Chapter 22
ISABELLA
Forty-five minutes later, we’re standing on the ice, arms folded, staring at the stone in front of us and trying to figure out how on earth those people make it look so easy. Cecilia hasn’t stepped more than a foot away from me since we got here.
“So I just… slide it?” Cecilia asks, peering down at the forty-two-pound stone at our feet.
“You slide it,” Nina confirms from the other end of the sheet, her voice carrying easily across the ice.
She’s stationed beside Rafael, their shoulders nearly brushing as they confer in low tones.
They’ve been leaning into each other all evening, heads bent together in what is almost certainly technical discussion, but Nina’s smile keeps giving her away—wide and bright and a little too pleased for this to be purely instructional.
“Just push yourself from the hack, Ceci.”
“I still don’t know what she’s saying.”
I laugh, the sound fogging in front of me in the cold air. “The hack is that little foothold behind you,” I say, nudging it lightly with the toe of my shoe. “You plant your back foot there, bend your front knee, and try not to hurt yourself.”
“God, okay, well, here goes nothing, I guess.”
Rafael cups his hands around his mouth. “Lower center of gravity!”
Cecilia shoots him a look. “I’m a professional skater! I have excellent balance.”
“Prove it,” Nina calls sweetly.
Cecilia exhales slowly, then lowers herself into position with the exaggerated caution of someone who has spent her entire life mastering blades, not rubber soles.
She pushes off—and immediately wobbles, left arm windmilling barely enough to look chaotic before she corrects.
The stone glides forward in a surprisingly straight line.
“Oh,” she says, startled.
“Oh,” I echo, unable to stop smiling. I feel it before I think it: the urge to praise her and touch her and have her stay right next to me forever. I also realize, a moment too late, that I was supposed to be sweeping the ice, directing the stone to the house.
It drifts forward, slow and dignified, until it settles somewhere vaguely near the target. Nina throws both hands in the air and groans, resting her forehead on Rafael’s shoulder as he laughs and says something directed only at her.
“Beginner’s luck!” she shouts, but rolls her eyes with a big smile on her face.
Cecilia straightens carefully, brushing her palms together, trying very hard to look unimpressed with herself.
It doesn’t work. There’s a spark in her eyes—bright, competitive, alive—that I recognize immediately.
It’s the same expression she gets rinkside when Rodrigo executes something difficult with very little practice.
“I’m an athlete!” she says, turning to me. “That was easy.”
“Of course, Ceci,” I reply. A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it—fond and a little smug, because she looks so pleased with herself and doesn’t even realize it. I let her have it, nodding once like this was inevitable all along.
Nina goes next, rolling her neck once like she’s about to enter a championship round instead of a Thursday night league with the elderly locals and a cold beer on a table six feet away.
“Watch and learn,” she announces, pointing her broom at Rafael. “And sweep when I tell you to.”
Rafael salutes lazily but is already gliding into position.
Nina pushes off cleanly—lower and smoother than anything I’ve ever seen before—and the stone takes off down the sheet with surprising speed.
“Hard!” she yells immediately. “Harder. Harder. Don’t you dare let that curl—”
Rafael drops into a frantic sweep, brushing in front of the stone with exaggerated intensity.
“Harder!” Nina shouts again, and the word echoes across the club, drawing a few chuckles and head shakes from the adjacent sheet.
Cecilia makes a strangled sound beside me. “Oh my god.”
The stone glides beautifully into the house, settling in the exact center of the target. Nina throws both arms up in triumph.
“That’s how it’s done,” she declares, completely unbothered by the double meaning she just broadcast to half the club.
Rafael straightens slowly, breathing harder than necessary, and looks at her with a grin that is equal parts competitive and something else entirely.
Cecilia leans slightly into my shoulder. “I see why you dragged me here,” she murmurs.
I don’t look at her right away. “For the athleticism?”
I feel her smile a moment later.
The small bar overlooking the ice is warmer, and the air is thick with fryer oil and beer and something else.
Maybe decades’ worth of stale air. From up here, the game Nina and Rafael are still playing looks almost orderly—stones gliding in clean arcs, brooms moving in effortless bursts—but the noise carries in uneven waves.
