Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Despite what you may have heard, my speech at Sheila Lin’s funeral wasn’t planned.

Until the whole crowd swiveled to stare at me, I didn’t even realize I’d stood up and volunteered to speak. I had no idea what to say. I barely recall what I did say.

I remember squinting into the sun, gripping my glasses to keep my hands from shaking, sweat creeping down my spine under my black dress.

And the way Bella and Heath looked at me. She seemed hostile at first—muscles tensed, dreading the scene I was surely about to cause—but as I spoke, she softened. When I stepped away from the podium, she gave me a nod of acknowledgment, so swift and subtle I thought I might have imagined it.

Heath, though—he stayed so still, he could have been another monument in the cemetery. I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet them. I was afraid of what I’d see—pure loathing, smug satisfaction. Or worst of all, total indifference.

I left Hollywood Forever without saying another word to anyone and changed my flight so I could leave LA as soon as possible. By the time the plane lifted off the tarmac, my visit to California already felt like a strange dream.

That was it, I figured. I would never see Heath or the Lins again.

I returned to my solitary life in Illinois. Weeks passed, every day the same as the last—until a blizzard swept through overnight, brushing a coat of glittering white over everything.

The next morning, I walked out my front door and found Bella Lin standing in the snow.

—

Bella was dressed all in white, and she looked so much like her mother, for a moment I thought I’d been visited by a ghost.

“Hi,” she said. The compact car behind her was white too, nearly invisible against the snowdrifts and the pale cloud cover.

I walked down the icy steps, stopping on the final tread. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the area.”

She’d been at the U.S. National Championships, which were held in Omaha that year—at least a six-hour drive. Even for Midwesterners, calling that in the area was pushing it.

“What are you really doing here, Bella?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“You just saw me at the funeral.”

“Yeah, and you left without saying goodbye.” She folded her arms. “Without saying anything, actually, aside from your big speech about what a bitch my dead mother was.”

I shifted my weight. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Don’t apologize. That speech was the most honest thing anyone said all day.”

She looked me over, noting my layered workout clothes and the tote I carried.

“Going skating?”

I nodded, tucking the bag closer against my fleece jacket.

“Mind if I join you? I’ve got my skates in the trunk.”

I gave her suede ankle boots, already stained with slush, a dubious glance. “You have different shoes in there too? It’s a bit of a walk.”

“I’ll be fine,” Bella said with a familiar smile. Challenge accepted. “Lead the way.”

She kept pace with me as I headed into the woods, an occasional heavier huff of breath the only sign that the slippery terrain gave her any trouble. I kept expecting her to ask where we were going, but she didn’t say a word—until we reached our destination.

“Holy shit,” Bella said. “You have your own ice rink ?”

About a year into my self-imposed exile, I’d had the old stable building where Heath used to hide out converted into a private skating facility. The ice surface was small, and I had to spend a good hour a day dragging a rake-like tool back and forth to keep it smooth enough to skate on, but it was all mine.

I hauled open the sliding barn doors and switched on the fairy lights strung across the rafters. The east-facing wall was all windows, looking out on the forest and the lakeshore beyond. The panes retracted so I could skate in the open air when the weather was better, a refrigeration system keeping the ice frozen even in the summer heat.

Bella spun around in awe.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you could never give it up.”

I’d certainly tried. The first few weeks after Vancouver, I did nothing except sleep and eat and seethe with rage. Then I decided I needed a project to occupy my time, so I vowed to fix up the house. If I couldn’t reach my full potential, at least my home could.

For months, I stripped paint and steamed wallpaper and scrubbed woodwork. I piled trash on the beach and lit a bonfire. I cleaned out my brother’s room and finally let myself cry about his death—and his life—gasping in dust and stale smoke until my lungs burned.

No matter what I did, though, my body roiled with restless energy. When it was warm outside, I walked in the woods until my feet blistered. When the weather turned, and the silence became too much, I played my parents’ records— Hounds of Love and Private Dancer and Rumours, volume turned as loud as it would go—but that only made me want to move, to dance.

To skate.

