Page 125 of Ice Princesses
Upstairs, the front door opens loudly enough that we both hear it.
Then—
“Honey, I’m home!”
Rodrigo, followed immediately by another voice. “Rodrigo, stop screaming!”
Katia.
Isabella closes her eyes briefly.
“They found us.”
I grin. “Your children are home.”
“Our children are getting too terrifying,” Isabella replies immediately, but she’s smiling when she says it, a little crooked and discombobulated.
Upstairs, I hear feet stomping against the hardwood floor, followed by Rodrigo saying something in soft Spanish. Katia coos, and I assume they have found the cat.
“Are we decorating the tree or what?” Rodrigo shouts from the first floor. “I didn’t drive all the way down here for this level of disorganization.”
I burst into laughter again.
Isabella groans softly and tips her head back dramatically. “He’s gotten significantly louder since he won that Grand Prix, Coach.”
“That’s because you keep validating him!”
“I support his dreams.”
“You bought him a six-hundred-dollar espresso machine because he got to ten thousand followers on Instagram.”
“He was emotional.”
I shake my head slowly, still laughing under my breath, and my gaze drifts back towards the medals scattered around us.
Even after everything, this version of Isabella—the one sitting on the floor in my hoodie while plotting psychological warfare against her mother using Olympic hardware—feels so different from the person the rest of the world thinks they know.
I reach out and pick up one of the medals carefully, turning it slightly so the light catches against the gold.
“You know,” I say softly. “I think this is the craziest thing of all.”
“What part?”
I glance around the room. “The fact that you have enough medals lying around your basement to accessorize out of spite.”
She snorts. “I’ll definitely be over-accessorized.”
I look at Isabella. At the woman who fought publicly because she was determined to build an entire program on the belief that the sport should be kinder than it had been to others, even if she’s the most decorated athlete in said sport. At the woman who somehow still looks at me like I’m the extraordinary one in this relationship.
“You know I’m proud of you, right?” I ask quietly.
Her expression changes immediately. She stands and reaches for my hands.
“Ceci—”
“No, I mean it,” I continue, softer now. “Not because of these.” I gesture vaguely to the medals. “Or the commentating or the connections, or any of the things everyone else cares about.”
She stays very still.
