Chapter 1
MATEO
For a few seconds after I step through the door into the rink, I just stand there and breathe it in.
It’s empty. The ice settles with a low, familiar creak from the Zamboni run.
I like it like this. I always have. Before anyone else arrives, I don’t have to be or do anything except enjoy the ice.
The locker room routine is automatic, which is useful, because thinking lately has been doing more harm than good.
I sit with my stick across my thighs and start taping the blade.
Black - always black. I tape with even passes, making sure there’s no overlap.
I’ve done it this way for years, long enough that I don’t remember deciding on it.
I press the tape down with my thumb and smooth it into the curve, I love the neatness of it, and the sense of control.
But the sense of control doesn’t translate, and that’s the whole problem.
On my way back into the rink, I glance up at the rafters - at the teal banners bearing the Blackwood Giants name.
The banners symbolize the version of this team that people still talk about like it’s inevitable we’ll get back there, like it’s a matter of time and not something we’ve been actively failing at for years.
And which I’ve personally been failing at in my two years of captaincy.
Last season was supposed to be different.
And for a while it was. Suddenly we had breakouts that worked and lines that were formidable rather than reactive.
A run of wins for the first time since I’ve been in Blackwood College.
And then everything got messy. The scandal and the ensuing headlines.
A girl in our team - on our ice playing disguised as a guy, against all the rules.
Not that we knew about it until it was far too late - but still, we had games forfeited and, ultimately, it cost us the Cup.
Half the league thinks we cheated. The other half thinks we got robbed.
Since it all came out a few months ago, we haven’t been able to capture the magic of that pre-Christmas winning streak.
In fact, we’ve lost every single game since.
I press the tape down harder than I need to and head for the door.
The ice is untouched when I step onto it, smooth and pale under the low lights. I stand at center and let my weight settle before I push off.
This is it. This year is my shot at whatever comes next.
Scouts came last season when we were winning but whatever I did wasn’t enough. Maybe they’ll come again. Or maybe they’ve already made up their minds about what I am - good enough here, not enough for anywhere else - and no one’s bothered to tell me yet.
I straighten and push off again.
I don’t hear Calloway come in, but I know when he’s there.
“Early,” he says from the bench.
I do a slow loop before pulling up near the blue line.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He huffs something that might be a laugh and sits with his thermos, watching me.
“You might find her challenging,” he says, cryptically.
I don’t ask who. I skate a small, idle circle and wait.
“New skating coach. Elida Eriksson. She starts today.”
I pull up properly at that. “We already have skating coaches.”
“Not like this one.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “She’s a professional figure skater from Sweden. She’s in her early twenties, but she’s already competed at the highest level. We’re lucky to have her.”
I stare at him. “A figure skater.”
“That’s what I said.”
“A professional figure skater.” I can hear myself, and I know I sound like an idiot, but I can’t quite get there fast enough. “From Sweden.”
“Eriksson. Yes.” His expression doesn’t change. “She’s joining the program.”
“To do what, exactly? Coach the men’s hockey team?” I laugh. “What’s she doing here? What does a figure skater have to say to us?”
Calloway looks at me with the patience of a man who coaches college hockey and has heard every version of every stupid thing young guys have ever said on a rink.
“She’s here primarily to help get the new women’s team up and running,” he says. “Technical work, getting them competition-ready. But I’ve also asked her to work with you. Some skating clinics, technique work. Things we’ve let get sloppy.”
I want to argue, but something in his tone stops me. I drift a little closer. “Why waste our training time on the figure skating stuff? We’re not figure skaters, Coach, we’re-”
“Hockey players. Yes, Russo, I’m aware.” He sets down the thermos. “And right now your hockey players are losing games they shouldn’t be losing because when it comes down to speed and efficiency, we fall short.”
I say nothing.
“Skating is skating,” he says. “And she’s one of the best in the world at it.”
“If she’s so amazing, then why is she here?” I mutter.
He ignores that. “She’s taking a break from pro skating. And Russo, I’m especially asking her to work with you.”
“Why me?”
He meets my eyes then, and there’s no softening in it. “Because you’re the captain, Russo. The guys look to you. How you move on this ice, how you carry yourself, how you respond to being coached - all of it sets the tone. And this team’s technique…” He pauses, deliberate. “We need to work on it.”
The words land the way he intends them to. Final but also honest.
I look away, jaw tight, out at the empty seats.
“She’s not your enemy,” he says, quieter now.
I reach down and grab my gloves off the boards.
“Yeah.” I don’t turn around. “We’ll see.”
I push off before anyone can see whatever’s on my face right now. Another lap. Harder. The ice gives back exactly what I put in and nothing more.
By the time I stop, the lights are fully up and the rink looks less forgiving - every mark on the ice visible, every imperfection catching the light. I pull my helmet off and drag a hand through damp hair.
