Fire & Ice, page 26
I have to do it. I’ll lose everything if I don’t. If FIRE kicks me out, I’m out of university, out of work opportunities, out of friends and connections, out of a place to live, out of luck, out of time. My feelings for her will go away in time. It’s not worth sacrificing everything for.
I have to do it. I hate it so fucking much. I wish we could have met differently, Giselle. I’m so sorry. I care about you so much, and I’ve loved every second we’ve gotten to spend together. I’ll remember you forever. And regret this forever.
The meeting with my father and Carl Webb—when we’d talked about the business expansion. Primrose had been privy to it all. A spy stationed there to collect that exact information.
And she didn’t do it. Because she felt the same way I did.
The picture made perfect sense now—that call, and then Primrose broken down the next day. She’d said Zachary never got the information. She’d tried to do it, tried to do her job—knowing the delicate situation of her life would fall apart if she didn’t—but she couldn’t. She protected me instead.
Ava had said Zachary sent Andrea to end things because he knew Primrose couldn’t. She’d tried—genuinely, despite everything, tried to stand up against the world for me, for us. And even though Zachary still sent Andrea to break my heart, Primrose threw everything away for me anyway.
She hadn’t been able to tell me what she was crying over. How could she have? She was keeping it secret just a little bit longer because she wanted me to be okay, carrying all that weight, throwing herself into the fire so that I could be safe.
And I couldn’t do anything for her.
Dammit.
I turned the page, carefully, shaking, the last page—like saying goodbye all over again.
You’re right, Matthew. I’m not meant for this. I’m a soft, tender thing who loves, and that’s not something to be afraid of.
Giselle deserves to be happy. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now, but I’m not going to devote this one short life I have to making things worse for someone who only deserves to be happy.
Don’t worry about me, okay? You’ve been good to me over the years. I’ve loved being a part of FIRE. The friendships I’ve made with you and everyone else mean the world.
I’ll be all right. Not my first time disappearing and leaving it all behind. I’ll remember you in whatever my next life looks like.
And I’ll remember Giselle.
If one day this all settles, and for some reason Giselle should ever talk to you again, tell her I’m grateful for her. And that I care for her.
Figure she won’t believe it, though.
Take care.
Slowly, shakily, I shut the book, and I held it into my chest, breathing hard, my eyes hot. I wasn’t sure when I’d started crying, but I held it tightly into my chest.
That damn woman. She couldn’t make me fall for her twice.
Ah, who was I kidding? Of course she could.
Chapter 33
Primrose
I fell. Hit the ice hard, landing badly on my knee, and I winced, gripping my hands into fists on the ice and just trying to gather myself to stand back up. The rink was pretty quiet right now, and I’d expected everyone to just skate around me, but I definitely didn’t expect the person who vaulted over the barrier and came towards me—Jordan, skating over to my side and kneeling next to me.
“Are you all right?” she said. “That looked like a bad fall.”
“Oh—I’m fine. Just stings a bit. I’ll be okay. What are you doing here? Are you actually here to practice?”
“Oh, yeah… I just broke up with my boyfriend and I’m full of angry energy.”
Breakups were—not what I wanted to think about right now. “I’m so sorry.”
She laughed drily. “It’s whatever. We already did this last week. Then he texted me at midnight one night and asked if I was up, and, well, you know the rest.”
“Ah…” I did not know how to respond to that. “Well, I hope releasing the angry energy is productive.”
“I still don’t wanna practice, though. I was mostly just chilling watching you practice. You’re still trying to pull off an axel, huh?”
“Oh.” I looked away. “Um… just practicing this and that.”
Jordan stood up, a hand on her hip. “I know there’s something between you and Giselle in that axel thing. So does that mean you and Giselle worked out whatever happened?”
I sighed, standing up, and I fumbled a little—Jordan offered me a hand, and I took it, letting her help me up to a wobbly balance on my feet. My knee was still stinging… maybe I had hit it too hard. “Nah,” I said, looking past her. “We broke up. I’m moving away. It kinda sucks.”
“What?” Jordan dropped her arms by her sides. “Oh my god, why? We’re never going to win anything if you’re not super-powering Giselle to skate for us.”
“You know, you could just practice more yourself.” I let my shoulders fall, my gaze dropping to the ice, my tacky rental skates and Jordan’s nice, clean white skates. “Stuff came up… don’t really have the opportunity to continue studying here anymore. But it’s all right.” I put on a smile. “I’ll figure things out. It’s not my first time.”
Jordan scrunched up her face. “What kind of stuff? I bet Giselle and I can put our heads together and find out a way to help.”
I laughed awkwardly. “You really would not need to—”
“Shut up. You’re my friend. And Giselle really likes you.”
Ah, what the hell. I raked my hand back through my hair. “I was part of a shady organization on campus and I was just getting close to Giselle to get intel on her family business, but then I blew it by developing actual feelings for her and couldn’t go through with the job, so now they’re chasing me off campus. That’d be the long and short of it.”
Jordan blinked, twice, slowly, before she cocked her head. “For real?”
“I know it doesn’t sound very real, but yeah. For real.”
