I leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees, and scrubbed a hand over my face.
For weeks I’d been worrying about what the federation might do to him, the pressure they were putting him under, the impossible position they’d forced him into.
I thought I understood the problem.
The truth was, I’d only been looking at half of it.
One more skate remained.
Tomorrow night, Luka and Mila would step onto Olympic ice for the last time in these Games. Then the competition would end, the Village would start emptying out, and the strange little world we’d built here would disappear.
Until now, I’d been so focused on not losing him that I hadn’t really let myself think about what happened if I didn’t.
What if he chose me?
Not in some dramatic movie ending sort of way. Not Luka abandoning everything overnight and running off into the sunset.
That wasn’t who he was.
But what if, when all of this was over, he decided he couldn’t go back to pretending?
What if he wanted more than stolen days in Milan and secret nights behind locked doors?
The thought should have filled me with uncomplicated happiness.
Instead, it scared the hell out of me.
Wanting Luka to be free and watching him pay the price for that freedom were two very different things.
I knew what was waiting for him at home. The federation. The media. The expectations that had shaped his entire life.
If he chose himself—if he choseus—none of that would simply disappear.
I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
For the first time, I found myself wondering what our lives would actually look like outside the Olympic bubble. Airports, different countries, video calls at stupid hours because one of us was always somewhere else. Competitions. Training camps. Time zones.
None of it looked easy, yet every version of the future my mind produced contained Luka somewhere inside it. A message waiting when I woke up. A voice on the other end of a phone. A hand reaching for mine in some airport halfway across the world.
Before Milan, before Luka had crawled under my skin and into my soul, those thoughts would have terrified me.
Now they felt inevitable.
Then another possibility slipped in beside it.
What if he went home and decided survival mattered more?
What if he looked at everything he stood to lose and chose the safer path?
The ache that followed surprised me with its intensity.
I wouldn’t blame him for that. God, how could I? After everything he’d told me, after everything I’d learned about the life he’d been living, I understood exactly why he might make that choice.
Maybe that was what made it so painful.
I loved him enough to know I could never ask him to destroy his life for me.
The room was quiet except for the distant sounds of the Village drifting through the window.
