It comes out calmer than I expect.
My mother’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“Then you’ll need to be comfortable with those doors not opening.”
Not slammed shut in my face.
A subtle and meaningful difference, where their name carries weight.
My father exhales softly, like this is the reasonable conclusion of a reasonable conversation.
“You’re not being asked to stop,” he says. “Only to be intentional about what you’re stepping away from.”
Which means I need to choose correctly. Which, for them, means I need to choose them.
The room feels very still.
For a second, I can see it the way they do. The clean trajectory and the inevitability of it. The version of my lifethat moves forward in a straight, sanctioned line, where each stepping stone was laid out by them and built on the last one, each decision reinforcing the one before it.
It would be easier, of course. But it would also not be mine.
I push my chair back before I can think about it any longer. The sound is soft against the floor, but it cuts through the room anyway. “I have to go.”
My father watches me stand, his gaze steady, measuring. “Isabella,” he says, loud enough to stop me for a second.
I turn back slightly.
“You’ve always understood how this works.”
I hold his gaze. “Yes,” I say. And then, after a beat, I add, “I just don’t agree with it anymore.”
CHAPTER 29
CECILIA
Practice runs long,then short, then somewhere in between, and by the time we step off the ice, Rodrigo is restless in that specific way he gets when an element almost clicks and he doesn’t want to ruin it by overworking it. It’s a skill he learned back home, but has definitely honed here, watching all the other skaters do the same.
So, when he says, almost offhand, that he wants to go get ice cream with me, I don’t argue.
The walk down Main Street is quiet, and the only sounds we hear are those of the town itself, the slow roll of the cars up and down the street, the leaves swaying in the wind. The mountain air feels different outside the rink, and for a few minutes I let myself exist in its organic state without running through checklists in my head.
The shop is small and unremarkable, and I know I would have missed it if it weren’t for the fact that Rodrigo has probably looked for all the sweet treat places in town since we got here. We take our cups outside because there’s nowhere elseto go, settling onto the edge of the sidewalk where the concrete dips towards the street.
For a while, we stay close to what’s safe.
The session. The combination that finally held for him. The spin that still needs work. I talk through it slowly, not because he needs the breakdown, but because I do. It gives structure to feelings that otherwise still feel unstable.
He listens to me talk, but not how he listens to me at the rink. There’s less urgency right now, less of that immediate translation from words to muscle memory. He nods, asks a question or two, but mostly just lets it exist between us.
At some point the conversation loosens. It stops being about what needs fixing and starts circling closer to us.
He’s the one who shifts it, and I can see it coming before he even utters a word. It’s small and almost imperceptible: Rodrigo’s shoulder pulls up slightly, like he’s bracing against something. His fingers start tapping against his thigh—not in rhythm like when he’s counting through his head, but uneven, distracted.
“I… umm…” he starts, then stops.
I don’t look at him. Because if I do, he’ll either push through it too quickly or drop it entirely, and I’m not sure which is worse.
He exhales, quieter this time, and tries again.
