The ice feels perfect beneath my blades. Smooth. Cold. Mine.
"Ready, Lila?" Marcus calls from across the rink, his voice echoing in the empty arena. It's 5:47 AM, which means we have the ice to ourselves for exactly thirteen more minutes before the junior team floods in for their morning session.
"Born ready," I say, pushing off into position. My breath clouds in front of me, visible in the harsh overhead lights that turn the ice into a sheet of diamonds. Three months until Olympic trials. Ninety-four days to be exact. Not that I'm counting.
Marcus glides toward me, his movements fluid despite the knee brace he's worn since Detroit. We both pretend not to notice it. We both pretend it doesn't matter.
"Triple axel into the throw?" he asks, falling into formation beside me. His hand finds the small of my back, muscle memory guiding us into position.
"Let's do the quad throw," I say. "We need the points."
"Lila." His voice carries that warning tone, the one that says I'm pushing too hard again. "We agreed to build up slowly."
"We don't have time for slowly." I meet his eyes, hazel clashing with brown. "Patterson and Wells landed it at Nationals. If we want a shot at the podium, we need difficulty."
Marcus's jaw tightens, but he nods. He always nods. That's why we work. Why we've worked for the past four years. He trusts me, even when I'm being reckless. Even when I'm asking for the impossible.
We circle the rink once, twice, building speed. The familiar rhythm settles over us like a second skin. Push, glide, push, glide. My blades cut perfect lines in the ice, the scraping sound mixing with Marcus's breathing and the hum of the refrigeration units overhead.
"On three," Marcus says.
One. Two.
I launch into the approach. The wind bites at my face as I pick up speed. Marcus's hand grips my waist, his other arm extending as I prepare for the throw. This is the moment where everything crystallizes, where four years of training and sacrifice and frozen fingers at 5 AM collapse into a single perfect point of contact.
Three.
I vault off his hands, spinning, spinning, rotating through the air. One, two, three, four. The world blurs into streaks of white and gray. Four rotations. Clean. I can feel it.
Then I hear the snap.
It's not my landing. My feet hit the ice exactly where they should, my blade catching with that satisfying crunch that means a good landing. But Marcus.
Oh God, Marcus.
He's crumbling. That's the only word for it. His body folds in on itself, his left leg buckling at an angle legs aren't supposed to bend. His knee. The one he hurt in Detroit. The one we've been babying through practices, icing after every session, wrapping in compression gear before bed.
I whip around, still sliding from momentum. "Marcus!"
He's on the ice now, clutching his leg, his face white. Not pale. White. The color of the ice beneath him, the color of shock and pain mixing into something that makes my stomach lurch.
"Don't move," I say, dropping to my knees beside him. My hands hover over his leg, useless. What am I supposed to do? I'm a figure skater, not a doctor. I can land a triple axel. I can't fix whatever just broke inside his knee. "Just breathe. I'm calling Coach."
"ACL," Marcus gasps. His teeth are chattering now, shock setting in. "I felt it go. Lila, I felt it tear."
My phone. Where's my phone? I left it rinkside with my jacket. I start to push up, but Marcus grabs my wrist. His grip is surprisingly strong for someone whose face has gone gray.
"I'm so sorry," he says.
"Shut up." My voice cracks. "You have nothing to be sorry for. This isn't your fault."
"Olympic trials." Each word comes out strangled. "You need. A partner."
"I said shut up." I wrench my arm free, not gently. I can't be gentle right now because if I'm gentle I'll start crying and I can't cry. Not yet. Not until Marcus is in an ambulance and someone else is handling this nightmare. "I'm getting Coach."
I half-skate, half-run to the barrier. My blades catch on the rubber mat as I clamber over, nearly face-planting in my panic. Coach Elena's office light is on. It's always on. The woman sleeps three hours a night and drinks coffee like it's water.
The door flies open before I can knock.
"I heard," Elena says. Her accent, thick Russian that never quite faded despite thirty years in America, cuts through my panic like ice through water. "Ambulance is coming. How bad?"
"ACL, he thinks."
Elena's expression doesn't change, but her eyes go flat. We both know what this means. An ACL tear isn't something you recover from in three months. It's not something you recover from in six months. Marcus's Olympics, our Olympics, just ended on a Thursday morning at 5:47 AM in a practice rink in Colorado Springs.
"Go with him to hospital," Elena says. "I'll handle Federation."
The Federation. US Figure Skating. The people who control our funding, our competition slots, our entire futures. The people who are going to want to know why their investment just collapsed on the ice.
"What do I tell them?" I ask.
Elena's hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and grounding. "You tell them nothing. I tell them. You focus on Marcus. Then we figure out next steps."
Next steps. Like there are next steps after your partner's knee explodes three months before the biggest competition of your life.
