Chapter 40 Théo
I was lacing up my skates when Coach Miller sat down on the bench next to me.
He didn’t ask about Nico.
The news had broken a few days ago—vague reports about a “medical emergency,” followed by the inevitable speculation that spread across the skating fandom like wildfire.
Renaud would have been on me the moment it hit.
He had Google alerts set up for all his skaters, past and present, and he treated every headline like a personal affront or a personal victory depending on the content.
He would have demanded to know what I knew, how it might affect my training, whether I was going to let this “distraction” derail my progress.
Miller just sat there, steam curling from his cup, waiting for me to speak if I wanted to.
“The Maple Leaf Classic is coming up,” he mentioned casually, sipping the black sludge he called coffee.
I hummed in acknowledgement. I knew this, of course. Sabrina had also mentioned it once, twice, half a dozen times. In every single conversation we’d had since I got back from Toronto.
The Maple Leaf Classic was in Toronto this year.
Toronto. Where I’d collapsed after my free skate and ended up on a stretcher, wheeled past the rink doors into an ambulance while cameras kept rolling—everyone watching me fall apart in real time.
Where Nico and I had spent three years hiding our relationship, stealing moments between training sessions and pretending we were just friends.
Where Coach Renaud had pushed me until I shattered.
Where Nico was now, in a treatment centre outside the city, recovering from what the press was carefully calling “dehydration and exhaustion” but what I knew was a bottle of sleeping pills.
I’d run away from Toronto. Fled to Chicago like a coward, or a survivor, depending on who was telling the story. I’d sworn I was done with that city, done with everything it represented.
And yet it kept pulling me back.
Sabrina wanted me to come even if I wasn’t going to compete. Just to watch, she’d said. To feel the energy again. To prove Toronto doesn’t own you anymore.
But competing was different. Competing meant walking back into the city that had nearly killed me and standing in front of judges who’d seen the footage—who’d watched me flame out spectacularly. It meant the whispers, the stares, the inevitable comparisons to the skater I used to be.
Six months since I’d finished my free skate on adrenaline and spite and then ended up on a stretcher. Six months since my body finally told the truth my mouth refused to.
And now—days after I’d sat in a hospital room holding Nico’s hand, listening to him ask if it ever got better.
It gets different, I’d told him. The bad days don’t disappear. But they get further apart.
I needed that to be true. For him. For me.
I was finding my footing again. Barely. Some days the ice felt like home. Other days the echo of an empty rink hit the wrong frequency—my chest tightening, my throat closing, my hands going cold around my water bottle like I was bracing for impact.
Coach Miller didn’t look at me, he just stared out at the ice. “I’m not saying you should enter if you’re not ready.”
If you’re not ready. The words hung there, patient. Non-judgmental. Somehow that made them worse.
“But if you still want to qualify for the Olympics…” He paused, let the weight of it settle. “This would be step one. You need an international score on the books before the Grand Prix assignments. Maple Leaf Classic feeds into that.”
I knew the path. I’d mapped it in my head a hundred times during the months I couldn’t sleep.
Challenger Series to prove I wasn’t broken.
Then maybe—maybe—a Grand Prix assignment if I posted a strong enough score.
Then Nationals. Then the final selection in January.
A narrow window, a brutal timeline, and absolutely zero room for another public implosion.
My fingers worked the laces automatically, pulling them tight. Too tight. The pressure bit into my ankle, sharp and grounding.
The familiar whisper slithered through the back of my mind. You could skip breakfast tomorrow. Clear your head. Light and empty, the way you used to feel before competitions. That version of you could handle this.
I thought about Nico in that hospital bed. The way his collarbones had jutted out beneath the thin gown. The way he’d asked me if it got better, his voice so small and hopeful and desperate.
I couldn’t be that version of myself anymore. That version ended up in a hospital or rehab or dead.
I yanked the laces tighter. It was a wonder they didn’t snap.
They were stronger than I was under pressure. Or maybe—maybe they weren’t. Maybe I was still learning what I was made of.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
Coach Miller nodded and stood, draining the last of his coffee. “That’s all I’m asking.” He paused at the boards. “For what it’s worth, Beaubien—you’ve put in the work. Your body knows what to do. It’s just waiting for the rest of you to catch up.”
He walked off before I could respond. Probably for the best. I didn’t have words, just a tangle of fear and something else. Something that felt dangerously close to want.
I stepped onto the ice.
The first hour was technical work. Edges, turns, the foundational stuff that required just enough focus to keep my brain from spiralling. I ran through footwork sequences until my thighs burned, until the rhythm of blade against ice became a meditation.
Then I started circling. Building speed.
I hadn’t attempted a quad in competition ready conditions since Worlds.
In practice, I’d landed a few, but always when the rink was quiet and the stakes felt imaginary.
This was different. Coach Miller was watching from the boards, pretending to check his phone.
The morning light slanted through the high windows the way it would at an actual event.
My heart kicked up. The old static crackled at the edges of my vision.
You’ll fall. You’ll fall and he’ll see, and he’ll know you’re not ready, and you never will be—
I thought about Derek’s voice in my ear, steady and calm, talking me through the worst of it on his bathroom floor. You answered my call instead of using them. That means part of you doesn’t want to.
Part of me didn’t want to fall either. Part of me wanted to fly.
I pushed harder. Crossovers eating up the ice, wind stinging my face.
The setup was automatic. Years of muscle memory taking over while my conscious mind screamed at me to abort, to step out, to play it safe.
I jumped.
For a moment, there was nothing but air and rotation. My body tucked tight, spinning, the world a blur of white and light. One revolution. Two. Three. Four.
Then my blade caught the ice.
I landed. Clean. Solid. My free leg extended behind me, arms out, gliding on a perfect edge.
I landed.
The shaky breath that left me was half laugh, half sob. I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling my heart pound—but it was a different kind of pounding now. Not panic. Adrenaline. Life.
Coach Miller didn’t whoop or clap. He just looked up from his phone, gave me a single nod, and went back to his fake scrolling.
That was enough.
I skated another lap, letting my pulse settle, letting the reality sink in. Months of therapy and rest and relearning how to exist in my own skin, and here was the proof that it wasn’t wasted. That I wasn’t wasted.
The quad didn’t fix me. One jump couldn’t undo years of starving myself for perfection, couldn’t silence the voice that still whispered about control and emptiness and being less so I could be more.
But it was a step. A choice to keep going. The same choice Nico was making every day in that treatment centre, the same choice I’d made when I’d answered Derek’s call instead of breaking apart those razors.
We were all just choosing, over and over again. To stay. To try. To believe it might get better.
And when I got off the ice that morning, I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Sabrina before I could talk myself out of it.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…