“That sounds exhausting,” she says.
“It can be,” I admit. “I don’t talk about it much.”
“You’re good at sounding like you have it figured out.”
I meet her gaze. “So are you.”
The conversation shifts around safer things, like logistics and training and the program. How fast the weeks are ticking by. How much improvement we can see in the skaters. Cecilia listens more than she speaks, nodding along, eyes tracking movement in the room even as she stays present with me.
In the corner of my eye, I see the Japanese delegation starting to head out. Goodbyes start overlapping, loose and disorganized, and the dinner simply dissolves.
I notice Cecilia checking her watch, then slipping her jacket on without ceremony.
“You heading back?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah, we have early ice time tomorrow.”
“I can walk with you,” I say, before I’ve fully decided to. I don’t give myself time to take it back. “I left my car at the rink.”
She hesitates for a moment, then shrugs. “Sure.”
Outside, the night hits clean and cold. The noise from the restaurant muffles behind us as the door closes. The street is dim and quiet ahead, then one of the streetlamps flickers in the distance.
We walk side by side at first. Our footsteps fall out of sync and then correct themselves without comment.
“How did you get into coaching?” I ask, filling the space. “Was it always your plan?”
She glances at me, waiting.
“I’ve been watching you this week,” I continue, but internally I’m wincing because I’m giving myself away and I immediately regret it. “With him, I mean.”
She stiffens slightly. It’s that defensiveness again.
“I definitely didn’t plan it,” she says. “At the tail end of my career, I started helping out at my rink a little more—I needed the money. And then…” She exhales. “I realized I was better at explaining things than I was at doing them.”
Cecilia’s voice is even, but there’s something in the way she keeps her eyes forward, fixed on the stretch of pavement ahead of us.
I nod, though she isn’t looking at me. I try to match her pace, but she walks just a fraction faster than I expect. She stops abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk right as the streetlamp flickers again. For a second, her face is half-lit, half-shadowed, and I’m struck by how contained she is even now, mid-conversation.
“What do you want, Isabella?”
It’s direct and sharp. Like she’s tired of me circling her all the time.
I take a breath, steadying myself before answering.
“I didn’t mean to sound like I was evaluating you earlier,” I say, because it’s true and because not saying it feels worse. “When I said I’d been watching.”
She doesn’t respond right away. She waits, arms folding loosely across her chest, giving me the space to finish the thought. I don’t.
“You’ve always done it,” she says instead, and her eyes are steady on mine. She tips her head back a little, and it almost looks like she’s being defiant.
“I—”
“You’ve done it since I met you fifteen years ago. You probably don’t even remember athletes like me.”
I frown, genuinely confused. “I do remember you. I don’t know what you mean.”
She lets out a short breath. Not a laugh. Something closer to disbelief.
