Chapter 25
CECILIA
The problem with Isabella Pierce is that she knows exactly what she’s doing.
I realize this halfway down the corridor that runs behind the rink, following the quiet click of her shoes on the rubber flooring while the noise of the arena fades behind us.
She didn’t raise her voice or turn the interaction into a scene.
She simply redirected the entire conversation in front of a Harvard recruiter, a handful of coaches to the side, and god knows how many people within earshot—and she did it in a way that left no room for misunderstanding.
His coach built that program.
I’ve spent most of my career fighting for that exact type of visibility, whether as a skater or now as a coach. And Isabella Pierce, no less, just handed it to me like it was obvious.
Volunteers move past us with clipboards and discarded jackets, preparing for the next discipline on the ice. No one stops her or even questions her where she’s going.
They step aside automatically.
Power does that. She does that.
She pushes open a side door, and we slip into another corridor that leads deeper into the administrative wing of the building. The sounds of the rink dull to a distant echo now—music and the occasional burst of laughter from a group of kids bleeding faintly through the walls.
I should say something.
Something professional or controlled. Take back that word vomit that just came out of my mouth because I had a second to doubt myself.
Instead, I’m thinking about the way she stood at the boards ten minutes ago and erased her own last name from the story.
Fuck.
I meant it professionally, mostly.
The problem with me is that I’m not entirely sure that’s exactly what it was.
Isabella slows in front of me, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure I’m still following.
That’s when I remember the other very inconvenient detail in all of this. She’s beautiful and hot and loves to be in control.
Not the polished, televised way that people usually talk about when they mention her and her career. That part is obvious.
What’s dangerous is the rest of it.
The way she handles power without squeezing it. The way she listens when people speak. The way she just dismantled a narrative that could have easily benefited her and her parents and didn’t hesitate for a single second.
Competence has always done something strange to my brain. Watching her wield it is not helping.
At the end of the hallway, she stops in front of her office door and pushes it open.
“After you,” she says.
Her voice is light, but there’s a tension underneath it now that wasn’t there before.
I step inside. The office looks exactly like it looked like last week—minimalistic, clean, and organized to a degree that borders on intimidating. It’s a little bit different to her house, where she doesn’t perform.
Behind me, the door clicks shut.
For the first time since we left the boards, the building is quiet.
Isabella turns towards me slowly.
“Well,” she says.
I let the word sit between us for a second longer than necessary, my back to the door, like I’m debating whether I want to pretend this is still about skating.
I exhale slowly through my nose, trying to ground myself in something that isn’t the way my pulse keeps rattling inside my chest. “Careful, Princess,” I mutter, taking a step in her direction. “You keep saying things like that and I’m going to start thinking you like me.”
Her eyes sharpen. “I do like you.”
Just like that. No buildup. And it knocks the air out of me so much, it’s completely disproportionate to the words themselves.
“That’s…” I shake my head once, like I can physically reset everything that is happening inside me. “That’s very inconvenient timing."
“Is it?” she asks.
She hasn’t moved a hair. Not closer or farther away, not even her posture. Isabella is standing there, watching me the same way she watches skaters at work—like she’s tracking every shift and every reaction, and waiting to see what I do with it.
“Yes,” I say. “Because I’m trying very hard to be normal about how you just obliterated a recruiter from Harvard and didn’t even flinch.”
“Are you failing?” she asks, almost lightly. Her mouth twitches.
I let out a quiet laugh. “Spectacularly.”
Isabella’s gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then back up.
I take a step in her direction and suddenly, we’re too close. I didn’t notice when it happened, but the space between us has narrowed into something charged and calculated. I can see the shift in her breathing, the way her shoulders loosen like she’s making a decision.
“So what are you going to do about it, Coach?” she teases, her icy blue eyes trained on my mouth. They linger there for a long moment.
I don’t give her a chance to say anything else.
I close whatever the remaining distance between us in one step, my hand coming up to her jaw, and then I’m kissing her—hard, immediate, like I’ve been holding it back for too long.
She reacts just as fast, meeting me halfway there, our bodies colliding with desperation.
Her mouth opens against mine on a sharp inhale, her hand gripping my shirt and pulling me closer like she needs more of it, not less.
There’s nothing—absolutely nothing—careful about this.
No apprehension or testing or hesitation.
It’s all heat and pressure and the kind of urgency that makes it impossible to think past the next second.
Her back hits the wall with a soft thud, and she lets out a breath that turns into something deliciously dirty—a desperate moan against my mouth before she’s kissing me again, deeper this time. She’s taking as much as I’m giving, and it’s making me ache for more than I know how to take.
My hand tightens at her waist, anchoring her there, but she doesn’t stay still. She leans into me, meets every movement, every shift of my body. Her leg wraps around me like when we first kissed in the locker room many weeks ago now.
And that—
“I like this.” She pushes her heel against my ass and moves me impossibly closer to her. “Fuck. Keep doing that.”
“Like this?” I murmur. My fingers drift to the waistband of her pants, grazing the fabric there, not pulling yet—just testing, feeling the way her body reacts before I decide what to do next.
She inhales sharply, her grip tightening at my waist, her leg hooking more firmly around me like she’s trying to keep me exactly where I am.
“Don’t tease me,” she says, but there’s no real warning in it. Just pure heat.
I let my thumb trace the edge of the waistband, slow and deliberate, watching her face instead of my hand.
There’s a fast knock on the door. Just two quick taps against the metal like whoever’s on the other side already knows they’re going to come in anyway.
We both freeze, and for half a second, neither of us reacts. My hand is still at her waistband. Her breath is uneven, hot against my cheek.
