Chapter 35
ISABELLA
She’s already in my house.
That’s the first thing I register when I walk in through the back door, the quiet click of it closing behind me barely loud enough to announce anything.
It’s not something I question, not immediately, because people are in and out of this space all the time—Nina, the staff at the rink, the occasional neighbor dropping off Natalie Portman after he’s had a wild night in the streets.
But this doesn’t register the same way in my mind. It doesn’t fit into the same category.
It feels domestic and normal.
Her shoes are by the front entry, not placed carefully, just left there.
A few weeks ago, she told me that she didn’t understand Americans’ obsessions with taking shoes off inside the house, so maybe I said something that convinced her, because now they’re there, by the door.
There is a jacket draped over the arm of the chair by the window, and I know it isn’t mine.
It shouldn’t feel this way, my brain mumbles. So easy.
There’s absolutely no reason for her to be here, no formal arrangement or message waiting on my phone explaining when she got here or why she let herself in, and for most of my life that would have mattered.
Instead, I set my keys down on the counter and stand there for a second longer than I need to, letting the quiet settle around me and the fact of her presence exist without trying to categorize it or assign it a purpose.
It’s a new feeling. And I don’t move away from it.
“What took you so long?”
I find her in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of water in her hand, tilting it towards Natalie Portman’s mouth.
“What are you doing?”
She looks up when she hears me. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I reply. “Why are you hand-watering my cat?”
“He’s thirsty.”
I close the distance between us without thinking about it in steps or intention, just a steady movement forward that feels inevitable and foreign at the same time. It’s something I’m not used to allowing, but this woman suddenly broke down everything in me.
My hand comes up to her face before I’ve decided to do it and my thumb brushes along her cheek, slower than anything I’ve allowed myself with her before, slower than anything I’ve allowed myself with anyone in a long time.
“Jesus, Ceci, he’s already incredibly spoiled,” I say with a smile. “What am I going to do when you leave?”
She stills under the touch.
“Isa,” she says, something that hovers between a question and a warning and makes me hesitate for half a second longer than I should because it almost opens the door to a conversation I’m not ready to have.
I take a step forward and I kiss her.
There’s no pause this time, no space to think or measure or decide what this means. My hand tightens at her jaw as I pull her closer, and the second our mouths meet, it’s different—sharper, more urgent, like what we’ve been building up to the past few months is finally breaking through.
She inhales against me, surprised, and then she’s there, her hand gripping the waistband of my leggings as she matches my intensity.
Whatever thought I had about talking—about asking and naming whatever the fuck this is—disappears the second she lunges into me like she’s not going anywhere and the answer is right here in the room with us, has been here all along.
My other hand finds her waist, pulling her flush against me, and I feel the shift in her immediately—the way her body goes boneless against me and the way her breath catches when I don’t give her any space to think.
“Isa—” she tries again, but it dissolves the second I kiss her harder. She makes a small sound against my mouth, and it sends something through me I don’t bother controlling. I move her back a step without breaking the kiss and push her into the refrigerator, grounding both of us in the moment.
This feels like the only thing I can hold on to now.
I need her to stay here.
I need her to stay here.
The thought repeats, louder the second time, like saying it twice might make it real and anchor it into something I can hold on to instead of something that keeps slipping through my hands the second I try to define it.
She shifts against me, her hands still gripping at my waist, her breath uneven against my mouth, and I feel it then—the edge of those three words rushing to spill. The place where this stops being just physical and temporary and starts asking something of me I might not be ready to give.
I slow down.
Not enough for her to pull away or question it, but enough that I can think again and feel the weight of what I almost let happen.
Her forehead presses lightly against mine, and for a moment, neither of us moves. I can feel her breathing, the rise and fall of it, the way it steadies gradually as the moment settles into this quiet normal we both seem to be chasing.
“Isa,” she says again, softer this time.
I know what she’s asking.
Or maybe I don’t know exactly, but I know the direction of it, the shape of the conversation she’s trying to open, and I can feel myself step around it before it even fully forms.
