Almost, Always

XI

Ivy

The noise in my head didn't want to quiet, it fractured, splintered into too many edges, too many sharp thoughts that refused to stay still. I needed something steadier, something colder, something I could control. Something I had the power to dominate.

When I was a child, it had always been the ice.

Mornings when the world felt too loud, too heavy, I'd lace my skates until my fingers ached and step onto the rink before anyone else could claim it. The first cut of the blade against the frozen surface was a kind of silence—the only kind that mattered. On the ice, there was no competition, no expectation, no eyes waiting for me to falter—only balance and breath. Push, glide, turn—control measured in movement.

Now, years later, the instinct returned like muscle memory. The air inside the rink burned against my lungs, sharp enough to strip thought into something clean. The ice caught me the way it always had. Every spin was a refusal, every step a demand: this was mine.

For a moment, I almost believed it still was.

The first stroke was clumsy, my body remembering before my mind did, but then the rhythm caught. Push, glide, draw the curve. The ice gave way under me, smooth and absolute, and the noise in my head dulled into something I could almost bear.

My breath fogged the air as I carved a line down the center, pivoted, and spun. The sound of my blades sang against the rink—high, silver notes that steadied with each turn. There was comfort in repetition, in the demand that every movement match the next. The more precise I became, the smaller the chaos felt.

Edges. Crossovers. A quick snap into a jump that I landed harder than I should have, knees jolting, balance caught just before it could break. I exhaled sharply, laughed once under my breath. Not perfect, but mine. Always mine.

It struck me how little the world had changed here. The air was still colder than it should be, the boards still scarred with grooves and scratches from skates long since gone. I could almost see the ghost of my childhood self racing across the rink—small, hungry for perfection, desperate to be weightless.

Blade. Breath. Balance.
This was the only place I trusted myself not to fall.

Except—there was another sound.

A second set of blades cut across the ice, lower, slower, deliberate. The noise hooked under my ribs before I even turned.

He was already there, coasting out of the far shadows like he'd been stitched into them. Shoulders loosed, every movement was too casual to be real. He skated as if the ice obeyed him without effort, like the laws of balance bent for him alone.

My breath caught sharp in my chest. How long had he been here?

He smiled when our eyes met, a crooked, knowing tilt that didn't belong in this place. "Didn't think I'd find you here, Callahan." His voice carried too easily in the cold. "But then again, you don't strike me as someone who ever really leaves the ice."

I tightened my grip on balance, forcing my blades into another line across the rink, pretending his words didn't cling.

Adam pushed off lightly, gliding toward me with an ease that looked careless but wasn't. He moved like someone who'd learned to skate long before he learned to walk. Every turn he took mirrored mine too closely, as if he'd been watching longer than I wanted to admit.

"You skate when you're thinking too much." He let the words hang between us, almost concerned. "Funny thing about running in circles. It doesn't really make the thoughts go away."