Page 77 of Hate You Most

There were pictures of Dakota too—Dakota tying her skates, Dakota standing beside the rink boards, Dakota laughing with her head tilted back and eyes closed.

Still, these pictures didn't feel like ones she would keep as memories. Dakota appeared occasionally in the photos, but not as often as Viktoriya had expected. For someone who supposedly lived with her—who was married to her—Dakota was strangely absent from her camera roll.

Viktoriya’s brow furrowed slightly. That was when she noticed the pattern changing.

As she scrolled past the years she could remember—past 2015—the photos became fewer. There were still pictures of coffees and skates and skating rinks. Pictures of her winning at the Olympics, and seven different photos of her medal that Viktoriya clearly remembered taking. But photos of Dakota were nearly impossible to find.

She knew they had taken photos together, and she knew Dakota had too. Had she deleted them out of shame?

The photos on the phone went all the way back to early 2012, but Viktoriya had lost interest. Unease curled slowly through her stomach.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she murmured to the empty room. If they had been together all this time—if they had built a life together, even if it was just for them—there should have been hundreds of pictures. Thousands, even.

Instead they were only fragments of their life.

Her thumb hovered uncertainly before she made up her mind and exited the main gallery and opened the Albums tab instead.

Different albums appeared in front of her. Favorites. Videos. Screenshots. And one toward the bottom labeled Hidden, with a little eye icon with a dash going through it.

The curiosity nearly took her breath away. She tapped it and a keypad for a code entry appeared.

Shit.

She didn't remember the past eight years of her life, how was she going to remember the code to the hidden photos folder on her phone? She tried her own birthday and the passcode was incorrect. She tried the generic, 1234, but that was also incorrect. She thought back to what she could remember. 1246 unlocked the folder. Dakota’s room number that night in Milano, Italy, when they'd talked.

Inside the hidden folder were photographs. Hundreds of them. Every single one featured Dakota.

The photos looked ancient compared to the ones she'd just seen, and nothing looked staged or aesthetic.

She stopped on one.

They were young—much younger than they were now—standing beside a rink somewhere, still wearing their training jackets. Dakota had one arm draped loosely around Viktoriya’s shoulders, both of them were smiling in a way that felt too carefree.

Viktoriya scrolled slowly.

The photos continued.

Locker rooms. Hotel hallways and hotel rooms. Selfies taken in mirrors, Dakota leaning close beside her, kissing her cheek.

The story unfolded across the screen without needing explanation. They grew older together, started standing closer in the pictures, and touched each other more easily.

Then the timeline crossed the point where Viktoriya’s memory ended, and the pattern changed again. The photos didn’t stop, but they became rarer. Instead of dozens per month, there were only a few. Instead of everyday moments, there were occasional snapshots—Dakota sitting on a bed in some unfamiliar hotel room, Viktoriya half visible beside her. Then nothing for months, and then another photo. The gaps grew wider.

Viktoriya’s chest tightened as she continued scrolling.

The last few photos were of them in what looked to be an apartment. One photo of Dakota and her looking out the skyline from a window, with their backs toward the camera. A few selfies of them on a couch and one where they were snuggled up against each other on a bed. There were no pictures of their rings, and nothing that hinted at them having actually lived together.

Viktoriya lowered the phone slowly.

It didn’t look like the camera roll of a married couple. It looked like the photos of two people who saw each other rarely and took pictures whenever they could manage it.

Her eyes drifted toward the coffee table where Dakota’s iPad was. She reached over and picked it up.

The large screen lit up instantly and asked for a passcode to unlock it. She tried Dakota's birthday and it unlocked. She opened the photos app and looked through all of Dakota's pictures. What followed were thousands of aesthetic and professionally taken photos, just like there'd been on Viktoriya's own phone.

She scrolled to the hidden folder and opened it with the same passcode she'd used earlier. The album was filled with shaky selfies of the two of them together—the life they couldn't share with anyone else.

Viktoriya couldn't deal with this fragmented uncertainty, she had to know. She opened Google and typed in both their names.