Page 12 of About to Fall

What if I never got the gold? What if I wasn’t enough? What if I had given up everything—my childhood, my friendships, my health, nearly my life—and got nothing back in return?

That was the fear that kept me up at night. Not failure. The terrifying possibility that I could do everything right, give everything I had, be as perfect as humanly possible—and it still wouldn’t be enough.

“I'm sorry if I added to whatever you were going through,” he said quietly.

“There's nothing to apologize for.” I heard myself slip into the reassuring voice—the one I used to make other people feel comfortable. “We were exploring a mutual attraction and that's over now. I've been under a lot of pressure with the Olympics a few months away and I just needed a little break so I could come back as my best self.”

Smooth. Tidy. The kind of answer that made people nod and move on.

He nodded. Moved on.

“Good luck with everything, Nico. I’m here if you need someone to lean on.”

“You too, Julien.”

He smiled—genuine, relieved—and disappeared down the hallway. And I stood there in the doorway of the weight room with my gym bag over my shoulder, watching him go, thinking about how easy that had been. How practised. How the words there's nothing to apologize for had left my mouth with the effortless delivery of someone who'd been letting people off the hook his entire life.

I wanted to be loved at all costs.

And it had cost me a great deal.

7. Adrian

Surprisingly, the person who had been the nicest to me since my arrival in Toronto was Sabrina Gallagher.

I had always filed her away as Théo Beaubien’s sidekick—the fiery redhead glued to his side at every major competition. Which was unfair. Sabrina was heading into her second Olympic Games as one of the top Canadian women. She had a Grand Prix medal of her own. She deserved better than being defined by who she was friends with.

The actual Sabrina was funny and blunt and surprisingly not a diva. She swore more than I did, which was saying something. She had a laugh that carried across entire rink lobbies and opinions about everything that she delivered without apology. She could be an absolute bitch, but only if you really, truly deserved it.

She had found me on my second day at the rink. Dropped into the chair next to me in the lounge, handed me a caramel macchiato with extra caramel, and said, “So you’re the one Renaud won’t shut up about. I’m Sabrina. Welcome to the circus.”

We had been friends since.

As far as I could tell, Sabrina and Nicky were Renaud’s A-squad—the two skaters the whole program orbited around. Their competition schedules dictated ice time, training priorities, everything. Théo Beaubien had been part of that once. Before whatever went down at Worlds blew it up. Sabrina didn’t volunteer the details and I wasn’t about to ask, but I could connect the dots well enough. Renaud’s golden trio had become a duo overnight and now here I was, slotted into a vacancy nobody wanted to acknowledge existed.

The pink haired wild card shoved into a system built on precision and pedigree.

I wasn’t naive enough to think Renaud had brought me in out of the goodness of his heart. The man didn’t have a heart—he had strategy. Training two skaters who’d spent years being pitted against each other by the press, one of whom was his own nephew and reigning national champion? That wasn’t mentorship. That was a chess move. He wanted the best roster heading into the Olympics and sentiment didn’t factor into the equation.

All that soft focus bullshit coaches said in interviews about fostering talent and building champions? Renaud believed it the way my father believed in family dinners—as a performance, not in practice.

Renaud only cared about one thing. A gold medal. Nicky was his golden heir but having a spare never hurt.

Despite the obvious competition Renaud was stirring up in his own ranks, Sabrina had offered me an olive branch. The only person I knew in Toronto was barely home and it wasn't like I had time to go out and make friends. If I wasn't on the ice, I was doing off-ice conditioning, stretching, weights, active recovery. Rinse and repeat.

So yeah. I was surprised when she texted me Wednesday to invite me out Friday. Even more surprised when she told me what it was for.

Sabrina: We’re going out to celebrate Nico’s return!! Club Goethe in Kensington. Friday 10pm. Wear something hot.

Sabrina: You’re coming and I won’t accept no.

His return from what, exactly? I wasn’t buying the exhaustion and dehydration story. Not for a second.

Not that Nicky would ever confide in me. We weren’t swapping secrets over morning coffee. But I wasn’t born yesterday and I’d grown up around enough money and enough media training to recognize a carefully constructed narrative when I saw one. Exhaustion and dehydration didn’t require a month long absence from competition. It didn’t require Renaud managing every detail of the re-entry like a military operation. And it sure as hell didn’t explain the way Nicky tensed up when someone asked him how he was doing.

There was a lot more going on behind the scenes and I’d bet my trust fund on it.

It didn’t change my opinion of him. If anything, it made him more real. The version of Nicky I’d been constructing in my head—the golden prince on his golden pedestal who’d never suffered a day in his charmed golden life—was suddenly a little more flesh and blood. A little less untouchable. Even my stubborn ass could admit when I’d misjudged someone.