Chapter 15 Remi
The Stave is perfect. Exposed brick, reclaimed wood, a chalkboard menu written in the handwriting of someone who took a calligraphy class. It’s the kind of place that smells of the best espresso and has a playlist nobody would hate.
The door is heavy, and the threshold has a small step that, on crutches, requires a brief tactical assessment.
But I manage it.
The barista doesn't offer to help.
Some people would grumble, but I love her for it.
The morning crowd is the mix you get on Twelfth at ten. There’s a woman with a laptop, swaying her body; only now do I see the earbuds. Two men in construction gear are standing at the counter; one adds a muffin to his order. An elderly couple over newspapers.
Nobody looks at me the way hospital staff looked at me, which was with a combination of pity and professional neutrality that I will be in therapy about, eventually.
Here I'm just a girl on crutches negotiating a low step, and the world has the decency to carry on around me.
I smile. Isabella is already at the corner table.
She half-rises when she sees me, then catches herself and sits back down. She’s wearing a beautiful cream knit that looks expensive; her dark hair is loose, a coffee is already in front of her, and a second one is waiting on my side of the table.
She remembered how I took it, which undoes me slightly, because I thought the world’s greatest figure skater saw nothing but herself.
On my way past the counter, I grab two of the salted caramel chocolates from the glass jar by the register. They're dark chocolate with sea salt on top.
I get myself into the chair across from her, prop the crutches against the wall, set a chocolate onto Isabella’s saucer. “These are the best.”
I take the coffee before I say anything else.
Isabella looks at the chocolate. "Some things don't change."
"Some things shouldn't."
"You look good," she says.
"I look like I was hit by a truck."
"You look like someone who got hit by a truck and is furious about it, which is different." Her eyes move over me with the quick professional assessment of a fellow athlete. "Looks like the knee is worse than the head."
"The head's fine as long as I don’t do it again.
And the knee is renegotiating my life choices.
" I wrap both hands around the cup. "I want to say this before it gets weird.
Congratulations. The short program was extraordinary.
I watched the reruns from my hospital bed when I woke up, which I'm blaming entirely on the concussion. "
Isabella's expression does something complicated. "Remi—"
"I'm not being polite. I mean it. The layback at the end of the combination. You held it so long.. Nobody can hold it that long. It was perfect."
A beat.
"It was pretty good," she admits, in the tone of someone who agrees completely but has been raised not to show it.
"Where's the medal? Tell me you brought it."
"I didn't want to gloat."
"Isabella." I look at her directly. "Gloat. As much as you want. I'm genuinely, completely, not-a-bit-jealous happy for you, and I need you to understand that so you can stop being careful with me about it."
She looks at me for a moment. Then she reaches into her bag and sets the gold medal on the table between us.
I've held Olympic medals before.
Not one of my own. And now I never will.
But this one has gravity. This one is hers.
"It's beautiful," I say.
"Yes," she says. No false modesty. That's one of the things I've always liked about Isabella Olivetti.
She picks it up and puts it back in her bag. We both drink our coffee, and the morning moves around us in its usual way.
"So," she says. "Tell me everything. How are you actually feeling? And where are you staying? River mentioned you're with some friends in Nashville but not much else."
"You spoke to River?" I set my cup down.
"Any chance I get," she says, with a look that makes it very clear what she means.
I laugh out loud. "Maybe I should tell my brother to back off. He likes to get involved in my life."
Isabella freezes. She doesn't make a sound as a stillness settles across her face. Her hands stay where they are on the cup.
In my peripheral vision, something shifts, as does the air in the room. And the smell.
I glance around. The barista, the laptop woman, the construction crew, the elderly couple. Nothing that explains it.
I look back at Isabella. "Sorry, your perfume."
"I'm not wearing perfume today."
"Oh." I blink. "It's nice, whatever it is. Must be the coffee."
She nods and sips on her coffee.
“We were talking about River,” she says.
"You know that my roommates, Steele and Crew, are River's friends? They all met when they played for the Boston Bulldogs. Then Steele and Crew were signed to play for the Scented Scorpions, here in Nashville." I smile. "And this is a very long story."
"I've got the time."
I take a breath. "Marilyn, their PR manager, organized this arrangement.”
“Didn’t you say in Italy that Marilyn organized for an omega to live with them?”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “She moved out. They weren’t compatible, they told me.
Anyway, I failed at the Olympics not only because my knee decided it didn’t want to play anymore but because I had an omega drop.
" I move my hand. "And the best way for me to recover is to be around alphas. So the arrangement is that I stay with them for a few months, which gives me time to get back on my feet. The alpha proximity is a bonus and a nightmare though. River is not happy.”
“Are you sleeping with them?”
I bite my lip. “No.”
A beat.
"I think I make it weird."
Isabella's expression has not changed. Perfectly composed, completely unreadable, which I notice with the same part of my brain that notices when a competitor is holding tension in their shoulder before a jump.
"They're being very respectful," I say. "Crew is a good cook, which nobody warned me about. Steele has strong opinions about podcast recommendations and music. It is…" I search for the word. "Fine. It's more than fine."
Something in the air shifts again.
My head turns toward the window, to the street outside.
A dog is tied to a bike rack.
A man wearing a dark jacket with his back to the glass is watching his phone.
I shake off the scent that is whispering in my ear and pick up the chocolate and sniff.
The scent must be the chocolate. It’s nothing as complicated as what my mind is conjuring.
I have to stop clocking scents I can't place, in coffee shops and building lobbies and the lobby of Steele and Crew's building.
It's all just my omega getting used to the world again.
A world with scents and nothing suppressed.
I turn back to Isabella.
"They both play for the Scented Scorpions," I say. "You might know them."
"I know who they are," she says.
Her voice is even. Her hands are still. And her eyes are watching me with more than she's saying, the way she always did, even at training, even at five in the morning when both of us were too tired to perform.
She's not smiling, exactly, but something around her mouth has the quality of a thought she's decided not to have out loud.
"You do?" I ask. Of course she does, everyone does.
"Make sure they are yours before you do anything with them." Her eyes hold mine. "You don't want any teeth in that neck of yours. Especially if your scent match hasn't found you yet."
I smile. "I wish. But as usual they're treating me like a little sister. Which is fine. It's more than fine."
"Good," she says. "Because you're not ready for anything else."
"Isabella."
I turn to the voice. Crew is at our table.
Black t-shirt, jeans, his messy hair flops in his eyes, and those green eyes are on Isabella with the stillness of a man who has just walked into a room and read every person in it.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
He sits in the chair next to me.
I look between them. "You know each other?"
"Yeah," Crew says. "She's Steele's sister."