Chapter Fifty-Two

brYAN

T he opening chords of “Hallelujah” sound over the speakers.

Jeff Buckley’s heavy sigh fades into otherworldly guitar reverb, each string reverberating in the vastness of the arena. The step sequence, the opening element—quad twist—letting everything go away. Skates scraping against the ice.

Side-by-side quad Salchow. I take a deep breath, keeping an eye on Katya in my peripheral vision, making sure we’re properly spaced apart and take off at the same time. One. Two. Three. Four.

Landed. But I lose my footing, tripping over my toe pick, and have to struggle to stay upright as my blade skids back. I’m about to vomit all over the ice. Oh no, oh god, oh god. I just ruined it. I just ruined everything.

A “ shit” jumps out of me, but before the panic can fully seize in my chest Katya shakes her head.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s—”

“It’s okay.”

She switches to backwards before I have a chance to say anything, and we move through the choreography as if nothing has happened—both of us have needed to work on that, which is ironic considering that’s all we seem to do off the ice. Pretend. Move on, but not really.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t even know what I’m doing, because I don’t have to think about it—it’s like we don’t even have choreography. All the movements come so easily, that I don’t need to think about it. All I need to do is look at her.

I’ve always been a more artistically-focused kind of skater, but I’ve never felt anything like this in a performance. This is on another level. Everything is dead silent except for our blades cutting into the ice, the wind whistling, and the already eerily empty track, free of excessive production, hypnotizing anyone who listens. Even before everything happened, this song was hard to listen to casually. The title really is fitting. It’s like a religious experience. Just like skating, if you do it right. And I think we’re finally doing it right.

Any half-decent pairs skater will tell you that non-verbal communication is what really matters. Why else would Lee be talking about it so endlessly for the last year? Connect. Meld. Understand. We’re ignoring the choreography, letting go, letting the music and muscle memory and whatever this is between us take over. And it finally hits me that I’ve never had someone understand me in this way, on the ice and off; without needing any words. It hits me that maybe I wasn’t lying in all those interviews.

I’ve got her in my arms at the end once we stop, me down on one knee and her laying in my arms. I can hear the audience screaming, I can feel the vibration thrumming in my chest along with my heart. But all I can see is her. And it’s not scripted, but I bury my head in the crook between her neck and shoulder and hold on for dear fucking life, she’s whispering something about not worrying about that stumble, and usually I’d be shitting my pants worrying about a stupid mistake like that but all I can feel is her. All I can hear is the chanting in my head, in my heart, going you, you, you .

I can feel it, feel her, down to my bones, in my blood, solid and coursing like the ice under our blades. We get to our feet, but I’m still holding onto her. And she’s holding me too. Even when we finally let go, and I open my eyes to everyone and everything around us, all the people, all the cameras. But then she smiles, her whole face lit up and shaking her hands in mine like a giddy little kid, and there’s nothing else. It’s only her.

It's only her.

“I love you,” I say, before I can stop myself, before I can even really realize what I’m doing, but even though I’m half-dazed and half-panicked, I can’t fully make myself want to take it back anyway. And she doesn’t say anything. She just tosses her head back and laughs, scrunching her nose up and golden hair slipping off her shoulders, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.

She pulls me in and kisses me. And I almost pass out right there.

I pull her closer, twisting her hair in my hands. The audience roars impossibly louder, but I don’t pay attention.

An eternity seems to pass, but when she pulls away it feels like it’s over way too soon. We throw our hands up together, both of us grinning as we bow, and the crowd--well, there’s no other way to put it.

Everyone literally loses their shit.

W e collapse into the kiss-and-cry, where we promptly get tackled by our coaches, who crush us with a massive bear hug.

“You guys were amazing !” Juliet practically screams, and I laugh, taking her by the arms and sitting her down on the other side of me.

“You need to breathe,” I tell her, but I’m grinning so big my face hurts.

“She’s right,” Lian says firmly, reaching for both mine and Katya’s hands. “You did it. You were perfect.”

I shake my head. It might’ve been amazing, but it wasn’t perfect. Not really. “Yeah, other than when I—”

“No. Perfect.” Lian looks me dead in the eye, nodding. “You two need to put aside the rabid perfectionism for a second and realize what you just did. That was spectacular . I’m not going to say you can’t do better technically. But what really makes a performance matter—listen, you don’t hear about people who watch a skate and say, wow, the physics of that was crazy, their edges were pristine, whatever. People don’t forget the emotion. That’s what people remember. How the skate made them feel. And, in that department, you guys just knocked it out of the park.”

Holy shit. I think that might be the first direct compliment I’ve gotten from my coach in the twelve years I’ve known her. “Jeez, Lee, you’re gonna make me cry or something.” I reach over Katya and pull Lian into a crushing hug.

“Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”

I pull away, and surprise is etched onto her face for a second before she smiles. Well, it’s close-lipped, and barely anything at all, but it’s a smile , goddamnit, and I finally cracked the stone that is Lian Chen. It only took over a decade of me driving her bananas.

