Chapter 6: The Late-Night Confession
The noise of the common room felt like a physical echo in Amber’s skull as she pushed open the heavy door to the rink. Silence, cold and absolute, swallowed her. The chaos of the village was just a dull throb through layers of concrete.
Here, the world made sense. Blue lines, red circles, borders.
The ice was empty, resurfaced earlier into a perfect, milky plane. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their sterile glow bouncing off the pristine surface and up into the rafters. It was so quiet she could hear the faint hum of the compressors, the ancient building settling around her. She leaned against the boards, the familiar bite of cold seeping through her sweats.
Her elbow still tingled where Y/n had caught her. The grip had been sure, unhesitating. It wasn’t the fall that replayed in her mind, but the moment after. The green eyes, the dropped grin, the quiet, “Alright?”
She was so deep in the loop of it she didn’t hear the second set of footsteps. Not until a voice cut through the quiet.
“Figured I’d find you in church.”
Amber didn’t turn. She knew the timbre, the easy cadence. Y/n walked up beside her, resting her forearms on the boards. She’d pulled a beanie over her choppy hair, shadowing her eyes. She looked at the ice, not at Amber.
“It’s quiet,” Amber said.
“Yeah. Loud out there.” Y/n paused. The silence between them was different from the rink’s emptiness; it was full of the unspoken game, the shouting crowd, the shared collapse. “Listen. About that interview.”
Amber finally glanced at her. Y/n’s profile was tense, the playful mask gone.
“I was being a smartass,” Y/n continued, her voice flat. “Talking to that reporter. ‘Gonna watch the Blade Angels.’ It was just… shit-talk. My thing. Didn’t think about it becoming a thing for you. Putting a spotlight where maybe you don’t want one.” She shook her head, a short, frustrated motion. “Feels cheap. Using your discipline for my… whatever. My point-making. So. Sorry.”
The apology hung in the cold air. Amber studied the ice, the perfect, unlived-on surface. She thought of other spotlights. Brighter, hotter, infinitely more demanding.
“It’s fine,” Amber said, and her own voice sounded strange to her. Not the polished, media-trained tone. Something thinner.
“Doesn’t sound fine.”
Amber let out a breath, watching it mist and vanish. “My father watches every practice. Every competition. He has a notebook. He times my rotations to the hundredth. He charts the height of my jumps against the girls from ‘92.” The words came out in a monotone, a recitation of facts. “If I finish second, he asks what I left on the ice. If I finish first, he asks why the margin wasn’t wider.”
She could feel Y/n’s eyes on her now, but she kept staring straight ahead. “The camera in the corner there,” she nodded toward the mechanical eye mounted high on the wall. “It feeds to a monitor in the officials’ office. He bribed a janitor two years ago to let him watch the live feed from a closet. He’s probably watching this right now. This conversation. Wondering why I’m not in bed, why I’m talking to a snowboarder, calculating the loss in recovery time.”
The hum of the lights seemed to grow louder. Y/n was utterly still.
“So you saying you’ll be in the audience?” Amber said, finally turning to look at her. The green eyes were dark, intent. “That’s nothing. That’s just… a person. Watching. You’re not holding a stopwatch. You’re not seeing a score. You’re just seeing the… the thing itself.”
Her voice caught, barely. She cleared her throat. “I’d rather have you watch me than him, any day of the week. And twice on Sunday.”
The raw honesty of it landed between them, a fragile, awkward truth. Amber instantly wanted to pull it back, to coat it in layer upon layer of frost.
Y/n didn’t offer pity. She didn’t flinch. She just absorbed it, her gaze steady. “That’s fucked up,” she said quietly, not about Amber, but about the situation. A simple diagnosis.
A faint, brittle sound escaped Amber. Almost a laugh. “Yes.”
“What’s in the notebook?” Y/n asked.
“Everything that’s wrong.”
Y/n shifted, turning to face her fully, leaning her back against the boards. “My old man split when I was five. Didn’t like the confusing parts, I guess. Sent a card when I made the team. ‘Proud of you.’” She said it like it was a foreign phrase. “I used to think having someone give a shit, even the wrong kind of shit, would be better than that silence. Maybe not.”
Amber watched her. The unguarded line of her mouth, the weariness that suddenly showed around her eyes. This was the person beneath the magnetic chaos. The one who understood different kinds of weight.
“Why do you do it?” Y/n asked. “Not the skating. The… letting him.”
The question was a direct hit. Amber looked down at her own hands on the boards. The knuckles were white. “It’s the deal,” she whispered. “The focus made me. The notebook made me. You don’t get to hate the furnace when you’re the sword.”
Silence again. Then Y/n pushed off the boards. “Come on.”
“What?”
“You’re thinking in circles. It’s freezing. And I’m starving. The cafeteria’s serving something allegedly resembling shepherd’s pie until eleven.” She started walking toward the exit, then stopped, looking back. Not with a challenge, but with an offer. “You can tell your dad you were conducting inter-sport diplomatic relations. Or you can just not tell him anything.”
Amber stood for a long moment, the cold seeping into her bones. She looked up at the camera’s unblinking red eye. Then she pushed away from the boards, her sneakers silent on the rubber matting.
She fell into step beside Y/n, not speaking, as they left the sacred, silent space of the ice. The heavy door shut behind them with a final, echoing thud, cutting off the view of the perfect, empty sheet. The corridor outside was dim, lit by every other fluorescent tube.
“The shepherd’s pie is actually not terrible,” Y/n said, her voice returning to its normal, easy pitch. “The peas are a crime against humanity, though. You can just… move them.”
“I don’t eat peas,” Amber said.
“Smart.” Y/n nodded, shoving her hands in her pockets. “First truly intelligent thing you’ve said all night.”
And just like that, the tension wasn’t gone, but it was shared. Carried between them down the empty, echoing hall, lighter than before.