The Favorites: A Novel(98)

Francesca Gaskell: That’s right. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t because of Kat and Heath. We just needed a change.

Producer (Offscreen): Sure, but you have to admit, the timing was—

Francesca Gaskell: We’d lost our coach. We were grieving, okay?

Ellis Dean: Of course Gaskell and Kovalenko left the Academy. Sochi was supposed to be their Olympics, after they’d been stuck in the alternate slot twice in a row.

Francesca Gaskell: We were really excited to compete against Kat and Heath again, believe it or not. Even as old and out of practice as they were—no offense—we figured having them in the mix would push us to be our best.

Ellis Dean: Staying at the Academy would’ve meant staying in Kat and Heath’s shadow. And Frannie was ready for the spotlight.





Chapter 67





I imagined my official reunion with Heath Rocha a thousand different ways.

He would run toward me like a third-act rom-com hero in an airport terminal. He would give me a cordial smile and a firm handshake as if we were rival CEOs negotiating a merger. He would stare in shock, then refuse to skate with me, because this had been some elaborate scheme on Bella’s part, and he did hate me after all.

The reality was far less dramatic. On a Tuesday afternoon in early February, a taxi dropped me off at the Lin Ice Academy. Heath and Bella were finishing up a session with one of the junior teams, who looked like babies to me but were probably around fourteen or fifteen.

The girl spotted me first. Her eyes went wide like a cartoon kitten, and she made a strangled sound of surprise. Heath turned.

“Hello, Katarina,” he said.

He didn’t seem happy to see me. He didn’t seem disturbed by my presence either. His expression was like the lake on a still night: placid on the surface, shadows below.

“Right on time,” Bella said. “Let’s get started.”

The two young skaters exited, the girl still staring at me. I smiled at her, and she almost tripped over her skates.

I’d become so accustomed to my compact private rink, the regulation-sized ice surface felt vast. Bella stood off to the side while Heath and I looped the perimeter, picking up speed with each circuit. On the fourth time around, he took my hand.

His palms were slick with sweat. So he was nervous too.

As soon as our fingers interlocked, our blades fell into a steady rhythm. Our breathing synced. Heath drew me into a dance hold, and we moved through our standard warm-up sequence without a single misstep, as if we’d been doing it every day.

Bella switched on a low-key bluesy instrumental, and we began to improvise, seamlessly blending old choreography with spontaneous new elements. I’d worried skating with him again would be awkward, stilted, difficult. Instead, it was easy. So easy it terrified me.

When Bella started calling out guidance from her spot beside the rink, that felt easy too. Heath could respond to her feedback before she’d even finished the sentence, and his experience as a choreographer had turned him into an even stronger lead. The slightest pressure of his hands, and I could sense exactly how he wanted me to move.

Eventually the music stopped, and so did we. Center ice, chests pressed together, close enough to kiss. Eyes locked, my entire world shrunk to the deep brown of his irises.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Bella said.

I felt like Heath and I had been on the ice for ten minutes, tops, but it had been over an hour. We were both covered in sweat—our own, each other’s. As we unlaced our skates and chugged from our water bottles, we avoided eye contact like we’d woken up after a regrettable one-night stand. There was the awkwardness I’d been expecting.

Bella had more work to do, so Heath and I walked out together, still silent. He held the door open for me as we stepped into the golden hour light.

“I guess I’ll see y—” I started, just as he said, “Katarina, I—”

Another voice interrupted us both. “Ms. Shaw?”

The young girl he and Bella had been working with earlier waited at the curb.

“Yes?” I said.

“Would you—I mean, if it’s not too much trouble…could you please sign this for me?”

She thrust something into my hands. A program from the 2009 Stars on Ice tour, with Heath and me on the cover.

“Sure,” I said. “Do you have something to write with?”

“Oh! No, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Here.” Heath took a pen from his bag and passed it to me.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.

“Madison. Madison Castro. My older sister took me to see the tour for my birthday. In Dallas, that’s where I’m from. Well, like twenty miles outside of Dallas.”

Once Madison conquered her fear of speaking to me, she couldn’t seem to shut up. Heath didn’t bother trying to hide his amusement, but she was too enraptured to notice.

“Seeing you skate is what made me want to become an ice dancer. I’m going to go to the Olympics one day, and—” She caught herself. “I mean, I hope I will.”

“I’m sure you will. And hopefully you’ll do much better than I did.” I handed the program back, my signature scrawled under her name. “Good luck this season, Madison.”

“Thank you!” She bounced off, beaming, the program clutched to her chest.