Chapter 6 #2
The thought had been nagging at me since her words had stopped echoing off the rafters, and the more I turned it over in the analytical sector of my mind—the sector that tracked puck trajectories and offensive formations and the behavioral patterns of shooters who telegraphed their intentions through micro-movements they didn’t know they were making—the more the shape of it solidified.
Garrison hadn’t panicked. Hadn’t miscalculated.
The insufficient launch height, the smile, the subsequent abandonment—it was an architecture.
A sequence designed to produce a specific outcome: Octavia Moreau, dismantled. Career. Pack. Identity. All of it.
Almost like a contract hit executed on a skating rink.
And I want to know who placed the order.
It may have been years ago, but nothing remained buried in a world governed by power and statistics.
Not in elite athletics. Not where federations tracked every score, every partnership dissolution, every suspicious injury report with the meticulous record-keeping of institutions that understood their currency was reputation and their liability was scandal.
If Garrison’s sabotage had been orchestrated—motivated by something beyond jealousy, funded or facilitated by someone with a vested interest in removing Octavia from the competitive landscape—there would be evidence.
Somewhere. Buried in federation archives or financial disclosures or the digital paper trail that every athlete, coach, and official generated by simply existing within the system.
Later. File it for later. Right now, she needs a partner, not a private investigator.
I pushed off the boards and skated onto the ice.
My blades cut a heavier track than hers—the broad, flat profile of hockey skates versus the precision edge of figure blades, the difference audible in the lower, more percussive sound my strides produced against the surface.
She was still in her final position, her breathing gradually decelerating from the ragged, open-mouthed panting of post-program exertion to something steadier.
Her eyes found me as I approached, and the wariness in them was a living thing—a creature coiled behind her irises, ready to strike or retreat depending on what came out of my mouth next.
“Your jumps are strong,” I said. No preamble.
No emotional buffer. She’d asked me to watch, and I was going to give her what I’d seen, because she deserved a critic, not a cheerleader.
“Triple Lutz entry is textbook. Rotation is tight, air position is compact, you’re getting good height on the vault.
The toe loop combination in the second half has clean flow, and your step sequence is at Level Four, minimum.
The footwork sells the music. The spiral at the end is a weapon—hold that another half-second and the judges won’t remember anything else. ”
A beat. Her chin lifted fractionally. Not pride—attention. The posture of a competitor who recognized that the next sentence was the one that mattered.
“But your spins are the weakness.”
Her frown was immediate. Deep. The kind that creased the space between her brows and hardened the line of her jaw simultaneously—an expression I’d cataloged years ago as her I disagree but I’m listening face.
The distinction between that face and her I disagree and you can fuck off face was approximately three millimeters of eyebrow elevation, and right now, she was on the correct side of the threshold.
But I could see it—deep in the storm-gray architecture of her eyes, behind the defensive frown and the crossed arms she’d folded over her chest. A flicker.
The rapid, involuntary calculation of a mind that had already identified the same problem and was deciding, in real time, whether to admit it or defend against the diagnosis.
“The combination spin is decelerating during the camel transition,” I continued.
“You’re losing approximately half a revolution per second between the sit position and the camel, which means you’re entering the layback below the rotational threshold for a Level Four designation.
Additionally, you’re traveling—lateral drift of roughly eight inches by the time you reach the upright position, which any competent judge will flag. ”
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes narrowed. But she didn’t interrupt.
“The root isn’t technical,” I said, and this was the part that required care—the diagnostic scalpel applied to the tissue closest to the nerve.
“Your mechanics are sound. The positions are clean. The issue is weight distribution during the transition. You’re loading your left leg disproportionately when you shift from the sit to the camel, which suggests you’re guarding the right. ”
Silence.
The ice hummed beneath us. Her breathing had stabilized. The sweat on her temples caught the fluorescent light.
“Which leg did you injure?”
