Chapter 57
~Riley~
Hudson and I shuffle closer together so we can both see the screen as Hannah flips the camera around. Suddenly, we’re inside one of the women’s bathrooms at Riverbend, where Natasha has a miserable-looking Blake backed against the sinks.
“Repeat what you just told us,” Natasha demands. “All of it.”
Blake’s eyes dart to her left, to something off-camera, and Hannah obligingly swings the phone to show us what she’s looking at. Victoria and Lydia are there too, and Victoria offers Blake an indifferent shrug that screams ‘This is your mess. Leave me out of it.’
When the camera returns to Blake, she looks smaller than before, her shoulders hunched over in resignation. She mumbles something that I can’t quite decipher, and Hudson glances over at me.
“Did you get that?”
I shake my head before speaking into the phone. “Hannah, we couldn’t hear her.”
“Louder,” Natasha demands.
Somehow, Blake looks even more distressed as she repeats herself. “I was the person in the pink coat at Canadians.”
Even though we had our suspicions, it’s still shocking to hear it out loud, and Hudson’s jaw is slack when I look over at him. “How?” is his first question, asked so quietly only I can hear him. “How did she know about that?”
Though I’m curious about that too, I have a different question to start with. “Why would you do that?”
Natasha looms over Blake, glaring down at her. “Start at the beginning.”
Very reluctantly, she starts to talk. “I liked Hudson for years, but he always said he didn’t date. But as soon as Riley showed up, he started acting differently.”
“Damn right I did,” the man next to me murmurs.
“Riley kept saying she wasn’t interested, even though they were always together. She acted like she was embarrassed to admit she liked him, and he deserves better than that.”
Even though she’s way out of line, I can’t help feeling a twinge of guilt at her assessment. I did try to keep him a secret, at least for a little while, and he does deserve better. Thankfully, that’s all in the past.
“So, after they announced they were together, I did some digging.” She sniffles, as if she’s close to tears, and Natasha leans in again, forcing her to keep going. “I found out about Hudson’s first girlfriend, and I went to see her sister.”
What the fuck? This isn’t just a crush; we’re getting into stalker territory. Hudson’s eyes are glued to the screen.
“She said she knew how I could get his attention,” Blake continues, sniffing again. “She gave me the pink coat and told me to wear it at the competition. She said it would remind him of her sister.”
“And you figured that was a good thing?” Natasha demands.
“I guess so.” She shrugs helplessly. “I mean, he loved her, right? She said it might make him a little sad, ‘cause she died, but then I could comfort him.”
“She doesn’t know,” I whisper to Hudson under my breath. “She doesn’t know how Sophie died.”
Surely, surely, if she knew the whole story, she wouldn’t have gone along with it.
He doesn’t answer, his jaw set tight.
“What about the phone calls?” I want to know. “Was that you too?”
The confusion on her face seems genuine as she glances between Natasha and Hannah. “What phone calls?”
“That must have been Peggy,” Hudson mutters. “She saw her opportunity when Blake turned up, and she took it. And that explains how she knew about you: Blake must have told her.”
I’ll take his word for it, but Blake is far from innocent. I can barely keep the rage out of my voice when I address her again. “If you actually care about him, why would you mess with him when he’s competing?”
“I didn’t know he’d be that upset about it,” she whines. “It wasn’t supposed to go that far. But when I went back to the hotel with him, he was just like… catatonic. It scared me.”
Not enough to do anything to help him, apparently, but I suppose I should at least be thankful she didn’t leave him alone in that state.
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Hudson says, loud enough for everyone to hear, and Blake flinches at the sound of his voice. “Thanks, Hannah. Thanks, Tash.”
“My pleasure,” Natasha assures him, scowling down at Blake one more time. “Kick some ass down there, Riley.”
“Thanks. Bye, Hannah,” I whisper before ending the call.
For a few moments after the screen goes black, Hudson and I sit in silence, both of us processing everything we just heard.
I’m livid on Hudson’s behalf, furious that Blake would take things this far or that Peggy would still carry such a grudge against him that she’d try to break him that way.
