Chapter 71

Chapter 71

I ran to Bella and crouched at her side.

She was conscious, but barely—head sagging limp against the wall, eyes squinted like she couldn’t bear the brightness of the fluorescent lights.

“Bella?” I pressed the back of my hand to her forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“Shit, is she all right?”

Ellis. He’d followed me.

“You better not fucking write about this,” I said.

He pressed a hand to his gold lamé ascot. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”

“You really want me to answer that? Make yourself useful and go get the medics.”

Bella let out a soft whimper and clutched at the bottom of her rib cage. Her coat zipper was halfway down, like she’d tried to take it off and given up.

“Find Heath too,” I shouted after Ellis. He nodded before scurrying out of sight.

I’d never seen Bella so weak. In all the years we’d known each other, that bitch had never even caught a cold, and now she looked like she was dying. She’d been fine an hour before.

Hadn’t she? I reassessed the past several weeks—her oversleeping, her listlessness, her lack of appetite. All the symptoms I’d assumed were due to stress from our punishing training schedule, the uncertainty of Heath’s recovery. More than once, I’d had the uncharitable thought that Bella had no right to be so exhausted, when we were the ones doing the real work.

Heath jogged around the corner. When he saw us, he broke into a sprint.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I found her like this.”

He knelt beside me, dust blurring the knees of his black pants.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, cupping Bella’s sallow cheek. “You’ll be okay.”

“Heath.”

Bella’s voice broke across the sound of his name, and it was so vulnerable, so intimate, I felt like I had no right to witness it.

I peered down the hall. Where were the medics? What the hell was taking so long?

When I turned back, Heath was embracing Bella, his face buried in her hair.

His palm pressed to her abdomen.

Before I could fully process the moment, the medical team rushed in.

“Her blood pressure is extremely elevated,” the lead medic reported after a few minutes of ministrations. “She needs to go to the emergency room.”

Bella seemed to flare back to life. “No, no, they’re skating soon. Can’t it wait?”

We’d missed the introductions and the warm-up. The first skaters in the final group were already on the ice, the muffled melody of their One Direction program music providing a strangely cheerful counterpoint to the drama unfolding backstage.

“I’m afraid not, dear. The ambulance is on its way.”

I glanced at Heath. He didn’t take his eyes off Bella.

How had I missed it, all these months? The connection between them. The love. Maybe not the same love he and I had felt for each other, but love all the same.

“You should go with her,” I said.

Now he looked my way. But Bella was the one who spoke.

“I’ll be fine. You have to skate. This is your last chance.”

Applause rumbled as the team finished their free dance. Then, in the silence afterward: the wail of approaching sirens.

I knew we were thinking about eight years before in St. Louis, another ambulance racing toward another arena. Another difficult choice that wasn’t really a choice at all.

Maybe Bella was right. Maybe it was our last chance. All I knew was, I couldn’t ask Heath to choose me this time.

“Go,” I told him. “I’ll be right behind you.”