The door opens, and Nina leans into the frame, one hand braced against it, eyes flicking between us once—sharp, immediate, taking in the distance that is not nearly enough for this to be a professional meeting.
“Oh,” she says, but there’s not a single hint of surprise in her tone. She’s fully entertained, one corner of her mouth tipping upward just like her sister. “I’m interrupting something,” she adds, lips twitching, a full grin threatening to appear on her face.
I step back first because I’m the one with something to lose here professionally, even if my body is very much arguing otherwise. Isabella doesn’t rush the movement. She just shifts a fraction, enough to create space without pretending it was never there.
“Yes, Nina?” she asks, tone controlled again, like I didn’t just have her pinned against the wall a second ago.
Nina lifts her brows. “Wow. Formal Izzy. I like this version of you.”
Isabella’s lips twitch. “Nina.”
“Right. Yes.” She pushes fully into the room now, letting the door swing open wider behind her. “I’m here to deliver a public service announcement.”
That alone is enough to make something in my chest tighten.
“The parents are here,” she says.
The air changes immediately. It’s not subtle at all. The way Isabella’s posture shifts, shoulders drawn back just slightly, like something old and ingrained has snapped into place before her body has a modicum of reaction and is able to stop it.
“Already?” Isabella asks.
“Yes, Gertrude just texted me.” Nina makes a gesture with her hand, as if everyone should know who this Gertrude is. “They’re doing their whole ‘we were just in the neighborhood’ act.”
I glance towards the still-open door, suddenly very aware of how exposed this space feels. Or how easily this could turn into something else entirely.
“You might want to—” Nina gestures vaguely between us, then down at Isabella’s blazer, then back at me—“reset whatever this is.”
Her tone is light, but her eyes are not.
Protective is the first thing that comes to mind.
“We’re fine,” Isabella says.
Nina hums, unconvinced. “Mm. Sure.”
Footsteps echo down the hallway, and the sharp inhalations of the Pierce sisters are heard right away. Nina’s expression shifts quickly. “This is not a drill,” she says, leaning out into the hall. “They’re coming this way.”
And that’s when Isabella moves. Her hand finds mine—warm, firm, decisive—and before I can process it, she’s already pulling me out of her office and through a hidden side door.
“Come on,” she murmurs, pulling at my arm with urgency.
“Wait. Wha—”
She’s smiling. Not her public smile, but the one that’s almost exclusively reserved for me. It’s reckless and exciting and every bit mischievous.
“We are absolutely not doing this today,” she announces, already pushing open another door that leads into a narrower service hallway. “Hopefully never.”
I should stop her and remind her that it’s insane. That I’m her athlete’s coach. That this building is full of people who know exactly who she is and the optics of this would be terrible.
Instead, I let her pull me.
We slip into a different hallway just as voices echo closer behind us and the door swings shut.
And then we’re running. My laugh catches somewhere between my throat and my chest before it breaks loose, sharp and surprised.
“Princess,” I manage in between breaths, “are you serious right now?”
“Yes,” she says, breathlessly, still holding my hand as she turns another corner without slowing down. “Very.”
“This is your plan?”
“My plan is not to have that conversation right now,” she replies. “So unless you’d like to stay and explain yourself to my mother—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Great,” she says, glancing back at me with a grin that feels wildly out of place on her. “Then keep up, Coach.”
We cut through another corridor, past a stack of equipment bins and a door marked STAFF ONLY.
Somewhere behind us, voices drift and fade, but we don’t stop until the noise of the rink swallows everything again.
She finally slows near a side exit, her grip loosening but not letting go.
For a second, neither of us says anything. We’re both a little out of breath.
Standing too close to each other and still holding hands.
“Do you do this often?” I shake my head, laughing under my breath. “That was incredibly unprofessional.”
She leans back against the wall, smiling and flushed. A few tendrils of hair have slipped loose from her updo, softening everything that usually feels so precise about her.
I reach for them without thinking. My fingers brush her temples as I tuck the strand behind her ear, slower than it needs to be. She stills under the touch and lets it happen.
I should drop my hand, I know that.
“Probably,” she says.
Her eyes drop briefly to our linked hands before following the movement of my other one as it drifts lightly along her cheek instead, tracing the warmth there, the faint flush I know I had something to do with.
Isabella’s breath shifts, just a fraction, and her eyes drop to my mouth before coming back up.
There’s a beat where neither of us moves.
Then I close the distance.
It’s not rushed or urgent this time, like back at her office. She exhales into the kiss, one hand coming up to my wrist, holding me there instead of stopping me.
Her lips meet mine softly at first, a brief press that lingers just long enough to make my stomach swoop. She exhales into it, warm and steady, and I feel the shift immediately—the way she relaxes into the contact instead of pulling back.
For a second, the world narrows down to just that.
“Shit,” she breathes. Her forehead rests briefly against mine, both of us still catching our breath. “I have to go back to the commentating booth.”
I huff out a quiet laugh. “Yeah. You do.”
But I don’t move. I’m unable to. Her hand lingers at my wrist for a second longer, thumb brushing once like she’s committing something to memory, then she lets go.
“I’ll see you later?” she asks, and for the first time since I’ve met her, there’s something almost tentative in it. It throws me off more than anything else she’s done today.
“Yeah,” I say. “You will.”
Her mouth curves and then she steps away, already pulling herself back together. Shoulders straightening, expression settling into something more composed, more recognizable.
“And Coach?” she calls, turning over her shoulder as she walks away. “Stop distracting me.”
I sigh, watching her disappear around the corner.
Like that’s even remotely possible.
The hallway goes still again, but it doesn’t feel the same.
I push off the wall, already smiling to myself. “Yeah,” I murmur. “That’s going to be a problem.”