Page 13 of Hate You Most

I was busy practicing how to beat you next month. Your triple lutz was better than mine, but you need to add more complexity into your combinations to stand a chance.

Dakota's answer came twenty minutes later.

Sanchez

Only a month, huh? Good. I'd hate for you to get too comfortable on top of the podium

Viktoriya found herself smiling at her phone. God, she really hated Dakota Sanchez.

CHAPTER FOUR

October 6th, 2011.

— ISU Junior Grand Prix, Milano, Italy.

The ice felt wrong under her blades. That was the only concrete explanation Viktoriya could come up with as to why everything was going so wrong.

Her body locked into the familiar rhythm of the program as her music started. It was classical with no lyrics. The first jump landed clean. The second followed—tight, but she landed it. The crowd reacted, too early and too loudly. She tried her best to tune it out.

She built speed for the triple lutz.

The entry was right, but Viktoriya was in the air when she knew that her body had tilted. Just slightly.

She came down on the blade wrong, the edge catching against the ice. Her free foot hit the ice, then her hand, momentum pulling her forward before she could save it.

The sound of her side slamming into the ice echoed through the enormous rink and a collective gasp rippled through the arena.

Viktoriya knew she should’ve changed that triple lutz to a double, but the double would not be enough—not with Dakota, not when the margins between them were shrinking with every competition. She’d almost perfected a triple lutz in practice, but it hadn't been enough.

Viktoriya pushed herself upright immediately. Her vision blurred at the edges as she steadied herself on the ice again. She drew in a sharp and uneven breath as her jaw clenched. Heat flooded to her cheeks. Viktoriya was sure the judges were staring at her from across the ice, but she didn't look at them or the crowd.

The rest of the program blurred together. Muscle memory carried her through the final elements, but the damage was already done. Even though she had landed every other jump, the fall had just cost her the gold medal.

She got off the ice the moment her music stopped playing. She was still seventeen, and Russia had already set their minds on Volkova being the next figure skating star—a path that would end with her winning gold at the 2014 Olympics.

That wasn't happening if she kept skating like that.

After the kiss and cry, after she'd sat through her scores with a neutral expression and pretended that everything was still fine, Viktoriya headed toward the backstage area.

Her coach walked over to her with hurried and almost frantic steps. “Volkova, what the hell was that?” He asked in Russian. Her coach had known and taught Viktoriya since the moment she could stand on her own two feet. He was a good man, with one hell of a temper. Before coaching her, he was a coach for Russia's junior hockey league. Over time he slowly grew tired of the violence and shit talking involved in the sport and moved to figure skating.

She tugged at her jacket sleeve, hands steady despite the way her pulse was still racing under her skin. “I fell on the Lutz,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “I know.”

“That was a triple,” he snapped and lowered his voice as a group of skaters passed them in the hallway. “You shouldn't have done it if you weren't one hundred percent certain you could land it.”

“I didn’t intend to.”

He scoffed. “Intent doesn’t matter. The judges don’t care what you meant to do, they only care about what you did.” He gestured sharply back toward the rink. “You gave them a fall and you lost.”

Viktoriya stopped then.

Slowly, she turned to face him. Her expression was composed, but something deeper had settled behind her eyes. “Don’t talk to me like I don’t understand what just happened. I know perfectly well that I made a mistake.”

His voice dropped, but it didn’t soften. “You cannot afford mistakes like that anymore. Not with this rivalry between you and Dakota. Not when everyone is already waiting for you to slip.”

They stood close in the narrow corridor, the sounds of the arena bleeding through the walls—applause, music.

Her coach exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “You know your parents aren’t here,” he said, more quietly now. “You know that means all eyes are on you.”