Chapter 44
I was folding laundry on the couch and watching some reality TV when Avery came home with takeout bags. He’d texted earlier to ask if I wanted to have dinner and I’d said yes—partly because I didn’t feel like cooking, partly because I needed to tell him. About Derek. About everything.
My stomach had been in knots all afternoon.
I was nibbling on a fresh spring roll as he wolfed down a banh mi with pork belly, extra pickled veggies. Bread crumbs rained down on the kitchen counter, unnoticed. Avery ate like an animal. A wild animal. That had been starved.
I chose the topic with the lowest chance of immediate emotional catastrophe. “I’m training for the Maple Leaf Classic.”
He spoke around a mouthful of banh mi. “What! That’s awesome, Théo!”
“Don’t tell mom. I don’t want her to get her hopes up. I’m barely starting to land quads again.”
He swallowed. “It would probably make her worry less knowing you’re heading back on track.”
“I’ll tell her eventually. It’s in Toronto this year.”
Avery’s chewing slowed. He didn’t say Nico’s name but it hung there anyway.
“I know,” I said quietly. “I really can’t escape that wretched place.”
“Théo...” He set his sandwich down. “When you flew out there—when you came back—you didn’t really tell me what happened. I mean, I saw the news about Nico but you never actually talked about it.”
I pushed the noodles around my plate with my chopsticks. He was right. I’d come home that night and gone straight to Derek’s. And then the Frost left for their road trip and I’d buried myself in training. Avery and I had circled around it, both of us too awkward to breach the wall I’d built.
“Nico and I were together,” I said finally. “On and off. For almost three years. I broke things off while I was in rehab.”
Avery blinked. “I knew there was something but I didn’t realize—”
“No one did. That was the point.” I took a breath. “Coach Renaud is his uncle. If anyone found out, it would have been a disaster. For both of us but especially for me. Renaud made that very clear. So we hid it. Snuck around. Pretended we were just training partners who happened to be close.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.” I set down my chopsticks. “And it was toxic. We were competing against each other for the same spots, the same medals, the same attention from Renaud. We loved each other but we also resented each other. And we were both so fucked up about food and pressure and perfection that we just... enabled each other’s worst habits. Called it understanding.”
Avery was quiet, listening in a way he never used to when we were kids.
“When I collapsed after Worlds, it wasn’t just the pressure of competing.
It was everything. The secrecy. The starving.
The feeling like I was disappearing and no one even noticed because I was still landing my jumps.
” My throat tightened. “Nico noticed. But he was drowning too. Neither of us could save the other.”
“Is that why you ended it?”
“I ended it because I was a disaster.” The word came out flat.
“The kind that leaves wreckage everywhere it touches. He kept trying to help me and I kept dragging him down. Every time he reached out, I pulled away. Every time he tried to get me to eat, I lied about it. He deserved someone who wasn’t—” I stopped, swallowed. “Someone who wasn’t so broken.”
Avery shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable but not looking away. “You’re not... I mean, you’re not a disaster, Théo. That’s a bit—”
“It’s how it felt.” I cut him off. “Maybe still feels. I don’t know.”
He was quiet for a moment, picking at a piece of carrot on his plate.
“I mean it.” He looked up, brow furrowed like he was working through a problem he didn’t have the vocabulary for.
“You’re... you’ve been through a lot of shit.
That doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person who’s been through shit. ”
“Eloquent.”
“Shut up, I’m trying.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just saying—you came here. You’re working on it. That counts for something, right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure it did.
“Anyway.” I pushed on before he could keep stumbling through his pep talk. “I couldn’t handle things in Toronto anymore so I came running here. Nico and I didn’t talk for months.”
“Until now?”
“Until he took too many sleeping pills and ended up in the hospital. That’s confidential by the way.
” I swallowed. “He said he just wanted to sleep. That he wasn’t trying to—but it doesn’t matter what he was trying to do.
It matters that he got that desperate.” My voice cracked.
