Page 73 of My Rival for Christmas

That’s what he said to me in bed.

“I thought,” Nate continues, “that I just had to wait two months. Until we were at the Games and won gold.”

Because that’s all I ever talked about. I couldn’t have anything else in my life outside of skating until I won gold. I was a fiend, hungry for that excellence. That pinnacle of achievement.

“But we didn’t win…” We were so confident we would.

While everyone around us was nervous, Nate and I were calm. Collected. Knowing that the two of us always made magic together on the ice. Nerves had no place between us.

But as flawless of a routine as we skated, we were always the people to beat and more than a few pairs had our number that day. And we came up short.

I’d never been so defeated in my life. Never felt a loss so much.

My singular, most important goal had just slipped through my fingers.

“We didn’t,” Nate confirms. “But I thought, well, I had already waited six years. I could wait another four.”

Something changed during those next four years. Not just with Nate.

But with me.

“You became a different person entirely after that,” Nate tells me, not unkindly. Rubbing his thumbs on the dimples of my back. Like a balm to soothe his words. “Skating had always been the most important thing in your life, but for the next four years, it felt like it became the only thing in your life.”

It was.The realization washes over me. I had always put it first, often sacrificing other important things to carve out moretime to skate, but I didn’t care. I was on a path of redemption. My life became nothing but eat, sleep, and skate—severely neglecting the first two items of that routine.

It was destroying me.

I was destroying him.

I was destroyingmyself.

But before I can say anything, Nate continues, still rubbing circles on my back. My tense body waning under his touch. “It was intense, Paige, but nothing I couldn’t handle. If you were going to put yourself through hell, then so was I. And on the tougher days, I remembered the look on your face when we lost. Your pain was my pain, and I knew I’d do whatever it took to get you that gold.”

He gives me a small smile that doesn’t reach his heavy eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I wanted that medal just as badly, but it had always meant something different for you. Had always been your biggest focus for so long. I just kept thinking, if we win, I could give you your life back. I could show you that there was more to life than skating.”

There’s a but to this story coming. My hands tighten around his neck, bracing for the blow.

“But those four years were so hard. My feelings for you, which were already pretty consuming, became so vehement I felt like I was drowning with no one around to throw me a life vest.” Nate’s face becomes ripe with emotions I’ve never seen, at least not to this degree.

So open and visceral andconsuming.

A hammer clangs against my chest in response.

“Spending those long hours with you?” he continues, his touch the only thing keeping me grounded right now. Which feels ironic for what he says next. “Holding you close, feeling you pressed against me? Knowing I had pieces of you but not in all the ways I wanted? I always thought I was a strong man,but I wasn’t strong enough to ignore the way my love grew for you. How every day you claimed another piece of my heart I desperately tried to protect. It was the most torturous ecstasy I had ever tasted, to the point where I felt like I was becoming addicted. To you, to the pain. In ways I didn’t know how to survive.”

I feel like I’m suffocating, as memories I’d long since locked away resurface. The tender way Nate used to watch me, how sometimes I’d see a flicker of devastation when he thought I wasn’t looking. How sometimes he’d grimace when he got too close, pulling away like I was caught on fire.

I just thought he was tired. We were pushing ourselves so hard.Iwas pushing us even harder, to the point where Vytas tried to step in and get me to take a breather.

I didn’t know he was going through all this, felt all this.

“How could I not have known any of this? That you felt like this?” My voice feels lost, vacant as I grapple for something sturdy to hold on to.

I always thought I knew Nate better than myself, but now I’m questioning if I even knew him at all. If I ever paid close enough attention.

I try to swallow, but my throat has only gotten thicker with emotions I can’t decipher.

Nate’s touch becomes too much.

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