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“You want the truth or do you want me to make you feel better?”

“Oh god.” She groaned and buried her face in her hands, then came right back up. “I heard the crowd, even down here. It was brilliant.”

“Don’t worry.” I sat next to her. “We always knew he’d own the rhythm dance. It’s his thing. We just gotta beat the nineteen others below him.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” She smiled and laughed at her own nerves. “This is why I don’t watch.”

“Yeah.” We had an hour until our slot. It was a long time to hang around and worry. “You wanna go for a walk? We can’t go too far, but they’ll let us outside.”

“Sure, yeah, good idea. I’ll go crazy trapped down here.”

We headed up and out of the prep area, wrapped in Team Canada jackets. Countless people milled around, busy behind the scenes. Organizers, volunteers, other skaters. We weaved through them and headed outside, where it was quieter. People still milled around, but the air was fresh and bitterly cold, great for clearing your head.

“Is it wrong, that I was kinda hoping he’d mess up?” Zoe winced, stamping her feet to keep the blood flowing in the cold. “Like he did a few times in practice.”

We stood at the edge of a cleared path, watching officials come and go, wrapped up in their big coats, their lanyards swinging.

“Nah.” I shrugged and stamped my feet, kicking off snow. “He wasn’t ever going to make a mistake, though.”

“You sound like you admire him.”

“I’ve never said I don’t.” I blew into my hands. I’d left my gloves inside. “His father was there.”

Zoe looked over. “I thought they didn’t get on?”

“Yeah, well, he showed up after Ren’s career picked up. Guess his son wasn’t such a failure after all.”

Zoe frowned, and maybe I’d said too much. “Goro thought that, about Ren?”

I shrugged, not wanting to go into it any further than I already had. I wasn’t supposed to know stuff like that. “Ren looked pretty pissed.”

“Yeah? When he came off the ice? I saw that.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, you don’t think he wants him here?”

“I don’t know what Ren wants,” I said, looking out over the pathways and mounds of snow piled beside them. That was one of the truest sentences I’d probably ever spoken.

Zoe glanced over, sideways. I caught her looking and watched her smile slowly grow.

“What?” I asked, my own smile growing.

“Did you go out with him in the city, like the journalist said?”

I’d wondered when someone was going to bring that up. I’d thought Casey might have, but he’d been focused on the Games. There wasn’t much point lying about it now. Everyone knew we’d been missing together, and now the press seemed to have gotten hold of it.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t what everyone’s going to think.” I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets and kicked at snow on the path. “He just needed some air.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

Another shrug but this time with my whole body. “Because every time we go near each other, everyone makes a big thing of it. We can’t walk down a street without someone taking a damn photo.”

“I guess people think the Meridian was more than dancing.”

“Yeah, doesn’t matter how many times I deny it. He must be sick of hearing my name. He probably thinks he made a mistake dancing with me.”

“You said he doesn’t make mistakes,” she teased, blowing into her own hands.