Page 38 of About to Fall

The flexibility required was insane—most male skaters couldn’t get into that position. I fucking couldn’t. It required a kind of hypermobility that no amount of training could manufacture if your body wasn’t built for it. Nicky made it look as easy as breathing.

He was exceptional.

But there was something else there too. A tension beneath the polish. A tightness in his shoulders during the connecting steps that didn’t match the looseness in his edges. I had been watching him compete for seven years now. I knew his programs—every transition, every jump entry, every place where the choreography asked him to perform emotion. He used to disappear into it. Used to become whatever the music demanded without visible effort.

Now there was a seam. A place where Nicky ended and the performance began. So small most people wouldn’t notice.

I noticed.

He finished to a standing ovation, stuffed animals and flowers raining down onto the ice. He picked up a bouquet of red roses and waved to the crowd as he skated back to the boards where Renaud waited with a water bottle and a nod that probably passed for effusive praise in that family.

I watched him towel off his neck. Take a drink. Exchange a few words with Renaud.

He didn’t look toward the tunnel. Didn’t catch me watching him like a stalker. Greyson Somebody was stepping on the ice now but I didn’t give two shits about him.

Watching Nicky skate always lit something in me. Talent recognized talent and skating alongside someone that good made me want to be better. I'd rather impress a skater like Nicky than a panel of officials who'd never landed a quad before. Who scored us from behind a table and went home to their comfortable lives. Who could never understand what it cost to stand on that ice and bare your soul.

When my name finally echoed through the arena speakers, I stepped onto the ice and became something else.

That was the thing about competition the judges' scores never captured, that the technical panels couldn't quantify—the version of me that existed on the ice was not the version that existed anywhere else. On the ice, I didn't have to explain myself. Didn't have to justify the hair or the ink or the piercings or the way I dressed.

On the ice, the only thing that mattered was what I could do.

And what I could do was undeniable.

My music was loud. Not classical. Not elegant. A remix of 3xit's “Burning Daylight”—Cam’s vocals raw and building into a chorus that hit like adrenaline. The lyrics were like an anthem for my life. Bad decisions. Toxic desire. Flying too close to the sun. You could feel the want and the recklessness in the guitar alone, in the way the bass line dropped and climbed and refused to let you catch your breath.

I opened with my quad flip—the jump that had put me on the map at seventeen—and threw it high and fast and landed with the kind of impact that rattled the boards. Not quiet. Not clean the way Nicky's landings were clean. Loud. A statement. The crowd responded immediately, a roar that washed over me and fed straight back into the next element.

Triple Axel into a step sequence that ate up half the ice, aggressive and syncopated, blades hitting the surface like punctuation. A quad-triple combination thrown in because I could, because no one was scoring this and I wanted to feel what my body was capable of when I stopped thinking about protocols and just moved. A spin sequence that started low and fast and wound up into something vertical and sharp, arms out, head back, chest heaving under the mesh.

The crowd was on their feet before my music ended.

I held my final position for three beats—arms spread, chin lifted, breathing hard, every tattoo visible under the arena lights—and then I dropped my arms and grinned. The grin was real because this was the only version of skating I had ever fully loved. Not the scores, not the politics, not the bullshit. Just me and the ice and a crowd that felt what I was putting down.

I picked up a stuffed dragon, an ode to my tattoo, and waved to the crowd. I came off the ice still buzzing, grabbed my water bottle, turned toward the boards—

And that's when I saw him.

Nicky was standing near the tunnel entrance, still in his costume, arms folded across his chest. Hair perfectly in place. Expression perfectly neutral.

But those blue eyes were blazing.

Tracking me with something hot and reluctant and quickly shuttered when he realized I'd caught him looking. He turned away.

When I walked past him in the tunnel, he was suddenly very invested in something on his phone.

“Hello, Nicky,” I said, slowing my stride. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“Nothing I haven't seen you do before.” Flat. Bored. Completely unconvincing.

“Hmm. Well, I chose that performance just for you. The costume too.” I let my eyes drop to his mouth, then back up. “Thought it was fitting. After last night.”

He flushed immediately. The kind of flush that started at his neck and climbed straight up to his ears.

“That was a lapse in judgement,” he said tightly. “Won't happen again.”

I reached out and smoothed his already perfectly smooth collar. Let my fingers brush the side of his neck for just a second. Felt his pulse jump under my touch.