Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Alycia
The moment Kyle turns away from me, the world doesn’t stop so much as it tilts.
It shifts just enough to make everything inside me slide into the wrong place.
His skates carve a sharp line through the ice, slicing straight through me, as well.
His shoulders are stiff in that way I’ve only seen a few times—when he’s holding something in so forcefully it’s a miracle he doesn’t crack from the pressure—and watching him skate away feels like watching something vital be pulled out of me with every stride.
For a beat, the rink holds its breath. The entire arena seems suspended in the echo of his absence.
Then the noise rushes back in like a wave I can’t brace for.
Reporters shuffle uneasily. Camera operators murmur into headsets with clipped urgency.
A few parents glance between Kyle’s retreating form and me with confusion and sympathy.
The whole place exhales, but my lungs do the opposite.
I can’t take my eyes off the tunnel he disappeared into. It’s pointless—he’s gone and not coming back out—but my gaze stays locked on the tunnel anyway. I saw the look on his face. I felt the moment something in him broke and knew, with horrible clarity, that I was the one who dealt the blow.
My knees nearly give out beneath the weight of that knowledge, but before they can, I force myself upright. My spine stiffens as I drag on the polished version of myself—the one built of restraint and strategy and precisely placed smiles—and pray it holds.
“Should we… follow him?” someone asks behind me, voice hushed but urgent, unsure of which course of action is safest.
I know I should answer the way I always do, but for the briefest moment, my throat closes.
My heartbeat is pounding so fiercely I’m convinced it’s visible through the front of my blouse.
I manage a slow inhale and school my expression into something so steady it feels like a betrayal of everything inside me.
“No,” I say carefully. “We keep the program running. Redirect the cameras to the kids’ area. No angle toward the exit tunnel.”
The rink lights shimmer against the ice, scattering onto my skin like shards of whatever’s left of my composure. Each reflection feels like a reminder: hold it together, hold it together, hold it together.
“Alycia, you need to see this.”
Someone places a tablet in my hands, and the video plays instantly.
The screen is bright enough to force my eyes open, even when every instinct tells me to look away.
I watch myself laughing lightly at the reporter’s joke—poised, polished, perfect—and then I watch Kyle’s facade splinter.
The flicker of hurt in his eyes is sharp and unguarded, and it punches something deep in me.
Then he mutters “longevity” in that tight, breaking voice before storming away.
The pain that hits me is sharp, and I almost collapse in on myself. I knew I hurt him, but I didn’t realize I’d humiliated him until this moment, seeing the entire moment replayed in full color proof for the whole world to see.
A swell of heat gathers behind my eyes, threatening to rise into tears I absolutely cannot allow.
Not here in the middle of an event I’m responsible for keeping afloat, and my composure is the only thing standing between order and chaos.
I swallow the emotion down so forcefully it burns all the way to my stomach.
“What do we do?” an intern asks, voice tight with worry.
You fix it, Alycia. That’s your job. You fix everything, even when the thing breaking is you.
“We continue,” I say, offering a small nod that feels like lifting a weight much heavier than my head. “We keep everything on schedule.”
My voice is the only part of me that isn’t trembling.
The next stretch of time blurs in that strange way moments do when you’re on the edge of breaking but can’t afford to fall apart.
I guide photographers. I direct families.
I answer sponsors’ questions with a practiced calm that feels like it belongs to someone else.
But beneath each task, pain drags like an undertow.
Each movement is automatic, the muscle memory of a job I’ve lived in for years, but underneath it all is a pulse of pain that keeps building and building, threatening to fracture straight through me.
Every time someone mentions his name, something inside me flinches.
Every time someone asks if he’s okay, I feel the lie lodge deeper behind my ribs.
Every time my eyes drift, against my will, toward the tunnel he disappeared through, the ache tightens until breathing becomes a conscious effort.
A volunteer jogs toward me, cheeks flushed from exertion and worry. “Alycia, someone saw Kyle go toward the tunnels.”
