Page 69 of Hate You Most

She definitely still hated her though, that part hadn’t changed. Maybe—just maybe—the hatred that had once occupied all of her mind, had morphed into something different that she couldn't place just yet. Something that wasn't as sharp as it once had been.

Viktoriya didn’t know where the feeling had come from, it wasn't something that could be named. It was older than the accident. Deeper than the memories she’d lost. A truth her body had held onto and waited for her mind to catch up.

And just as she let herself sit with it—the room fell away. It wasn’t gradual and there was no warning. One moment she was on the couch, the next she was choking on air.

The tears pressed themselves out the corners of her eyes and down both her cheeks. Her vision went blurry, but she could faintly make out the way Sanchez was looking at her. The way her eyes scanned her entire face and the way her body moved silently to turn off the movie.

"What's wrong?”

Her chest heaved violently, lungs refusing to cooperate as panic flooded her body. She pressed a hand to her sternum as if she could physically hold herself together that way.

She looked around the room, blinked away her tears, but she was no longer in the warm apartment and Dakota was no longer beside her.

The air was cold and the apartment was dark, except for the faint glow of a nearby streetlight through the curtains. The city was muted and distant beyond the windows.

Viktoriya laid rigid on the left side of the bed, staring blankly at the window as the wind moved the thin curtains. Her rival was skating at the Olympics tonight, and she hadn't seen her in six months. She wasn't there, competing against her.

Her hands shook against the sheets as she tried—failed—to quiet herself.

Beside her, he shifted.

“Can you stop?” he muttered in a deep Russian voice. He didn’t turn to look at her and didn’t ask what was wrong. “I’m trying to sleep.”

They had been dating for almost four years, but Viktoriya knew in her heart that she didn't feel a single thing for him—and he barely felt a thing for her. Her father had introduced Lev to her only a week after she'd returned to Moscow. He said that she needed to do it for their family's reputation. Now that she had won a gold medal, she should be dating a respectable and good Russian man—an actor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, even though her throat was closing.

She got out of bed carefully, movements so small that her absence was barely noticed. She grabbed a dark sweater and slipped into the hallway, it smelled faintly of cleaning solution and something floral. On her way out she closes the door behind her as softly as she could.

The moment she was alone, Viktoriya broke completely.

Her back crashed against the cold wall and she folded in on herself. Knees drawn to her chest, her breath shattering into sharp and uneven gasps. The sound that escaped her lips was more animalistic than human.

She pressed a hand over her mouth and failed to completely contain the sound. Tears streaked hot and relentlessly down her cheeks. Her shoulders were shaking and her chest burned. It spilled out of her in waves she couldn’t control.

Dakota’s face rose in her mind—on the ice, focused and brilliant and so far away it physically left a hole in her chest. Perhaps she was dying—dying because she longed for the one person she could never be with. The one person that her own country, her own father and her own mind would never allow her to have.

This, too, would stay with her.

Not the man she called her boyfriend that was half-asleep in their bed—but the undeniable certainty that she'd never felt so alone in her entire life.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket and she knew without looking at it that it was Dakota. She unlocked her phone and wiped a tear from the side of her cheek. The glow from the large display ignited her swollen face and eyes.

Sanchez

I won

Not even a second after, another message came through.

Sanchez

Now we’re even

The word even slammed into her like a blow. The ache in her chest intensified until it was physically unbearable. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if that was the thing keeping her from coming entirely undone.

“I should be there,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I should be there.”

But she wasn’t. Instead, she was completely alone. The loneliness pressed itself into her body and her bones from every dark corner. It infested her until she had become nothing.