She didn’t answer immediately. The question hung between us in the cold air, and I watched her process it—watched the debate play out behind her eyes, the internal negotiation between vulnerability and pragmatism, between the instinct to guard the wound and the recognition that guarding it was the wound’s greatest ally.
“Right,” she said. Quiet. Clipped. The single syllable carrying approximately ten thousand pounds of context she wasn’t offering.
I nodded. “So when I throw you into the spin for the pairs elements, land on your left. Your stronger leg. Let the right handle the extended positions—the free leg in the camel, the stretch in the layback—but the skating leg, the one absorbing the rotational load and the landing impact, needs to be the one you trust.” I held her gaze. “Can you do that?”
She nodded. Slowly. The motion careful, as if the agreement were a physical object she was handling for the first time and hadn’t yet determined its weight.
Then the wariness sharpened into suspicion.
“You can’t possibly be thinking of joining me.”
I shrugged.
A deliberate, unhurried, full-shouldered shrug that communicated precisely the level of casual indifference I did not feel but was choosing to project, because the last thing this woman needed right now was the full, unfiltered intensity of my investment.
That would scare her off faster than a slap shot to the five-hole.
“I have time.”
Her frown deepened—which I hadn’t thought anatomically possible given its already considerable depth—and her arms tightened across her chest. The posture was defensive, but the direction of her body hadn’t changed.
She was still facing me. Still here. In the language of Octavia Moreau, remaining in the conversation was its own form of permission.
“You can’t join as my partner and then bail if we actually qualify.” Her voice was firm. Prosecutorial. The tone of a woman who had been abandoned by enough people to have developed a contractual approach to trust. “Plus—aren’t you here for the hockey team?”
I shook my head. Slowly. Let the motion carry its own weight before I filled it with words.
“I’m here to assist. A substitute. The Ironcrest line has their golden boy between the posts already—their starting goaltender’s been locked in since preseason.
I’m depth. Insurance. The body they put in the crease if the starter takes a puck to the mask and needs to sit a period.
” I kept my voice level. Matter-of-fact.
Stripped of any self-pity that might dilute the practicality of what I was offering.
“They’re not going to need me for every game.
Not even most games. My schedule has gaps the size of canyons, and I’d rather fill them with this than with the soul-crushing monotony of solo drills in an empty rink while the starting goalie gets all the meaningful ice time. ”
I let that settle.
“Also,” I added, pulling the next piece of information from the mental file I’d assembled at three in the morning while unable to sleep for reasons I was choosing not to examine too closely, “I already checked the competition regulations. IOF Rule 7.4.2—multi-discipline participation. Athletes may compete in more than one Winter Games discipline provided there is no scheduling conflict between events. Figure skating programs are held during daytime and afternoon blocks. Hockey matches are scheduled in evening and nighttime windows. No overlap.”
Her eyebrows rose. Not in surprise—in the specific, slightly horrified recognition of a woman realizing that the man in front of her had done the administrative homework before the sun was fully up.
“That’ll be strenuous on you,” she said.
“Two disciplines. Two training regimens. Two completely different physical demand profiles—goaltending is about lateral explosiveness and reaction speed, figure skating is about endurance and rotational control. You’re asking your body to maintain two contradictory athletic vocabularies simultaneously.
That’s not ambitious, Petrov—that’s reckless. ”
Petrov. Still Petrov. Not Luka. The surname as a fortress wall, and I’m on the wrong side of it.
I shrugged again. “We won’t know until we try, right?”
I could see the argument forming behind her eyes. The objections stacking like blocks—logistical, physical, emotional—each one valid, each one reasonable, each one a brick in the wall she was building between herself and the possibility that someone might actually show up for her and mean it.
But the mathematics were brutally simple, and we both knew it.
Angelo Reyes was not walking through that door.
The audition was in less than two hours.
And the only person currently offering to fill the empty space on the ice beside her was a goaltender with an obsessive attention to detail, a working knowledge of her program, and a five-year debt of abandoned trust he was desperate to begin repaying.