But more than anything, I’m so proud of him for not letting them win.
Hudson is the one to finally break the silence. “Well, looks like you and I have one more thing in common, Pip.”
The nickname makes me smile, as it always does. “What’s that?”
“We both have people willing to go the extra mile to fuck with our heads to keep us from winning.”
The fact that he’s completely right makes me laugh because honestly? What else am I going to do at this point?
“Is that something we should be proud of?” I wonder.
“I don’t know about ‘proud’, but I do know that no matter how hard they try, they can’t break us.”
His lips brush across my temple, and my eyes close as I lean into him. “A few months ago, I might have disagreed, but now, I think you’re right.”
“And the best thing we can do is go out there and keep winning anyway,” he states.
I tilt my head back to meet his gaze, a smile forming on my lips. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
The next evening, Evelyn and I are in the same warm-up group for our short programs, and I keep my chin up as I get ready in the dressing room, refusing to let her intimidate me.
Somewhat surprisingly, it seems to work; every time she looks in my direction and finds me staring right back at her, she quickly looks away.
Evelyn skates first in our group, and though I normally wouldn’t watch any of the skaters before me, tonight feels like a good time to break that routine. Along with a few other skaters and volunteers, I stand in front of the TV backstage to see exactly what I’m up against.
Evelyn smiles as she takes her starting position but before she even takes a step, I can see in her eyes that her usual confidence is missing.
Her opening jump combination is strong, and her smile becomes a little more genuine as she goes into her layback spin.
As my coach pointed out, her position isn’t as good as mine but it’s not bad.
Her triple Lutz is fine, and the footwork has always been one of her strengths.
With each move, her confidence seems to build a little more, and as she steps into the double Axel, there’s no reason to expect it to be anything other than perfect.
But in the next second, it falls apart. The edge slips out from under her as she lands, and she goes down. The gasp of the crowd in the stands above us echoes through the ceiling.
Maybe it was a lack of concentration, or maybe it was just one of those things you can never really control. Maybe it was even a little bit of guilt. I’ll never know, but I understand exactly what it means for me: if I skate well, I can be ahead of her, at least tonight.
I step out into the hallway as she stomps back to the dressing room, her skate guards squeaking on the floor and her shoulders tense. Our eyes meet for only a second before she looks away again.
I don’t say anything because I don’t have to. She knows where things stand as well as I do.
When I take the ice for my program two skaters later, Hudson’s cheers from the other side of the rink ring out before I even start my warm-up, and it fills me with a joyful lightness that carries over into every step of my program.
My jumps are all there. The footwork flows naturally and my spins stay centred and fast. It’s just as good as my skate in Finland, and when my marks come up in the kiss ‘n’ cry, it takes me a second to register the number one next to my name.
The crowd’s cheers help it sink in as a smile spreads across my face. I’m in first fucking place.
We still have the long program to go, but even if I don’t win, I proved something today, to Evelyn, to Trevor, to my mom, the skating world, but most of all, to myself.
It’s time the world paid attention to Riley Walters.
It feels like I’m walking on air as I get changed and head to the back door where a taxi will be waiting to take me to the hotel to have dinner with the whole Baker family. A small group of fans are gathered beyond the barriers, hoping for an autograph or picture.
“Oh my God, it’s Riley Walters!” someone shouts when I step outside, and I immediately start to laugh.
Hudson is standing right in the middle of the group of fans, no doubt having already signed a few autographs himself, and I go over to greet them all before grabbing him out of the crowd and pulling him into the taxi with me.
“You were incredible today,” he murmurs just before his lips find mine. Last night, I sent him back to his own room, sticking to my routine of no sex before a competition, but as my body responds to him in the backseat of the car, I already know that’s one more tradition I’ll be breaking tonight.
“You’re always incredible,” I tell him. “How about you come back to my room after dinner and we see just how incredible we can be together?”
His eyes dance with delight and desire. “Any fucking time you want, Riley.”