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Rolling to my knees, I got to my feet with some difficulty. My tailbone felt tender, but my hip was definitely going to be a mottled mess by the end of the night.
Skating to the exit, I took the skate guards that Omar was holding up and slipped them onto the blades of my skates.
“There,” I said, giving Felicite a cheeky wave. “You may now enter for your ice time, your highness.”
The woman’s pale features flushed pink all the way to the roots of her white-blonde hair.
Felicite tilted her pointed nose up into the air. “I don’t know why you’re giving me attitude. You were the one who went over time.”
“Because I was still working with her, Felicite, don’t forget that this is my workshop and my ice,” Omar warned, his stony features becoming even rockier as he rounded on the other woman.
Felicite’s mouth opened and closed with shock, clearly not used to being checked by, well, anyone.
“Now get your ass on the ice and warm up. You still need to perfect your twos.”
There was a twittering of giggles from the other skaters who were hanging around. They’d clumped into groups last month as soon as we arrived, forming cliques that I had no desire to be a part of.
I only had one friend in Scotland and she was currently barreling headfirst in my direction.
“God, what a cunt,” Maeve snickered as she looped an arm through mine and handed me my duffel. “Don’t you listen to her, she’s got a stick so far up her arse I’m surprised she doesn’t taste wood.”
Maeve had been one of the other skaters on Team Ireland at the Olympics this year and had glued herself to my side as soon as we all introduced ourselves the week before the opening ceremony.
She was the loudest on the team, her curly brown hair often taking on a life of its own as she argued with anyone who would listen—more often than not whoever was doing her hair and trying to tame the wildness of it.
Green eyes flicked over to me, questioning my continued silence to her chattering, but I was too busy staring at my phone which I’d just pulled from my bag.
The screen had immediately lit up with a message from Alexei, one of the people I was trying my best to avoid at the moment.
ALEXEI: Ciara, you can’t ignore us forever. Please talk to us. I was waiting to say this in person but I’m sorry for yelling at you in the hospital… I was very scared and lashed out.
“How could you let this happen, Ciara, you were supposed to be looking out for her! How could you let her go hang out with other figure skaters without you?” The memory of Alexei’s voice ghosted through my mind.
I dropped my phone back into the bag as if it had burned me.
“Those people still trying to talk to you?” Maeve asked, wheeling around so she could get a better look at my face.
Her freckled nose wrinkled. “You should just ignore them. They don’t deserve you.”
“They’re my family.” I shook my head, feeling a little annoyed with the shorter woman in front of me for talking badly about the people I cared most for in the world.
Even if I’d lost them at the moment.
I hadn’t stuck around long in the hospital after Brynn had been hit by that car in Norway. I couldn’t fathom sitting there and looking at the anger in Alexei’s eyes or the confusion in Brynn’s from losing the memory of the greatest moment in her life.
It was all my fault. Had I not left Brynn with that damn hockey player she would have been safe and happy.
But I’d wanted to push her out of her comfort zone and my instincts had told me to trust the suave Alec Nashtos. One of the biggest mistakes of my life.
If I ever saw that man again I was going to set him on fire.
Maeve, oblivious to the anger boiling just underneath the surface of my skin, scoffed. “Are they though? Family doesn’t hurt you like this. They should be ashamed of themselves. If you were to come back to Ireland with me at the end of this you wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.”
That was enough from her.
“Maeve—” I snapped, wheeling around to give her a piece of my mind. She may have been my friend, but that did not mean she knew me. Not really.
She knew nothing of my time in Ireland before the moms came to get me. She knew nothing of waking up in the hospital to a new, grieving family that—despite being the reason they’d lost their loved ones—accepted me completely and showed me what a family should be like.
