Chapter 69

Chapter 69

Heath and I hadn’t set foot in Russia since 2005—when I won my first world title, and he haunted me like a specter from the stands.

We were both surprised to receive an invitation from the Russian skating federation for their annual Grand Prix event, the Rostelecom Cup—though we knew damn well it wasn’t a gesture of goodwill. Volkova and Kipriyanov were headlining the competition, and no doubt wanted to warm up for Sochi by humiliating us on their home turf.

Moscow was even colder and gloomier than I remembered. I found it difficult to imagine Heath living there, even as he slipped effortlessly between Russian and English with clerks and cabdrivers and gestured to landmarks. He pointed out the tumbledown apartment block he used to live in, and the old church—converted to a skating rink back in the Soviet era—where he’d once trained, but his breezy tone belied the hardships he must have faced. Still, it was more than he had ever willingly shared about that time in his life before, at least with me. Holding back the flood of questions I wanted to ask in response to each new drop of detail took all my willpower.

The Rostelecom Cup was held in a smaller venue at the same sporting complex where Worlds had taken place eight years earlier. In contrast to the frigid weather, the heat inside the arena was cranked so high white steam rose from the ice, and sweat pooled at the small of my back before I’d even finished lacing my skates. The space felt claustrophobic, plain concrete walls and glaring faces everywhere we turned. During team introductions, the crowd of Moscow locals shook the rafters with raucous cheering for the young Russians right before us, then reverted to stony silence when our names were announced.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Bella told Heath and me after the warm-up. “This is a good thing. You two have been out of the game for years, and they still consider you a threat.”

Since Vancouver, Yelena and Dmitri had faced few serious rivals, at home or abroad. They’d moved to a brand-new purpose-built training center, rumored to have been subsidized by the Kipriyanov family’s shady business interests. After racking up four consecutive world titles and countless other medals during our absence from the sport, they were widely expected to walk away with the next Olympic gold.

When you’re so dominant for so long, though, it’s easy to rest on your laurels, to stop pushing yourself. Whereas for the past several months, Heath and I had done nothing but push. Working with Bella felt less like being coached and more like a collaboration among equals—although sometimes I felt like the least crucial member of the team. Bella called the shots, Heath selected the music and created all our choreography. All I did was skate.

Win or lose, though, we were in this together. We might not beat our rivals this time, but we could make them worry.

The International Skating Union had finally done away with the stuffy, repetitive compulsory dance event, and rebranded the original dance as the “short dance.” For the Olympic season, everyone had to skate the Finnstep—a fast, complicated style requiring swift edge and direction changes that could trip up even the most experienced skaters. One wrong step, and it was almost impossible to catch up with the tempo again. But you couldn’t go too fast either, or you’d run roughshod over the precise choreography.

That’s exactly what happened to the rookie Russian team skating first: they rushed through their program like they couldn’t wait to get it over with, and all nuance was lost. By the end, they were both panting, the guy’s face so flushed you could hardly make out the acne scars on his cheeks anymore. He folded over and put a hand down on the ice, trying to catch his breath, while his partner—a teenager wearing heavy blue eyeliner that made her look even younger—skated to the boards without him.

As Heath and I awaited our turn, I kept smoothing my skirt, palms scraping over the sequins until I’d nearly rubbed my skin raw. When I first saw a sketch of the design, I thought the gunmetal-to-white ombre effect was gorgeous. The finished dress, though, made me think of dirty snow on a city curb, and the fabric felt too heavy for the light character of the Finnstep.

We took the ice second—supposedly due to our lack of world ranking from the previous season, but everyone knew it was a deliberate slap in the face. Right before our music—a swingy, upbeat cover of “Crazy in Love”—kicked in, Heath sucked in a breath. I had to wait until well into the opening promenade section before I could catch a clear glimpse of what had startled him.

Though Yelena and Dmitri wouldn’t skate until the end of the event, Veronika Volkova stood at the boards, watching us. She’d taken up a position right beside Bella, so if we wanted to look to our coach for help or reassurance, we couldn’t avoid seeing her too.

“Eyes on me,” I said, just loud enough for Heath to hear.

He nodded and refocused, and we pulled off a dizzying series of turns in such perfect synchronicity, we even coaxed a few claps from the unfriendly crowd.

The next part of the dance required every team to stop on the exact same spot of the rink for an exuberant display of stationary footwork—legs swinging back and forth like tolling bells, then quick, bouncing steps balanced on toe picks. Smiling wide all the while, despite the sweat streaming into our eyes.

We were in a close hold, so I felt it the second Heath started to fall. His right leg seemed to glitch, as if his skate had snagged on something. Then his foot flew out from under him.

Instinctively, I grabbed onto his shoulder to stabilize him, but he was already going down. Worse, he’d twisted out of the hold to avoid hitting me with his blade, so he struck the ice at an angle, torquing his back.

Our bubbly music still blared as I knelt beside him, steam rising around us. He hadn’t cried out, aside from a low groan only I was close enough to hear. But I knew what Heath was capable of enduring without making any complaints at all. This was bad.

“My blade,” he said through gritted teeth. “It hit something.”

I glanced frantically at the spot where we’d been performing our stationary steps. Later in the event, I might have suspected a rut in the ice, but we were only the second team to skate.

At first I saw nothing through the haze. Then I looked closer. A scatter of tiny dots glinted under the arena lights, barely distinguishable from the ice surface. I pressed my finger to one, and it stuck to my skin.

A sequin.