Page 4 of About to Fall

I'd been off the ice for a little over a month. Almost a week in the hospital after my mother found me on the bathroom floor—stomach pumped, hooked up to an IV, and under observation.

Then a month at a residential facility in Aurora. A place where I learned to say out loud what I had done and, harder still, why. The public got a different story—exhaustion and dehydration, Nico Fontaine taking a much needed rest ahead of the Olympic push—a fiction so tidy I almost envied it. After that, a final week to transition back to the real world, whatever that meant for someone whose real world was a rink and a coach and a country's expectations.

My therapists had gently suggested I ease back in. Take it slow. Take time to heal.

The Olympic window did not care about my timeline.

I had worked too hard, given up too much, swallowed too many things whole and smiled through the wreckage, to let one night cost me my shot at gold. I was 21 years old and this was supposed to be my moment. I was not going to let a month in Aurora and a bottle of sleeping pills take that from me.

But this. This I had not factored in.

Even though Coach Renaud was my uncle—and yes, he required me to call him Coach at the rink, a boundary he had enforced since I was a child and one I had never once tested—he had not said a single word to me about Adrian fucking Zhao being in Toronto.

Why was he here? In my rink, on my ice, in my peripheral vision.

There was only one plausible explanation for his presence but my mind refused to accept it. There had to be a mistake.

On the ice, Adrian completed a lazy back crossover and glanced toward the tunnel. I stepped back into the shadows on instinct, which was humiliating, and also too late.

His eyes—dark, annoyingly sharp—found me lurking in the shadows like a creeper.

He didn't wave. Didn't smile. Just looked at me for a long, unhurried moment with an expression I couldn't read from here and didn't particularly want to.

Then he turned away and kept skating.

I stood there in the tunnel, typing and deleting several texts before settling on: Coach Renaud, we need to talk. I’ll come by the office after practice.

My chest felt tight. That familiar constriction wrapping around my ribs, making each breath feel shallow and insufficient. My hands were trembling slightly as I stuffed my phone into the pocket of my skate bag.

When I looked up, Adrian had made his way over to me, skate guards over his blades. He was already taller than me but the skates made him significantly taller which only irritated me further.

“Hello, Nicky.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I was wondering when I would see you.”

There was genuine curiosity in it—not just the usual provocation. His eyes moved over me quickly, cataloguing, assessing. I probably looked different from the last time he'd seen me. Thinner. Paler. With darker circles under my eyes.

“Zhao.” I kept my voice flat. Neutral. He was the only person who ever called me Nicky and today I wasn't going to let it bother me. A month of therapy and I could do neutral. Or at least fake it.

He quirked an eyebrow expectantly. “No 'nice to see you' or ‘how have you been’? I'm wounded.” His gaze lingered a beat too long. “You've been off the grid. Injury?”

I ignored his question. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?”

The dismissiveness in his tone cut through the panic spiral like a hot knife. I looked at him standing there with his pink hair and piercings, loose and unbothered like he belonged here. Like this was his rink. “It looks like you're warming up.”

“Perceptive,” he replied dryly, tilting his head slightly. “Seriously though—where've you been? You missed the Maple Leaf Classic. Renaud gave some bullshit answer about rest and recovery but you don't strike me as someone who rests voluntarily.”

“I don't owe you an explanation.”

“No, you don't.” Something shifted in his expression—the smirk softening which was somehow worse. “But it seems like your uncle owes you one. He really didn't tell you?”

The dread turned molten. Heat flooded up through me—burning through the panic until all that was left was anger. My hands stopped shaking.

I had been gone for less than six weeks. I had come back this morning determined to pick up exactly where I left off—same schedule, same goals, same Nico.

I knew the answer before I even asked. “Didn’t tell me what?”

Adrian had the decency not to gloat for once in his life. “Well, this is awkward. Coach Allen's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. He retired to take care of her. I needed an Olympic level replacement and there are limited options.” A small shrug, like it was the most obvious choice. “I moved here two weeks ago.”