before he saw too much. Before I ruined it.
But I forced myself to stay.
I watched Derek pull on a pair of clean boxers from his dresser and pad to the kitchen, completely unselfconscious. He’d tossed a pair for me and a Frost hoodie onto the bed. Both were too big for me but I liked wearing his clothes.
He reheated the food from Walsh & Wilde—pasta with chicken and roasted vegetables—and plated it like we were having a normal dinner. Like we hadn’t just had our hands and mouths all over each other ten minutes ago.
We ate at the dining table. He asked me about Coach Miller and I found myself telling him about the training schedule, the terrible coffee, the way Miller had asked what I wanted to get out of skating instead of telling me what I should want. Derek listened like it mattered. Like I mattered.
I asked him about their trip. He told me about their games, about Petrov’s hangover, about Kenzo’s boyfriend surprising him in Philly. His eyes crinkled when he laughed and I realized I wanted to make him laugh again. And again. And again.
It was almost domestic.
It terrified me.
After dinner, he put on the episode of Game of Thrones I had been watching earlier, picking up right where I’d left off.
I had nowhere else to be, no excuse to leave, so I sat with him on the couch.
Aspen jumped up and curled between us, his warm weight a buffer against the part of me that still wanted to bolt.
“Who’s a good boy?” Derek asked, scratching behind Aspen’s ears. Aspen’s tail thumped against the cushion.
I was responding to a text from Sabrina and answered without looking up from my phone. “Depends. Are you asking him or me?”
Derek’s hand stilled on Aspen’s fur. I could feel him staring.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
I smirked, still not looking up. “Whatever you say, daddy.”
The silence stretched for a beat too long. When I finally glanced over, Derek’s face was flushed, his jaw tight in a way that had nothing to do with anger.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he muttered.
“Probably.” I locked my phone and tossed it aside, leaning back into the cushions. “But what a way to go.”
◆◆◆
The next day, I practiced at Coach Miller’s rink.
I knew I should be easing back in. Building slowly. Doing all the sensible things Miller had suggested. Instead, I was on the ice by 7 a.m., pushing myself just as hard. Old habits.
The building was quieter than I was used to—no Renaud barking corrections from the boards, no cluster of anxious skaters fighting for ice time and approval. Just the hum of the refrigeration system and the scrape of blades on fresh ice.
The quiet wasn’t empty. It was… clean. Like someone had wiped the noise off the walls.
I did my warm up the way I always did—edges first, then turns, then spins—because ritual was the only thing my body still trusted.
Without it, everything felt like guessing.
My hips were a half beat behind where my brain wanted them.
My timing was there but my confidence wasn’t.
I could feel the lag in my centre of gravity.
I met a few of the other skaters, mostly by proximity.
A pairs team from Michigan working on their throw jumps, the girl launching herself with terrifying faith and the guy catching her like he’d done it a thousand times.
A teenage girl with a fierce ponytail who landed her double axel with mechanical precision, face unreadable even when she nailed it.
An older man—forties, maybe—skating figures in slow, meditative loops like he was the only person in the building.
No one asked about my career. No one whispered about Toronto or rehab or why Théo Beaubien was training at a second tier rink in Chicago instead of preparing for Olympics. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t care.
It was still a disaster, in some ways. My body felt foreign to me—too heavy, too slow, the muscle memory that used to be automatic now requiring conscious effort.
I under rotated a triple salchow and nearly fell on my ass.
Old me would’ve spiralled. Renaud would’ve said something about commitment or discipline or focus.
Coach Miller just nodded from the boards and said, “You’re pulling your arms in too early. Let the rotation build first.”
I tried again. Still under rotated but closer.
“Better. You’re rushing because you don’t trust it yet. That’s okay. Again, when you’re ready.”
No disappointment. No sharp correction. Just patience.
I practiced for two and a half hours and left sweaty and wrung out, my legs trembling in that satisfying way. Outside, Chicago was starting to change. Leaves turning red and yellow. The days growing shorter.
On the train back, the urge to document the city hit me. A woman’s red scarf against a sea of black coats. The blur of the L tracks cutting across the sky. A kid swinging his legs off the seat, humming to himself like the world was still safe.
I didn’t even have my proper camera with me—that was still in Toronto, collecting dust in a closet along with everything else I’d left behind. Just my phone. But the impulse was there, flickering to life like a pilot light I’d thought had gone out.
I used to see the world this way all the time.
Framing shots in my head. Noticing the way light fell on ordinary things and made them worth capturing.
Somewhere along the way—between the calorie counting and the competitions and the slow erosion of everything that made me me—I’d stopped looking.
Stopped noticing. The world had gone grey and flat and I hadn’t even realized it was happening until I was too numb to care.
