Chapter 8: Frames

Theo's POV

She had said she'd tell me later, and I had said, "All right."

Then I had gone back to the ice and run twelve lifts with her without saying a word, because I knew how to wait.

At three in the morning I was still awake in the office above the rink, with my coach's old laptop and a bowl of cold noodles.

I did not need to watch the tape.

That was the first thing I told myself.

The second thing I told myself was that a man who had caught her wrist and held it too long had no business being curious.

I put on the first tape anyway.

My coach kept every national championship since 1998 on a hard drive, because she believed in homework.

I pulled the last six years of the U.S. pairs event and found the program Lena and Wyatt had skated at junior nationals.

They were eighteen, and she was already better than he was.

I watched the lift once, quickly.

Then I watched it again.

Then I got a pencil.

I am not a clever man.

My old partner used to say that I had two skills, a clean catch and a long memory.

The catch had gone wrong in September, in a flat practice rink, on a throw I had misjudged by two inches.

The memory was still working fine.

On the screen, Lena skated up behind Wyatt, on his right side.

She tapped his left glove twice.

He turned his head toward her voice, and she said something I couldn't hear, and they went into the lift.

I rewound it.

I wrote down the time.

I ran it ten more times, and then twenty, and then I pulled up six other programs and did the same thing.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Switched Partners. I Switched Countries. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.