Davorin barely reacted. Somehow, that made the whole thing look worse.
“She’s not calming him down,” Ethan muttered.
“You think she’s making it worse?”
“No.” Ethan folded his arms across the top of the boards. “I think she’s the only person saying the thing he doesn’t want said aloud.”
That felt awkwardly close to what I’d been thinking.
Davorin still hadn’t moved. Then he reached for his bag with a sharp movement, ending the conversation.
“That’s not just Olympic stress,” I said before I could stop myself.
“No, definitely not.”
A whistle blew somewhere across the rink while another team reset for lifts near center ice, but neither of us looked away.
The woman finally walked past him first. Davorin stayed where he was a second or two before following.
I straightened beside the boards, unsettled by how much the whole exchange had gotten under my skin. It wasn’t the tension that bothered me.
It was the feeling that I’d just watched someone spend five minutes pretending they were fine.
“I’ve seen that before,” Ethan said suddenly.
I glanced sideways. “Where?”
His eyes stayed fixed on the corridor Davorin had disappeared into.
“Places where people stop breathing properly because they’re afraid to take up the wrong amount of space.”
I didn’t want to think about that.
“Dean.”
Mark again.
“Yeah, I know.”
I drove into the next turn with enough force that the blade carveddeep across the ice. Speed usually helped clear my head when thoughts started crowding too close together.
Today it barely touched the problem.
You saw a stressed athlete. That’s all.
A different coaching style. Different pressure. Different federation culture.
There were logical explanations everywhere if I wanted them badly enough.
Except none of those explanations accounted for the look on Davorin’s face while his partner spoke to him.
Or the way I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I slowed near the boards again and dragged a hand through damp hair while my pulse settled gradually beneath the exertion.
Davorin didn’t matter.
His federation didn’t either.
