Page 67 of About to Fall

“I've been watching you skate for a long time, Nicky.” He held my gaze. “And it pissed me off. I want to beat you at your best. Not whatever that was.”

“And the other thing? In Osaka?” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “Was that part of your strategy too? Get in my head?”

Something shifted in his expression. The smirk faded and he rubbed the back of his neck—a gesture I'd never seen from him before. Adrian Zhao, uncomfortable. It didn't compute.

“I was pissed off that night. At Théo. The way he was acting at dinner—then looking at you like he still had the right to worry about you after he—” He stopped himself. Jaw working. Started again, quieter. “He's a selfish bastard, Nicky. Stands there all concerned and protective like he didn't walk away. Like he didn't leave you behind.”

I didn't know what to say. I'd assumed his hostility toward Théo was competitive—two alpha skaters circling each other. I hadn't considered it was personal. That it was about me.

“Théo did what he needed to do for his own recovery,” I said carefully. “I don't blame him for that.”

“Of course you don't. You never blame anyone for anything. That's your whole problem.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I'm not saying he's a bad guy. I'm saying you deserved better than being left to deal with the fallout alone.”

“I don't need you to fight my battles, Adrian.”

“You're always so busy taking care of everyone else.” He met my eyes. “Someone should take care of you for once.”

The words landed somewhere soft and bruised.

“I don't need taking care of.”

“Sure you don't.” He picked up his weights again, the vulnerability shuttering closed. “And I'm a natural blond. We all tell ourselves stories, Nicky.”

We trained in silence for the next hour. Him on weights, me on conditioning drills. Every now and then I'd catch him watching me in the mirror. Every now and then he'd catch me doing the same.

Neither of us mentioned it.

When I finally grabbed my towel to leave, he called out without looking up from his lat pulldown.

“Same time tomorrow?”

I should have said no. Should have maintained the distance that made sense.

“Yeah,” I said instead. “Same time tomorrow.”

31. Adrian

Was it stupid to train with your competition? Arguably one of your greatest rivals in the sport?

The press had been writing about Fontaine vs. Zhao since we were teenagers. Two skaters who couldn't have been more different—the prince and the punk, the tradition and the rebellion, the darling and the disruptor. We'd traded national titles back and forth. Split podiums at every major international. The rivalry was so well documented it had its own hashtag (#PrinceVsPunk), its own fan edits, its own corner of skating Reddit where people debated our relative merits with the intensity of constitutional scholars.

So yeah. Probably stupid.

But I had been spending all my waking hours with Nicky for the last two weeks and the funny thing was—we hadn't even exchanged phone numbers. Everything felt ass backwards with him. We had already fucked and now we were slowly getting to know each other. Like we'd skipped to the end of a book and were now circling back to read the first chapter.

It started with the gym sessions. Then it became morning coffee at the café across from the rink—him with his boring black Americano, one sweetener, and splash of almond milk, me with whatever sweet confection I was craving that day. Then it was cool down stretches on the mats where conversation happened in the quiet moments between reps.

I told him about my parents. The empire waiting for me in Vancouver that I wanted no part of. The way my father looked through me at family dinners. The way skating was a temporary inconvenience he was waiting for me to outgrow.

And then, three days ago, he told me about his hiatus.

“I need to tell you something,” he said. “And I need you to not make a joke about it.”

“When do I ever—”

“Adrian.”

“Okay. No jokes.”