Chapter 36
CECILIA
The rink in Linz is much louder than it was a few days ago, even though we’re still a week away from the competition.
There is a constant hum of voices, coaches leaning into each other with clipped conversations, skaters pacing along the boards with headphones on, the sharp, familiar sound of blades cutting into fresh ice.
And every time I’m at one of these, I expect it to feel overwhelming. Just the amount of people on a single sheet of ice makes me shiver on a regular basis, but championships have a different feeling.
This part, the competition, has always made sense to me. Even when everything else felt uncertain, being on the ice and running through my program—it asked something of me and gave me something back in return.
Rodrigo is on the far side of the rink, running through his warm-up sequence with a precision that would have made me nervous three months ago and now just makes me…
proud. He carries himself with a steadiness that feels completely new, like all the pieces of a puzzle clicked into place and stayed there.
Certainly, all the work we’ve been doing has finally stopped feeling like effort and started feeling like instinct.
For both of us.
That part still catches me off guard. That it’s not just mine anymore, and that something I built from scratch actually held and is being passed on to someone that will take it further than I ever could.
I let myself watch him for a second longer than I probably should.
“Have you talked to her?”
I startle out of my thoughts and see Sandra standing next to me, her federation jacket zipped up all the way to her mouth.
“Jesus, Sanchi,” I say, trying to sound normal and not like a person who is so distracted by thoughts of the Ice Princess that she can’t keep her head on.
“I’ve been standing here for at least ten minutes, Ceci.”
“Fuck.” I sigh and rub my eyes. I can’t focus. I haven’t been able to focus since the day we left Colorado to come over here. I’ve been counting down the minutes until I can see Isabella again. “She’s not due to come in until a few days before the short programs.”
I’ve repeated that to myself enough times that it should feel reasonable by now. It doesn’t. It just feels like waiting.
I don’t bother scanning the rink again. I’ve already checked more times than I’m able to admit.
My body is always half-oriented towards the entrance, like she might materialize at any second, even when I’m not actively looking for her.
And if I’m not looking close enough, I’ll miss her and I won’t be ready for when she walks in.
“That’s not what I was asking and you know it.”
“I’ve been busy,” I reply, and the tone that comes out makes me sound petulant. Like a child who doesn’t want to clean up after themselves. “You’ve been with me all week.”
“You know…” she says, turning her body in my direction. I keep my eyes on the ice, even though I can feel myself drifting towards the doors again.
Sandra doesn’t follow my gaze and instead chooses to keep her eyes on me.
“That’s impressive,” she says. “I haven’t seen this level of deflection since before you retired. It really is impressive, amiga.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “We’ve talked.”
“Mhm.”
“We have,” I insist, even though I can hear how weak it sounds. “She’s been busy scouting for her program.”
“So you’ve talked about skating,” she replies immediately.
I don’t answer.
“Ceci,” she says, softer now, but somehow worse. “What are you doing?”
“Working,” I shoot back a little too quickly. “Rodrigo needs to be ready for the competition, and I—”
“Don’t,” she cuts in. “Don’t do that thing where you hide behind him like I haven’t known you for more than two decades now.”
I press my lips together and look back out at the ice, at anything that isn’t her face right now.
The doors at the far end of the rink open and close as people move in and out, and every single time, my attention snaps to it before I can stop myself.
“I’m not hiding,” I say. I hear, again, how defensive it sounds, but I don’t take it back.
“Okay,” Sandra replies, completely unconvinced. “Then when were you planning to tell her?”
My stomach drops.
I turn to her slowly. “Tell her what?”
She raises a brow, like she’s deciding how much patience she has for this. “The job,” she says.
I freeze.
“What job?” I ask, because apparently I’ve decided to commit to the lie, even though it’s already collapsing in on itself.
Sandra lets out a short laugh. “The one in Wyoming, Ceci. The one you’ve been thinking about for the past week and pretending is just a hypothetical so you don’t have to admit to yourself what it actually is.”
I stare at her.
“How do you even—”
“You’re not subtle,” she interrupts. “You’ve been checking your email every five minutes, and then you disappear for forty minutes at a time to call someone and come back looking like you ran a marathon.”
I open my mouth, close it. Then open it again. “It’s not like that—” I clear my throat. “She’s not interested in me like that.”
“Dios mío,” she replies, and groans so loudly, I have to look around to see if someone notices we are having this conversation here. “Why are you being so dense?”
I drag a hand down my face, trying to regroup, trying to figure out how this turned into a conversation I was very intentionally not having.
“It’s not a job,” I say finally. “It’s a short-term maternity cover before the Olympics for an assistant coach, and it’s not even guaranteed full-time after that.”
“And where is it?” she asks.
I hesitate.
“Ceci.”
“It’s like an hour and half away from Lake Jasper,” I admit.
Sandra doesn’t say anything. Which is worse.
“Okay, you have a point,” I add quickly. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just—timing. It’s practical. It’s—”
“Closer,” she finishes for me.
The word sits there between us, heavier than everything else we’ve said. I don’t respond. Because that’s the part I haven’t said out loud, not even to myself in a way that feels real.
Sandra studies me for a second, not unkindly, but with a level of clarity that makes it very difficult to keep pretending.
“We’ve talked about this before,” she says. “You’re allowed to want things.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” she asks.
I exhale, long and slow, and let my gaze drift back across the rink. To the entrance again. Still nothing.
“I haven’t even decided anything.”
“Sure,” Sandra replies. “But you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
I nod once.
“And you’re not going to tell her,” she adds.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit, quieter now.
“It’s not like we’ve had any type of conversation about anything.
Last time I saw her, we said we would play it by ear, and then she went to Ireland to find a replacement for Rodrigo and I was left standing there in her kitchen like a desperate little—”
Sandra huffs out a breath, shaking her head slightly. “You could start with the truth.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “That seems extremely aggressive.”
“Only because you’ve been avoiding it.”
We stand there for a second, the noise of the rink filling the space between us. Rodrigo skates past on his last warm-up lap, focused, steady, completely in his own world.
“You don’t have to figure it out today,” Sandra says finally. “But you do have to stop pretending this is not happening.”
I nod again, even though I’m not sure what that actually looks like in practice.
“Remember when you retired?” There’s a faint smile on her face. “You were so sure that was the end for you.”
I shrug. “It felt like it.”
“It felt like that because you were done fighting for something that wasn’t giving you anything back,” she says.
She’s right. I remember exactly what that felt like—waking up every day already tired, already bracing for something that was supposed to matter and somehow didn’t anymore.
I remember deciding that was enough, that I was done asking—pleading—for something that wasn’t there. And something in my chest tightens.
She nods towards the ice. “And then Rodrigo showed up, and you built something anyway. Despite everything we had against us. You are making history with him, Ceci.”
I press my lips together and try not to blink.
“You’ve been waiting for something to meet you halfway for a long time,” she adds, softer now.
I don’t look at her.
“Maybe this is it.”
The doors open again, and I swear I don’t mean to look.
I do anyway.
Every time.