She put a hand to her chest. “Oh my god, but that’s so romantic.”
“Romantic—it’s not romantic.” I put my hands up. “It got out to Giselle and she’s not… there’s no way she’ll talk to me again after she found out how much I was hiding, how much I was lying about. I know that. I know that, I just…”
Jordan folded her arms. “You’re just still trying to do an axel because you promised her you would and you think it’ll make her come back.”
I put a hand to my forehead, looking away. “I don’t think it’ll make her come back, just… I just want to…”
“Just want to make her come back.”
I swallowed, and I found my eyes burning—I tried to speak in a cool level voice, but the tremble came through. “It feels a little bit like she’s still… here… when I’m doing this.”
Jordan dropped her arms, giving me a sad look. I couldn’t bear to look at her, turning away and pushing on ahead, but a jolt of pain shot up from my knee, and I wobbled, falling against the barrier. Jordan glided over to my side, sighing.
“You need to get off the ice. You hurt yourself.”
“I’m really all right…”
“You are not. It’s going to delay your progress if you injure your knee. Those things are fragile as fuck. C’mon, off the ice.”
My knees weren’t the only parts of me that were fragile. I let Jordan escort me off the ice, and she sat with me as I took my skates off, a deep, inconsolable sadness that didn’t make any sense as I was setting them aside—too emotional for just saying goodbye to a rental skate for a day.
“How much of the truth does she know?” Jordan said, and I sighed.
“She knows our relationship was just an… assignment. Knows I was with that organization. Well—probably thinks I still am. I doubt she’s aware I’m getting kicked out. Didn’t tell her that I actually have feelings for her… don’t feel like there’s a big chance of her believing me.”
“Don’t you think she deserves to know?”
I focused on cleaning the skates, eyes down, rhythmic motions for a while before I responded coolly, “Wish she did. I don’t want her to go feeling like she can’t be loved, and I bet that’s what she’s thinking… especially after finding out Andrea had also been assigned to her.”
“Andrea—her ex? She was also a part of this whole scheme?”
Guess that was also me now. Giselle’s ex. I wished I could get over this, already. “That’d be why she was secretive about it, yeah. But Andrea also fell for her.” I shoved the laces into the skates, setting them aside and pulling on my own shoes. “If anything, Giselle is just so impossible not to like that it’s torn the organization apart. I wish she could know that… but she’d never believe me if I told her.”
“And you? Don’t you think you deserve for her to know?”
I snorted. “I don’t deserve much right now.” I finished pulling on my shoes, standing up slowly, easing myself lightly on my bad knee. Practicing axels was a bad idea. I didn’t need to injure myself right before I went out to start working. I’d already known that before I came in to practice, though. “Friend offered me a place to stay, but I don’t really think it’s fair…”
Jordan scowled. “Self-sacrifice is so annoying.”
“What?”
“What, like being sad makes you more noble? Like suffering makes you a better person?” She rolled her eyes. “Get real. Your friend’s offering because they want to.”
I looked away, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “Doubt that. It’s kind of just the thing you have to do, right? Someone’s losing everything right before your eyes, you kind of have to offer them help even if it’s not something you want to give.”
Jordan stood up with me. “I guess,” she said. “I mean, if you assume people don’t care about you. But you seem like a smart woman. I think you can tell when someone is just being polite and when people care about you. And you already know the answer, don’t you? You just want to throw yourself onto the sword and suffer nobly for what you’ve done.”
I gave her a look, a nervous tangle in my chest. Jordan scowled.
“It’s a lot easier to make yourself sad and think that’s penance than it is to actually make changes, make amends. But that’s not actually making up for it, and you’ll know that, so you’ll never feel better and always keep beating yourself up, forever. You and Giselle both deserve for you to address things and make it better instead of you just running away and kicking yourself forever.”
I swallowed, a nervous feeling turning in the pit of my stomach. “I, uh…”
She softened, giving me a lopsided smile. “Giselle’s my friend. And this whole thing really tore her up. So I want things to be better for her. You’re my friend, too. So I want things to be better for you. And look, usually things have to get worse before they get better! I know confronting this stuff sucks!” She put her hands up. “But it’s going to be better than running away forever and always making yourself miserable on purpose.”
Christ, I hated that she was right. I looked down, a heavy feeling in my limbs, like I was just so… damn… tired. Running away forever sounded nice. And maybe that was what I’d always been doing.
What would it even look like if I did the opposite? If I took everything that this nameless panic lacing through me was telling me to do, and I went in the exact other direction. I wasn’t naïve enough to think it would lead to me and Giselle in each other’s arms again, but… but maybe Jordan knew what she was talking about. If I tried to stay, tried to set right what went wrong in my wake—maybe it wouldn’t work, but at least then I’d know that I tried.
I sighed. “You’re surprisingly mature sometimes.”
Jordan dropped her arms by her sides. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you taking shots right now?”
“Nah. You’re just… carefree. Don’t seem like the type to be carrying these big, heavy feelings yourself.”
Jordan scowled. “That just sounds like you’re trying to make it sound less like an insult.”
