Chapter 9
ISABELLA
Objectively, I know that what I’m doing is a mistake. I shouldn’t be following her.
The thought is clear and calm and arrives fully formed, which usually means I’m about to ignore it.
Cecilia walks fast, coat unzipped and flapping in the wind, breath visible in the cold as she cuts towards the rink. I tell myself I just want to resume the conversation. That this feels unfinished and it would be rude and unlike me to leave it like that.
None of that explains why I lengthen my stride. My short dress is riding up with every step, but I don’t care to fix it.
Cecilia doesn’t look back. She pushes through the side entrance with practiced familiarity. It’s the door staff uses when the main doors are locked for the night.
The lobby and hallways are much darker than during the day, and the overhead lights are dimmed to maintenance levels. Down by the boards, I can hear the echo of loud music and even louder laughter.
“Cecilia,” I call.
She slows but doesn’t turn. Doors to locker rooms and storage closets and offices line the corridor, and the sound of our steps bounces loudly off the walls.
“Cecilia.”
This time, she stops.
I close the distance between us before she can decide to keep walking. She faces me slowly, expression unreadable in the dim fluorescent hallway light.
“You don’t have to—” she starts.
“I do,” I say.
The honesty surprises both of us.
Her brow tightens slightly. “Do what?”
“Finish talking.”
There’s another one of those half-laughs while she studies me, as if deciding whether to believe that or not.
“We said what needed to be said.”
“I don’t think we did.” She’s fidgeting a little, her fingers tapping on her thigh. It’s the most nervous I’ve seen her yet, and I can’t tell if it’s me or the unresolved conversation weighing between us.
“You followed me in here to tell me that?”
“Yes.”
“And you think that helps.”
“I think leaving it hanging makes it worse.”
“Isabella…” Her jaw shifts. She looks past me towards the rink doors at the end of the hall, where pink and green light pulses through the glass. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want you walking away thinking I dismissed what you said.”
The silence stretches.
We’re standing too close now. I hadn’t noticed myself stepping closer until now, but I’m aware of it suddenly—the narrowness of the corridor, the cold locker room door behind Cecilia, the echo of our breathing, and the way her attention is locked entirely on me.
“I really don’t remember saying that,” I whisper. “It doesn’t make it better, I know. But it does matter.”
“How,” Cecilia says, quieter now. “Explain that to me.”
Her eyes are fixed on mine, and her breathing is faster. I can feel her warm breath on my chin. Her eyes flick down to my lips, then back up.
I open my mouth and don’t immediately have an answer that feels neat. Cecilia’s breath stutters once, small and barely there.
Behind us, music suddenly bleeds through the rink doors. Loud, bass-heavy. Laughter follows it, distant but unmistakable.
“What is that?” she mutters, almost to herself.
“Knowing Nina,” I say, “something absolutely excessive.”
She huffs once, distracted despite herself.
I take another step closer before I can stop myself, and I’ve effectively caged Cecilia in against the door.
“Cecilia.”
“Yes.”
Her voice is steady, but her body isn’t. Those finger taps against her thigh are faster now. There’s a hum under my skin that has nothing to do with the cold.
“I hope you know that that’s not how I feel at all,” I say. “Your technique is—was—always spectacular. So technically accurate. And it’s evident in Rodrigo, too.”
Our gazes lock.
I see the moment before she does. The micro-shift. The recognition, passing through her expression like something she hadn’t expected and hasn’t decided how to contain.
I should step back. I know that with the same clarity that tells me this entire conversation has already crossed whatever line I thought existed between us.
Instead, I move, closing the nonexistent distance I’d left as a concession to reason, until there’s nowhere for her to retreat without making a decision of her own.
I lift my hand slowly, deliberately, giving her time to stop me if she wants to.
My fingers brush her wrist, light enough to be a question rather than a claim, and I feel the quick, unmistakable jump of her pulse under my touch.
Her breath catches, just barely, and it’s that— the involuntary response, the way her body answers before she does—that undoes me.
She says my name, quietly, and I know it’s meant to be a warning.
I don’t listen.
