Page 54 of ICED
“Only the best kind of silly.”
I help her to her feet again, making sure every strap and buckle is still snug. She grabs both my hands like tiny vices and takes one tentative step onto the ice. Her knees wobble immediately.
“I’m doing it!” she says, then falters.
But I’ve already caught her.
She giggles again, a little less shaky this time. “Youdoalways catch me.”
“Told you I would,” I murmur.
We inch forward again. One slow, sliding step. Then another. Lila is smiling now, not the giddy excitement from before, but something softer. Braver. Earned.
I glance up at Maya through the plexiglass. She’s sitting now, hands clasped over her mouth, her eyes never leaving us.
I think she knows what this is.
Not just skating.
Not just a game.
It’s a promise.
One I’ll keep every day, every fall, every wobble.
As long as they’ll let me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MAYA
Lila’s laughing again.
Real, hiccupy little giggles that bounce off the rink’s cold walls and wrap themselves around my heart like a scarf. I press a hand to my mouth, because if I don’t, the tears might sneak out instead.
She’s back on the ice, wobbling, holding tight to Owen’s massive hands, but moving. Trying. Smiling.
Like she didn’t just whisper something that shattered me into a thousand pieces.
“Daddy made us cry when Mummy fell.”
It wasn’t much. Just a scrap of memory. But it hit like a freight train.
I thought she was too young to remember the worst bits. I spent so long convincing myself she’d been shielded from it, that she’d slept through the shouting, that she’d been too little to notice the bruises I painted over with makeup and smiles.
But kids see everything, don’t they?
Even when we try to hide it.
My eyes blur and I blink fast, trying to stay focused on the present, the now. Owen and Lila, just a few feet away, inching along the ice with all the grace of baby penguins. He’s talking to her the whole time, low and steady. Reassuring her. Letting her lead. Never pushing.
She slips again. Not badly. Just a wobble.
But before her knees can hit the ice, he’s got her. Again.
She grins. “You’re amagic catcher,” she says, voice high and breathless.
He just chuckles. “Best job I’ve ever had.”
