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TWENTY-NINE

CAMDEN

The shower started out fine. My body was loose, my head free. Then, for some reason, I remembered what had brought Ren to my door, and my post-sex glow rapidly turned to a hard chill that the hot water didn’t touch.

I washed all the signs of sex off, but the cold wouldn’t go, and it kept getting heavier. I propped a forearm against the tile, and let the water wash over me, hoping the dread would pass. It didn’t.

I didn’t realize I was crying until Ren knocked on the door.

“It’s open . . .”

He must have heard how broken my voice was, because he came in, looked up, and I couldn’t hide it from him.

“May I?” he asked, reaching for the shower door.

I wasn’t going to say no to a naked Ren getting in the shower with me, not even while having some kind of emotional breakdown. He stepped in, his arms came around me, and I was back to sobbing again. I didn’t have any control over it. It just came in waves, trying to pull me to my knees. Most of it was Saga, but it was everything else too. My head had decided now was the time to pile it all on me. The disciplinary panel, the interviews twisting me to make it sound as though I didn’t belong in Sapporo, my father’s broken voice on the phone, the messages I’d missed from home, Ren fucking me and going cold right after. Not now, but back then. The pressure and weight of it all.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for the Olympics. Maybe my body could do it, but my head couldn’t.

“You’re okay,” Ren was telling me. “You’re strong, you’ll get through this.”

Maybe. But even if I did, what about after?

“You just have to get through tomorrow and the next day, and dance.” He eased me back, and looked down, into my eyes. Water streamed down, flattening his hair to his face, making all his angles sharp and severe. “You can do that. You did it with a fractured hip, you can do it here.”

“Yeah . . .” I didn’t sound convinced.

“Saga would want this for you.”

I lost it like an idiot, and cried in his arms as hot water poured over us. I didn’t remember much of what happened after. Just that Ren was close, his gentle hands on me, guiding me, keeping me standing. We dried off together, then climbed into my bed, lights off, and just lay there. He was hard again but he didn’t do anything, just held me, like he somehow knew that was what I needed. Just to be held.

All I had to do was get through the next two days, and dance on the ice, and make it the best dance I’d ever performed in my life. I was supposed to dance, knowing my friend was dead, that I hadn’t been there, that I maybe could have stopped him, that I’d failed him. Dance like none of that mattered.

“There’s one thing my father told me that has been useful . . .” Ren whispered, both of us close to sleep.

“Hm?”

“Use it on the ice.”

He pulled me closer and kissed my neck.

Use it on the ice.

And that was why Ren was like he was on the ice, because everything went there. All his anger, his fear, his doubts, it all went onto the ice. The ice held his passion, his heat. And it made him one of the best ice dancers in the world.

I sighed.

I’d use it on the ice too.

I had to, because if I didn’t, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.

Doors slamming somewhere in the building jolted me awake. For a few blissful seconds, there was just the warm bed and Ren’s leg and arm flung across me, their gentle weight pinning me down. He snored lightly, out cold.

Then I remembered where we were, and what day it was, and how we both definitely didn’t not have time to be snuggling in bed together.

I grabbed for my phone.

Eight forty-five a.m.