Chapter 4

Elara

"Three weeks," I said. "I've been here three weeks."

"And you're already at a Wolf Den party." Alex tilted his head, something between impressed and amused. "That's faster than I managed freshman year."

"I was dragged."

"Sure." He didn't push it. Just waited — patient in that specific way I recognized from months of late-night voice messages. Back when I'd been in Saint Petersburg, in my father's apartment, staring at the ceiling at two in the morning with nowhere to put any of it. My parents were both American, which made the whole thing almost funny in a dark way — two Americans who'd decided Russia was where they wanted to build a life, right up until they decided they didn't want to build it together anymore. Mom left when I was in seventh grade. Packed up, flew back to Michigan, and six months later she was Natalie Clark and Northlake had a new resident and I had a stepfather I'd met exactly twice before I had to move in with him.

Dad stayed. I stayed with Dad. I kept skating.

And then Nick happened. And then seven months after Nick happened, it stopped being something only I knew about.

I'd never told anyone in Saint Petersburg. Not my coaches, not my training partners, not the girls in the locker room who'd probably suspected something was wrong for months. I'd told Alex. A stranger on the internet with a Russian username and gold-frame glasses in his profile picture, who turned out to go to school forty minutes from the town where my mother lived with her new family.

He'd written back: I believe you. That's the first thing. Whatever comes next — I believe you.

My father had not said that. My father had looked at me across the kitchen table after the story broke — seven months of me holding it together, seven months of competing and smiling and pretending, and then one anonymous post that blew the whole thing open — and what he'd said was: You understand this makes things very difficult. Your entire training career could be ruined. Maybe you should go stay with your mother for a while.

Three weeks later I was on a plane to Michigan with two suitcases and a Northlake University acceptance letter, after my father had spent two months convincing me to send in my application.

"How's the adjustment?" Alex asked. "Classes, the rink situation, everything."

"Fine," I said. Then, because he'd earned better than fine: "The rink schedule is annoying. I keep getting bumped for hockey practice."

"It gets worse in November." He studied me for a second in that careful way — checking without making it obvious. "You look good, though. I mean it. The outfit really suits you."

Something warm moved through my chest. I filed it immediately under not your problem. "Leah picked it."

"Tell Leah she has great taste." He glanced over his shoulder briefly. "Hey — I have to go find someone. But coffee this week? Actual conversation?"

"Yeah," I said. "That sounds good."

"Good." He squeezed my arm — quick, careful — and then he was moving, threading through the crowd toward the far wall.

I watched him go.

He stopped beside a girl with dark hair and cheekbones that could cut glass. She was already smiling before he even reached her. He put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned in. The kind of easy that only happens when two people have been doing it long enough that it stopped requiring thought.

Oh.

I looked at my cup. Took a sip.

He has a girlfriend. Of course he has a girlfriend.

The thing was, I'd never let myself fully think it through. Not consciously. It had just been there — this quiet, background warmth, the knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a person who knew the worst thing about me and had chosen to stay on the other side of the screen anyway. I'd built something around that. Maybe more than I wanted to admit, he'd been part of why this place had felt possible at all.

And my father had shipped me off to a stepfather I didn't know, in a town I'd never lived in, to a mother who'd built a whole new life with a whole new family that didn't have a room with my name on it — and the one thing that had made any of it feel survivable was the idea that Alex was here.

He was here. He just had his arm around someone else.

That's fine, I told myself. The words felt thin and useless, like holding up a piece of paper against a storm.

I took another sip. It tasted like fruit punch and bad decisions.

Completely fine.

I stood there for a while, not moving, not thinking about anything in particular. When the cup was empty I set it down on the nearest surface and drifted toward the drinks table, mostly because it gave me somewhere to be. I pulled out my phone, scrolled through nothing, put it away. Crossed my arms. Uncrossed them. Tried to look like a person who had somewhere to be and people to talk to, instead of someone who'd just watched the one steady thing in her life put his arm around a girl who wasn't her.

That was the problem with the drinks table. Standing next to it, alone, pretending to be busy, made me a target. I didn't realize it until the first guy was already there.

---

"You look lonely," he said.

"I'm not," I said.

He handed me a cup. I took it because refusing felt like a whole conversation I didn't have the bandwidth for.

The second one wanted to know my major. The third one wanted to know where I was from and then said Russia in a terrible accent like that was a personality trait. The fourth one did a thing with his eyebrows that I think was supposed to be charming.

I drank every cup they handed me because it was easier than talking and because I was watching Alex across the room and then actively trying to stop watching Alex across the room, which required a lot of mental energy I apparently didn't have. Each cup tasted different. Fruit punch, something sour, something that burned going down, something sweet enough to hide how strong it was. I drank them too fast. I knew that, in the way you know things from very far away, and I didn't stop.

By the time the fourth guy drifted away, the music had gotten louder without actually getting louder. The bass was in my teeth. The lights were doing something weird at the edges of my vision.

Okay. That's not great.

I looked for Leah. She was by the kitchen doorway with Blake, her hand on his chest, laughing at something he'd said with her whole body. She looked happy. She looked exactly like someone who should not be interrupted.

My legs felt slightly disconnected from the rest of me.

"Leah." I grabbed her arm. She turned, and I watched her face do a quick recalibration when she saw mine. "I need to go. I don't feel good."

"Oh, baby." Her voice sharpened immediately. "How much did you drink?"

"I don't know. Some guys —" I stopped. The room tilted slightly. "I need to lie down somewhere."

Blake stepped in from the side. "There's a guest room upstairs. End of the hall. You can sleep it off, it's safer than trying to get back right now."

Every single alarm in my brain went off at once. Unknown house. Unknown room. Unknown men. The list of reasons not to was so long it was almost funny.

I looked at Leah. She was still holding my arm, her grip steady. She'd walk me to the stairs — she'd said she would. And I could feel my body giving out in real time, the floor unsteady under my feet, my throat tight with something that was going to come up whether I wanted it to or not. If I tried to leave now, I'd make it maybe to the front door before I was sick in someone's bushes, and then I'd be outside, alone, in a neighborhood I didn't know, in a state I'd lived in for three weeks. The guest room was a door I could close. The street was not.

Pick the more controlled option, I told myself. The one with Leah's hand on your arm and a door that locks.

"Okay," I said.

Leah walked me to the stairs. "I'll check on you in twenty minutes," she said. "Text me if you need anything. Anything at all, okay?"

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"I know." I gripped the railing. "Go back to Blake."

She hesitated. I could feel her hesitating even without looking.

"Go," I said.