Page 69 of Ice Princesses
“Yes.”
“She’s very good.”
I glance at him.
“It’s so obvious,” he continues easily. “The athlete skates like he is enjoying himself. That doesn’t come around often.”
By the time I make it down to ice level, the recruiters have mostly scattered.
Rodrigo is still near the boards, laughing with Katia, the tension of the program finally dissolving out of hisshoulders.
Cecilia hasn’t moved far.
She’s standing a few feet away, scanning the room like she normally does.
“Nice flip,” I say when I reach her.
She glances over, surprised for a fraction of a second before her expression settles again.
“He tightened it this week,” she replies. “Up until yesterday, it was drifting.”
“I noticed.”
The corner of her mouth lifts slightly at that, though it fades quickly.
For a moment we stand there in the noise of the rink—skates scraping, voices carrying across the boards, someone dragging a bag of equipment down the corridor.
Rodrigo calls something out to her in Spanish from across the bench area, and she lifts a hand in response without looking away from me.
“Looks like the scouts liked him,” I say.
“They did.”
Her tone is unnervingly neutral.
A recruiter breaks off from the group near the tunnel and heads straight towards us, his expression already arranged into something eager and polished. He’s young enough that the Harvard logo on his quarter-zip makes him look more like an assistant than the person making decisions, but the lanyard hanging from his neck says otherwise.
“Princess,” he says when he reaches us, smiling in the particular way people do when they think the nickname is charming instead of burdening. “Incredible commentary today.”
I smile automatically. Years of training and muscle memory, but all I want to do is roll my eyes at the tired comment. “Thank you.”
He turns slightly, but not enough to stop addressing me first.
“And what a result,” he continues. “Your camp is clearly doing something right. The Argentine kid—Rodrigo?—he’s getting a lot of attention.”
I feel Cecilia go still beside me.
Not dramatically, but instead a slight change in the air, as if every muscle in her body was drawn inward by a fraction.
“And with your family’s influence behind initiatives like this…” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “I mean, when aPiercegets involved, people talk.”
I could let the moment pass. Say something vague and keep the conversation moving.
That’s what I would have done a year ago.
Instead, I say, “He’s not getting attention because of me.”
The recruiter blinks.
