Chapter 26
ISABELLA
The exhibition week doesn’t slow down. It stretches instead, expanding into every available hour until there’s very little space left for anything that isn’t already scheduled.
I had to ask Nina to add bathroom breaks into my agenda because I found myself having to excuse myself mid-conversation just to escape for a minute.
By the last day, I’ve stopped pretending I can keep track of where I’m supposed to be without checking my phone.
Everything overlaps. A sponsor breakfast turns into a media segment which turns into a conversation I didn’t plan to have with two US federation officials who speak in careful language about long-term positioning.
I nod where I’m supposed to and answer what I’m asked, but leave before the conversations turn into something else.
I realize, belatedly, that this is all my parents’ doing. This sort of whisper network they’re working, threading the needle from person to person until someone can close the loop.
“Your timing is getting suspicious,” Nina says from one of the bathroom stalls in the farthest locker room in the building.
I’d been stretching my break as much as possible, trying to see if I could avoid my parents for a few extra hours before everyone packs it up to go home after a successful exhibition.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply, washing my hands quickly.
She hums like she absolutely does, and I sigh. “You missed the sponsor lunch.”
“I had a meeting.”
“Izzy.”
I glance at her. “Don’t abuse your power.”
She rolls her eyes, but her mouth tips upward a little. We leave the locker room together in the direction of the main rink. Just when we’re about to get to the lobby, my sister tilts her head slightly towards one of the conference room doors I’ve been avoiding all week. “They’re in there.”
“I know. Gertrude has been updating me.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “Are you planning to acknowledge them at any point?”
“I acknowledged them yesterday.”
“You walked past them, Isabella,” she says. “Very decisively, I’ll give you that.”
Nina watches me for another step or two, then sighs dramatically. “Okay. So we’re doing this again.”
“Doing what?”
“This thing you did the year you retired where you pretended to move fast so they couldn’t catch you.”
I push open the side door that leads back into the rink. “Is it working?”
“For now,” she says with a smile, following me inside.
The noise settles over us immediately, the familiar scrape of blades and conversation folding back into place like I never left.
It’s louder today, fuller, the last day of the exhibition carrying that strange mix of relief and urgency.
People are already beginning to say their goodbyes in small pockets along the boards, but no one is quite ready to let the week end yet.
There’s still something to extract from it—one more conversation and one more chance to make an impression.
I slow slightly without meaning to, letting my eyes adjust to the light off the ice.
Cecilia stands near the boards, shoulders relaxed but her attention fixed entirely on Rodrigo and Katia, who are laughing on the ice and running a pairs sequence I haven’t seen before.
She says something as they glide past—quick, precise—and they nod immediately, pushing into the next set of elements without hesitation. There’s no excess in the exchange.
“She’s so good,” Nina says beside me, quiet enough that it doesn’t carry. “He’s definitely going to medal.”
“She is,” I reply, and there’s no effort in it. “He is.”
We watch in silence for a moment longer. Katia lands clean, the sound of her skates cutting through the rink in that familiar way—blade, impact, glide—and I see the way a few people shift closer to the boards, the way attention collects around them without being asked.
“Do you think…” I turn to Nina, but she’s already nodding along with my train of thought. That maybe we could bring her on, as a coach, and she could handle some of the summer clinics and a selection of the programs we are hoping to grow into in the next few years.
“I think it’s worth asking her,” she says as she takes out her phone and starts making a note somewhere, maybe drafting an email or a proposal.
Katia and Rodrigo laugh as they circle back, saying something to another skater before resetting, loose in that characteristic Cecilia way. Even Katia has absorbed her technical skill, and she’s only been adjacent to this coach most of the summer.
We drift closer to the boards, more out of habit than intention. I rest my hands lightly against the barrier, watching the pair reset again, and I’m suddenly very aware of how quiet my own mind feels when I’m standing here. Watching her.
There’s no script for this part.
No one waiting for me to say the right thing or move at the right time. No expectation attached to where I stand or who I’m speaking to or what it might mean later.
Even at my best, at the top of my career, there was always something else attached to it.
A camera angle, a conversation waiting on the other side of the boards, a correction that needed to be done before the next run-through.
Everything fed into something larger, something that needed to be shaped and maintained. A legacy with impossible standards.