Money can’t buy happiness, but for me it bought the next best thing. I found a contractor who specialized in at-home hockey rinks—and who, thankfully, had never heard of Olympic ice dancer Katarina Shaw. Several months and a significant chunk of my savings later, the stable had been transformed.

At first I’d been clumsy on my blades, my limbs pathetically uncoordinated from disuse. I fell on my ass over and over and over again, until my backside was one big blue-purple bruise. But there was no one there to see, no one to judge. For the first time in my life, I was skating only for myself.

“We need music,” Bella announced after lacing up her skates.

“There aren’t any speakers.”

“You built yourself a whole damn rink and didn’t bother to install a sound system?”

“I’m usually alone.”

Some days, I skated with headphones in and a playlist blasting, but most of the time my only accompaniment was the meditative scrape of my blades.

Undeterred, Bella took out her iPhone, starting up a pop song with a lively drumbeat and propping the device against the boards to make the most of the tinny speakers.

She did some basic footwork in time with the tempo, singing along—something about traffic lights and busy streets. When she saw my blank look, she laughed.

“Oh my god, you really have turned into a hermit, haven’t you? This has been all over the radio for months. One of my junior teams wants to skate to it next year.”

I joined her on the ice, and we circled each other, tracing overlapping ellipses.

“The younger skaters still talk about you, you know,” Bella said.

“What, as a cautionary tale?” Katarina Shaw, the Wicked Ice Queen Who Destroyed Her Own Career in a Single Day. Sounded about right.

“No,” Bella said. “They talk about you the same way you talk about my mother.”

“So they think I’m a bitch?”

“Mm-hmm. And they want to be exactly like you when they grow up.” She did a graceful pirouette, arms above her head. “This is amazing. I want a skating rink in my backyard.”

“It used to be a stable. It’d been on the verge of falling down for years, but—”

“Wait.” Bella stopped, blades spraying snow. “ This is where your brother made him sleep? In the middle of winter ?”

So Heath had told her about Lee’s abuse. I wondered what else he’d told her.

My fury over finding Heath and Bella together had long since cooled, but the thought of him confiding in her about the childhood trauma that bonded us stung like a fresh scald.

“So.” I’d put off the subject as long as I could. “You and Heath.”

“It’s not like that,” Bella said—a little too quickly.

“What’s it like, then?”

“Well, at first, it was revenge.”

Hearing her admit it was almost a relief. They’d both been furious that night, and they couldn’t have found a better way to wound me than jumping into bed together.

“Then after Vancouver,” Bella continued, “I was assisting my mother, and Heath started choreographing programs for some up-and-coming teams at the Academy.”

“Really?” I’d assumed Heath would want nothing more to do with the skating world.

“He’s great with the younger kids. Especially the boys who don’t have formal dance training; they really look up to him. But anyway, Garrett moved away, and my mother…” Bella shook her head. “I don’t know why I thought working with her would improve our relationship. She treated me like I was just another junior coach. So Heath and I ended up spending a lot of time together.”

I thought of the way she’d leaned toward Heath at Sheila’s funeral, seeking solace from him instead of her twin. Part of me—the part that loved them both, in spite of everything—was happy they had each other to rely on, in whatever capacity.

The rest of me wanted to rip Bella’s hair out at the root and use it to set the building on fire with her locked inside.

At least a hint of that impulse must have shown on my face, because Bella quickly added, “We’re just friends.”

“Friends with benefits.”

“ Friends, ” she insisted. “Until…well, there was this one night. I had an extra ticket to see Adele at the Palladium, and Heath offered to go with me.”

I wasn’t sure which was more shocking: Heath willingly attending an Adele concert or Bella taking a night off to have some fun for once.

“I swear,” Bella said, “it was purely a physical release. It meant nothing.”

“So that was it?” I fought to keep my face neutral, to keep any hint of hope from sneaking into my voice. “Just that one time, and then—”

“What, you want an exact count?” Bella’s eyes flashed. “You left, and Garrett left, and Heath and I stayed. All we had was each other.”

And I had no one. But that was my own fault, wasn’t it?

