He Switched Partners. I Switched Countries. novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Nineteen

Lena's POV

At six in the morning, Theo was waiting for me outside the rink, with two coffees and the laptop under his arm.

He had not slept.

I could tell, because he had shaved badly.

"I need you to look at something," he said. "And I need you to not say anything until it's over."

"That's two things."

"Yes."

We sat in the empty stands, with the laptop open between us on the cold bench.

He showed me the first tape, and the second, and a dozen more.

He did not narrate.

He let each one run, and he paused it on my own hand at the exact moment it touched Wyatt's glove.

Then he showed me the clip from the winter we turned nineteen, with the late catch and the judge's frown.

Then a hospital notice on a sports blog.

I read it twice.

I had forgotten how small the print was.

I had been standing in the rink that day, five feet from the boards, when the other boy's shoulder hit Wyatt's head.

I had been the one who called his mother.

"He told me he had a headache," I said.

"For how long?"

"A few weeks. Then he said it was gone."

"Did he tell you about the left side?"

"There wasn't a left side." My voice sounded strange to me. "He said, 'I'm fine, I just lose count sometimes. Will you say it out loud for a while? Tap me, so I know where you are?'"

Theo said nothing.

"He told me not to tell anyone. He said they'd bench him in a heartbeat in Olympic year, and I'd lose my partner. I said yes."

I had been nineteen.

I would have said yes to anything he asked me.

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