The paramedics arrive fourteen minutes later. Fourteen minutes of me holding Marcus's hand while he tries not to cry and I try not to scream. Fourteen minutes of the junior team arriving and gawking until Coach Elena barks at them to take the second rink. Fourteen minutes of my brain cycling through every throw, every lift, every element we've done in the past month, trying to figure out what we did wrong.
We didn't do anything wrong. That's what makes it worse.
"Miss Hart?" One of the paramedics, a woman with kind eyes and efficient hands, looks up from where she's splinting Marcus's leg. "Are you riding with us?"
I look at Marcus. He nods, wincing as the movement jostles his knee.
"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, I'm coming."
The hospital smells like antiseptic and despair. Marcus disappears behind white doors marked "Authorized Personnel Only," and I'm left in a waiting room with fluorescent lights and magazines from 2019. My phone has seventeen missed calls. Coach Elena. My mom. Three unknown numbers that are probably reporters, because bad news travels at the speed of light in the skating world.
I call my mom back first.
"Lila?" Her voice is sleep-rough. It's only 7 AM in Michigan. "Honey, what happened? Elena called."
"Marcus tore his ACL." Saying it out loud makes it real. Makes it permanent. "We were doing a throw and his knee just... gave out."
"Oh, sweetheart." Mom's sigh crackles through the phone. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Eventually, yeah. But not in time for trials. Not in time for anything that matters."
"Lila Hart, you listen to me." Mom's voice shifts into the tone she used when I was eight and wanted to quit skating after a bad fall. The tone that means she's about to say something I don't want to hear but need to. "Everything matters. Marcus's health matters. Your health matters. The Olympics aren't the only thing in the world."
"They're the only thing in my world," I say quietly.
Silence stretches between us. I can hear the coffee maker gurgling in the background, the sound of home. The sound of a life I haven't lived in four years, not really. Not since I moved to Colorado Springs and started training full-time. Not since skating became less of a hobby and more of an obsession.
"What does Elena say?" Mom asks finally.
"She's talking to the Federation."
"Then trust her. Elena's been in this game longer than you've been alive. If anyone can figure out a solution, it's her."
We talk for a few more minutes, but I'm barely processing the words. My brain is stuck in a loop, replaying the moment of impact over and over. The snap. Marcus's face. The way the ice felt suddenly less like a friend and more like an enemy.
When we hang up, I text Marcus's parents. His mom's reply comes back immediately: On our way. Tell our boy we love him.
Our boy. Like Marcus is still twelve years old, falling on his butt during practice and laughing about it. Before skating became a job. Before our coach's entire paycheck depended on our performance. Before everything got so heavy.
I'm three episodes deep into some medical drama on the waiting room TV when my phone buzzes. Unknown number. I almost ignore it, but something makes me answer.
"Lila Hart?" A man's voice, crisp and professional.
"Speaking."
"This is David Chen from US Figure Skating. Coach Markovic gave me your number. I'm calling about Marcus Sullivan's injury and your partnership status."
Partnership status. Like we're a business arrangement. Like four years of training together, bleeding together, celebrating together means nothing more than a line on a spreadsheet.
"He tore his ACL," I say flatly. "I assume you know that already."
"Yes, we've been informed." Papers rustle in the background. "Miss Hart, I want to be upfront with you. The Olympic trials are in twelve weeks. Under normal circumstances, we would pull your slot and allocate it elsewhere."
My stomach drops. "But?"
"But your technical scores this season have been exceptional. The Federation believes you have podium potential if paired with the right partner." He pauses. "We're holding emergency partnership meetings tomorrow at the training center. Your name is on the list."
I sit up straighter, my heart suddenly pounding. "What does that mean?"
"It means we have three male skaters currently without partners due to various circumstances. We're going to assess compatibility and make assignments. Be at the center at 9 AM sharp. Wear practice clothes. Bring your skates."
"Who are the skaters?" I ask, but I already know the answer. There are only so many elite male skaters without partners at this level. Only so many who would be available, who would be desperate enough to gamble on a partnership with less than three months to train.
"You'll find out tomorrow," Chen says. "9 AM, Miss Hart. Don't be late."
He hangs up before I can respond.
I sit there, phone pressed to my ear even though the line's dead, trying to process what just happened. Emergency partnership meetings. Three male skaters. Twelve weeks to forge a new partnership from scratch, to build the kind of trust and timing that took Marcus and me four years to develop.
It's impossible.
It's my only shot.
The doctor comes out twenty minutes later to tell me Marcus is in surgery. Clean tear, best case scenario for an ACL injury, six months recovery minimum. I thank him and head back to the training center. My car drives itself, autopilot taking over while my brain spins through possibilities.
Three male skaters. Who needs a partner badly enough to take me on with this kind of timeline?
