Page 121 of Oh, Flutz!

Twenty minutes, and I’mpacked. My entire life, everything I’ve built in the last year, and yet it still only fits in three suitcases.

I sleep. I do. And then I wake up, and I take a cab, and I get on the plane, feeling like I’m still in a nightmare.

I should be feeling good about this. I should be feeling relief. I don’t have to lie anymore, I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to change—I’m going home. I’m going back to my team, to my coaches, to my family. Everything will be exactly as it was.

I squash down the sudden unease.This is what you want, Ekaterina. This is all you want.

I resist the urge to look past the woman next to me out the window, to get a glimpse of New York as it runs out underneath me. I shut my eyes, leaning my head back against the headrest, pretending the sweeping feeling in my stomach is only from the takeoff.

It’s just me now. I’m all alone again, just me against everything and everyone. This is what needed to happen; what would always have happened eventually. I did all of us a favor. I had to do it. For me, but especially for him. It’s for the best.

This is all I know how to be.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

BRYAN

LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK

Idon't know whatto do with my hands.

It’s like when we were first learning lifts. I didn’t know where to put my hands. The position felt all wrong, awkward, and now when I’m on the ice I stand there like a moron, because there isn’t anyone next to me to keep me out of my head. There isn’t anyone whose hand I’m supposed to be holding.

Because she isn’t here. She isn’there.

It’s been almost two weeks since that night, and I’m still waking up to the sound of “I’m not who you think I am.”The last words she said to me before I left the room and ran until I couldn’t anymore, until I started sobbing my eyes out like a loser. They're still stuck in my head the way all her words tended to.

I remember all of it like it’s still happening, like I’m still standing there in front of her on that freezing cold terrace, watching her pull away from me with no way of stopping it. I can’t leave. I’m trapped on that hotel roof like I’m trapped in this town.

I almost said it, and that’s probably the worst part. I really almost said it. I was standing there, mind running a million miles a minute, trying to figure out how the hell to get her to stop saying this stuff, to just get her to stay, and I just kept running into a roadblock. Over and over again.I need you. I love you. Don’t leave me too.

It’s probably the only sane thing I did that night that I didn’t say that part. No matter how much I humiliated myself by basically begging her to stay, I at least didn’t say the worst thing.

She doesn’t love me. She’s not that stupid.

I guess it just proves how much of an idiot I am that I thought she actually might.

Iwake up again,somehow. I seem to keep waking up. Only this time, there’s a different sound screaming in my ears as a good morning.

I groan, rolling over onto my other side so I can flail around for the shrieking phone on my nightstand. “Aw,crap—“ I force my eyes open and reach under the bed for it, fumbling around until I grab it, then turn it on.4:54.Jesus christ. I’m actually going to kill whoever’s calling me at this hour.

I hit accept, even though more than likely it’s just some spam caller on a different time zone. “I don’t want your bootleg Viagra, alright? I function perfectly fine on my own.”

“Bry! Bry, it’s—” The call crackles, but I sit up straight, because I’d recognize that voice anywhere.

“Alex? Woah, slow down, I can’t hear anything.”

“Bry, something’s happened—”

My stomach drops at the sheer panic in my little sister’s voice. “Alex, what’s wrong?”

But then I know. I know what it is even before she’s answered. My chest’s fallen open at the bottom.No. Please, no.

“Get to the hospital. Bryan,fucking get to the hospital!”

Chapter Forty

KATYA

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