Chapter 44

Chapter 44

“Your hair.” That was the first thing Bella said when she saw me.

A few weeks before, I’d tried to hack off the remaining blond with a pair of dull kitchen shears. I made such a mess of it, Heath insisted on taking me into town for a proper haircut—the only time I’d left the property during our time in seclusion, aside from doctor’s appointments. The hairdresser had tamed it into a pixie cut, the shortest style I’d ever had.

“It suits you,” Bella added. It could have been a compliment or an insult.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“We tried to call,” she said. Garrett stayed silent, shifting his weight back and forth, weatherworn planks creaking under his polished shoes. “We were worried about you.”

Heath had gotten the house’s phone service restored along with the other utilities, but after a week of nonstop phone calls from the press, we’d ripped the cable from the wall. My cellphone was in a drawer somewhere, drained of power, and Heath still didn’t own one.

“We’re fine,” Heath said. He had his arm lashed across me. Protective.

I pushed past him, approaching the twins. “Really, you were worried? So worried, you didn’t bother coming to see me in the hospital?”

Garrett finally spoke up. “We did come to see you.” His voice sounded hoarse, like he hadn’t used it in days.

“What?” I looked at Heath. His jaw was set in a hard line.

“We both came,” Bella said. “We brought you flowers and everything.” She nodded in Heath’s direction. “ He said you didn’t want to see us.”

“He was right. I didn’t.”

Heath should have given me the choice, though, instead of making it for me. At the very least, he should have let me know later on about their visit.

I wondered how I would have reacted if I’d seen Bella that night. Maybe I would have screamed in her face and thrown the flowers in the trash. Maybe I would have forgiven her.

I couldn’t know for certain whether she’d collided with me on purpose, but my gut told me she hadn’t. Bella Lin rarely intended to hurt anyone. She just didn’t care if she did.

“Can we talk?” Bella asked.

“We’re talking right now.”

She shot a sharp look at Heath. “Alone?”

I suggested taking a walk. Heath and Garrett stayed behind on the porch. “Be nice,” I whispered in Heath’s ear before heading toward the lake. He made a grunting sound that wasn’t exactly agreement, but wasn’t refusal either.

Bella struggled to keep up with my stride across the uneven ground, heels sinking into the soft earth. Her shoes would be ruined. I hoped so anyway.

At the end of the lawn, I clambered onto one of the limestone slabs overlooking the shoreline. Bella gingerly took a seat beside me, on the edge of the rock, tilting her weight onto one hip so the smallest possible part of her made contact.

We both stared out at the horizon. Stratus clouds had blown in to cover the sun, and a hint of winter sharpened the edges of the air again. The water was a silvered mirror.

“I’m really sorry, Kat,” Bella said.

I turned to face her. “So you did do it on purpose.”

“That’s not what I said.” She swiveled toward me too. The stone left a smear of dirt on her designer coat. “I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“And you’re sorry you didn’t get to go to the Games.”

“Did you watch?” she asked.

I shook my head. Heath and I hadn’t so much as spoken about it. I didn’t even know who had won the gold.

Bella tugged the coat tighter. “Mom made us.”

Rubbing her children’s faces in their failure, like puppies who’d soiled the carpet. Sounded like Sheila Lin.

“How did Ellis and Josie do?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

I winced. “And the Russians?”

“Gold for Yakovlevna and Yakovlev,” she said. “They won the world title last week too, even though Polina’s twizzles were a total mess.”

Garrett and I had competed against the second-tier Russian couple plenty of times, and they’d never beaten us. They only won those medals because we weren’t there.

But it didn’t matter. They were in the record books, and we were a cautionary tale.

The wind blew harder, colder, heaving water at the base of the rocks. When Bella spoke again, her voice was barely audible above the waves.

“Your friendship means so much to me, Kat.”

“More than winning?” I asked.

I just wanted to see if she would lie.

Bella met my eyes without hesitation. “Of course not. You want to know why I’m here? Because it’s about damn time you stopped playing house and feeling sorry for yourself.”

There she was—my cutthroat, ambitious best friend.

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

“Who says I’m coming back?”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Heath doesn’t want to.”

He hadn’t gone that far. Not yet. But he was content in our little stone house by the lake, more at ease than I’d ever seen him.

Some days, I was content too. Other days, I felt trapped in a purgatory of my own making. Every day the same as the next, not working toward anything, not improving, not striving. Simply existing. Heath might be able to live like that, but I couldn’t.

“We haven’t discussed it,” I said.

“Seriously? What the hell have you been doing out here in the middle of nowhere for all this time, then?”

I raised a suggestive eyebrow.

Bella scowled. “Don’t answer that. And if you’re worried about me getting between you two again, don’t. You were right about him.” She laughed, but it did nothing to douse the spark of fury in her eyes. “Guess it was all about you after all, huh?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Bella had every right to be angry. Heath had wasted her time, toyed with her emotions—and worst of all, derailed her career when it mattered the most.

“Anyway,” she said with an imperious sniff. “He’s all yours. At least you’ll have no trouble getting sponsors now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, because everyone’s so obsessed with you.” Bella fluttered her lashes. “Shaw and Rocha, the star-crossed childhood sweethearts of U.S. Figure Skating.”

I stared at her, confused. Her eyes widened.

“I thought you knew. You really haven’t seen it?”

“Seen what, Bella?”

She bit her lip. “Let’s go inside. Heath should know too.”