“Good.”
I learned early that approval arrived through performance, through behaving correctly enough to make other people proud in public.
Years later, after I landed my first triple-triple combination at twelve, a federation official smiled at my coach and said, “This one will represent us beautifully.”
Represent.
Even then the wording carried warning beneath praise. They were never training a child. They were shaping an image.
I accelerated again, harder this time, speed blurring the empty stands around me while years of accumulated restraint pressed painfully against my ribs. Every interview where I smiled at questions designed to imply Mila and I belonged together. Every rumor I allowed to survive because correcting it felt dangerous. Every moment spent monitoring my own body language like a man under permanent surveillance.
My edge slipped unexpectedly beneath me and I corrected instantly before I could fall.
The recovery happened so fast it barely registered, yet the familiarity of it made me laugh once under my breath.
That, too, had become instinct.
Catch yourself quickly. Never let instability remain visible long enough for anyone else to notice it.
I circled the rink again, slower now, and found myself thinking about Mila.
God.
Mila had understood pieces of this long before I managed to admit any of it to myself. She stood beside me through years of speculation and carefully manufactured narratives, letting reporters build romance where none existed because the alternative carried consequences neither of us wanted to test publicly.
And all the while she carried her own secrets too.
Marek’s face was in my head, watching me too closely weeks ago before saying, “You look at him like losing him would matter more than protecting yourself.”
At the time I’d dismissed it because anger felt easier than recognition.
Now Marek frightened me because the loneliness beneath his words felt familiar. His quiet acceptance that survival was all life had to offer.
I slowed abruptly near center ice. My chest hurt, tight with grieffor all the years I had spent convincing myself that survival was enough.
Suddenly I could see the rest of my life with brutal clarity: more medals, more interviews, more strategic silences while entire pieces of me disappeared gradually beneath performance. Another decade becoming smaller in ways invisible to everyone except myself.
I skated harder, abandoning drills entirely now. No choreography, no technical plan, nothing but movement and speed and the violent need to outrun thoughts that refused to leave me alone.
For years I blamed skating itself for the suffocation, but the ice had never demanded I erase myself.
People did that.
I came to an abrupt stop, my blades carving deep against the surface. My breathing echoed loudly through the empty arena while sweat cooled against the back of my neck.
If I returned home unchanged after Milan, I would lose far more than Dean.
I would lose whatever remained of myself underneath all this performance.
Dean had not rescued me. That was another lie I’d nearly told myself because it sounded simpler than the truth. He had merely lived openly enough around me that continuing to shrink myself suddenly became unbearable.
Before him, survival felt permanent.
Now it felt like grief stretched across years.
I closed my eyes briefly and saw that day we’d spent in Milan. None of it had been dramatic.
That had been the devastating part. Freedom had looked so… ordinary.
