홈 / Romance / SHATTERED ICE:One rink, bound by betrayal / 챕터 191 - 챕터 200

SHATTERED ICE:One rink, bound by betrayal 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 191 - 챕터 200

205 챕터

191.

Samantha's POVAnthony looked at his hands briefly. "I wrote that she pays attention to things most people miss and then acts like she didn't notice. So the other person doesn't feel watched." A pause. "I wrote that she's harder on herself than she is on anyone around her. And that she hides it well enough that I didn't see it for the first two months.""What else?"His voice was even. "I wrote that she's braver than she thinks she is. Not in the way people mean when they say it as a compliment. In the actual working sense. She does the thing that scares her and she does it before she's ready and it works more often than it should."The rink was very quiet."I also wrote," he said, slower now, "that she makes it easier to be in a room. I don't have a more precise way to say that."Samantha looked at him. He was looking at the ice.She looked away.Vera was quiet for a moment. She set the folder on the bench beside her and looked at both of them."Can I tell you what I expected?" she

192

Samantha's POVThe flight to Vancouver was two hours and forty minutes.Samantha spent the first hour reviewing the program notes on her tablet, not because she needed to, she had the program memorized down to the breath marks, but because having something in her hands helped. The second hour she spent looking out the window at the flat white layer of clouds below them and trying not to calculate how many days were left.Seven. Seven days to the qualifier.Anthony was across the aisle and one row ahead. She could see the back of his head and the edge of his jaw when he turned slightly. He had slept for the first forty minutes, which she knew because Isaac had pointed it out with something close to wonder."He never sleeps on planes," Isaac had said quietly."Maybe he's tired," Samantha had said."Anthony doesn't get tired," Isaac said. "He just gets quieter."She had looked at the back of Anthony's head for a moment after that. Then she had gone back to her program notes.Vera sat in

193.

Samantha's POV Samantha watched them run the sequence twice. The stumble happened both times. The quality underneath it happened both times too.She didn't say anything.She glanced sideways at Anthony.He was watching the Canadian pair. Not the Russian pair. He had turned his attention to them two minutes ago and hadn't moved it since.He felt her looking and glanced over."The Russians are better technically," she said, keeping her voice low."Yes," he said."But."He looked back at the ice. "But you can't look away from those two.""No," she said. "You can't."They watched in silence for another minute. The Canadian woman stumbled again on the same exit and her partner caught her elbow without breaking his movement, a small, reflexive steadying that the woman responded to by adjusting her weight and continuing. They hadn't stopped. They hadn't looked at each other to check. It had just happened, two bodies with a shared language that operated below the level of thought."That's w

194

Samantha's POVSamantha heard him before she saw him.She was walking back from the vending machine at the end of the athlete corridor, water bottle in one hand, earphones in the other, not yet in, which was the mistake. She always put them in before she left the room. Today she had forgotten.She heard the laugh first.It was a specific laugh. Not loud, not obnoxious, calibrated to carry just far enough. Logan Pierre had always known exactly how much space to take up in a room. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him when they were paired together at sixteen. She had mistaken it for confidence back then.She turned the corner and saw him.He was standing with two other coaches near the bulletin board where the practice schedule was posted. He was in the Team USA jacket, the same deep navy she had worn for four years, and he was holding a coffee cup and gesturing at something on the schedule with the ease of a man who believed every room he entered had been waiting

195.

Samantha's POV "I'm not saying he's a bad person," Logan said, and the gentleness in his voice was the worst part. "I'm saying that when it comes down to it, when he has to make a call that's about him, he makes it. Every time." He looked at her with an expression that was almost kind. "He's going to choose himself, Samantha. That's just who he is. And you're going to be standing there again holding the same thing you were holding after Nationals."The corridor was quiet. Somewhere down the hall a door opened and closed.She looked at Logan for a long moment.She thought about what she wanted to say. She thought about the things that were true and the things that were complicated and the things she did not owe this man under any circumstances."Okay," she said.He blinked. "Okay?""I heard you," she said. "Okay."She turned and walked away.She didn't look back. She kept her pace even all the way down the corridor and around the corner and through the door to the stairwell and up on