I lean in and kiss her.
The contact is immediate and unguarded, not tentative, but so certain that it surprises me even as it’s happening.
For a fraction of a second she stays still, and then her hands come up, gripping the front of my coat and pulling me closer with a strength that tells me she’s been holding herself back for longer than I have.
The noise coming from the rink reaches us almost immediately.
A burst of laughter, amplified and bright, followed by music thudding through concrete and steel, the sound spilling down the corridor and making my stomach tighten with sudden awareness.
It sounds close enough that someone could round the corner at any moment, and the thought cuts through the haze in my head with startling clarity.
I don’t pull away.
My hand slides from her wrist to her waist as I turn, shoving the door we’ve been leaning against open just enough to slip us inside before swinging it shut behind us with more force than I mean to use.
The snick reverberates slowly in the space, the latch catching as I reach back and snap it into place with a quick, practiced motion that feels far too instinctive for something I haven’t planned at all.
“Isa—”
Cecilia pushes me against the lockers, crowding the space between us until my back meets cool metal with a dull, hollow sound. My hands come down on either side of her, and I grab her by her hips, pulling her against me as I lift one leg and wrap it around her body.
“What are you doing?” she almost asks, in a not-quite-a-question way.
Cecilia looks at me, startled now, breath uneven, and the sight of her standing there—flushed, steady-eyed, entirely present—sends another sharp zap through me.
“Ceci?” I hear behind the door. It sounds like Rodrigo on the other side, probably done with their evening activities. “?Estás ahí?”
My body reacts before my brain does.
I stiffen so abruptly that it almost feels like something has hit me, my grip on Cecilia’s hips tightening for half a second before I force myself to let go.
The unmistakable jolt of panic rushes through me, and the sound of his voice slices cleanly through whatever narrow, sealed-off world I’d been operating inside, dragging reality back in with startling speed.
I drop my leg, creating space between us, and Cecilia steps back a second later.
The movement is quick. Her hands are still on me, but her eyes shift to the door, then back to my face and down my body, taking in the change of my posture and the sudden distance I’m trying to put between us.
“I—” I start, and then stop, because there are too many words running through my brain at once and none of them feel like the right one for this specific moment.
Behind the door, someone laughs—Katia, probably—and music swells again from the rink.
Cecilia exhales, slow and controlled, even as her gaze stays locked on me.
“That was fast,” she says.
“I didn’t—” I try again, then abandon that, too, heat climbing up the back of my neck in a way that has nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the woman in front of me.
“Isabella,” Cecilia says with a heavy sigh, and I see her face transform. She’s impossible to read, but something in her expression is unsettled.
“This was a bad idea,” I say, hearing how thin it sounds, even if I actually mean it. Her mouth twitches, something closer to disbelief.
“And yet,” she replies.
I straighten, forcing my body to move out of the way, even though every part of me seems reluctant to give it up.
Her eyes are too bright, and her hair is out of place, and I can feel the warmth coming off her body.
The simple awareness of her presence hits me all over again, slower this time and far more dangerous.
“I need to—” I begin, and don’t finish because I don’t actually know what that sentence is supposed to end with. I smooth my dress down my legs and take a step to the side, needing space before I do something worse.
Cecilia watches me carefully, like she’s cataloguing my retreat and the way my brain is trying to recalibrate.
To go back to that perfectly poised person she has seen for years, the person my parents and the public know me to be.
Not this version, a woman reckless enough to kiss pretty girls in ice rink locker rooms.
“Isabella,” she says, low.
“Yes.”
“You started it.” The corner of her lip lifts slightly, another one of those little amused half-smiles.
I don’t argue, of course.
“I know.”
Another voice floats down the corridor, closer now, overlapping with music and laughter and the thud of something hitting the rubber floor.
I glance towards the door again, pulse still running too fast, my breaths unable to catch up with my brain.
“This isn’t over,” she says.
I nod once, because anything else would be dishonest.
And then I reach for the handle, unlocking it with a soft click that feels much louder than it should in the quiet of the room, already bracing for whatever version of myself is going to step back into the hallway first.