Chapter Thirty-Two
LUKA
My apartment is too quiet. I’m awake, but I’m not moving.
The sheets are warm. The room is dim. My phone sits on the nightstand like a loaded weapon I’ve been refusing to pick up because I already know what’s on it.
Then my front door opened.
Not a knock. Not a text. Just the unmistakable sound of a key in a lock.
I don’t have time to sit up before my sister’s footsteps cut through the hallway with the kind of determination that belongs to women who grew up in the same family I did and survived it by learning how to bulldoze obstacles.
"Kat," I call out, voice rough with sleep I didn’t actually get. "What are you doing here?"
The bedroom door swings open, and Katerina steps inside as if she owns the place, which she does because she’s my sister, and she has never once cared about boundaries when she decides they are inconvenient.
"I came to check on you," she says simply, and then she strides toward the windows and yanks the curtains open.
Light floods the room so abruptly, I swear it scorches my eyeballs.
"Jesus—" I mutter, squinting hard and lifting an arm to block the sun. "I’m sure I didn’t ask you to do that."
"No," she replied, unbothered. "But you were supposed to hit the weights with Scottie last night, and you backed out, and then this morning you were supposed to go running with Slade and Wolf, and neither of them heard back from you."
I blink at her. "It’s our day off."
"You don’t believe in days off," she says with a perfectly calm expression. "Please try a more convincing excuse. You’re getting lazy with your excuses, and that’s embarrassing to me."
I dropped my arm and glared at her through the brightness. "I’m sorry to disappoint you."
She turns, scanning my nightstand like she’s cataloging evidence. Her gaze lands on the empty glass next to my phone, and she makes a sound in the back of her throat that I recognize as the kind of disapproval she usually reserves for men who think "hydration" is optional.
She picks up the glass and walks out.
I hear her in the bathroom, water running. The clink of glass against the sink. The kind of efficiency she’s always had, the kind that makes you realize she could absolutely run a country if she ever got bored with ballet and marriage and Seattle society.
She returns a moment later and presses the refilled glass into my hand as if this is a medical intervention, not a sibling visit.
"Drink," she ordered.
I take it because arguing would take more energy than I have.
"So," I say, forcing myself to sit up, legs swinging over the side of the bed. "Why is Penelope calling you? Isn’t that what Scottie is for?"
Katerina’s mouth curves, sharp and amused. "Oh, trust me. She called Scottie first. Then she called Slade. Then she called Wolf."
I raised a brow.
"And when none of them wanted to come check on you because they’re all terrified of your moods, guess who got assigned the job?" She points to herself. "Me."
I take a sip of water and let it sit in my mouth for a second before swallowing because my throat feels dry, like I’ve been breathing through it too hard for too many days.
"You’re being dramatic," I say.
"I’m being accurate," she replies. "You have ignored half the team. You skipped training. You skipped your run. You have been avoiding people for days, Luka."
"I haven’t been avoiding," I say automatically.
Katerina just stares at me like she’s waiting for me to finish lying.
I exhale slowly. "Fine. I’ve been… busy."
"With what," she asks, tone flat, "staring at your ceiling?"
That hits closer than I want it to.
I take another sip of water to give myself something to do with my hands.
Katerina folds her arms. "I’m leaving for New York tonight," she says, and now her voice shifts into something more serious. "I have rehearsals and meetings for the ballet fundraiser, and I need to know that you’re okay before I go."
"I’m fine," I say immediately, because that’s what I always say.
She rolls her eyes so hard it’s almost impressive. "Are you honestly going to pretend you’re happy with the way you left things with Natalia?"
My stomach tightens.
Of course, she knows.
"You heard about that?" I ask, even though the question is pointless. Seattle is a small town when it comes to hockey. News travels faster than the puck.
"There were dozens of witnesses," she says. "And Scottie tells me you aren’t skating like yourself anymore."
I stare down at the glass in my hand because the alternative is looking at her and having her see too much.
"It has nothing to do with her," I say out of reflex, and I hate myself for it because even I can hear the lie.
Katerina leans forward slightly. "If you try to deflect and tell me this has nothing to do with her, you can forget the invite to Christmas next year at Scottie’s parents’ house. All extended-family privileges will be revoked until further notice."
I glance up at her. "Is that your threat?"
"It’s a good threat," she says, completely serious. "You love his mother’s cooking and you know it."
I exhale a short laugh despite myself, and the sound of it surprises me. It feels like it came from a place inside me I haven’t visited in days.
Then the humor drains.
"She lied to me," I say quietly.
Katerina’s expression softens just a fraction. "She made a mistake."
"She promised," I correct.
"She told the wrong person," Katerina says, patient but firm. "There is a difference, Luka, even if you don’t want there to be."
