35. Nico #2
“Do you?” He stepped closer and I fought the urge to step back. My heart was pounding again—that same erratic rhythm from this morning. “Because you've been distracted all week. Unfocused. Whatever is going on in your personal life, you need to leave it off the ice.”
Something in me cracked.
“My personal life,” I repeated flatly.
“Don't play dumb with me, Nicolas.” His voice dropped, cold and precise, and my stomach turned to ice. “I see you with Zhao. The coffee breaks. The gym sessions. You think I don't notice?”
“We train together. That's all.”
“That's not all and we both know it.” He was close enough now that I could see the vein pulsing in his temple. “I brought Zhao into this program to push you. To light a fire under you. Not to become a distraction that tanks your short program.”
“The fall was my fault. Not Adrian's.”
“Was it? Because the Nico I trained for fifteen years doesn't rush his entries. The Nico I trained knows how to focus. Whatever is happening with Zhao—”
“What's happening with Zhao?”
Adrian's voice came from behind us.
Something in my chest loosened. Just slightly. Just enough to take in a full inhale.
I turned to find him leaning against the wall, arms crossed, expression deceptively casual. He was still in his competition makeup, glitter catching the fluorescent lights. His eyes found mine for a moment—I'm here, I've got you—before shifting to Renaud.
“This is a private conversation,” Renaud said.
“Sounded like an invitation with how many times you dropped my name.” Adrian pushed off the wall and moved closer.
My breathing started to even out. He was here.
I wasn't alone. “He's had a difficult year and he's been struggling with his mental health and you just keep pushing and pushing.
You don't get to speak to him like that. I don't care who you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Adrian's voice was calm but there was steel underneath.
“He's not distracted. He's exhausted. You rushed him back.
He needed months, not weeks, and you knew that—you're his coach and his uncle and you should have been the first person to pump the brakes.” He glanced at me.
Continued anyway. “Instead you put him back on international ice before he was ready because your Olympic timeline mattered more than his recovery.”
Renaud's face went purple. “You have no idea what you're talking about.”
“I have eyes. I watch him train every day.
He's running himself into the ground and you're standing here telling him he's unfocused?” Adrian stepped between us, putting himself physically in Renaud's path.
“He fell. It happens. He'll come back in the free skate and land every jump and you'll take the credit like you always do.
But don't stand here and blame him for struggling when you're the one who built the machine that's grinding him down.”
The silence was absolute. No one talked to Renaud like this. No one.
“Zhao.” Renaud's voice was ice. “I suggest you remember who is trying to help you get back to the Olympics.”
“I suggest you remember that I've got six other coaches who'd take me tomorrow.” Adrian smiled, sharp and dangerous. “My talent isn't the problem here. Neither is Nicky's. Maybe look a little closer to home.”
He turned, grabbed my arm, and pulled me down the corridor before Renaud could respond.
“Adrian—”
“Don't. Don't apologize, don't make excuses for him, don't tell me I shouldn't have said that.” He pulled me into an empty warm up room and shut the door. “Someone needed to say it.”
“He's going to make your life hell.”
“Let him.”
He said it like it was nothing. Like standing in a corridor and telling Jean-Pierre Renaud that he was the problem was barely a thing and not the kind of move that could end a career.
And he'd done that for me.
Adrian's hands came up to cup my face. His thumbs brushed across my cheekbones and I leaned into the touch without meaning to. “Are you okay? Forget the scores. Forget the fall. Are you okay?”
I stared at him. At this ridiculous, impossible man who'd just torched his relationship with his coach to defend me.
“I don't know,” I admitted. And the honesty of it—the sheer, exhausting relief of not saying I'm fine—made my eyes burn.
“That's honest.” He pressed his forehead against mine. “Come to my room tonight. I don't care if Sabrina sees. I don't care if Renaud finds out. Just—come.”
“Adrian—”
“Please.” His voice cracked on the word. Adrian Zhao, who never cracked. Who wrapped everything in sarcasm and swagger.
