Chapter 11
ISABELLA
“Can someone grab the bands and put the small cones back before we all pretend we don’t see them?” Nina calls from the far end of the field, her voice cutting through the scrape of sleds and the low hum of conversation.
By the time I look up from my tablet, most of the field is in motion. The mid-afternoon sun is still high, but the air has that sharp mountain edge to it, dry and thin once it gets to one’s lungs.
The kids are still hanging out on the field, groups of them chatting and laughing as if a morning under the spicy mountain sun hadn’t been physically demanding at all.
“I’ve got it,” I say.
“I can do it,” Cecilia says at the same time.
We both pause.
A few yards away, Rodrigo is crouched by a cooler with Katia, arguing about whether electrolyte packets taste better in cold- or room-temperature water, which feels like the sort of discussion only seventeen-year-old elite athletes could take seriously.
Nina glances at me from the folding table where she’s talking to one of the physical therapists, catches the beat of silence between me and Cecilia, and pointedly looks away.
Cecilia adjusts the clipboard in her hand. “You can carry the heavy things.”
“Of course,” I say with a smile. “I live to serve.”
“I can tell.”
I fall into step beside her anyway, each carrying pieces of equipment into the rink’s storage room.
The service hallway through the back of the building is always cooler than the ice itself.
The air is thick and sharp, and it cuts through my bones immediately.
It always smells of Zamboni fuel, no matter how deeply we clean, and how hard we try to get rid of it.
The storage room door is already propped open, an old hockey puck jammed on the top hinge to hold the heavy door from closing.
Inside, it’s tight. Shelves on both sides, stacked with bands, weights, foam rollers and cones. There’s a pile of mats towards the back, and it looks like it’s one box away from collapsing onto me. There is no real space to move without bumping into someone or something.
Cecilia heads straight for the mats.
“Wait!” I call, one step ahead of what’s about to happen.
She tosses a bundle of resistance bands onto the top of the stack like it’s nothing, like the whole thing isn’t already leaning forward under its own weight.
The shift is immediate.
“Cecilia—”
The mats start to slide. Not slowly or in a way that can be corrected quickly with a swift move of the wrist. The entire stack gives out at once, folding forward in a soft, inevitable collapse.
She reaches for them on instinct, which only redirects the fall towards me.
I barely have time to adjust my grip on the crate full of cones before the first mat hits my shoulder, the second catches my arm, and the rest follow, pinning me back into the shelf in a very inconvenient and slightly painful way, and effectively trapping me in a tight space with dirty equipment. My ass on the cold concrete floor.
There’s a pause. And then she laughs.
It’s quick. Unfiltered. And it slips out before she has time to control it, I think. My belly swoops immediately and the feeling feels incredibly disproportionate to what is happening right now.
Because I’ve seen Cecilia smile. I’ve seen the restrained version of it, the polite version, the one she gives to Rodrigo like it’s their own form of currency.
And this isn’t it. This is easier, lighter. Entirely unguarded for half a second.
“Don’t,” I say, still partially pinned under a mat. I’m still holding the crate with my hands but have no idea where to put it.
Cecilia exhales, trying to rein it back in, but I can see the amusement at the edges of her mouth. “I told you to move.”
“You did not,” I say with a gasp, and it makes me sound indignant when it really isn’t that big of a deal.
“I implied it.”
“With what? Your brain? I’m amazing at a lot of things, but I cannot read minds, you know?”
“God, Princess, you’re so dramatic.”
I still for half a second because that name people are so intent on calling me throws me completely off balance when it comes from her lips. It’s not the word itself; I’ve heard it my entire life—polished, rehearsed, handed to me like something I should be grateful for.
But my body reacts anyway. Heat rises, low and immediate, settling somewhere I’d rather ignore.
She crouches in front of me, pulling one of the mats off with more effort than she expected, and I take the opportunity to adjust my posture, pushing the rest with my knees and sliding sideways. We both reach for the same one at the same time, and our hands land on it together.
We pause. Cecilia’s hand is warm, steady, and she’s close enough that I can see the small shift in her expression when she realizes we’re not moving.
Her hair has come loose around her face, a few blonde strands stuck to her cheek, and she doesn’t fix it.
I don’t move my hand either, which feels like a decision I’m making in real time and not entirely thinking through.
And it tracks so much with how she makes me react to her when she’s close to me.
Like my body just decides what it wants and gets it, immediately.
She pulls the mat free first, breaking whatever that moment was before it can settle into something more complicated.
“Get up,” she instructs, standing.
“Yes, Coach.”
“That’s not what I—” she says, but I catch her reaction. A stutter in her breath, and a quick flutter of her eyes.
“I know.” I wink, because I can and it’s fun and flirty, and I have her all to myself here.
I push myself to my feet, brushing my hands down my legs more out of habit than necessity. She’s already restacking the mats, slower and more deliberate.
I grab the crate again and slide it onto the top shelf.
“Stop slamming things,” she gripes, without looking at me.
“I’m just putting things where they go.”
She shakes her head, but there’s no real bite to it anymore.
I reach for one of the bundles of bands that fell with the mats and our arms brush, light and electric.
I glance at her.
“Stop being mean to me,” I say with a smile.
“No,” she replies immediately.
There’s no hesitation. No softening. And her expression makes me grin.
“Because you’re already very hot,” I continue, hooking a band on the wall where they are all arranged by color, “and the meaner you are, the worse it gets.”
That makes her turn.
Slowly this time, like she’s deciding whether to engage with it or shut it down completely. Cecilia opens her mouth once, then closes it. Her eyes do something funny. It’s a mix of widening and narrowing at the same time, and it makes her look absolutely disjointed.
“Sounds like a you problem,” she finally says.
“Oh, it absolutely is.”
She studies me for a second longer than necessary, like she’s trying to place me somewhere that makes sense.
“Okay, then,” she says with an exhale, and this time there’s something softer in it, something that feels dangerously close to amusement.
Outside the storage closet, someone is rolling a cart and the noise from the rink bleeds faintly through the walls—music, voices, the dull rhythm of movement on ice.
She pushes the door open and steps into the hallway. “I’ll see you later, Isabella.”
I follow, because of course I do.