Chapter 36 #2
Catch yourself quickly. Never let instability remain visible long enough for anyone else to notice it.
I circled the rink again, slower now, and found myself thinking about Mila.
God.
Mila had understood pieces of this long before I managed to admit any of it to myself.
She stood beside me through years of speculation and carefully manufactured narratives, letting reporters build romance where none existed because the alternative carried consequences neither of us wanted to test publicly.
And all the while she carried her own secrets too.
Marek’s face was in my head, watching me too closely weeks ago before saying, “You look at him like losing him would matter more than protecting yourself.”
At the time I’d dismissed it because anger felt easier than recognition.
Now Marek frightened me because the loneliness beneath his words felt familiar. His quiet acceptance that survival was all life had to offer.
I slowed abruptly near center ice. My chest hurt, tight with grief for all the years I had spent convincing myself that survival was enough.
Suddenly I could see the rest of my life with brutal clarity: more medals, more interviews, more strategic silences while entire pieces of me disappeared gradually beneath performance. Another decade becoming smaller in ways invisible to everyone except myself.
I skated harder, abandoning drills entirely now. No choreography, no technical plan, nothing but movement and speed and the violent need to outrun thoughts that refused to leave me alone.
For years I blamed skating itself for the suffocation, but the ice had never demanded I erase myself.
People did that.
I came to an abrupt stop, my blades carving deep against the surface. My breathing echoed loudly through the empty arena while sweat cooled against the back of my neck.
If I returned home unchanged after Milan, I would lose far more than Dean.
I would lose whatever remained of myself underneath all this performance.
Dean had not rescued me. That was another lie I’d nearly told myself because it sounded simpler than the truth. He had merely lived openly enough around me that continuing to shrink myself suddenly became unbearable.
Before him, survival felt permanent.
Now it felt like grief stretched across years.
I closed my eyes briefly and saw that day we’d spent in Milan. None of it had been dramatic.
That had been the devastating part. Freedom had looked so… ordinary.
I pushed off again, slower now, letting the rink open around me.
My edges deepened naturally through the curves, no choreography dictating placement, no audience waiting for perfection.
Halfway through the next lap I leaned farther into an outside edge than I ever would during competition, reckless enough that centrifugal force pulled sharply through my ribs.
The blade hissed beneath me, and for the first time in years, skating felt separate from performance. I jumped again simply because I wanted to.
Laughter escaped me, sudden and startled in the emptiness of the arena, and then without warning tears burned behind my eyes hard enough that I had to scrub angrily at my face with the sleeve of my training jacket.
I was exhausted from spending years surviving elegantly enough that nobody noticed survival was slowly hollowing me out.
The tears kept coming anyway, cold against overheated skin while I circled the rink once more beneath dim maintenance lights.
Eventually I drifted back toward the boards where my Velkaran jacket rested folded beside the gate, white, crimson and black with the gold dragon stitched over the chest. I picked it up.
I loved my country.
Velkarya was not only fear and federation oversight and careful silence.
It was my language. My childhood. Frozen mornings before sunrise walking into rinks with numb hands and aching feet.
My mother wrapping scarves too tightly around my throat before competitions.
The first time I understood the sound blades made cutting across untouched ice.
Home could wound you and still remain home.
I wiped my face roughly with the sleeve, then folded the jacket again and placed it back where it had been.
Across the arena, pale light stretched endlessly over empty Olympic ice.
I could not return to the person I had been before Milan. Even if I tried, the attempt would destroy me slowly enough that perhaps nobody else would notice until years later.
But I would know.
I inhaled deeply, cold air filling my lungs, then pushed into one final lap around the rink—not as Velkarya’s perfect symbol, not as a man editing himself into acceptability every waking second, but simply as Luka, alone on the ice with nobody watching him anymore.
When I finally slowed, I glanced over at the jacket, at the dragon staring back at me.
National champion. Olympic medalist. Pride of Velkarya.
Standing there alone beneath the darkened rafters, I finally understood why the last few weeks had felt so unbearable.
Everyone kept talking as though a choice was inevitable, as though loving Dean automatically meant abandoning everything else I loved. As if those things could not exist together.
Maybe they were right. Maybe the world would force the issue eventually. But for the first time, I found myself angry at the premise.
I did not want one life instead of the other.
I wanted my country.
I wanted my skating.
I wanted Dean.
I wanted all of it.