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“Well, it’s a movie about a figure skater who falls and hits her head and it causes her to go blind,” Ciara explained, patting my fingers when she felt them stiffen at the mention of vision loss.
“She thinks her whole world is ending because of it. I could sort of relate.” Ciara’s breath tickled my skin as she laughed. “Her boyfriend teaches her how to count the strides of the ice rink she’s in until she doesn’t even need to think about where she was going. She just went and did it.”
I scoffed at that. “But that’s a movie. Not real life. Do you think I can just count my way through my figure skating career?”
Ciara finally let go of my fingers and shook her head. “Not at all. But the counting was never the point. You don’t have an eye problem, you have a confidence problem.”
“I watched your Olympics routine and you were amazing. You flew right across the ice like you owned it,” Ciara continued and began to skate backward away from me.
“Yeah until I nearly botched it by running into a wall.” My words were dry but my feet were already moving to follow her.
“Doesn’t matter. You had confidence then, so you were able to skate, but somewhere along the line you lost it.”
She twisted away from me and the sound of skate blades on ice filled my ears and I sped up to chase her.
“And you think you can help me get it back? With counting,” I asked sardonically, nearly running into her as she skirted to a stop. Her cinnamon scent was so mouthwatering that I nearly pressed my nose to the spot just under her chin where it was the strongest.
“I don’t know,” Ciara said, reaching out and gently brushing my eyes closed. The all-consuming darkness was a comfort after a day of straining my eyes to see what little I could.
Then Ciara’s voice was right next to my ear. “But all I do know is that when I was in your skates—though the situation was a bit different—I knew that I needed something to cling to and counting seemed to work.”
There was a brief pause before she put my hand on the low wall. “Start with the length and count out loud and then we’ll do the width.”
An hour later, Charm, who had been sleeping next to my duffel while I skated, greeted me with a gentle woof once I stepped off of the ice.
Ciara had left me alone ten minutes ago to get ready for her own ice time and my instincts were already mourning the loss of her presence.
“She’s honestly too nice,” I told the dog as I settled on the bench and began to unlace my skates. “She acts like she doesn’t care half of the time and then she does something like that.”
Ciara offering to coach me was the last thing I ever expected her to do. She was a bit like a cat, I was quickly realizing, a bit standoffish but fiercely protective once she came around to you.
I vaguely wondered if that made me her kitten. I sure hoped not… or maybe I did?
It was all a muddle mess of confusing omega hormones and rational thought.
Pulling on my slippers, I shouldered my bag and whistled for Charm. “All right, girlie, let’s hit the showers.”
There were locker rooms for both male and female athletes, but I bypassed them for my private dressing room and shower, holding my ID card to the keypad until it beeped and opened.
The room was dim and I flipped the lights on, dropping my bag on the bench and undressing from the sweatpants and long-sleeved shirt I was wearing.
Charm settled in the corner with a huff and I could feel her eyes on me as I snagged the mesh shower bag out of my duffel and headed for the shower, remembering at the last second that there was a six-inch lip leading into the damn stall.
The edge of it caught on my foot, nearly sending me careening into the tiled space. Thankfully, I had a grip on one of the metal bars that were on either side of the entrance and I managed to keep myself upright.
The top of my foot stung from scraping it, but otherwise I was unscathed.
“How could you forget about the ledge, you idiot?” I chastised myself out loud as I kept a firm grip on the bars until I was in the shower.
Charm’s whine filled my ears and she nudged the back of my bare leg.
“I’m all right,” I told her, reaching back to give her head a reassuring pat.
Charm didn’t seem to believe me because she flopped down just outside of the shower and rested her chin on the lip. I knew that once I was done with my shower that she would be there to remind me to step over the damned thing that time.
Sighing, I turned the shower on as hot as I could get it, letting it pound away the ache in what was undoubtedly a bruised shoulder from the tumble I took.
That would be fun to explain to Enzo later.
