Page 5 of About to Fall

While I was in rehab, my uncle had recruited my biggest rival to train under the same roof. And he hadn’t even bothered to tell me.

“Are you okay?”

It was only then I realized I had gone very still and quiet. It was something my therapist had pointed out—that my distress response was inward rather than outward, that I had a tendency to go quiet and contained in exactly the moments I should probably be saying something out loud. I was still working on it.

“I'm fine,” I said, reflexively. The anger was a living thing in my chest now, coiled and vicious, but my voice came out perfectly level. Perfectly controlled. “I’m sorry to hear about Mrs. Allen.”

“Yeah, fuck cancer,” he agreed. “They caught it early so they're optimistic.”

“That’s good. Early detection makes a huge difference.” Even furious, I couldn’t help being polite. “So now you're here. Training with Coach Renaud,” I ended dumbly.

He snorted. “You call your uncle Coach? Is it a secret? Even I know he's your uncle and I don't know shit about you except your ranking.”

“It's a sign of respect.”

“Clearly it's not a two way street.”

The words hit like a physical blow. My jaw clenched so hard I felt it in my molars. Heat crawled up my neck, across my face. Adrian always did this—always found the exact nerve and pressed down hard, always knew exactly what to say to make me feel like a fool for trying so hard to do everything right.

I stiffened. My voice came out colder than I intended, which was saying something. “I need to lace up and you should get back to practice. I don't know what kind of program Coach Allen ran but Coach Renaud is very structured.”

“Whatever you say, Prince Nicky.” He flicked off his skate guards and stepped back onto the ice without a backward glance.

Prince Nicky. As if the press calling me the golden prince of figure skating wasn't bad enough, Adrian had to go and create his own version. I hated both—hated the golden prince because it was a crown I'd never asked to wear, hated Prince Nicky even more because it was patronizing.

My heart was hammering as I laced up my skates—but my hands were steady now. The panic was gone, completely obliterated by rage. Anger had a way of doing that. Making everything simple. Making everything clear. Making it possible to move forward when fear would have frozen me in place.

The thing was, it made sense. Objectively, if I removed myself from the equation entirely and looked at it from Coach Renaud's perspective, it made complete sense. Adrian was 23, in his second Olympic cycle, chasing a medal he'd come close enough to taste in the last Games. He was definitely a top contender to be standing on the Olympic podium come February. Of course Renaud wanted him.

There were three of us who had been grouped together in the skating press for years now—the inevitable shorthand of a generation. Théo Beaubien, who had been my boyfriend and then my loss and then my lesson. Adrian Zhao, who had been my measuring stick and then my standard and then my nemesis. And me, Nico Fontaine, the golden prince with an Olympic legacy to maintain. My uncle was an Olympic gold medallist and had trained a dozen skaters that had medalled though none had matched the gold he had earned himself.

Théo had won Nationals two years ago. Adrian the year before that. I had won last year, my first national title, the one that was supposed to announce that I had arrived. Théo was in Chicago now under Coach Miller, quietly recovering from his own traumatic downfall. Adrian had trained his entire career under Coach Allen in Vancouver, a pairing so established it had seemed permanent.

Nothing was permanent, apparently.

I completed a lap and let myself look back across the ice at my uncle who was standing at the boards talking to Adrian now, one hand gesturing toward the far end of the rink in the way he did when he was mapping out a program. My uncle who had been coaching me since I was old enough to skate. My uncle whose name was connected to my career in ways I couldn't fully separate from my own effort. My uncle who had held the secrets of what happened with Théo and me, managing the press narrative, and preparing for the Olympic season. Who somehow found time to recruit Adrian Zhao to his roster of Olympic calibre skaters.

Was his legacy more important than blood?

I didn't let myself answer that. Not here, not on the ice, not with Adrian twenty metres away and the Olympic clock loudly ticking in the background.

4. Nico

I had not been off the ice this long since a hamstring strain two years ago. Same amount of time away from skating but an entirely different kind of recovery. The hamstring had been straightforward. Rest, physio, gradual return, back to full strength within a week of resuming training. My body had known what to do because the problem had been purely physical.

This time, the problem was everything else.

The first hour back had been about finding my edges again, relearning the ice the way you relearn a language after time away—the vocabulary still there, the fluency slightly dulled. With the hamstring, I’d come back hungry. Impatient. Counting the minutes until I could push harder. This time I was tentative in a way I barely recognized. Overthinking every crossover. Second guessing the timing on my landings. Carrying tension in my shoulders that had nothing to do with muscle memory and everything to do with the fact that the last time I’d pushed myself too hard, I’d ended up on a bathroom floor.

My body remembered the ice. My mind wasn’t sure it trusted it anymore.

And then there was Adrian skating around the far end of the rink like he owned it, which was not helping my concentration.

He had moved from warm up laps to actual practice and somewhere in between he had found Sabrina. I recognized her from across the ice before I could see her face—her red hair catching the light when she moved. One of the best female skaters Canada had produced in a decade, heading into her second Olympics, and my friend. Mine. I’d known her since junior high.

Adrian was saying something to her and I couldn’t hear it from here. Whatever it was made her laugh—hand coming up to cover her mouth, shoulders shaking with it. She shoved him on the arm the way she did when something was genuinely funny, not just polite funny, and he grinned at her like they’d known each other for years instead of what couldn’t have been more than two weeks.

Of course he had already found someone to charm. He seemed to save all of his aggravating traits exclusively for me.