But the voice of the announcer over the loudspeaker cuts through the adrenaline and the chattering of the audience. “The scores for Ekaterina Andreyeva and Bryan Young, from the Placid Valley Figure Skating Club.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Katya blurts, and I lace our fingers together.

“Please not on live television, Taylor and Marissa would have a field day,” I reply half-jokingly, even though I’m dangerously close to puking, too. The only thing keeping me from emptying my stomach in front of the American public is the thought of Taylor Davis’s stupid satisfied smirk.

Oh, god. The old nausea is swinging with full force. It’s back to the days of sitting here in the kiss-and-cry, anxiously waiting for what feels like an eternity for a bunch of old people to put out a couple of numbers that genuinely have the power to make or break your career. It makes you want to scream at the poor technician that has to run the numbers and make sure all the calculations are right. Like, how long does it take to punch some buttons?

Part of me almost doesn’t want to get the scores back. Because, for once, there’s a chance that it might be something just as incredible as we think it is. And that’s absolutely terrifying. Because it also means that there’s a lot of room for a letdown.

Especially because of that stumble. Jesus . Of all the stupid things. Of all the days I could have done all the stupid things on, it had to be today? I swear to god, if we get knocked back down to second because I tripped over my damn toe pick like a total idiot, I’m going to lose my mind.

I’m also going to lose my mind if we have to wait any longer. “Why the hell is this taking so long,” I hiss, bouncing my leg uncontrollably.

Katya puts her free hand on my thigh to get me to stop. Breathe , she mouths, even though I know she’s probably just as scared as I am. That alone brings me a wave of relief. Katya’s here. I’m here. We’re going to be fine.

“Uh, apologies for the interruption, but the technical panel is having some difficulties—”

The announcement is cut off by the collective groan of thousands of people.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say, dropping my head in my hands, shaking it miserably.

But then Katya starts laughing.

I squint at her to make sure I’m not in some kind of stress-induced fever dream. “Are you in hysterics or something?”

“No—I just—” She dissolves into giggles again, hiccupping once before leaning into my shoulder, putting a hand on my cheek to turn me towards her, until all I can see is silver and gold and that little smile of hers that I think I’d kill for. “It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.”

The nerves melt away, the fear quieting. Because I know she’s right. No matter what the scores say, we just did something that—well, I can’t exactly describe it. There aren’t really any words for when you finally achieve the thing you’ve been wanting for so long, only it wasn’t the thing you thought you wanted.

Like you got the thing you didn’t know you needed. Like you could almost be whole.

I smile back. “Yeah.”

“It seems the system is back up, thank you for your patience,” the announcer says, the relief evident in his voice, and I’d laugh if I wasn’t immediately seized with hyperfocus. The only thing I can see right now is the empty box where the numbers are milliseconds away from popping up into. All I can hear is my pounding heartbeat. All I can feel is Katya’s hand in mine.

I might go into cardiac arrest before I found out if we’ve actually won or not.

“The scores for Andreyeva and Young are. For the free program:”

The numbers pop into the box.

I can hear the screaming before I’ve even processed the value.

“One hundred and seventy-three point five-four points, with an overall score of—” yells out the announcer, almost incomprehensible over the amount of noise from the crowd.

Oh. My. God.

“—256.33 points!”

“Oh my god, ” I yell at the top of my lungs, and Katya just shrieks, jumping onto me, and I immediately scoop her up into my arms, swinging her around with no regard for Lian or Juliet, who let out protests as we both nearly crash into them.

“With a new world record for the pairs free program and total score, your National Champions, Ekaterina Andreyeva and Bryan Young!”

The audience bursts into a fresh wave of yelling and applause, and I’m dizzy.

We did it. We actually did it.

“This is insane,” Katya says, over and over, and I plant a kiss on her forehead, grinning uncontrollably.

“We just set a world fucking record, sunshine.”

“Language, Bryan,” Lee scolds, but she’s smiling too.

I put Katya down, then pull our coaches into a bear hug that almost knocks Juliet off the bench.

“We couldn’t have done this without you,” Katya tells them, and Lian pats her on the arm, standing up and collecting all our jackets.

“Katya, honey, I didn’t do anything. You and Mr. Golden Retriever over here deserve all the credit.” Lian reaches for both of us. “I’m so proud of you two. I knew you could do it.”

Yeah, okay, maybe I’m crying.

“Only you two would have your first real kiss on live television,” Ollie says once we get out of the kiss-and-cry and where the rest of our group is waiting for us.

He’s shaking his head, doing a pretty bad job at pretending to be disdainful considering he’s got the Oliver Kwan Shit-Eating Grin on his face. “You absolute dog , Young. What would your mother say?”

“Dude, I’m not even listening to you right now,” I say, my own grin stretching impossibly bigger. I haven’t been able to stop smiling for the last hour. This is the best day of my life. And not because of the gold, but because I’m here at all. Because she’s here at all.

We made it, both of us. Together.