Chapter 27

Chapter 27

“O ur final skaters, from the United States of America: Katarina Shaw and Garrett Lin!”

Hand in hand, Garrett and I glided to the center of the ice. We hadn’t watched Yelena and Nikita’s free dance, but based on the collective gasp the crowd in the Luzhniki Palace of Sports had let out halfway through their Swan Lake program, I knew our rivals had made at least one obvious mistake.

Garrett and I had taken the lead after our flawless Midnight Blues compulsory, and we’d extended it with a season’s best performance of our energetic original dance to selections from the musical 42nd Street. Now all that stood between us and our first world title was the four minutes of the free dance. Skate clean, and we’d be heading into the upcoming Olympic season as reigning world champions.

Our free was set to a Tchaikovsky piece too: his symphony inspired by the Shakespeare play The Tempest. This was Sheila’s idea of subtle psychological warfare: showing up our competition by outskating them to music by the same composer (and a Russian legend, no less).

Garrett’s costume was dyed with a delicate oceanic swirl, while mine had bedazzled lightning cutting across the chest. We were meant to be the sea and the storm, colliding in a passionate clash of raw, natural power. The conceptual elements seemed a bit over the top to me. But in comparison, Volkova and Zolotov’s traditional balletic choreography seemed downright tired. We’d already bested them at the Grand Prix Final in Beijing.

And our other biggest rivals were already out of the running. I hadn’t spoken to Bella since the night before, when she and Zack officially withdrew after a lackluster original dance that left him limping off the ice. They’d already had to simplify their programs significantly to accommodate his worsening knee issues; even if they had been able to finish the competition, they wouldn’t have medaled. He was scheduled for knee surgery after Worlds, and his doctor thought he should be able to return to the ice by the fall. But there was no guarantee.

I assumed my starting position: embracing Garrett, my head tilted to rest on his shoulder. After three seasons of skating together, I still felt as if I barely knew Garrett Lin, but I knew this: he was petrified when we took the ice, every time. From a distance, he came across as serene and confident, but close up I could smell his sweat, feel his quickened pulse against my temple. Somehow his panic made me calmer, as if we were a pendulum swinging into stillness.

I took a deep breath, waiting for the first note of the sedate string and brass melody that underscored our opening choreographic sequence.

That’s when I saw him.

He stood on the steps leading up into the stands, to the left of the judges’ table. He wore a black wool coat, and his dark hair was shaved close to his scalp.

He looked entirely different from the Heath Rocha I’d known and loved. And yet recognition struck my heart like a bell.

“What’s wrong?” Garrett whispered. Without realizing it, I’d lifted my head, drawing my body bowstring-taut in his arms.

But it was too late to explain. Our music started, and we were off—a beat too late, but Garrett skillfully caught us up without missing a step.

Skating with Heath, I always felt right on the edge of control, swept away. With Garrett, everything was precise. Correct. Controlled. All the things that came so naturally with Heath had to be manufactured. I had to remind myself to smile, to gaze into Garrett’s eyes, to reach for him at the right moments, with the right amount of passion and yearning. It became part of the choreography, one more thing to learn along with the steps and spins and lifts.

The artifice had bothered me initially. That day, though, I was grateful for it. By the time we reached our first set of twizzles—coinciding with the shower of woodwind flourishes that signaled the approaching musical storm—muscle memory had taken over, and I was performing impeccably as ever.

As I exited the final spin, though, I couldn’t help sneaking another look at the steps.

He was gone.

I told myself I was imagining things. Letting my nerves get the better of me. I’d stopped searching for Heath years before—after the authorities told me he was an adult who had left of his own volition and so couldn’t be considered a missing person, after the twins’ skating-world contacts turned up zero hints as to his whereabouts, after Sheila gave me a talking to about how I needed to let it go and focus on the present, because my personal preoccupations had no place on the ice with her son.

I’d stopped searching, but I’d never stopped looking. How many times over the past three years had I worked myself up with the worry that Heath would appear in the stands at a competition? How many times had I mistaken a dark-haired stranger for him—walking in city crowds, or waiting in line to board a plane or buy a coffee?

That’s all this was. Another phantom, conjured by my anger and heartbreak and the unspeakable fear that Heath was truly gone for good.

