Chapter 6
CECILIA
In my opinion, one week is enough time to see the edges of a place.
Not the polish—that’s immediate and in this particular case, it was very obvious the moment we stepped out of the van that brought us here the first day. The ice, the equipment, the staffing, the way everything runs on a schedule that actually holds.
What takes a week is noticing what changes underneath.
By day seven, I can map out the training facility without thinking. Which of the rinks is louder. Which hallway smells more like hockey boy sweat than rubber mats. Where the coaches gather when they want to be seen, and where they go when they don’t.
There are resources everywhere. Not just money, but attention. Time. What feels, to me, like redundancy. Three people assigned to a problem that back home would’ve been mine alone, solved between skating sessions with duct tape and a very loud prayer to whoever listens.
And watching the athletes is something spectacular, because they absorb all of this so fast.
Especially Rodrigo and a young skater from Texas, Katia.
It’s small things. The way he skates into the rink instead of waiting for me at the door. The way he listens with his whole body when someone else is speaking, shoulders squared, eyes up, even if he looks back at me afterward, checking to see if I agree.
He hasn’t pulled away. But he’s on a stretch assignment that is making him grow so fast in front of my eyes.
And that’s what scares me.
The other coaches are loud. Not careless, just big. Big egos in a sport where ego and presence is everything. They coach with their whole torsos, voices cutting through the rink, instructions barked mid-lap like commands that don’t expect to be questioned.
“Again.”
“Higher!”
“No, not like that.”
They fill space without apology.
And I don’t.
I wait until Rodrigo skates to the boards.
We’ve been working with a Korean choreographer who keeps asking him to slow down—stretch the edges, let the step sequence breathe, trust the music instead of chasing the next element.
Rodrigo’s breath steadies and his eyes flick in my direction, asking without words.
“Vení,” I say, soft enough that he has to lean in. “Your timing was fine,” I tell him. “You rushed that takeoff because you were anticipating the correction. Don’t.”
He nods once. Resets. Goes again.
And it works. The landing is cleaner this time, the exit flowing instead of fighting him. Rodrigo skates past the boards with a grin he tries to hide and fails completely.
I feel eyes on us again.
When I glance up, Isabella is standing a few feet away, listening to two coaches argue about jump entries. She isn’t looking at them.
She’s looking at us.
Not the jump.
The coaching.
Our eyes meet for half a second before she looks away, like the moment wasn’t intentional.
Rodrigo circles back towards me, and I force my attention onto the ice.
“De vuelta,” I say.
Still, my body stays coiled. Protective in a manner that borders on feral. Every correction someone else makes—the choreographer, the jump specialist, the skating skills coach—feels like a threat, even when it isn’t meant to be.
This place doesn’t know him at all. And I do.
That’s the difference.
Isabella watches sometimes. Not constantly—she doesn’t hover—but her presence is impossible to miss. Always in motion, always greeting someone, always exactly where she needs to be.
She runs this place without running it. Everyone defers to her, and I see her family’s name and the legacy they’ve built everywhere in her.
What I don’t expect, however, is for her to defer to me.
It happens mid-session, almost casually. A technical discussion breaks out near the boards—two coaches debating step sequences, voices overlapping. Isabella steps closer, listening, nodding along.
Rodrigo glances at me. I shake my head once. No.
She sees it.
“What do you think?” she asks, turning to me.
The question tightens something in my chest.
“I think he’s overcorrecting because you’re changing too many variables at once,” I say. Flat. Honest. Not softened for the room or for my skater.
The rink goes dead quiet, the silence sharpening because someone important is listening.
Isabella nods immediately. “Okay. Then we don’t do that.”
Just like that. Zero pushback and complete trust in my word.
The coaches shift, recalibrate, and move on easily. The rink fills again with noise, skates cutting into ice, commands resuming like nothing momentous just happened in front of everyone’s eyes.
“That’s your call,” Isabella adds lightly, as though it’s self-evident. “You know him best.”
Four words that sound incredibly plain and almost careless. They shouldn’t mean anything.
But something in my body gives. It feels like a muscle unclenching after years of staying tight. Recognition. What I’ve chased without ever naming. The thing I wanted back when I was still skating, still trying to prove that quiet didn’t mean weak.
I hate how immediate it is. How my body reacts before I can stop it.
Because I remember her voice from years ago, threaded through a round table microphone, carried by bad acoustics and worse timing. I remember the way she’d said it—not cruel, not even sharp. But casual and thoughtless.
“Sometimes,” Isabella had said then, “skating doesn’t need to be shiny. Clean lines matter more than embellishment.”
It had sounded like wisdom. A small talking point during what was probably a meaningless interview that passed as truth because it came from skating royalty.
And I had shrunk under it, standing at the edge of the rink, hearing my own style reduced to excess. To decoration. To something completely unnecessary in the face of competition. I’d taken it home with me, that comment. Let it sit in my bones and confirm every quiet doubt I already carried.
So hearing her now—standing here, in this place, with all its power and machinery—defer to me so easily and publicly, makes my stomach twist.
Because it feels so fucking good.
And that scares me more than if she’d challenged me.
I don’t trust moments that rewrite history without acknowledging it. I don’t trust validation that arrives wrapped in charm and easy smiles and a body that makes heads turn, offered like it was always meant to be mine.
I meet her eyes and hold them, letting the silence stretch long enough to remind myself who I am.
“Cecilia?”
The way she says it is different this time. Softer. Curious.
I blink, pulled abruptly back into my body.
“Yeah,” I say.
She smiles, just a little, knowing she’s interrupted something but isn’t sure what. Or maybe she does and is choosing not to name it.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t,” I lie.
She glances towards the far end of the rink, then back to me. “There’s a dinner tonight. Staff, coaches, a few people from the US Olympic Committee. Very low-stakes and lots of bad wine. Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t drink wine.”
I snort before I can stop myself.
Her smile widens, pleased. “I’ll take that as a maybe?”
“I don’t know,” I say, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t normally do these things.”
“I know,” she replies easily. “That’s why I’m asking.”
There it is again—the feeling of being clocked without being cornered.
“You don’t have to decide now,” she adds. “I just wanted to make sure you knew you were invited.”
Invited. Not expected.
“What are the kids going to do?”
“Nina has that covered for them.” She winks, and my god, this woman.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Okay,” she replies, unbothered. “I’ll see you later, then.”
She steps back, giving me space even as her eyes linger a beat longer than necessary. Long enough for something to spark between us, and definitely long enough for my pulse to trip over itself again.
Then she turns and walks away, leaving behind the echo of her presence and the quiet certainty that whatever the fuck this is, it’s not staying where I put it.