But today, on this rattling train with strangers pressed around me, I was seeing again.
I lifted my phone and took a photo of the kid’s sneakers—bright orange against the scuffed floor.
It wasn’t much. But maybe it counted as something.
I had promised Sabrina I would try. My mom and Avery were invested too—both of them watching me with that careful hope that made me want to disappear and do better in equal measure.
Avery had been surprisingly relaxed about letting me crash in his spare room and basically mooch off his hospitality. I think our time apart had softened something between us. That and watching me starve myself half to death and disappear into a rehab facility for three months.
We didn’t talk about it—that wasn’t how we operated. But I could see the relief in his eyes every time I ate a full meal in front of him.
That night, we ordered dinner from the Thai place down the street. Avery ordered enough food for a family of six. Hana came over to watch a movie with us—some action thing with too many explosions that Avery had picked.
Whatever awkwardness had happened during Sabrina’s visit seemed forgotten. Hana settled on the couch with her feet in Avery’s lap and he massaged them absentmindedly while the movie played, his eyes on the screen like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My brother was still an idiot in some regards.
I caught Hana’s eye at one point and she gave me a small smile—somewhere between amused and resigned. I raised an eyebrow. She shrugged.
At least someone else saw it.
I sank back into the couch, feeling warm and sleepy and let the noise of the film wash over me. For a few hours, no one asked me to be extraordinary. No one asked me to be anything at all.
It wasn’t happiness.
But it was… quiet.
That felt like progress.
◆◆◆
The following day, I returned to the Frost training facility.
I preferred early mornings when the rink was empty, before the hockey players showed up and the energy shifted. I liked the solitude. The stillness. The way I could pretend, for a little while, that I was the only person in the world.
I was doing my warmups—edge work, crossovers, lazy spirals to stretch out my hips—when the door opened.
Derek.
He was wearing a dark grey henley that clung to his chest and his biceps and a black cap turned backwards on his head. It had no reason to look that good.
He didn’t take a seat in the back row. Instead, he stood by the boards, his muscular arms resting on top of the plastic divider, watching me with those steady dark eyes.
Not wanting to seem overeager, I continued with my usual routine. A few single jumps to warm up my legs. A sit spin that I held until my thigh burned. A step sequence I’d been tinkering with, something new that didn’t feel like punishment.
I could feel him watching the whole time. It made me skate better. Made me want to show off, just a little.
I stopped for a water break when it was almost time for him to leave for weight training. Skated over to the boards with practiced nonchalance.
He handed me my water bottle before I could reach for it.
“You look more relaxed,” he said.
“Is that so?” I took a sip.
“Must be the sex.”
I nearly choked on my water. Recovered quickly, raising an eyebrow. “Not the coaching?”
“Are you having sex with your coach?”
“Ew.” I wrinkled my nose. “He’s like 58.”
“Good to know you have standards.”
“Very high standards.” I took another sip, then added, because I couldn’t help myself, “Good boys don’t give it up to just anybody.”
Derek’s face went pink, which was deeply satisfying.
“We’re leaving for Colorado tomorrow,” he said, clearly deciding to ignore my comment. “Can you come over tonight?”
I hesitated.
I’d told myself I was going to do things differently this time.
Not fall into the same patterns that had wrecked my life in Toronto.
And I still hadn’t told Avery about us—which meant coming up with some excuse for why I wasn’t coming home tonight and lying to my brother felt like exactly the kind of thing I was supposed to be avoiding.
But Derek was looking at me with those warm brown eyes and I thought about his big comfortable bed and his stupid bergamot bodywash and the way he held me like I was something worth holding.
Fuck it.
“What time?”
So much for doing things differently.
“Dinnertime? Around seven?” He was trying to sound casual but I could see the hopeful tension in his shoulders. It was almost endearing. “I can order something. Or cook. I make a mean stir fry.”
“High praise from a man who considers protein shakes a food group.”
“Well, they haven’t failed me yet.”
“I can’t disagree.” I bit back a smile and handed him the water bottle. Our fingers brushed and neither of us pulled away immediately. “I’ll come over and I’ll make you dinner.”
“You want to do that?”
“Yes,” I bit my lip before confessing, “I like to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Something softened in his expression. “You worry about me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head, daddy.”
“You can’t just—” He lowered his voice. “You can’t just say that here.”
“Say what?” I widened my eyes innocently. “I was talking about Aspen. You’re his daddy. It’s a fact.”
“You really are a brat.”
“Never denied that.” I pushed off from the boards, skating backward. “Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.”
I spun and launched into a triple toe loop, landing clean. The ice sprayed beneath my blade, cold and familiar, and when I glanced back, Derek was still watching me, a helpless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Maybe this was a horrible idea. Maybe I was setting us both up for disaster.
But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to run.