I laughed. “Maybe it’s just that you never practice.”
“Okay, that one I’ll give you. Maybe I should get on the ice just to make a point.”
“Your coach is going to be making a point out of you if you don’t.”
“I know,” she whined. “Okay, fine, I’m doing, like… fifteen minutes of practice. You be easy on your knee. I don’t want it to look like it’s my fault if you break something.”
Slowly, I sank back down onto the bench. “Yeah,” I said. “You know? I will. Take it easy on myself when it’s hurting, I mean.”
“You better,” she said, turning and taking off towards the rink. I stretched my leg out, feeling around my knee.
Tender. But nothing that wouldn’t heal.
Chapter 34
Giselle
Blustery cold out. I wasn’t sure where it had come from all of a sudden, but I pulled my coat tighter as I pushed out of the door of my complex and headed for the parking lot. The wind nipped at my ears, and it threatened to blow my carefully styled hair out of place, so I ducked my head down low and walked quickly, only to be stopped halfway by the last voice I wanted to hear right now.
“Christ, there you are. I’d thought you were dead or something.”
Ugh—Cass’s voice. It probably said something if my first thought hearing my friend’s voice was ugh, didn’t it? I stopped by the brick wall installation at the edge of the lot, sheltering from the wind as I looked towards where Cass came up around the corner and straight for me, her hands in her coat pockets, hood pulled up. She’d been texting while I was getting ready, trying to ask me about something or other, but I couldn’t bring myself to look—couldn’t really bring myself to think about anything other than Primrose right now, if I was being totally honest.
Which was a problem, because I kind of needed to focus on this competition. Even if I already knew I was going to crash and burn and humiliate myself out there on the ice.
“Hi,” I said, drawing myself up defensively. “Sorry, I’m kind of in a rush to get to my competition—”
“Yeah, which isn’t going to start in, like, an hour, right?”
I looked away with a frustrated sigh. “It’d be nice to be there early. I don’t need more stress.”
“What’s the stress, anyway?” She stopped in front of me, putting her hands out. “It’s not like the skating decides your future. Don’t your parents get tired of you focusing on that all the time anyway?”
It felt like it had been a lifetime since I’d last seen her… I’d started a whole new life believing in all new things, and had that life end, since the last time we’d talked face to face. I massaged my temple, still not quite able to look at her. “Be that as it may, it’s still something I care about. Can we pick this up another time?”
“God, that girl really screwed you up.” She hunched her shoulders. “You used to be there for me. I’ve been having a rough time of things lately and you just completely ditched me. Like—it’s okay you want to go focus on your own things. It’s your life, I guess. I just feel a little left out.”
Was it really so much to ask for a friendship that didn’t feel so adversarial? That didn’t feel like I was constantly primed for an attack? I swallowed. “It’s not Primrose’s fault.”
“It’s completely her fault. She swooped in while you were emotional over a breakup, and she decided to use it to get something from you. That’s why you were busy with her twenty-four seven, right? Why you told me to fuck off—she was the one who helped encourage you to do that, right?”
“It’s—”
“That’s classic abuser mentality.” She folded her arms. “Cut off your friends, make it just you and her.”
“It wasn’t her,” I snapped, my face burning hot. “I was tired of feeling like I was constantly defending myself—like I was in trouble and trying to make up for it or something.”
“So it’s me?” She put her arms out, gesturing wildly, a look on her face like I’d just slapped her. “Just because I want to do things together like always, now I’m bullying you? You can tell me if you don’t want to spend time with me. I can handle the truth. I’d prefer the truth to you hiding from me, just say it to my face.”
“I’m not saying it’s you trying to make me feel bad…” I pinched my brow. Was I any better as a friend, anyway? Was this actually just how things were? Maybe this was how I would have ended up with Primrose anyway if we’d stayed together—that maybe I was the problem and couldn’t stay happy with people.
“Okay, because I feel a little targeted. You’re just ignoring all my messages after having blown me off for a whole week already.”
“I told you I wanted an apology,” I snapped before I could think about it. Cass went wide-eyed, slack-jawed.
“An apology?” she said, incredulous. “An apology for what? I was right.”
“Even if you had been right, it’s no way to talk about Primrose, and it’s no way to talk to me.”
She gestured to herself, to me, speechless for a second, like she couldn’t believe I would say something so hopelessly stupid. I felt like I’d throw up, and my heart beat too fast by far. I turned back towards the lot.
“I need to go for the competition now.”
“So what the fuck is wrong with me, then?” she said. “Now I’m the bad guy, because I warned you about the girl who screwed you over? Am I that fucking bad that you can’t even talk to me directly?”
“Cass. Please. I can’t afford to be late.”
“You know—fine, then,” she snapped, her voice getting higher-pitched as she took a step back. “If you hate me that fucking bad, you could have just told me. I would have preferred you just tell me instead of gaslighting me about what I’m doing wrong.”
“I don’t hate you, Cass.”
“Forget it. It’s okay. You have your life, I have mine.” She turned away, shaking her head derisively. “You’re not required to like me. Lots of people can’t handle me, I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”