For the next few songs on the album—which later, after I’d officially rejoined society, I learned was Taylor Swift’s Red —we skated in silence, improvising to the music. Eventually we turned toward each other and clasped hands in a dance hold, switching off lead and follow roles.

By the end of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Bella was bent double, breathing hard, while I’d barely broken a sweat.

“Jesus,” she said. “This whole time I thought you were, like, sitting on the sofa watching soap operas, and instead you’ve been secretly training for Sochi.”

I laughed and performed a few one-foot turns around her, showing off. “Sure. Me and my imaginary partner. Put us in, coach!”

“If you want a real partner, I have a pretty good idea where you could find one.”

I laughed again. Bella didn’t.

“Heath hates me,” I said. Yes, he’d called to tell me about Sheila’s funeral, but the message had been brief, businesslike at best.

“Plenty of skating partners hate each other,” Bella said. “Pretty sure Heath is incapable of hating you, though. He misses you.”

“He said that?”

“I mean, not in so many words. As I’m sure you’re aware, words are not that man’s strong suit. But I can tell.”

If Heath missed me so much, surely he would have contacted me long before Sheila’s death forced his hand.

Then again, I hadn’t attempted to get in touch with him either. And I’d fled the cemetery the second the service ended, like I was being chased by rabid coyotes.

“Why don’t you two team up for Sochi?” I asked. “Since you’re such good friends. ”

“Because I’m a better coach than I ever was a skater—and I was a damn good skater.” She paused. “I don’t know if Garrett told y—”

“He did.” I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it: Garrett, stretched so thin by stress and guilt and self-flagellation that he’d frayed apart. He’d almost died, and I’d had no idea.

“I should have seen it,” Bella said. “The way the pressure was eating him alive. I had myself convinced he thrived on it, like us.”

“Thriving? Is that what we were doing?”

“Probably not.” She shook her head. “How messed up is it that it took seeing my twin brother in traction to get me to rethink my life and my choices?”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d watched a bit of the Omaha Nationals. During Gaskell and Kovalenko’s gold medal–winning free dance, the broadcast kept cutting to Bella, standing behind the boards. Sheila had always been still and stoic when her skaters were on the ice; Bella was the complete opposite. She performed the program along with them, bouncing and smiling and swinging her arms. Seeing her so animated, so joyful, I couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m sure you’re a fantastic coach,” I said. “But you can’t seriously think Heath and I could make the Olympic team. We’re practically senior citizens.”

“You’re experienced. The U.S. ice dance program has been struggling since you split. Aside from Francesca and Evan, it’s a bunch of baby skaters who’ve never come anywhere near an international podium.”

Back in 2010, I had been so sure the Olympic Games would be the pinnacle of my existence. It was as if I’d nearly summitted a mountain, only to tumble down right before reaching the top. And now I was standing at the base, staring up at that distant peak again. Could I really be crazy enough to consider another climb?

“My mother left the Academy to me,” Bella said. “But the Lin name only goes so far. Now that Nationals are over, skaters are already talking about leaving to work with more experienced coaches. Having Shaw and Rocha on our roster, especially if you made the Olympic team again—well, it would go a long way.”

“And you’ve spoken to Heath about this?” I knew even asking the question was declaring some level of interest. But of course I was interested. As restorative as my just-for-the-hell-of-it skating regimen had been, I missed competing. I missed skating with a partner.

And yes, I’ll admit it: I missed Heath. I missed him the way a soldier misses a severed limb. Seeing him with Bella had hurt, but it was nothing compared to the phantom pain of his absence.

“I haven’t talked to him yet,” Bella said. “I didn’t want to get his hopes up, on the off chance you told me to go fuck myself. So are you telling me to go fuck myself?”

A soft ballad wafted from her phone speakers now, the album winding down. The sun had started to dip beneath the waves, and the fairy lights shone above us like golden stars.

I could have let Bella leave. She would have started up her rental car, driven to whatever boutique hotel she’d booked for the night, ordered room service, and flown back to California in the morning. We would have continued to go our separate ways, diverging further and further until the gap was too broad to bridge.

But she was right. I could never give it up, no matter how hard I tried.

“I’m starving,” I said. “Wanna eat some carbs?”

Bella grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”