6. Nico
I wished I had the guts to text Théo about the Adrian situation.
Not because we were close—not anymore. But something completely insane was happening to me and I had no one to tell. Kat would listen but she'd never met Adrian. My mother would worry. Dr. Priya would ask me how it made me feel and I'd have to dissect that for fifty minutes.
Théo would just get it.
If anyone would understand the sheer absurdity of coming back from rehab to find Adrian Zhao doing laps on your home ice, it was Théo.
He had that unbothered attitude toward the press constantly pitting the three of us against each other—the golden prince, the rebel, the prodigy.
He'd shrug it off and keep training. I wished I had that ability.
Our names had been in rotation for years—Fontaine, Beaubien, Zhao, trading spots on podiums, always being compared.
But it had never bothered me with Théo. We'd come up together, trained together, pushed each other to be better.
He was technically a competitor but I'd never been able to see him that way. He was just Théo.
Adrian was different. His name next to mine bothered me in a way I couldn't articulate. Théo worked harder than any skater I knew, myself included. Everything he had, he'd ground out through sheer discipline and force of will.
Adrian just showed up and was brilliant. Effortlessly, annoyingly brilliant. I'd caught him vaping outside the facility the other day.
Vaping.
Like his lungs weren't a professional asset. Like consequences were something that happened to other people. Then he'd stroll onto the ice and land a quad flip like gravity owed him a favour.
But texting Théo meant opening a door I wasn’t ready to walk through yet.
He was in Chicago now. Training under Coach Miller.
Rebuilding his life personally and professionally.
I was happy for him. But I was still barely holding it together myself and it was hard not to compare—his recovery versus mine, his progress versus my stalling, his new beginning versus my inability to move past the same shit I'd been stuck in for months.
And the last time he'd seen me, I was in a hospital bed.
He'd flown in from Chicago to be by my side.
He'd been where I was—not the same room, not the same reasons, but the same rock bottom.
And he'd checked in since—casual texts, nothing heavy.
But we weren't what we used to be. The easy rhythm was gone, replaced by the careful politeness of two people trying not to re-open the scars they'd left on each other.
So. No texting Théo.
I was on my own with this one.
◆◆◆
Day four back, I ran into Julien. Another person I wanted to avoid.
He was coming out of the weight room when I was going in.
Light brown hair falling across his forehead, those sweet brown eyes that always looked at the world with wonder.
He'd been in the junior program for a few years now—talented enough to stay, not quite exceptional enough to rise.
My uncle had a timeline for that kind of thing and he applied it without sentiment.
It had all started because I'd tried to help him.
Late nights at the rink working on his quad toe loop, reviewing his programs frame by frame, trying to find the extra edge that would push him past the threshold into senior competition.
I'd seen something in him—not brilliance, exactly, but a stubborn, earnest work ethic that reminded me of myself at that age.
The willingness to stay longer, try harder, bleed for every fraction of a point.
It hadn't been enough. Some skaters had a ceiling and Julien was pressing against his and no amount of extra ice time was going to change the physics of what his body could do.
The late nights had turned into something else. Two people reaching for each other for different reasons—seeking comfort and companionship in a cutthroat environment. When he ended things to focus on his skating, I understood. Whatever had drawn us together, it hadn't been enough to keep us there.
I hadn't even finished grieving Théo before diving into things with Julien. But his attention made me feel worthier somehow. Like if someone wanted me, I couldn't be as broken as I felt. Dr. Priya had a lot to say about that.
Now I'd have to navigate the awkward hellos when we inevitably ran into each other in close quarters. Not that he'd be here long. A few weeks at most. Two months if Renaud was feeling generous.
“Hey, Nico. I heard you were back. How are you?” he asked tentatively.
“Hi, Julien. I'm fine. Better. Thank you.”
He shifted his weight, gym bag strap twisted in his hands. “I'm not trying to butt into your business but Coach said you were taking a break because of exhaustion and I can't help but feel like maybe I had something to do with it?” He chewed on his lip. “The timing was…”
“No. It wasn't about that.”
And it wasn't. Not really.
The spiral that had ended in Aurora hadn’t started with Julien.
I knew that now—Dr. Priya had helped me draw the actual map, trace it back past Julien, past Théo, past the night in October when the pill count stopped making sense.
It had started much earlier. In the particular way I’d been shaped by this sport and the weight of being the golden prince.
The panic attacks, the insomnia, the constant low-grade hum of anxiety that never fully quieted—it all came from the same place.
The need to be perfect. Not good. Not great.
Perfect. Every program, every interview, every interaction, every moment I existed in public—the world was watching and they expected Nico Fontaine to live up to the title they’d given him.
Flawless on the ice. Gracious off it. Never tired, never struggling, never anything less than the golden boy the country had decided I was before I was old enough to decide for myself.
Take away the skating and what was left? A 21 year old with no plan.
What if I never got the gold? What if I wasn’t enough? What if I had given up everything—my childhood, my friendships, my health, nearly my life—and got nothing back in return?
That was the fear that kept me up at night. Not failure. The terrifying possibility that I could do everything right, give everything I had, be as perfect as humanly possible—and it still wouldn’t be enough.
“I'm sorry if I added to whatever you were going through,” he said quietly.
“There's nothing to apologize for.” I heard myself slip into the reassuring voice—the one I used to make other people feel comfortable.
“We were exploring a mutual attraction and that's over now.
I've been under a lot of pressure with the Olympics a few months away and I just needed a little break so I could come back as my best self.”
Smooth. Tidy. The kind of answer that made people nod and move on.
He nodded. Moved on.
“Good luck with everything, Nico. I’m here if you need someone to lean on.”
“You too, Julien.”
He smiled—genuine, relieved—and disappeared down the hallway.
And I stood there in the doorway of the weight room with my gym bag over my shoulder, watching him go, thinking about how easy that had been.
How practised. How the words there's nothing to apologize for had left my mouth with the effortless delivery of someone who'd been letting people off the hook his entire life.
I wanted to be loved at all costs.
And it had cost me a great deal.