Down the corridor, a door slams. Voices carry - half-awake and familiar. The team’s arriving.
ELIDA
The coffee is bad.
Bad in the way American coffee is generally awful, which is to say it tastes like it was brewed days ago. Despite this, the machine in the kitchen produces it in alarming quantities, and I’m most of the way through my second mug.
It’s possible I’m avoiding leaving the apartment.
The apartment itself is fine. Small, but clean, and furnished to be inoffensive. Beige sofa. Beige walls. A print above the desk of a lighthouse that could be anywhere.
The college arranged it, which means it sits in that particular category of adequate - close enough to campus to be convenient; generic enough that no one had to think too hard about it.
It reflects the budget, which in turn reflects the team.
The women’s program has only just been reinstated, and it’s still stretching every resource.
On one hand, it’s progress that the budget reaches this far at all. On the other, it displays exactly how far it doesn’t. If I had been hired for the men’s team, would the accommodation feel this… temporary?
I push the thought aside before it settles. I am lucky to be here. To still be on the ice, even if it is not the way I once imagined.
Even so, I haven’t fully unpacked because unpacking feels like a decision I’m not ready to make permanent.
The flight from Stockholm was eleven hours. I slept for maybe two of them, badly. I spent the rest of it with my forehead against the cold plastic of the window, watching the dark, thinking about things I’ve promised myself I’m putting out of my head for good.
It’ll be good for you, my sister Iris said, at the airport, gripping both my hands in that way she has that means she’s worried but doesn’t want to say so. A fresh start. A new country. No one knows you there.
That last part was the important bit.
I set down the coffee mug and look around the apartment like it might offer me a reason to stay or a reason to motivate myself. It gives me nothing. The lighthouse print stares blankly.
Six months ago I was competing. Only six months ago my name meant something in the sport I had given my entire life to - every early morning and sacrificed weekend and missed birthday since I was six years old.
I had sponsors and a ranking. I had a coach who told me I was going to be one of the greats, and I was foolish enough (or young enough, or lonely enough) to believe that he meant more than only my skating when he said it.
I don’t let myself finish that thought.
I’ve gotten good at that. Stopping right before the part that still hurts.
I’m here now, in this beige apartment, in this small American college town, and the life I built in Sweden is behind me. I can’t undo that. I’m not competing. I’m not being coached. I’m coaching - or I will be, starting today, which is a sentence that still sounds absurd when I say it in my head.
I pull on my jacket and check the time.
7am.
The team’s first session isn’t until this afternoon.
That’s fine, that’s actually the bit I’m looking forward to, or as close to looking forward as I can get right now.
A completely new team. They’re a blank skate.
Girls with talent (hopefully) who are still figuring out what they’re capable of.
I know how to do that. I know how to stand on ice and teach someone to trust their own instincts.
They’re grateful to have a team at all and I know they’ll be willing to learn.
The men’s team is a different matter.
I pick up my bag and my terrible coffee and head for the door before I can think too carefully about it.
Coach Caden Calloway had been straightforward when we spoke, at least. Calm and measured, the kind of man who says exactly what he means and doesn’t dress it up.
I want you to work with the women’s program primarily, he’d said, but I’m going to ask you to run some sessions with the men as well.
Skating fundamentals. Technique work. I think you can give them coaching they’re not getting anywhere else.
What he didn’t have to spell out was that they’re likely to be resistant to the idea. Or at least skeptical.
That’s fine. I’ve skated in front of judges who’d already made up their minds before I touched the ice.
I’ve performed through injuries and exhaustion and even through heartbreak I wasn’t allowed to show on my face because the music was still playing and the cameras were still on.
A hockey team of twenty-year-old boys who don’t think they need a young female figure skater telling them anything about skating is not, by any measure, the hardest room I’ve ever had to win.
I step outside, and the cold hits me immediately. It’s different from home - the air here is drier. I tuck my chin into my scarf and start walking.
The campus is quiet at this hour, mostly empty, the paths lit in pale yellow under lights that haven’t switched off yet for the day. My breath fogs in front of me. My boots are wrong for the slight icy patches on the pavement, and I pick my way carefully.
The rink appears at the end of the path. A light is on inside. Through the small window beside the entrance I can see the pale gleam of the ice.
I stand outside for a moment.
This is not what I planned. This is not anything close to what I planned, twelve months ago, two years ago, at any point in the life I thought I was building. But I’ve learned that plans have a way of becoming irrelevant when someone else decides to light them on fire.
I pull open the door, and feel immediately grounded, the way I usually do when I walk into a rink - the same as when I was six, stepping into one for the first time, and every time since.
Whatever else has been taken from me, whatever else I’ve lost or had pulled away or handed over without fully understanding what I was doing - they didn’t take this.
I straighten my shoulders and walk in.