Page 49 of Hate You Most

“God,” Dakota laughed, the yogurt still in her hand. “You're impossible sometimes, do you know that? Can't you just for once stop fighting me and accept that I'm trying to do what's best for you?”

Viktoriya sat further upright, the lights cutting into her retinas. “You don't know what is best for me.”

“I do,” Dakota said coldly. “Trust me, I do know.” A laugh escaped her lips. “Your brain is like a scrambled egg right now, and I'm trying to do what I can to keep it from scrambling even more, but you're making it fucking impossible. Yes, it sucks—this entire situation—it fucking sucks, but there is nothing I can do about that other than accept it for what it is. So, would you please just stop hating me for a second, and eat your damn Jell-o.”

She looked at her, saw the same spark in Dakota's eye she'd seen a million times on the ice. Always right before they competed. Except they weren't on the ice anymore, and they weren't competing.

“Fine, I'll eat the pudding.”

“Thank you,” Dakota said, and opened her yogurt. They ate in complete silence, using plastic spoons that would break if too much pressure were applied to them. Viktoriya felt oddly much like the spoon in her hand. She'd almost broken last night from the pressure in her head. She needed to get better at advocating for herself, or she'd end up as a broken plastic spoon in a hospital trashcan.

“I need a cigarette,” Dakota said as she threw her eaten yogurt into the trash.

“You are still doing that? You know smoking is bad for you, yes?”

“I know,” She leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “And yet I'm not the one in the hospital bed.”

“Give it twenty years and you will be.” Dakota laughed at that, and Viktoriya couldn't help but crack a smile too. When Dakota's smile faded, she was still looking at her, and she had a different look in her eye. A longing look—for something Viktoriya knew she didn't have and couldn't give. Viktoriya wasn't the person that Dakota fell for and married, or at least, she couldn't remember who that person was supposed to be. Dakota was a stranger with a history. Dakota was her rival.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Dakota simply said, then turned on her heels and slipped out the door and into the hallway.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

October 24th, 2022.

— Hospital parking lot. Detroit, Michigan, early morning.

Time no longer constrained itself to the normal twenty four hours in a day, instead it took the form of a million hours and a million seconds. Time itself had completely disappeared.

“You are so dramatic,” Dakota said, unlocking the car door and holding it open for her. “It's two weeks without your phone, I'm sure you'll survive.”

She sat down in the passenger seat, then turned to look at Dakota.

“Skating,” Viktoriya said. “It's two weeks without skating, I don't care about my phone.”

Dakota shook her head with a tight smile, then closed the car door and walked around to the driver's side.

“You’ll skate again before you know it.” The car was put in reverse, and they rolled slowly out of the parking lot.

The city outside was dark, the sidewalk smooth with rain. The streets glowed beneath blurred neon lights as Dakota drove them through the nearly empty roads in exhausted silence. Somewhere during the drive, the night began to fade and the black sky slowly softened into a pale yellow as morning light crept between the buildings. By the time they reached Dakota’s apartment, the sun was slowly rising over the skyline, turning the skyscrapers gold at the edges.

It was a fancy building, the kind that still had a doorman in the lobby, and the elevator rose almost silently as it carried them toward one of the upper floors.

Dakota unlocked the door and they stepped in silently. Viktoriya wasn't sure if she should be saying anything. The air in the apartment smelled faintly of coffee and something clean—lemon or soap or some type of cleaner—and the floors didn’t echo beneath her feet like it did at the hospital. No beeping machines, no white walls, no strangers watching her breathe. This apartment was supposed to be comforting for her. It was supposed to be a home.

Still, her shoulders didn’t loosen.

She didn't recognize a single thing, like she'd never been there before.

Viktoriya walked to the end of the living room, looking out at the Detroit skyline from the large floor to ceiling window. The rising sun burned the back of her eyes and a dull pain traveled the length of her head.

Dakota had always liked skylines, Viktoriya knew it as surely as she knew her own name. She remembered the countless photographs and interviews she'd seen of Dakota, standing in front of massive glass windows in tailored suits while she answered questions. Magazine covers, sponsorship shoots, Olympic press tours—always the same kind of backdrop behind her.

Her memory was a funny and fragile thing. She could remember what she had for lunch yesterday, and countless press photos of Dakota from more than ten years ago—but anything from the past eight years was like getting her head crushed by a truck. Looking down at the streets from high up always filled Viktoriya with a strange and almost disorienting feeling, like one wrong step could send everything collapsing inward.

They had been sent home with a bag of different pills and a laminated list of what she was and wasn't supposed to be exposed to. No outside stimulation, including her phone and TV. No harsh light sources, including natural sunlight. No information that Viktoriya couldn't remember herself and wasn't absolutely necessary to know. It was a complete brain detox, and Viktoriya thought it was her own personal hell.