Page 6 of The Fall

I’d hate me, too.

There’s no way Savannah would’ve been able to compete after that.

Why don’t I remember this happening? I know I can be cold sometimes, but I would never purposely hurt one of my competitors.

I look down and see the date that the video was uploaded.

My shoulders tense. This competition was one day after my mom found out she had cancer.

I was broken. Numb.

I don’t remember anything other than my mom forcing me to go to that competition. I skated for her because she asked me to. My routine was second nature to me at that point, and I barely had to think to get on the ice. Cass and I did it and won, and I left immediately with my mom. Cassandra stood on the podium by herself that day.

It was the beginning of the end for me.

Now I’ve got to get this woman to trust me after I ruined her chances to go to the last Olympics.

Fuck.

This is not what I signed up for.

THREE

SAVANNAH

“My life is over,” I say as I flop down on my couch in the apartment I share with my younger sister.

“That feels awfully dramatic,” Kelsey says, barely looking at me from her computer screen. She’s an overachiever and decided to take a summer class this semester, so she’s got plenty of homework to keep her busy when she’s not working her part-time job at a clothing store by the university.

“It is dramatic,” Max says. He drops his bag onto the floor next to mine and comes over to sit next to me on the couch. “Everything is going to be fine, Sav.”

I roll my eyes and scoff. “Yeah, right.”

Kelsey looks up again at me and then shuts her laptop. “Alright, tell me what’s going on.”

I tell her everything. How Tati is leaving and that our new coach is Logan Sokolov. She has the decency to gasp when I say his name. She remembers when he broke my ankle. I was cursing his name over and over again and on the verge of buying a Logan Sokolov voodoo doll off Etsy so I could stick pins in it while I watched him compete at the Olympics. I didn’t do it, though. I am an adult after all, but I really, really wanted to.

“He’s the one who⁠—”

“Yes,” I answer quickly. “Broke my ankle, ruined my life.”

Kelsey sighs and gives me a pointed look. She’s always been the more rational one of us. As the middle child of the family, I have a tendency to act out of emotion. I’m always trying to prove myself. Which is stupid because, as Kelsey and my older brother tend to remind me, our family literally packed up our lives in Nebraska and moved to Colorado so I could work on my skating. Both of my siblings claim that I’m the favorite child, which may or may not be true, but I still feel the nagging need to prove myself not just to my family but to everyone. Going to the Olympics is my chance to do that. I was supposed to do it two years ago, but, well, my life was ruined.

“Your life is not ruined,” Kelsey says patiently. “Look at you. You just graduated from college and get to spend all your time skating. You’ve got a great skate partner.” Max smiles at this compliment. “And now you’ve got a coach who has been to the Olympics and knows what it takes to get there. You should feel lucky.”

If it were any other Olympic gold medalist, I probably would. But Logan Sokolov practically ran into me on the ice and didn’t so much as look at me as I lay writhing in pain on the ground. There was never an investigation either because, unofficially, he’s the golden boy of the United States ice dance community, and god forbid he gets in trouble.

“He didn’t even apologize to me today,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. He looked at me like I was the crazy one. The audacity.

“You didn’t really give him a chance, even if he had wanted to. You basically yelled at the guy all day,” Max says.

I didn’t yell at him all day. I raised my voice once and then tried to ignore him for the rest of the day. Coach Tati came to watch us at one point and gave me a glare that told me I needed to behave. So, I tried my best… kind of.

“I’m just not happy about this.”

“Yeah, that’s an understatement,” Max mutters. “We don’t have a choice, though, unless you want to find another coaching team, which would be even harder on us this close to the Olympics.”

I sigh. “I know. I know. I’m sure I’ll get over it. I can’t say I’ll ever like the guy, but I’ll try my best to listen to his coaching.”