Chapter 19
Calder
I arrive almost an hour early. Which is ridiculous. Arabella won't even start warmups for another twenty minutes, but somehow I still end up standing near the rink entrance with coffee in one hand and nervous energy crawling beneath my skin.
I keep telling myself this is normal. Big competition. Pressure. Anybody would feel tense. Except the second Arabella walks into the arena, my body reacts before my brain fully catches up.
There she is.
My attention locks onto her instantly while she moves through the entrance carrying her garment bag and skates.
Even from across the rink I notice the tension.
The set of her shoulders. The stiffness in her posture.
The way she keeps flexing her fingers unconsciously while walking.
Awareness hits me so hard it feels physical.
My chest tightens right along with her shoulders.
Jesus Christ.
I start moving toward her before I consciously decide to.
Arabella spots me halfway across the rink, and the second she does, something in her posture loosens slightly.
Tiny change. Barely noticeable. My body reacts to it immediately anyway.
If she's tense, I feel tense. The second she relaxes, something in me settles too.
"Hey," I say once I reach her.
Arabella exhales softly. There's faint makeup already brushed beneath her eyes and her hair is twisted up loosely for warmups.
Beautiful.
The thought lands hard and immediate.
"You're early," she says.
"So are you."
Arabella rolls her eyes slightly, though tension still lingers around the edges of her expression.
I take her coffee from the carrier and hand it over automatically.
Her fingers brush mine. The contact settles something inside my chest, because suddenly all I want is for her to walk onto the ice knowing she does not have to carry this pressure alone.
And some deeper part of me already thinks making sure she knows that is now my job.
By the time Arabella steps onto the ice for warmups, my pulse already feels wrong.
Too fast. Too aware. Arena lights catch against the crystals scattered across her costume while she glides toward center ice.
Everything about her looks sharp. Controlled.
Beautiful in that precise, dangerous way she always does when she's focused.
But underneath it, I can still see the tension from earlier, and somehow that matters more than the performance everyone else came here to watch.
Nobody else in this arena is seeing the version of Arabella I know. They see perfection. I see the girl who curls against me half-asleep. The girl who laughs at beginner skaters threatening legal action against the ice. The girl who goes quiet when she's scared of disappointing herself.
Arabella pushes into her first jump during warmups. Clean. Effortless. The entire arena barely reacts. Apparently people here are used to impossible things. I'm not.
I watch her run the jump again. The mechanics of it are insane.
She launches off a blade barely wider than my thumb, rotates fully in the air, then lands with so much control it barely even looks real.
I know enough about athletic mechanics to understand what I'm seeing.
The jump needs explosive power off a single edge, full rotational control under centrifugal force, and landing precision brutal enough that most people would destroy their joints trying to repeat it daily.
Most athletes that technically precise move carefully because they're afraid of mistakes.
Arabella moves like she trusts her body completely.
That's what I missed before. I kept looking at the grace and overlooking the violence underneath it.
She's running a second combination now. I follow the setup automatically. Entry edge. Timing. Launch. But what catches me this time is her face right before the jump. Not the expression she wears for the audience. Not the polished competition mask. The half second before it settles into place.
In that moment she looks completely unguarded.
Focused in the exact way I recognize from dark empty rinks at five in the morning. From watching her land a clean triple axel and allow herself maybe three seconds of private satisfaction before immediately resetting.
She isn't performing right now. She's competing. Those are different things. Performing is for everyone else. Competing feels private somehow. Between her and the physics of what her body can survive.
I remember sitting beside her on that bench while she admitted she doesn't know how to stop pushing herself.
I remember her kneeling on the ice floor while I retaped her wrist and she let herself crack open for a minute.
Same person. Different setting. The discipline I saw in private suddenly visible in public.
The realization cracks something open inside me too.
Because somewhere along the way I convinced myself softness made people fragile.
That it was something you could afford when pressure was low and had to lock away when things actually mattered.
That being open just gave the world more ways to break you.
I built my entire life around that idea.
Been carrying it since I was seventeen years old.
Arabella just dismantled it in one practice run.
She isn't fragile. She's relentless. Soft and relentless at the exact same time, and somehow those things aren't fighting each other in her. They fuel each other. And the fear sitting in my chest suddenly stops feeling like a warning. Starts feeling like something I need to get past instead.
The music starts.
Everything inside the arena goes quiet.
Then Arabella moves.
My lungs forget how to work for a second.
Not because she's beautiful, though she is.
Because suddenly the performance feels painfully intimate in a way I can't fully explain.
Like I'm watching something deeply personal instead of public.
Arabella skates like she feels everything too intensely and learned how to survive it by forcing emotion into precision.
Every movement looks sharp enough to cut somebody open.
Power buried inside grace. Loneliness buried inside perfection.
And underneath all of it, I can still see flashes of the version of her that laughed herself breathless over burnt grilled cheese on the couch last night.
Arabella lands another jump cleanly. The crowd reacts louder this time.
Pride hits me so hard it almost feels physical, followed immediately by something worse.
Want, but nowhere near physical anymore.
Something deeper. The terrifying need to stay close to her.
Protect her. Watch her succeed. Be the person she looks for afterward.
Because this doesn't feel like watching an athlete compete anymore. It feels like watching somebody I love expose parts of herself in front of thousands of strangers. I shut down that thought before it can take root. My hands tighten unconsciously against my knees.
The wait for scores feels longer than entire hockey games.
Arabella stands near the boards afterward breathing hard while coaches and officials move around her.
Still glowing faintly with adrenaline. I can already see the nerves starting to creep back in now that the performance is over.
Her fingers flex once beside her thigh, tiny movement, and tension locks through my chest again.
The scores finally appear overhead. For half a second the entire arena holds its breath. Then Arabella looks up. Everything changes instantly.
Relief hits her first. Then joy. Real joy, bright enough that it completely transforms her face. And suddenly nothing else inside the arena matters anymore. Not the scores. Not the crowd. Not the announcers. Just her. Because Arabella starts searching through the crowd.
Looking for me.
The second her eyes find mine, she smiles. Something inside my chest loosens so fast it almost hurts. Relief crashes through my body hard enough that I realize I've been braced for impact since she stepped onto the ice.
And somehow the first person she came looking for was me.
Again.
Arabella collides into me hard enough that I barely catch the sound she makes against my shoulder, half laugh, half overwhelmed breath.
I catch her automatically. One second she's throwing herself at me.
The next I'm lifting her clean off the ground without thinking about it first. She lets out a startled laugh.
I spin her once before setting her back down again, still holding her, still way too close.
Her hands stay locked around my shoulders. Mine stay firm against her waist. Neither of us moves. Because Arabella looks happier than I've ever seen her, and somehow she's looking at me like I'm part of the reason.
My forehead presses briefly against hers before I can stop myself.
Pure instinct. Shared breathing. Warm skin.
The entire arena fading into distant noise around us.
Her eyes are bright with victory and something else, something that makes my chest tighten.
Without thinking, I tilt my head and kiss her.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Something quiet, barely there, that nearly breaks my self-control entirely.
Her hands tighten on my shoulders, pulling herself closer, and I follow without hesitation.
When we finally pull apart, we're both breathing hard.
The crowd noise comes crashing back in like it never left.
"You won," I say quietly.
Arabella laughs breathlessly. "I know."
The joy in her voice nearly wrecks me. My hand slides instinctively higher against her back, holding her closer without thinking about it. Protective. Possessive enough that I only really register the movement when camera flashes start exploding somewhere nearby.