Chapter 40
ISABELLA
“Ceci, no.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, harsher than I intend and edged with a vitriol I don’t usually let out in front of her, or anyone, really.
Her shoulders shift and her expression hardens just enough to tell me I’ve already lost control of the tone of this conversation. She looks almost defeated.
I take a breath, slower this time, trying to pull myself back into something measured and who doesn’t sound explosive before I even have the chance to explain.
“That’s not—” I start, then stop, because I don’t know how to finish that sentence in a way that doesn’t make everything worse.
Because what she said is true. Or at least, it’s being made true without me.
I drag a hand back through my hair, the motion more abrupt than I intend, and for the first time since I walked into this room to find her, I feel it clearly. The way everything has tilted underneath me in a matter of minutes, going from something that I was controlling and deciding to… this.
“I didn’t accept anything,” I say finally, more evenly now, even though my chest is still too tight, my thoughts moving fast. “No one asked me. I am absolutely not moving to Amsterdam.”
Her eyes don’t soften. If anything, they sharpen further, like she’s trying to decide if that makes it better or worse.
“Isabella,” she says, and my name sounds different in her mouth now, cutting and painful and like embodied hurt.
“I’m serious,” I continue, stepping forward and reaching for her hand without really thinking about it, closing part of the space between us because distance suddenly feels like the worst possible option.
“I accepted a job.”
I swallow. The words sit outside of comprehension, something I can hear but not register, and they land all at once, heavy and immediate, knocking everything else slightly off balance.
“In Argentina?” I ask, quieter now, trying to understand what she’s actually saying. The room starts spinning around me. “Like as an accountant?”
Her gaze doesn’t waver.
“I accepted a job,” she repeats, more steadily this time, like she’s already braced for whatever comes next. “Starting in October. After the National Championship back home.”
The timeline clicks into place faster than I want it to, faster than I can control, and suddenly I’m doing the same thing she just did to me, filling in the gaps, building something out of information I didn’t have five minutes ago.
“And you weren’t going to tell me?” I ask, and I hate how it sounds coming out of my mouth, given the absolute clusterfuck that surrounds me right now.
Her expression tightens.
“I am telling you.” There’s a defensive edge in her voice now, but underneath it’s unmistakable hurt. “Right now.”
I let out a short breath, something that doesn’t settle into anything useful, because we are suddenly standing on opposite sides of the same problem and neither of us knows how we got here.
“Where?” I ask instead, latching onto the only practical part of this conversation.
“It’s an assistant coaching position,” she says, like the details matter, in case they help to soften the impact. “It’s a maternity cover, not permanent. At a college program.” She hesitates, just for a second. “It’s in Wyoming,” she adds.
“Close to me,” I say, before I can stop myself.
Her eyes flicker.
“An hour and a half from Lake Jasper,” she confirms, and now I can hear it clearly, the thing underneath all of this, the past she hasn’t said out loud until now. “I thought—”
She stops.
But I know how this sentence ends.
I thought it would make it easier.
I thought it would make sense.
I thought we were going to be together.
Cecilia takes a deep breath as her gaze drifts away, settling anywhere but where I’m standing, like she needs distance even in a room this small.
“I didn’t know,” I say, because that’s the truth that matters right now, even if it doesn’t fix anything. “Ceci, I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
She lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, but there’s nothing light about it.
“Of course you didn’t,” she replies. “Why would you?”
I flinch, barely, but enough that I feel it.
“That’s not fair,” I can absolutely hear where this is going and I don’t want to meet her there, not like this.
“Isn’t it?” she asks, and now there’s nothing being held back, no careful control in the way she’s choosing her words. “Because from where I’m standing, it feels pretty accurate.”
I shake my head, stepping closer again. Distance feels wrong, even now, even as everything else starts to fracture around us.
“You think I’ve been planning this?” I ask. “That I would use you—use Rodrigo—to position myself for something like that?”
Her jaw tightens.
“I don’t know what to think, Isabella,” she says, and that makes my chest tighten because it’s harsher than anything else she could have said. “I heard about your presidency before I heard about anything from you. I heard it from people who seem very confident it’s already decided.”
“It’s not decided,” I push back immediately, the words coming faster now, sharper. “And even if it were, it wouldn’t be because of Ascend, it wouldn’t be because of him—”
“But it helps,” she cuts in.
The room finally stills.
“It helps that you have a program that’s producing results,” she continues, more controlled now but no less intense. “It helps that you’re attached to something that looks like progress, like development, like the future of the fucking sport.”
Her eyes lock onto mine.
“And it helps that you didn’t tell me any of this while I was busy doing exactly that with you.”
I stare at her.
“That’s not what—” I take a deep breath and loosen my shoulders.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know, Ceci.
” There’s no space left for careful phrasing around this.
She’s looking at me, waiting patiently for an explanation that, by all accounts, is going to sound like an excuse to her ears. “And you didn’t tell me, either.”
Her expression falters, just for a second.
“Do not turn this on me, Isabella!” Her voice rises enough to cut through the room, her restraint slipping in a way I haven’t seen from her before at all. It’s the first time I see it clearly—the anger sitting right under her skin, no longer contained. “I was going to.”
“When?” I ask.
“Now,” she shoots back immediately, and her voice cracks on the word, enough that I hear it and it makes my heart break. “I’m telling you now.”
The room feels too small. Or maybe we’ve just filled it with every single word we haven’t said to each other in three months.
“I can’t read your mind, Ceci,” I say, quieter now, but no less urgent. “I can’t know you’re rearranging your entire life around this if you don’t actually tell me that’s what you’re doing.”
She looks at me like that’s the problem.
Like that’s exactly the point.
“I didn’t think I had to spell it out,” she says. “I thought—”
She stops. There’s a long pause, and we are both suspended there, staring at each other like the silence might solve this.
The door opens behind me, and I feel my sister instantly without having to turn. The shift in the room is immediate, a change in energy that makes Cecilia’s gaze flick past me and tighten at whatever Nina’s expression is telling her.
“Izzy,” Nina says, low and controlled.
That tone. I close my eyes briefly.
“Not now,” I reply, still not turning around. Still choosing to center Cecilia in all this.
“It is right now,” she says, just as quietly. “They’re here.”
Something in my chest goes completely still.
Ice cold.
I let out a breath that finally feels like a reset and my entire body shifts, locking into something else entirely.
Something sharper that I haven’t let myself tap into in a long time.
It reminds me of the moment I decided to give Ascend a try, the exact same feeling settling in my chest now—this quiet, undeniable pull towards motion, towards doing something that doesn’t just shift things for me, but changes the structure of everything around me.
When I open my eyes, I don’t look at Nina, I look at Cecilia.
“Come with me,” I say, already reaching for her hand. “So I can show you exactly how fucked up all of this is.”
This. This I can control.
And I’m not letting them walk in here, in a place where I belong, and define it for me.