Page 66 of Broken Hearts
Mav drops his phone between his legs. “What do you mean, she’s fine?”
“Just what I said. The doctor cleared her to skate.”
“Rhett, buddy, he might have cleared her, but she’s notfine. Have you seen the video of her fall last year?”
“No. What fall?”
Mav blows out a breath and raises his dark eyebrows. He positions his phone so I can see it again, and this time he pulls up a video of Sienna skating at some competition last season. She’s in a red outfit that sparkles as she moves along the ice.
She has such a smooth, graceful way about her. Even if I weren’t super into her, she’d be hard not to watch.
“Here it is. Here it is,” Mav says, reminding me that we’re watching this for a purpose.
Adam comes over and crowds in to see.
I’m expecting her to jump and not clear the landing, but she’s just gliding across the ice when her body crumbles. She goes down hard on the ice and the audience lets out a collective“Oooo”.
I stop breathing and my pulse speeds up while I watch the medical staff rush out, and then the video cuts off.
“Holy shit.” Adam stands.
“I don’t understand.” My ears ring. “Sienna said she’s fine. This was last year?”
“Yeah, early in the season, I think. She was in the hospital for a few days.”
“How do you know all this?” My tone is accusatory. What I really mean is,Why don’t I?
“She was gone from yoga for about a month. We had this awful teacher instead who—”
“Focus.” I raise my voice. “What else do you know about her heart condition?”
“Woah, dude. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you raise your voice before.” He makes a face at Adam that shows his shock. “That’s pretty much all I know.”
“How could you not tell me? How couldshenot tell me?” I stand and pace the living room.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. I look to Adam. He’s mostly reasonable.
“That may not be the type of thing that’s so easy to bring up. Have you talked about her heart condition at all?” he asks.
I think back on all our conversations. “Yeah. Kind of. Fuck. I guess not. She told me she takes medication and that she has to be careful and listen to her body. She said she has episodes, but this…” I wave my hand toward Maverick’s phone. “She didn’t tell me that.”
I sit back down. My mind is spinning. “Now what? She’s about to skate. Can that happen again? She has the monitor now, right?”
I feel sick. The image of her slamming into the ice replays over and over. Holy shit.
“I’m going to call her.” I do just that as I walk to my room, slamming the door behind me.
“Pick up. Pick up. Pick up,” I mutter quietly.
She does on the third ring. The background noise of the competition is so loud, I can just barely make out her voice. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. It’s Rhett.”
“I know, silly.”
“Right.” Her happy, bubbly tone is such a contradiction to the picture of her lifeless face in the video that’s now frozen in my head. “You’re okay then?”
“What?”