I park in my usual spot, muscle memory guiding me through the familiar lot. The sun's higher now, mid-morning light glinting off car windshields and melting the frost on the grass. It's going to be a beautiful day. The kind of day that feels wrong for your life to be falling apart.
The rink is full now, multiple sessions running simultaneously. I can hear the scrape of blades on ice, the calls of coaches, the thud of bodies hitting mats during off-ice training. The sounds of normalcy. The sounds of a world that kept spinning even while mine stopped.
Coach Elena finds me in the locker room. I'm just sitting there, still in my practice clothes, staring at my skate bag like it holds answers.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Nope."
"Good answer." She sits beside me, the bench creaking under her weight. "Chen called you."
"Yeah."
"What you think?"
I look at her, really look at her. Elena Markovic coached Soviet skaters in the eighties. She's seen dozens of careers end, dozens of partnerships dissolve. She's watched dreams die on this ice more times than I can count. If anyone understands what I'm feeling right now, it's her.
"I think it's crazy," I say honestly. "I think twelve weeks isn't enough time. I think whoever I end up with is going to resent being stuck with second choice. I think there's a ninety percent chance this ends in disaster."
"And ten percent?" Elena asks.
"Ten percent, it ends in gold."
She nods slowly. "Tomorrow, 9 AM. Be ready."
"Who are the three skaters?" I ask.
Elena stands, brushing invisible lint from her warm-up pants. "That is question you ask tomorrow."
"Come on, Coach. You know who they are."
"Yes." She heads for the door, then pauses. "But you will meet them with open mind, not with head full of my opinions. Fresh slate, Lila. That is what you need right now."
The door closes behind her with a soft click.
I sit alone in the locker room for a long time, letting the sounds of the rink wash over me. Somewhere above me, someone lands a jump. The boards rattle as a body checks into them during hockey practice. A coach's whistle pierces the air.
My phone buzzes. Another unknown number. I ignore it. Then it buzzes again. And again.
I look down. Not unknown. Marcus.
Out of surgery. Knee is wrecked but doc says I'll walk again. Eventually. Skate again. Eventually.
The word "eventually" sits there on my screen like a bomb.
Another text: You're gonna kill it tomorrow. Go show them what Hart girls are made of.
I type back: Marcus, I'm so sorry.
His reply is immediate: Not your fault. Never your fault. My knee was ticking time bomb. Better now than mid-Olympics, right?
I don't know how to answer that. Don't know if there's a right answer.
Get out of this hospital and go practice, he texts. You've got twelve weeks to win a gold medal. No pressure.
I laugh, the sound echoing weird and hollow in the empty locker room. Trust Marcus to joke about this. Trust him to worry about my career when his just ended.
I text back a string of heart emojis because words feel insufficient, then force myself to stand. My legs are shaky, adrenaline crash hitting hard. I need food. Sleep. A shower. In that order.
But first, I need to skate.
The ice calls to me, the way it always does when life gets complicated. I change into fresh clothes, lace up my skates, and head to the practice rink. It's nearly empty now, most skaters breaking for lunch.
I step onto the ice and just... glide. No music. No routine. Just movement. The scrape of my blades, the cold air on my face, the familiar burn in my thighs as I push into a crossover.
This is what I know. This is what makes sense. Everything else can fall apart, but on the ice, I'm solid. I'm sure. I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be.
I practice for two hours straight. Jumps, spins, footwork. Everything except throws and lifts, because those need a partner. Those need trust. Those need Marcus.
By the time I finish, my legs are trembling and my mind is blessedly quiet. The kind of exhausted that comes from pushing your body past its limits. The kind that lets you sleep without dreaming.
I'm packing up my bag when my phone buzzes one more time.
Not a text. An email. Subject line: Emergency Partnership Meeting - Required Attendance.
My finger hovers over it for a long moment before I click.
The email is brief. Clinical. Lists the time, place, and dress code. Then, at the bottom, a single line that makes my blood run cold:
Skaters participating: Adrian Braxton, James Chen, Michael Torres.
Adrian Braxton.
The name sits on my screen like a curse.
Adrian Braxton, the NHL defenseman who got banned from professional hockey six months ago over some scandal involving a cheerleader. Adrian Braxton, who skated pairs as a junior before he abandoned figure skating for the money and glory of professional hockey. Adrian Braxton, whose family basically owns half of US Figure Skating through their foundation donations, which is probably the only reason the Federation is even considering letting him back.
Adrian Braxton, who called me "too rough around the edges" at a sponsor event three years ago when he was still slumming it at skating galas for his family's foundation.
Adrian Braxton, who suddenly needs figure skating again now that hockey has thrown him away.
The US Figure Skating Federation announces emergency partnership meetings. My name is on the list.