Page 116 of Ice Princesses
“I didn’t know,” I say, because that’s the truth that matters right now, even if it doesn’t fix anything. “Ceci, I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
She lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, but there’s nothing light about it.
“Of course you didn’t,” she replies. “Why would you?”
I flinch, barely, but enough that I feel it.
“That’s not fair,” I can absolutely hear where this is going and I don’t want to meet her there, not like this.
“Isn’t it?” she asks, and now there’s nothing being held back, no careful control in the way she’s choosing her words. “Because from where I’m standing, it feels pretty accurate.”
I shake my head, stepping closer again. Distance feels wrong, even now, even as everything else starts to fracture around us.
“You think I’ve been planning this?” I ask. “That I would use you—use Rodrigo—to position myself for something like that?”
Her jaw tightens.
“I don’t know what to think, Isabella,” she says, and that makes my chest tighten because it’s harsher than anything else she could have said. “I heard about your presidency before I heard about anything from you. I heard it from people who seem very confident it’s already decided.”
“It’s not decided,” I push back immediately, the words coming faster now, sharper. “And even if it were, it wouldn’t be because of Ascend, it wouldn’t be because of him?—”
“But it helps,” she cuts in.
The room finally stills.
“It helps that you have a program that’s producing results,” she continues, more controlled now but no less intense. “It helps that you’re attached to something that looks like progress, like development, like the future of the fucking sport.”
Her eyes lock onto mine.
“And it helps that you didn’t tell me any of this while I was busy doing exactly that with you.”
I stare at her.
“That’s not what—” I take a deep breath and loosen my shoulders. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know, Ceci.” There’s no space left for careful phrasing around this. She’s looking at me, waiting patiently for an explanation that, by all accounts, is going to sound like an excuse to her ears. “And you didn’t tell me, either.”
Her expression falters, just for a second.
“Do not turn this on me, Isabella!” Her voice rises enough to cut through the room, her restraint slipping in a way I haven’t seen from her before at all. It’s the first time I see it clearly—the anger sitting right under her skin, no longer contained. “I was going to.”
“When?” I ask.
“Now,” she shoots back immediately, and her voice cracks on the word, enough that I hear it and it makes my heart break. “I’m telling you now.”
The room feels too small. Or maybe we’ve just filled it with every single word we haven’t said to each other in three months.
“I can’t read your mind, Ceci,” I say, quieter now, but noless urgent. “I can’t know you’re rearranging your entire life around this if you don’t actually tell me that’s what you’re doing.”
She looks at me like that’s the problem.
Like that’s exactly the point.
“I didn’t think I had to spell it out,” she says. “I thought?—”
She stops. There’s a long pause, and we are both suspended there, staring at each other like the silence might solve this.
The door opens behind me, and I feel my sister instantly without having to turn. The shift in the room is immediate, a change in energy that makes Cecilia’s gaze flick past me and tighten at whatever Nina’s expression is telling her.
“Izzy,” Nina says, low and controlled.