The words land like a hit to the sternum, not because I didn’t already know he was gone, but because hearing it out loud fractures something I’ve been trying so hard to hold steady. “Okay. Thank you.”
But the moment he turns away, I feel the air shift, heavy and cold, closing in around the edges of my chest. The bright lights overhead seem suddenly too sharp, like everything is too exposed.
I take one long, controlled breath meant to steady me, but it doesn’t soothe.
It only deepens the ache pressing against my ribs; my precious armor feels paper-thin and useless.
I can’t stay out here another second. I make an excuse—logistics, cleanup, last checks—but I know the truth.
I’m looking for him. Even though he owes me nothing and I’m the one who cut the ground out from under us.
I slip out of the rink, and the door shuts behind me with a soft click that feels far too final.
My pulse thunders in my ears as I take the first steps toward the tunnels.
By the time I step into the hallway, the air feels thin in a way that makes it hard to breathe, as if the building itself knows something inside me has already begun to unravel.
Disappearing in the middle of a team event is unprofessional.
Beneath every rational reason is the truth I can’t admit out loud: I’m looking for him, even though I know the last thing he owes me is a moment of his time.
My heels click softly against the polished floor, the sound too practiced for how violently my pulse is thrumming beneath my skin.
For a moment, I almost convince myself that this is manageable, that I’m composed enough to face whatever comes next.
And then I turn the corner, and everything inside me stops so abruptly it feels like hitting a wall.
Kyle is standing halfway down the hallway, but the version of him in front of me isn’t the one I prepared myself to see.
His posture is caved inward, his shoulders weighed down by something so heavy it pulls the breath from my lungs.
His eyes are swollen—red along the edges, like he’s been crying long enough that the tears have carved paths into his skin. It’s grief written openly on his face.
And beside him is a woman I’ve never seen before.
Her hand rests on his forearm, gentle, grounding, the kind of touch someone offers when they’re helping hold a person together.
She leans toward him with quiet familiarity, her voice low and soothing enough to make something inside my chest twist so sharply I feel the echo of it in my ribs.
She murmurs something to him, and the sound of it, though I can’t make out the words, is soft enough to make my chest ache with jealousy and guilt in equal measure.
Someone else got to hold him together when I was the one who shattered him.
The realization knocks my balance off center.
The floor shifts beneath my feet as a hot, humiliating wave of emotion barrels through me.
Jealousy comes first, rising like instinct, lighting a match.
Then heavy grief follows close behind, dragging at every breath.
And threaded through both is sharp, unforgiving guilt, curling around my lungs until it’s hard to inhale without feeling like each breath is a reminder of what I caused.
The woman notices me before he does and steps back almost instantly, her hand slipping off his arm with a quiet, respectful awareness that makes the moment feel even more intimate.
She’s someone he trusted enough to fall apart in front of, and I know that says something about what he needed and who I didn’t let myself be for him.
Kyle turns at the shift in her posture. He goes still the second his eyes find mine—not in the polished, PR-trained way people freeze when they’re uncomfortable, but in a way that tells me the sight of me hits him like he’s still bleeding from a wound I left.
And I can see everything he’s not saying written across his face.
I should pretend I’m fine and swallow down the ache rising in my throat. I can tell him something neutral, but all I can think about is that I wasn’t the one he turned to. I wasn’t the one who got to hold him while he fell apart.
“We’ll need you both for the post-event recap.” My voice barely finds its way out when I finally manage; the edges tremble just enough to betray the storm beneath them. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The woman nods once, giving Kyle another reassuring touch on his arm before stepping back down the hall.
He watches her go, then turns back toward me with a look so raw it nearly brings me to my knees.
It’s not anger. It’s a hurt so deep and personal that it feels like I witnessed something I was never supposed to see, something he tried hard to keep hidden from me because he understands how much I’ve already been carrying.
He takes one small step forward, and I can feel the moment building between us like pressure under thin ice. “Alycia—” he begins, and the softness in his voice nearly breaks me.