There wasn’t space for anything that didn’t serve that. I never once snuck out or lied about where I was going or who I was with. I didn’t get to be careless in ways that didn’t matter.
I shift slightly against the boards, the cold seeping through the thin fabric of my sleeves, grounding me with an unfamiliar kind of steadiness.
Because the version of me—standing here, watching skaters work through something without anyone watching me in return, without anyone measuring what it means—feels quieter than anything I remember.
Simpler.
And I realize, slowly and almost reluctantly, this is the closest I’ve come to understanding what people mean when they talk about normal.
Fuck.
“I’m going to go hide in my office before Mom finds me,” I mumble to Nina before she can hear me thinking.
My gaze drifts back to Cecilia without meaning to.
She’s talking to Rodrigo again, one hand resting lightly on the boards. He nods immediately, pushing off into another pass, and she watches him go without stepping in, without needing to.
She trusts what she built.
Nina snorts. “Good luck with that.”
There’s a knock on the door.
Three deliberate taps and a moment of pause after. I don’t need to check who it is, but I close my eyes regardless in case it’s one of my parents.
“Come in,” I say.
Cecilia steps inside, closing the door behind her with the same quiet precision she brings to everything else. She crosses the room like she belongs in it, like this is a continuation of a conversation we left halfway sometime last week.
“I have a thought,” she says, sitting on the chair across from me. Her fingers start tapping lightly on her knee, an uncharacteristic display of energy. I lean back, watching her instead of interrupting.
“Katia,” she continues, splaying one hand on the table. “She’s wasting time in singles.”
I blink. “That’s a strong statement.”
“She’s fast,” Cecilia says, grabbing a stack of papers from my desk and perusing them lazily. “But she’s not consistent enough to compete at the level you want her to in this discipline. Not long term.”
“And you think—what?”
“I think she’d be better in dance,” she says simply. “Her edge quality is almost there. Her musicality is better than she realizes. We just need to find her a partner.”
“We?”
She looks up at me then, steady and certain. “I mean… your program. You.”
The correction comes quickly, almost automatically, like she hears it as soon as it leaves her mouth and tries to pull it back into something safer, something that doesn’t assume too much.
But it’s already there. The seed has been planted by her competency.
I don’t say anything right away. I just watch her for a second longer than necessary, the papers half-forgotten in her hands. Her posture shifts under the weight of her own words and the way I’m looking at her, I think.
A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.
“Right,” I say lightly, but there’s something warmer under it now. “My program.”
Her eyes flick to mine, searching, like she’s trying to read how I took it, whether she overstepped or said too much or not enough.
Then I huff out a quiet laugh, shaking my head once. “You’re already planning my expansion strategy?”
She relaxes a little at that, one shoulder dropping. “I’m just saying, if you’re serious about building something here—and I know you are—you can’t think small.”
“I like the way you think,” I say, reaching for the papers she’s holding but not taking them from her. Her fingers tighten slightly on the stack before she lets me have it. “What would you do next?”
“Well,” she says, her eyes studying my face. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but there’s a spark there that I only see when she’s on the ice with Rodrigo. “I would do some scouting at Internationals, to start.”
“But don’t you think those dancers might have established partners?”
“Hmm,” she murmurs. “I mean, you’re Isabella Pierce. I think you could convince anyone to join your program.”
I let out a quiet breath through my nose, a small smile pulling at my mouth. “That sounds like a dangerous amount of confidence in me.”
“It’s not confidence,” she says almost casually, but her gaze lingers. “It’s observation.”
“Is that why you joined my program, Ceci?”
Her mouth curves at that, slow and deliberate. She taps the edge of the desk with her thumb, like she’s buying herself a second.
“I didn’t join your program,” she says finally, softer now. “I brought you a skater you couldn’t ignore.”
I laugh louder than I mean to, and that makes her grin. “That’s one way to frame it.”
“It’s the correct way,” she replies, but there’s a hint of a smile still there, something warmer underneath her deflection.
My eyes drop briefly to her mouth before I catch myself. The air between us tightens in a slow, delicate way—the way it’s been all week, circling something without naming it.
“Careful, Princess,” she murmurs. “You keep encouraging me and I might start making decisions I can’t justify on paper.”
I glance up at her, meeting her eyes fully this time. “Maybe I want you to.”