I didn’t have time for fear. I had a title to win. So I threw myself into the dance, picking up speed as Tchaikovsky’s tempest intensified with a thunderous timpani roll. As we reached the climax of the piece, turbulent strings and cymbals crashing like waves against rocks, Garrett swung me up into our most dramatic lift. I balanced with a single skate against his leg and spread my arms wide like a sorceress casting a spell, skirt whipping behind me as we shot across the ice with so much power it was as if we’d created our own gale, until—

There he was again. Closer now, watching from right behind the boards.

Heath. It couldn’t be. But it was.

My leg started to quake. Garrett dug his fingers in, trying to save the lift. As I was about to come crashing down, he improvised, catching me in his arms and bouncing me off his hip like we were doing a clumsy Lindy Hop. His quick thinking saved us from a fall, but it was ugly and took far too long.

I tried to do the math in my head, figure out what my error had cost us. The new rules meant we’d be docked at least a point for going over the time limit on our lift. Our awkward dismount position would cost us even more. We had a decent lead over the Russians, but any further mistakes, and it might not be enough.

I barely remember skating the rest of the program. My eyes were open, but all I could see was Heath, that hateful expression under his harsh new haircut. The next thing I knew, the crowd was cheering, and Garrett was hugging me.

As we made our way to the kiss and cry, Garrett scooped up one of the stuffed animals tossed onto the ice—a puppy with shaggy golden fur—and handed it to me. I held it in my lap as we awaited our scores, clutching its plush throat like I was trying to throttle it.

When our scores flashed on the monitor, I was still scanning the stands for Heath. I didn’t realize we’d won until Garrett lifted me off my feet with a victorious whoop. Sheila wrapped her arms around both of us, beaming like she’d gotten the gold herself.

I’m world champion was my first dazed thought.

My second was: Bella is going to hate me.

Garrett and I were hustled straight from the kiss and cry to a flurry of interviews—microphones and cameras stuck in our faces, overlapping voices asking questions in a dizzying array of languages. He did most of the talking, while I held fast to his arm.

Smile, I kept repeating to myself. This is the best day of your life.

I thought perhaps it would sink in once the medal was around my neck. But even as I waved to the crowd from the top step of the podium, I felt numb. As the national anthem played, I rested one hand over my heart and the other over the medal, trying to ground myself through deep breaths and the cool sensation of the gold against my palm.

Not real gold, only plated silver. Scratch it hard enough, the finish would come right off.

Tears glittered in Garrett’s eyes as he sang along to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” My lips moved too, but no sound came out.

Then, there he was again. Under the flag, where he could be sure I would see him. Nearly everything about Heath had changed since three years earlier in Nagano, but his eyes—they were the same. Heavy-lidded, long-lashed, so dark the irises blended into the pupils. So intense, they held me in place sure as a hand around my throat. I would have recognized those eyes anywhere.

We were supposed to stay on the podium for official photos, and then take our lap around the rink. Medal ceremonies had become so routine, I knew the procedure.

But as soon as the anthem ended, I pressed my bouquet into Garrett’s hands. He gave me a bewildered look, but I was already stepping off the gold medal platform, heading for the exit.

I thought I’d lost Heath. When I reached the lobby, though, I spotted the back of his dark coat as he pushed through the glass doors leading to the parking lot. I ran after him as fast as I could still wearing my skates. I hadn’t even stopped to grab my guards; the blades would be ruined. I had custom ones now, like Bella’s and Garrett’s, with my name engraved in cursive.

The weather had been arctic all week, and it was snowing—white eddies swirling across the pavement, splinters of ice stinging my eyes. My blood had thinned after so many years in Los Angeles, but I hardly noticed the chill. I held my breath as I scanned the lot, from the dormant fountain in the center to the stand of cedar trees marking the edge. Heath had disappeared.

If he’d even been there in the first place.

“Kat!” Garrett caught up with me. “What are you—”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sheila was only a few steps behind her son, and while he seemed genuinely concerned about my erratic behavior, she was furious.

“Give her a minute,” Garrett said.

Sheila turned her glare on him. He shrunk from her, looking like a timid little boy instead of a twenty-year-old champion athlete.

“I’m sorry.” My legs shook, rocking on the curved blades like I stood on the deck of a pitching ship. I’d been so sure it was him, but I was already doubting myself. “I—”

“You’re a world champion now,” Sheila snapped. “So act like it.”

She turned on her heel and strode back inside.

“Come on.” Garrett draped his Team USA jacket around my shoulders. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”

I’d sacrificed so much for this moment. So much I could never get back, even if I wanted to. And it had all been worth it, hadn’t it? Garrett and I were world champions. We would be the gold medal favorites at the next Olympics.

So act like it.