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The percussive beat was strengthening. Addisyn listened for the cue in the music and launched a double Axel, almost holding her breath in the air as she plunged forward. The impact of a perfect landing traveled up her leg. She sneaked one glance at Ed and noticed he was nodding approvingly.
The passion that had seemed dry and dead was back, crackling in Addisyn’s soul. Her whole spirit was alive again, and she was skating with all that was in her. With every time she’d raged or cried or prayed or wanted to throw up in the last few days. All the pain was being turned into power. And even as she carried out the routine, she knew, deep in her soul, that she had never performed like this. Ever. She would meet Ed’s requirements. She would make the Olympic team.
And she wasn’t the least bit excited about it.
As the music intensified, so did the depth of her feelings—the speed at which her mind was reeling. She flung her pain skyward, watched it soar away. But more pain remained, more uncertainty. Why?
Darius’s face leaped to her mind. He had skated on ice like this. He had missed his chance somehow. He was a failure, he said.
Yet Darius had been kind and gentle.
Layback spin, turn, twizzle. Addisyn flew forward out of that one with a leap that made her own breath catch. She heard Ed murmur something that sounded impressed.
And Darius had never looked at her the way Brian did.
And suddenly the realization flew out of the air and hit Addisyn, hit her so badly she almost missed her next step and had to recover quickly. That was it. The look in Brian’s eyes.
Hunger.
Hunger for her—or who he thought she was and tried to make her be. Hunger for her success—the success that would stoke his own. Hunger for her beauty—the need to have her as a trophy on his arm.
We can’t afford for you to get sick.
We?
Don’t blow this for us.
Forus. Always it had beenus. But really—it had been him. All along.
He’s darkness, Addisyn...he’ll make you like him...Avery’s voice rang as clearly in her ears as if Avery were standing right there, once again begging Addisyn not to make the mistake of a lifetime.
And look at what Brian had brought to her life. A phony façade and a pressure-packed life. She’d traded the sister who’d loved her, the man who’d amazed her, and the freedom to make her own choices for expensive cocktails, glitzy lifestyles, forbidden kisses, and a man who was nothing more than hungry for her.
Double toe. Lutz.
The music continued, swirling around Addisyn. Fake Love. So true. Brian had never known the meaning of the word.
He’ll make you like him...He had. No wonder she’d seen such darkness in her eyes. She could only pray it wasn’t too late to go back, to become Addisyn Miles again.
God, what do you want me to do?Addisyn’s own desperate prayer in the dressing room flashed back into her mind. Well, now she knew. And she’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
The song built to its moment of crescendo. She flew through a jump combination, landing her Salchow with perfection.
And stopped.
“Addisyn!” She vaguely heard Brian’s gasp of amazement. She was also dimly aware that her muscles were screaming and her breath was hard and hurting in her chest—the result of the spiritual struggle as much as the physical intensity.
But none of that mattered. Standing there on the ice, lungs heaving, the driving beat of “Fake Love” still grating insistently on her consciousness, Addisyn was fully, forcefully aware of one thing and one thing only. She was not, ever again, going to give in to the darkness. She had broken its power.
A hand snapped like a vise around her forearm. Brian’s whisper seared the air. “What the heck do you think you’redoing?”
Addisyn turned and saw him for the first time. Saw not the charming, suave professional with unmistakable poise and undisputed success, but the scheming, lustful bully. She looked at him without terror, without guilt, even without disgust. The hold he had maintained over her soul cracked and blew away like an empty husk in the wind. She saw him as Avery had always seen him—as she should have seen him long ago.
“Get your hands off me!” she snapped, yanking away. He slipped from the sudden motion, almost losing his balance on the slick ice.
Regally Addisyn pushed off and glided to the edge of the rink. She glanced around her one more time as she skated. This was the last time she would ever skate in an arena of this size, but somehow, that didn’t matter.
She calmly stepped off the ice and snapped her skate guards on. Methodically. Left and then right. Then she stepped to where Ed Bourns stood.