And I don’t know why.
My hand slips from her jaw to her neck, then down to her shoulder, slower now, grounding instead of pulling.
“I got a call this morning,” I say, the words coming out more evenly than I expect.
She stills enough that I feel the shift immediately.
“A call?” she repeats.
“Yeah.”
I step back just slightly, enough to see her face, enough to create the smallest amount of space between us without making it feel like I’m pulling away.
“There’s a skater in Ireland,” I continue. “Junior. Someone flagged him to me a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
Her brows knit together just slightly, trying to follow the sharp pivot and understand why I’m telling her this now, here, like it belongs in the same space as everything we were just doing.
“Huh,” she finally says. “That makes sense. Ireland doesn’t have a permanent skating rink.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“Tricks of the trade, Princess,” she replies with a smile, and I feel the weight of my avoidance lift immediately. “I heard skaters train on roller blades, and then go to camps in the UK a few times a year to stay in shape.”
“Oh my god, that’s insane.”
“Welcome to my life,” she replies, but it doesn’t sound dramatic or self-deprecating, and I see her grin at me, a little mocking. “But why are you thinking about it now?”
“I saw some footage today,” I say. “And I think I need to go.”
“Now?”
“He’s fifteen. I’m scared that he’ll have to quit before he gets to seniors. I think we can intervene now.” I sigh, and my shoulders sag automatically. “It makes sense to add a few extra days before Austria.”
“Well,” she replies easily. “That sucks.”
It’s so immediate and unfiltered, that I can’t help the small breath of a laugh that leaves me, some of the tension loosening in my chest without my permission.
“Yeah,” I say. “It really does.”
Cecilia shifts closer again, not like before, not urgent or searching, just there. Like she’s decided proximity is the easiest answer to something neither of us is actively trying to define.
“I mean,” she adds after a moment, her voice quieter now, more thoughtful. “It’s only, like, two weeks until Austria, really. It’s not like you’re disappearing.”
“No.” I smile into her mouth, kissing her lips, her jaw, the soft skin right below her ear. “Definitely not disappearing.”
There’s a pause, and it doesn’t feel heavy, but rather careful. We’re both aware of the shape of the conversation that we need to have without wanting to press too hard on it and risk something that’s been working without effort.
“I don’t—” I start, then stop, because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence in a way that sounds normal and doesn’t immediately turn this into something bigger than I’m ready to handle.
She looks at me, waiting but not pushing. There’s a softness in her eyes that doesn’t ask for anything from me.
“I’m not very good at this part,” I admit, finally.
Her mouth curves slightly, because she definitely already knew that. “What part?”
I hesitate, and it’s ridiculous how unfamiliar this feels, how something that has come so easily with her up until now suddenly requires words I don’t quite know how to use.
“This,” I say, gesturing vaguely between us. “The… in-between, I guess.”
She considers that for a second, her gaze steady on mine, and there’s no judgment, not a single piece of evidence of that impatience from a few months ago. There’s only a kind of quiet understanding that makes it easier to keep going.
“You don’t have to be, Isabella,” she replies.
“So then—”
“I mean it,” she continues, softer now. Her thumb is doing something delicious under my tank top, and suddenly I’m extremely aware we are in my kitchen, Cecilia pushed against the refrigerator like teenagers running out of time before their parents get home.
“We’ll see each other in Austria and the Grand Prix in France after. And we’ll see.”
It’s not a plan. Definitely not a conversation. But at least it’s something. And the way she says it—so grounded, so certain without needing to define anything—feels more solid than anything I could have come up with on my own.
I nod once, letting that settle.
“Okay,” I murmur.
She smiles then, small and private, like we’ve just agreed on something without actually saying it out loud, and it does something so strange to my chest. Those words start to bubble up again, threatening to spill.
“Okay,” she echoes.
I reach for her without thinking, my hand finding her waist, and she leans into it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like there hasn’t been a shift between us at all.
And maybe there hasn’t, and this is just what it looks like when something is meant to keep going.