Shouting. Laughter. The scrape of fabric against pebbled ice.
I order fried pickles and a beer, and Cecilia watches me closely as the plate arrives, steaming hot and smelling delicious.
“Oh no,” she says, studying the breaded green disks.
“They’re delicious,” I reply, feigning offense.
She lifts one cautiously, the steam curling between her fingers, and takes a tentative bite. Her expression rearranges itself in stages—skepticism, then surprise, then reluctant acceptance.
“I don’t understand the obsession with pickles. They are literally sour cucumbers.”
“Ceci.”
“They’re… fine,” she concedes.
I don’t hide my smile this time. “That’s practically a love letter from you.”
She rolls her eyes but reaches for another, settling back in her chair.
She hooks her leg on my chair and drags it a little closer to her, a mischievous smile on her lips.
She’s relaxed, and her shoulders are looser than I’ve ever seen them.
The light catches in her hair differently here, warmer, less severe.
Below us, Nina is arguing with Rafael about sweeping angles with the kind of intensity usually reserved for when we’re venting about our parents.
“You sisters are pretty intense,” Cecilia says, almost absently. “But I do have to say that you are different than I expected. Or…” She tsks, then shakes her head. “Remembered.”
I glance at her. “Different how?”
She gestures vaguely towards the ice. “Less… contained.”
She says it like she’s noticing something she wasn’t supposed to.
I consider that. From up here, there’s no commentary booth. No federation members lingering in doorways, waiting to discuss things with me. No parents. Just noise and bad music and Nina shouting inappropriate things at full volume.
“Is that a problem?” I ask.
“No.” She shakes her head slightly. “It’s good.”
My stomach flutters at those words, at the way she’s looking at me, studying my face with so much care.
A stone thuds against another below us, and Nina throws her broom into the air in exaggerated triumph. Rafael catches it mid-flight, their shoulders brushing as they laugh too close to each other’s face.
Cecilia watches them for a beat. “What’s up with them?”
“Honestly,” I reply, looking at the infectious smile on my sister’s face, “I have no fucking clue.”
She studies that dynamic quietly, then looks back at me.
“What happens,” she asks, her tone shifting almost imperceptibly, “when someone doesn’t need you the same way anymore?”
It comes without warning. And I think I know where she’s heading, but I want her to tell me where her head is at.
I trace the condensation on my glass with my thumb as I wait for the right words to form, watching it bead and fall.
Below us, Rafael misses a sweep and Nina groans loudly, shoving him with her hip.
“Is this hypothetical? Or are you thinking of something specific?”
Her mouth curves faintly. “Answer the question, Princess.”
I lean back in my chair, letting the wood press between my shoulder blades.
“I think,” I say carefully, “that if you’ve done it right, they’re not leaving you. They’re just… changing shape.”
I hear how much I want that to be true.
She absorbs that, eyes steady on mine.
“And if they outgrow you?” she presses.
“Then you decide where you grow, too,” I reply.
Her gaze sharpens at that.
The noise below swells again, and for a moment we both look away, watching Nina and Rafael recalibrate their positions on the ice without speaking, moving around each other with an ease that feels practiced.
Cecilia’s fingers rest loosely on the table between us. I let mine drift close enough that our knuckles brush, just lightly.
“Are you thinking about Rodrigo’s future?” I ask, and Cecilia stills. It’s a natural reaction, I think, especially since she’s invested so much in him. It’s normal to have these questions, especially at the level these athletes are competing in.
“Yeah,” she says, grabbing another pickle and popping it in her mouth. Her nose scrunches a little as she chews, like she’s still not fully committed to anything, and she nods to herself, thoughtful, somewhere far inside her own head.
I watch her do it.
The way she retreats inward when she’s calculating. The way her jaw sets just slightly when she’s weighing outcomes. “I don’t want to be all emo about it,” she says, softer now. “If there’s a better opportunity for him, I have to entertain it, obviously. Even if it’s not with me.”
She watches me for a moment in that open, unguarded way she has when she forgets to mask it, and something in my chest tightens—I recognize it immediately.
“Next time,” she says, leaning back again, “you’re coming to something I choose.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Looking forward to it, baby.”