26. Nico
I had slipped out of the hotel room before the sun was fully up.
Adrian was still asleep—sprawled on his stomach in the other bed, one arm hanging off the edge, face pressed into the pillow at an angle that should have been uncomfortable but didn't seem to bother him at all.
His hair was a mess of pale pink against white cotton.
The sheets were tangled around his waist. He slept the way he did everything else—taking up as much space as the universe would allow.
I hadn't looked at him for longer than thirty seconds. Couldn't afford to. Because looking led to thinking and thinking led to remembering and remembering led to the full body flush that was currently making me want to crawl out of my own skin.
I had gotten dressed in the dark, grabbed my skate bag, and left without making coffee or leaving a note or doing any of the things a normal person might do after—
After.
My heart was beating erratically in my chest.
It should have been simple. Anger and adrenaline and the kind of collision that burned itself out on impact. A hate fuck. Something I could file away under poor judgment and never revisit.
Except afterward we'd stayed in that bed. And talked. And laughed. And it had felt… easy. That was when the temperature shifted.
I'd felt it happen—the exact moment we both realized we'd gone too far. Said too much. I'd gotten up first. Locked myself in the bathroom. Stood under the shower with my forehead against the tile.
When I came out, he was waiting for his turn, leaning against the wall in his boxers, expression already sealed shut. He didn't say anything. Neither did I. He went in. I heard the water start.
While he showered, I fixed the bed—the compulsion to make order out of chaos. Pulled the sheets straight, smoothed the pillows, tucked the corners. By the time I was done, it looked like a hotel bed again. Clean. Neutral. Like nothing had happened here.
When he came out, half naked with his hair dripping, his eyes went to the bed. Then to me. He didn't say anything about it. He didn't need to. We both knew what I'd just done.
He climbed into his own bed. Not mine.
"Good night, Nicky," he said and turned away from me.
I lay there on sheets that were smooth and cold and smelled like us and told myself this was fine. That the ghost of his hands on my hips and his mouth on my neck and his fingers laced through mine would fade by morning.
◆◆◆
There were three other skaters on the ice at this hour. Probably jetlagged and trying to squeeze in more practice. Not spiralling and needing a place to escape.
The bite of cold air against my face helped clear my thoughts as I tried to outskate the thoughts.
It hadn't meant anything to him. That was the thing I needed to accept—cleanly, quickly, before it twisted into something that would compromise my focus for the next few days.
Adrian Zhao was not new to this. He'd probably hooked up at every competition he'd ever attended. The man travelled with a box of condoms—not a discreet travel pack tucked into a toiletry bag like a normal person. A box. The big box. The Costco of condoms. How much sex was he planning to have?
He flirted easily. Dressed provocatively. Sex was just another thing he did for fun without examining what it meant for the person underneath him.
For all I knew, he did this with every competitor.
Maybe it was part of his pre-competition strategy—psychological warfare conducted horizontally.
Get in their pants, get in their head. Leave them at the boards the next morning trying to remember their own name while he sailed through warm up without a care in the world.
I dug my blades into the ice harder.
I hated it. The idea of him touching other people with that same practised confidence—those hands that knew exactly what they were doing because they'd done it many, many, many times before. With people who weren't me.
And I hated that I cared. That I had given myself to him with an eagerness that still made my face burn. That I had said please and fuck me and felt things worse than both, and meant all of it, and for him it was probably just a regular Thursday night.
I was on my third lap when I caught an edge wrong and stumbled—barely, just enough to remind me that the ice didn't care about my emotional state.
I forced myself to slow down. Breathe. Run through the opening sequence of my short program with the mechanical precision that had carried me through every crisis of my career.
There was no allowance for distraction. No grace period for humiliation, or regret, or whatever the hell this was. The Olympic clock kept ticking either way.
I skated until the arena staff started setting up for the official practice session and then I went back to the hotel to change.