My jaw clenches. "She told her after I explicitly asked her not to tell anyone."
"Yes," Katerina agrees. "And that was wrong."
Finally… acknowledgment.
But it doesn’t soothe anything.
Because the part that still burns isn’t the fact that she talked. It’s the fact that she knew what that promise meant to me. She knew why I asked. She looked me in the eye in that chalet and swore she wouldn’t use it.
And then, twelve hours later, it was everywhere.
My name.
My story.
My vulnerability turned into a headline and a loophole, and a convenient narrative shift.
My stomach turns faintly, the familiar sensation of disgust that always comes when I remember how stupid I was to believe in anything for even a second.
"It showed me I can’t trust her," I say, voice flat.
Katerina studies me. "The problem is that you’re not just punishing her," she says finally. "You’re punishing yourself too."
I scoff quietly. "I thought you came here to report back to Penelope."
"I did," she admits, unbothered. "But I also came here because something is wrong with you, Luka, and you can’t pretend its nothing when the people who know you best are all noticing."
I don’t lose control. I don’t slip. I don’t let my life show cracks.
And yet here I am, lying in bed in the middle of the day, acting like I’m exhausted when really I’m just trying to avoid the part of my brain that won’t stop replaying Natalia’s face when she said she didn’t leak the information, when she said she cared, when she stood in that hallway and took my coldness like a punishment she believed she deserved.
Katerina walks into my bathroom without asking, because of course she does, and returns a moment later with a handful of vitamins from the cabinet.
She drops them into my palm.
"Here," she says. "You need these."
I stare at the pills while she takes a seat on the edge of the bed and looks at me with a quieter kind of seriousness now.
"I’m not asking you to forgive her today," she says. "I’m asking you to stop disappearing."
"I’m not disappearing."
"You are," she insists. "And you’re doing it because it’s easier to tell yourself she betrayed you than it is to admit you cared enough for it to hurt."
I don’t respond.
Katerina exhales, like she expected that.
"Randolph is thrilled," she adds, switching angles as if she’s trying to reach me through practical facts. "He’s been telling Scottie that sponsors are easing up. That the magazine is taking the heat. That you’re ‘safe.’"
Safe.
The word tastes bitter.
"Are you safe?" she asks quietly.
I stare at the glass of water.
The Olympic Committee still hasn't made an official statement.
They could still fine me. They could still demand a public apology.
They could still make an example of me because medals are sacred to them in a way that feels hypocritical when you remember how many of their governing bodies survive on sponsorship and optics, too.
And I haven’t heard whether Natalia’s mediation plan ever moved forward after Switzerland, because I shut her out before she could tell me. I cut the thread so fast that I never found out whether she could have actually fixed this without the leak.
The irony is thick enough to choke on.
"Safe doesn’t mean anything," I say finally.
Katerina nods slowly. "No. It doesn’t."
She stands, smoothing her coat as if she’s preparing to leave.
"I’m going to New York," she says. "I need you to promise me you’re not going to rot in this apartment while I’m gone."
"I’m not rotting," I mutter.
"You’re rotting," she replies without hesitation. "And if you don’t get up and go to practice tomorrow, I will personally tell Penelope that you need to be benched like a child until you learn how to behave."
That gets my attention.
"You wouldn’t."
Katerina smiles sweetly. "Try me."
I exhale, rubbing a hand over my face. "Fine."
"Fine, what?"
"I’ll go," I say.
She narrows her eyes. "That was not convincing."
"It’s the best you’re going to get."
Katerina accepts it with a nod, then steps closer and presses a quick kiss to my temple, like she’s reminding me she’s allowed to love me even when I’m being impossible.
"Stop moping," she says, already turning toward the door. "And drink the water."
"I hate when you act like you’re my mother."
"I learned from the best," she calls back.
Then she’s gone, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving my apartment quiet again.
But it’s a different kind of quiet now. The empty kind.
I sit there for a long moment, staring at the vitamins in my hand like they contain answers. Katerina thinks she knows what happened. Scottie thinks he knows. The team thinks they know.
They all see the version of this that fits into simple categories: betrayal, heartbreak, stubbornness.
The truth is that I asked Natalia to hold something fragile for me, and she handed it to someone who shattered it, and now I don’t know how to separate intention from outcome, because my entire life has taught me that outcome is what matters.
My father always said love makes you weak. I used to think that was cynicism. Now I understand it as strategy. Because the moment you care, you give someone the power to wreck you.
And I cared. That’s the part I don’t want to admit, even to myself.
I reach for my phone without thinking, thumb hovering over her name before I can stop it.
I don’t press call. I just stare at it.
Because the scariest part isn’t that she might have hurt me again.
It’s that she might have stopped trying, and I’m not sure I can pretend that doesn’t matter.
Not anymore.