Page 115 of Hate You Most

Viktoriya had opened her mouth to argue, but the memory fractured before she could say anything. Her mind splintered into another version of herself. Tears gathered behind her eyes as her father spoke softly, which had somehow made it worse.

There had been a discussion, a plan. It had been presented to her like mercy. If she could not stop her mind from wandering back to Dakota every time she closed her eyes, then perhaps her mind could be made to stop for her. Perhaps she could be protected from the temptation and from scandal and from the weakness that love had made of her.

She remembered agreeing.

The pressure and the weight from it all had nearly broken her. Her skating was no longer a certain future, and the nation wasn't pleased with her anymore. It was only one terrible thing in exchange for a thousand better ones. It had become almost too easy after that, to convince herself that pain was merely the cost of staying alive.

A horn blasted somewhere behind her and it startled her so hard that the memory shattered once more. She was back in the car, rain streaking down the windows and the only sound around her being her own ragged breathing.

Her phone slipped from her hand as another memory came so violently that it nearly made her cry out.

She was no longer in Russia, but a brightly lit apartment with a cheap bottle of wine on the table between Dakota and her. Dakota leaned against the counter with her arms folded. She looked at her with a terrible wonder.

They had talked for hours that night, though Viktoriya could no longer separate the beginning from the middle, only the ache of wanting and the fear of being watched.

Her father had grown more and more irritated with every trip she took. The excuses she made barely made logical sense. Every competition was entered only so she could be close to Dakota for a few precious hours a few times a year.

A few hours that felt like pure oxytocin.

It had worked for a little while. That lie she kept telling everyone and herself, that she was still loyal and careful and definitely still in control. And then it was 2017, and the trips had become impossible after the injury. A fall that had twisted her knee so badly she had hit the ice with a sound she would never forget. Rehab had been brutal and she hadn't seen an end to it.

She had forced herself back on the ice—back to doing triples, but it wasn't working. She could barely climb the stairs without her legs physically shaking from the pain, and she was missing Dakota more than ever. She couldn't compete, and that meant she could only be with Dakota in hurried phone calls in the dead of night. All the small moments that kept her going were slipping away, and she couldn't get her strength back fast enough.

She remembered the rage of it all. The helplessness—the way she had smiled through every interview and public appearance while secretly calculating how many lies she could tell before the nation buried her alive.

Dakota skated at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea without her, and she won gold.

In 2019, the news of Viktoriya's retirement from skating went viral. Her body couldn't handle competitions, and that meant no more state sanctioned trips.

Still, she couldn't stay away from Dakota. She booked trips to the States a few times a year, no more than a week at a time. For that entire week, Dakota would explore her body in ways she could only dream of before. They got married, so her heart didn't break every time she went back to Russia. She thought she was being so careful. She thought she had everyone fooled and thought she could play two lives against each other and keep winning.

Then her mother had gotten sick in late 2020.

The fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic wouldn't leave her alone. Her mothers frail hand in hers. She had wanted to stay in Russia then. SHE wanted to disappear into the silence and the coldness of her home, but rumors and gossip trailed behind her from America, like mud on her expensive shoes.

The thought of those whispers turning into actual proof made her skin crawl.

Dakota had wanted her to tell the truth. She wanted to stand in the open where no one could tear them apart by gossip or rumors alone, and Viktoriya had wanted the opposite with a desperation that bordered on insanity.

They had fought, again and again, until all the old tenderness was buried under hurtful words and exhaustion.

And then in 2021 her mother passed, and she'd been too afraid to return home. The fight between Dakota and her had been unlike any other. She knew that she couldn't keep living like this.

Dakota had stood in the apartment doorway with her arms crossed and brows furrowed. She had insisted that her parents deserved to know the truth. That she was tired of hiding. She was tired of loving someone who couldn't bear to be seen loving her back.

Viktoriya knew she couldn't do that, so instead of comforting her wife, she screamed that she wanted a divorce, that marrying her had been the greatest mistake of her life. She needed to step back before Dakota could be the first to do so.

Her bags got packed while she screamed at Dakota. As soon as she got into the car and headed for the airport, her mind went quiet. She was going back to Russia and she was going to bury her mother.

She shut Dakota out entirely. She somehow convinced herself that distance would make it manageable. It had not worked.

Nothing had worked.

She had slowly gone insane. Every time she blinked, Dakota was there in the darkness. The rumors had followed her home anyway, and she had begged her father to make them stop. “Scrub every trace of it,” she said to him. “Take it away, just make it stop.”

She had sat across from her father with red and puffy eyes. He looked at her with that awful mixture of approval and disappointment, as if she were a daughter and a problem at the same time.

Love wasn't always carefree and peaceful. Sometimes love was so bone crushingly painful that she couldn't see herself surviving another second without going mad. She needed to forget Dakota completely.