Chapter 11
MATEO
I can’t stop thinking about her hands in my hair.
I text Jess in the afternoon. Can we talk? and she replies sure. I walk over and she opens the door and takes one look at my face and says, “come in,” in a tone that tells me she already knows why I’m there.
She pours herself a glass of water and leans against the kitchen counter and looks at me with those calm, clear eyes and waits.
“Jess,” I start.
“Is it the skating coach?”
I open my mouth. Then close it again.
She nods slowly, like my silence has confirmed what she’s known for a while. “I saw your face at the bar the other night. When you saw them together.”
“It’s not - it’s complicated.”
“I’m sure it is.” She takes a sip of water. “Are you in love with her?”
I don’t answer quickly enough, which is its own answer, and something moves across Jess’s face that I’ll feel bad about for a long time.
“I think I’m going that direction,” I say finally.
“I’m not angry. I knew we were casual, it’s not like you’re the only guy I’m seeing. I thought you weren’t ready for anything serious. Not that you weren’t ready with me. Kind of feels like you were just waiting for someone else.”
“I didn’t plan-”
“No one plans it.” She sets down her glass and looks at me directly. “Go, Mateo. Sort it out with her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” She pushes off the counter and picks up her glass and heads toward the other room, and at the doorway she stops without turning around. “She’s lucky. For what it’s worth.”
I don’t have anything adequate to say to that.
“Take care of yourself, Jess.”
“Always do,” she says.
I let myself out.
You were just waiting for someone else.
I think about what happened on the rink.
She’s not wrong.
But I didn’t see it coming.
ELIDA
The week before the away game passes in a blur.
I see Mateo every day in training and not once alone, which is either fortunate or unfortunate depending on which part of my brain is making the assessment.
He’s different with me now - respectful, careful, nothing that anyone watching would clock as anything other than professional.
He takes corrections without comment. He works hard. He doesn’t push.
But what happened between us is tangible now - an almost physical thing that hangs in the air every time I get close enough to correct his stance.
Twice now, during a session, I’ve had to step back abruptly, because I’ve been standing near enough to catch his scent, and I’ve realized with a jolt of shame and wanting that I’m wet.
I can’t stop thinking about him.
That’s the plain fact of it, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise, at least in the privacy of my own head. On the ice I’m professional and focused. But at night I keep replaying the same five minutes against the boards and finding new details in it every time.
His mouth.
His hands, strong and unhurried.
The way he said my name.
I’ve been here before, says the sensible part of me, every time. You know how this goes.
And I do know. That’s the problem. I know exactly how this goes.
I dream about Erik on Thursday night.
It starts the way it always starts when he shows up uninvited in my sleep - the rink in Stockholm, early morning, the way it always was. Just the two of us and the ice and the music playing from the small speaker he kept at the boards.
“Again,” he says, from the boards. “The combination. You’re rushing the entry.”
I run it again and again. He watches with that focused, particular attention.
“Better.” He skates out to meet me at center ice. “But here-”
His hands find my waist. Standard correction, which is what he always said. Sometimes true. Sometimes not. His hands were always finding things to adjust.
This time, they don’t stop at my waist. They drift lower - slow and deliberate, as if measuring - and settle on the curve of my hips, then slide past it, fingertips pressing into the edge of my left ass cheek. Like it’s an accident. Like it’s technique.
“Erik,” I say, laughing, breath catching. “We’re not allowed…”
“You’re so special to me,” he says, and his voice is low and persuasive, and he’s close, closer than a correction requires.
I know this, I’ve always known this, but he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the rink worth looking at.
His thumb traces a small, private circle over the fabric of my skate tights.
I’m tired. I’ve been fighting for my skating career for years.
He kisses me.
I let him. The line was already so blurred. Because he’d been making it feel that way for years. And I hadn’t noticed. Or I didn’t want to notice.
In the dream, his hand stays where it is, heavy and claiming, and I don’t pull away. It feels almost romantic, almost safe. Like being wanted. I lean into it and I don’t know yet what it’s going to cost me.
I wake up at 3am with the Stockholm rink still in my brain and lie in the dark waiting for my heart to slow down.
It takes a while.
I think about Mateo.
I think about the way he stepped in front of me when Tara came through the door like it was instinct.
Erik never stepped in front of anything.
Erik stepped back and let the wave break over me and watched from a safe distance while my career drowned in it.
When the interviews came and the federation started asking questions, he said she misunderstood the nature of our relationship and she came onto me.
I understood what it feels like to be erased by someone who once told you that you were everything.
I pull the duvet up.
Outside, the Minnesota dark presses against the window.
I close my eyes and don’t sleep for a long time.