“And I kept thinking... that could have been me. That almost was me. And maybe if I’d stayed, if I’d been better, he wouldn’t have—”
“No.” Avery’s voice was sharper than I expected. “No, you don’t get to do that.”
I looked up.
“I don’t know much about this stuff,” he said and his hands were gripping the edge of the counter like he needed something to hold onto. “But I know you can’t—you can’t take responsibility for someone else’s... for what they do when they’re that low. That’s not how it works.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if it worked that way, then mom would be responsible for what happened to you. And she’s not. Right?”
I stared at him. I didn’t have a response to that.
“Look, I’m not—I’m shit at this.” He let out a breath. “But you’re my brother. And I’m not going to let you sit here and convince yourself you ruined someone’s life when you were barely keeping yourself alive.”
My eyes were burning. I blinked it away.
“When did you get so wise?” I managed.
“I’ve been hit in the head a lot.” He grinned. “Sometimes things shake loose.”
Then he reached across the counter and squeezed my shoulder—brief and awkward for both of us. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth a lot, actually.”
He nodded, cleared his throat, and picked up his sandwich again. We ate in silence for a minute, the heaviness settling into something more bearable.
“There’s something else,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it.
Avery looked up, mid-chew. “Yeah?”
“I’m seeing someone.”
His brows shot up. “Oh. Another skater?”
“No.” I pushed the noodles around the plate. “It’s Derek.”
Avery stopped chewing and his jaw went slack. For a long moment he just sat there, mouth full, staring at me like I’d announced I was joining the circus.
Then he swallowed—hard—and set his sandwich down.
“Derek,” he said slowly. “As in Derek Sullivan. My Derek Sullivan.”
“He’s not your Derek Sullivan.”
“He’s my teammate. My mentor. The guy who—” He broke off, shaking his head like he was trying to rearrange his brain. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”
“You said that already.”
“It’s worth repeating!” He ran both hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up in every direction. “How did I not notice this? I see you guys together all the time!”
I bit back a smile. This was the same man who couldn’t see that Hana was head over heels for him, even when she was literally in his lap watching movies.
“You’re not exactly known for your emotional intelligence,” I said.
“Hey, I have emotional intelligence. I have tons of it.”
“You really, really don’t.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. “Okay, fair. But still—Derek? The guy who’s been like a big brother to me?”
“Please don’t make it weird.”
“It’s already weird!” He paused, his expression shifting into something more serious. “Wait—is he…is he being good to you? This isn’t another secret situation like Nico?”
“It’s not a secret, Avery.” I held his gaze. “We wanted to tell you first. That’s the only reason we’ve been quiet about it. We weren’t ready to deal with everyone else’s opinions before we’d even talked to you.”
He absorbed that, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.
“And it’s nothing like Nico,” I continued. “Derek knows about everything. The rehab. My struggles. The—” I stopped, unsure how much to say. “He knows. And he’s still here.”
Avery studied my face for a long moment. “I want you to be happy. But is this really the best time to jump into something new? You just got back from seeing your ex in the hospital. You’re trying to compete again. That’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
“Derek isn’t Nico.”
“I know he’s not. Sully’s a good guy—one of the best I know. But that doesn’t mean the situation isn’t complicated.” He sighed. “You’re my brother. I’m always going to worry about you. Especially when you’re being a stubborn little shit.”
“I prefer the term ‘determined.’“
“Stubborn little shit,” he repeated firmly. “But if you say he’s good to you, I believe you. Just... be careful, okay? And if he hurts you, I’ll have to kill him, and that’ll be really awkward because I still have to play with him.”
“Your priorities are heartwarming.”
“I’m a complicated man.” He picked up the last spring roll and pointed it at me. “But I mean it. You deserve someone who’s going to treat you right. If Derek’s that person, then... I’m happy for you. Both of you.”
I felt something loosen in my chest. “Thanks, Avery.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He bit into the spring roll. “Just… no PDA when I’m around.”
“No promises.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I learned from the best.”
He threw a napkin at my head. I caught it, grinning.
Maybe things were going to be okay after all.