I kissed him instead of answering. Grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him into me and kissed him like I was drowning and he was the surface.
It was reckless and desperate and tasted like salt because at some point, I'd started crying.
His arms locked around me and he held on—just held on—and I let myself be held.
◆◆◆
I watched Adrian's short program from the green room with my hands clasped between my knees and my heart in my throat.
He skated like a man with something to prove—every jump explosive, every transition sharp, his whole body channelling the same furious energy he'd aimed at Renaud twenty minutes ago into something the judges had to reward.
The quad flip was massive. The step sequence was electric.
He attacked the program like it had personally wronged him and by the time his final spin wound down, the arena was on its feet.
First place after the short. Of course.
I went to his room that night.
He opened the door and I kissed him before he could say a word. Pushed him back into the room, kicked the door shut behind me, and pressed him against the wall with a force that surprised us both.
We didn’t talk. Not at first. There was nothing to say that our bodies weren’t already saying—every touch carrying the weight of that corridor, Renaud’s face, the way Adrian had stepped in front of me like protecting me was the most natural thing in the world.
I pulled his shirt over his head. He dragged mine off just as quickly, and then his mouth was on mine, his hands on my hips pulling me close. It wasn’t the frantic collision of Osaka. This was just as intense but there was nowhere to hide inside it.
I held on to him, fingers buried in his hair, and kissed him with all the things I couldn’t bring myself to say.
There was still urgency between us but it no longer felt like an escape valve.
It felt like surrender—the need of two people who were finally too exhausted to keep pretending this was something they could resist.
After, tangled in the sheets with Paris glittering outside the window, Adrian traced patterns on my shoulder and said, “I don't want this to just be hotel rooms.”
I turned my head to look at him. “What?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely between us. “I don't want it to just be competition hookups. Sneaking around. Pretending we're just training partners.”
“What do you want?”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was smaller than I'd ever heard it.
“You know, no one's ever actually asked me that?” He stared at the ceiling. “My parents want an heir. The public wants their Olympian. Renaud wants me to medal. Everyone's always had a plan for me. I've just never been consulted on it.”
“So what does Adrian want? Not what anyone else wants for you. Just you.”
He exhaled—slow, shaky, like the question itself was something he had to brace for.
“I want to try. For real. Dating. Boyfriends.
Whatever that looks like. I genuinely don't know what that looks like.
My parents' marriage is a business arrangement and I've never made it past a third date.
I don't know how often you're supposed to text someone.
I don't know if we tell people. I don't know what the rules are.” He met my eyes.
“But I want to figure it out. With you.”
My chest ached. Not the tightness that preceded the panic and the spiralling. This was the ache of being offered something precious by someone who had never offered it to anyone before.
What did I have to offer him? A whole collection of issues, curated over 21 years.
The people pleasing, the inability to be alone for more than five minutes without reaching for the nearest warm body, the pills on a bathroom floor.
I would get clingy. I would overthink. I would try to be whatever he needed instead of what I actually was.
But Adrian had issues too. The avoidance.
The deflection. Keeping everyone at arm’s length because his parents had taught him love was a transaction.
He would pull away when things got real.
Make a joke when things got too heavy. Flirt with everyone in a room because it was easier than being sincere, then get jealous the second someone else looked my way.
I knew all of that. He knew all of mine. Neither of us had flinched.
Maybe that was the whole point. Not two whole people building something perfect, but two broken ones wanting to be there for each other despite their shortcomings.
“Adrian...”
“You don't have to answer now. I know it's complicated.
I know Renaud is going to be a nightmare.
I know we've got the Olympics in two months and this is probably the worst possible timing for two people who should be focused on literally anything else.” He laughed, hollow.
“I just needed you to know. That this isn't casual for me anymore. Maybe it never was.”
I reached up and traced the script along his collarbone. Fall seven times, get up eight.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Okay. Let's try.”
His smile was blinding.