Page 124 of Born of Ice

“Yes, you could’ve.” She grabs my face, steadying me as her eyes lock me in place. “I’ll never lie to you, but this is life, Exton. It’s not a fluffy romance novel where everything just works out. This is real and it’s painful. We all make mistakes. He made his.His, Exton. He is the one responsible for them, not you. He understood it, he never blamed you for not showing up, so you shouldn’t either. That’s the thing about being an adult, there is no one else to blame no matter how much we’d like to. I made my share of choices that led me here and you have yours. But it’s not about those mistakes. It’s about how we move forward from them. What we carry with us into the future.” Electra wipes the tears off my cheeks even though hers keep falling.

“You taught me that…now, accept it yourself,” she continues, but all I could think about in my head was the things I’ll never get to learn now. I won’t get the answers to the million questions I have. I won’t get to know anything about my mom.

He never told me anything about her in my first eight years of life. Any time I tried to mention something, his eyes would grow wild and crazy. He’d yell so hard, his spit would cover my face and I’d get slapped in a face. I’d get slapped so hard, I would crumble to the ground. Eventually, I learned to shut up.

Being a kid I didn’t understand why, why my dad was like that. Why did he hate me so much, but now…after this letter…

I look at my Electra and I still don’t understand how he could do that to me, but I get the why. Because if something happened to her, I’d die right alongside.

Just like he did. He died. He died with her.

My mom. My mom who loved me. Wanted me. My mom who was a figure skater…

God, my mom…

“Electra…she…and now you…how?” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say but all I knew was that all this was crazy. It was too much, too impossible but at the same time it almost felt like I knew it this whole time.

I felt that connection between Electra and me. Knew there was more to it.

Could it be my mom watching over me? Over Electra? Could it be her that brought us together?

I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost miss the new wave of tears on her beautiful face. She’s shaking like she can’t believe any of this.

“Did you know who she was? Helena Quinn? Did you hear her name before?” I searched her eyes.

I was ashamed to admit I never once looked into my parents. Never once wanted to search for more information about them.To me they both died and there was nothing more to it and now…well, now, I want every tiny detail.

How absurd is that? How stupid it is of us humans to go looking for answers when there’s no one left with the knowledge.

But then Electra nods her head, tasting the salt on her lips as she lifts her finger to my face and starts tracing my nose, my cheekbones, the wrinkles around my eyes. “How I’ve never seen it before is beyond me,” she whispers reverently, and I swallow a thick lump. “You do look just like her, baby. So much, it’s almost scary, apart from her features being softer.” Electra pauses for a second and I feel that thread between us thicken and pull again.

“I didn’t just hear of her, Exton. I worshiped her.” I suck in a sharp breath. “Helena Quinn is the reason I am a figure skater.”

I don’t realize my mouth is propped open until I feel the soft pads of her fingers tracing over my parted lips. “How?” is all I can manage.

“When I was about six years old, I was doing my homework in the kitchen while my mom was washing dishes and she had turned something on the TV for the background noise but when I lifted my head up, I saw this woman skating. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Electra says with a glimmer in her eyes.

“She was so graceful, so majestic and flawless I couldn’t look away.” Her features grow animated despite the tears. “Her whole body moved as one with ice, as if it was a part of her, carrying her through her dance. God. Exton, it’s like nothing I’d ever seen and all I knew was that I wanted to be like her. Later, I learned it was an old recording of Helena Quinn’s routine from one of the Olympics she won, and I made my mom look for any tapes with her.” She shakes her head. “God, how is this real?” Electra whispers, asking the same question I had on the tip of my tongue, but before I can say anything she gets this faraway look in her eyes.

And then they widen slightly as she opens and closes her mouth with no sound.

“What is it?” I pull my brows together with concern because Electra looks almost in distress.

She takes a long, steadying breath. “After the injury, I was in this weird state.” She licks her lips almost nervously and I tilt my head to the side, slightly, waiting to see where she’s going with this all while my heart rate starts to beat two beats faster.

“I always thought it was a myth, something people who nearly died made up to get their five minutes of fame, yet there I was… It almost felt like a realm between life and death and in my case, I was falling through the ice.” Electra takes another slow, deep and a very shaky breath. I can almost see every painful memory of that day on her face, as if they still live rent free in her mind and most likely won’t ever leave the premises.

“I was drowning in the icy water. Falling and falling and falling so deep, there was no point in fighting. I didn’t want to fight. Giving up, seemed to be such better option, but then I heard it.” Electra closes her eyes softly, watching the memories behind her eyelids.

“My mom’s voice. She was calling me, pleading with me to keep living. Keep going. But then…” she trails off, her brows furrowing for a moment. “I thought it was a figment of my imagination. Hell, all of this was a figment of my imagination or some weird chemical reaction in my brain but…I heard another voice,” she whispers, opening her eyes softly and casting them at me from underneath her lashes and the hairs on my body raise.

Holy…

“The voice told me I must keep going and I asked her if she was in pain too, like I was, and she said yes. I asked why she won’t give up then and she said ‘He needs me, and he needs you too.’”

“Electra…”

“All this time I couldn’t place it. I knew I’ve heard it before, but it was tangled up, bits and pieces missing from my mind. Until now,” she whispers. “I heard Helena Quinn. And I think the ‘he’ she was worried about was you. Maybe I’ve gone mad. Maybe I’m making all of this up. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination and it pulled the two people I valued who were no longer alive. I don’t know what it was…” Desperation laces her tone as she fists my shirt. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”

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