196

Samantha's POVThe knock came at eleven seventeen.Samantha knew the time because she had been watching it. Not intentionally. She wasn't the kind of person who stared at clocks waiting for something to happen. But the room had been too quiet for too long and her eyes had drifted to the bedside display more times than she could count, each time registering the number without meaning to.Eleven seventeen.She was sitting on the bed with her back against the headboard and her knees pulled up, the program notes open on the tablet in her lap. She had read the same paragraph four times. The words were going in and dissolving before they meant anything.When the knock came she set the tablet aside and sat still for a second.She already knew it was him. She didn't examine how she knew. She just did.She got up and opened the door.Anthony was in a grey t-shirt and dark sweatpants, no jacket, which meant he had walked down the hall from his room without planning to stay long. His hair was s

197

Samantha's POV"Dogs with long ears," she said. "They look like they're listening to everything. I find that comforting."He was quiet for a moment and she could hear that he was almost smiling. "Okay," he said."What about you," she said. "What does your life look like after this."He took a longer time to answer. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, which was something she had noticed he did when he was actually thinking rather than just pausing."Smaller," he said finally. "I want it smaller. Not less. Just." He stopped. "I've spent fifteen years performing for people I've never met in arenas I forget as soon as I leave them. I want to know where I am when I wake up. I want a place that's actually mine." A pause. "I want to coach eventually. Not yet. But eventually. I want to give something back to the thing instead of just taking from it.""You'd be a good coach," she said.He looked at her. "Why.""Because you see things other people miss," she said. "And you don't waste words

198

Samantha's POVSamantha was already awake when her alarm went off.She had been lying in the dark for about twenty minutes, eyes open, listening to the city outside the window doing its early morning things. Distant traffic. A door somewhere in the hotel closing. The specific silence of a building full of people pretending to sleep.She turned the alarm off before it finished its first cycle and sat up.---They had agreed to meet in the lobby at seven. Vera wanted them at the rink by seven thirty for a light warm up, no full runs, no pressure, just movement and music and the body remembering what it already knew.Samantha was downstairs at six fifty eight.Anthony was already there.He was standing near the window that looked out onto the street, his bag at his feet, a coffee cup in his hand. He was in his Team USA warm up jacket and dark training pants and he was looking at the street outside with an expression she had learned to read over months of watching him.He was doing his mo

199

Samantha's POVThe first lift was strong. His hands found her waist with the accuracy of a man who had memorized the exact coordinates of that position, adjusted slightly right as she had changed her approach angle, and she felt the correction happen in his grip without a beat of hesitation. She rose, rotated, descended.The second lift, clean.The connecting steps, sharp.Then the third lift approach and she felt it a half count before it happened, a slight unevenness in the ice surface under his blade, just enough to shift his weight a fraction on the last step. His right hand caught her waist solidly but the left came in half a beat late and she was already rising and the apex of the lift was good but the descent angle was off by just enough.She came down on her left blade and her knee bent sharply to absorb the landing and for one full second she was on the edge of losing it, her right foot coming down fast, her body making a hundred small corrections simultaneously.She heard t

200

Samantha's POVThe arena they had been given for dress rehearsal was three blocks from the Grand Prix venue.It was a smaller building, older, with boards that had been repainted too many times and seats that were mostly empty except for a handful of federation officials and two judges who had been approved to observe the run. Not score. Just watch. Vera had been clear about the distinction when she told them."They are not scoring you today," she had said at breakfast. "They are simply present. Do not perform for them. Perform for the program."Samantha had nodded.She had slept well, which surprised her. She had expected the night before dress rehearsal to be the kind of night that ate itself, hours of lying awake running through elements and worst case scenarios. Instead she had gone under quickly and stayed there and woken up feeling something close to ready.That feeling lasted until approximately nine forty-three in the morning.---The first sign was the music.They were three

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