Page 5 of The Fall

Savannah rolls her eyes. “Wow, alright. Fine. Guess it’s ‘pick on Savannah’ day.”

“Sav—” Max starts, but I don’t need him to run interference.

“Or it’s ‘learn to take criticism’ day. You’ll never win gold if you think you can’t improve,” I tell her flatly.

“I know how to accept criticism,” she says.

I raise an eyebrow. “Really? Just not from me?”

“Especially not from you.”

“You do realize I’ve won several gold medals, right?” It’s a douchey thing to say, but I used it to get my point across.

“You do realize I don’t care, right?”

There’s silence surrounding us as we stare at each other, arms crossed over our chests. “As your coach⁠—”

“I didn’t pick you,” she cuts me off.

“I didn’t pick you, either. But here we are. So either get over it or leave.” I expect Tati to tell me I’m being too harsh or pull me aside and tell me that maybe this was a bad idea. But she doesn’t. She looks from me to Savannah and back to me, waiting to see what happens.

Savannah skates closer. “I don’t like you.”

That’s an understatement. “I’m not asking you to.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“I’m not going to let you fail, Savannah. I can’t promise you a lot, but I can promise that when you get out on that ice this season, you’ll have the best package ever.”

Her jaw moves like she wants to say something, but surprisingly, all that comes out is, “Fine.”

Then she slaps on her blade guards and stomps off toward one of the back rooms.

“I, um, yeah. I don’t know. She’ll come around?” The last part comes out as a question, which doesn’t make me feel much better.

“Will she?” I ask.

Max exhales and shrugs. “Shit, I don’t know.”

He quickly follows after her, calling her name.

“They’ve got ballet practice now,” Tati explains. I’m glad to know she’s not just running away because I pissed her off. “She’ll come around, Logan. Just don’t give up.”

I nod and follow Tati to her small office. She goes over some of my employment paperwork, the schedule with my younger students, and gives me a copy of Savannah and Max’s schedule. Then she has to go work with a few other new coaches she hired. I’m not coaching a lot this season. I wanted to make sure I was good at it before I took on too many skaters. Tati agreed that would be the best plan, too.

Once she’s gone, I find an empty bench near the rink and pull out my phone, searching for the National Championship footage that Tati mentioned because it’s been weighing on the back of my mind. I wonder what I did to piss this woman off so bad that she can barely look at me.

The first few links on my search give nothing except videos of me, which I have no interest in watching. I change my search to add Savannah’s name and click on the first video that comes up.

It’s the skaters in our group warming up on the ice. The camera is pointed at Savannah and Max as they skate backward, arms out. They look great, but it’s strange because I have no recollection of seeing them that day.

I’m about to exit out of this video, thinking it’s not the right one, when I see Cassandra and me skate into the frame. I’m getting dangerously close to them. And that’s when it happens. I skate too close as if I don’t see them. Savannah notices me at the last second and makes an attempt to get out of my way, but as she does, her ankle twists and she falls to the ice.

There’s no way her ankle isn’t broken by the looks of the angle it’s at.

I rewind the video to watch it again, but this time I watch my face. It’s completely blank. I don’t smile. I don’t frown. It’s as if I don’t even notice her fall. Cassandra notices, though. She smirks—fucking smirks—at Savannah as she’s lying on the ice holding her leg.

Fuck.