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I’m invincible when I’m with her.
I take her hand, our fingers entwining, the gold band nestling between my third and fourth finger.
“Do you want to walk?” I ask her. “Or would you rather skate?”
Nix smiles fully for the first time this week. “Let’s skate,” she says.
I take her to the Medeu rink, perched high in the mountains outside Almaty. The endless expanse of smooth, gleaming ice has just been resurfaced, with barely a skate mark across. The air is so thin that I feel slightly giddy, especially with the loud Russian pop music echoing off the fir trees.
Nix laces her skates, eager to be on the ice.
I take her hand and we push off, gliding over the mirror-like surface, swift as birds.
It’s almost illegal to not know how to skate in Russia.
My father used to flood the grounds behind the monastery. Adrik, Kade, Freya and I could skate almost as soon as we could walk. We played hockey with Timo and Zima.
I tell Nix all this. It feels euphoric speaking to her like this, without having to twist or deform a single detail.
“I played hockey too,” she grins back at me. “My fa?—”
She stops, her mouth open before she closes it quickly.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can talk about him.”
Nix is silent for a moment.
I don’t want to ask her this, but I have to:
“Do you resent what I did?”
I killed her father right in front of her. He was trying to hurt her, but still . . . I can only imagine what she must be feeling.
Her eyes are as wet and gleaming as the ice. She fights to hold back the tears, to keep control of herself.
“I don’t resent you,” she says. “I feel . . . I feel like I started to lose my father the day I stepped foot on that ship. I lost the part of him that never existed in the first place. But still . . . even then, once I started to realize . . .”
Her cheeks are burning red and her shoulders heave as she tries to hold back the hurt that can’t be contained.
“Even after . . . I never would have believed that he’d . . .”
I stop skating, grabbing her and pulling her against my chest so she can sob without embarrassment, her face hidden from view.
For the first time she cries not for her father, but for what he tried to do to her. For how he turned on her when he believed she had betrayed him.
I let her exhaust herself against my chest, while I rub slow circles on her back with the palm of my hand.
When she looks up at me, her face tear-streaked and swollen, she says, “Everything I believed about him was only a fantasy. Even this great love he had for my mother . . . I can’t help but think that if she was still alive, if she saw all the things he’s done, she would have hated him. And if she didn’t agree with him, if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted, he would have hated her, too. She’s only perfect in his memory because she didn’t live long enough to disappoint him. His idea of love is so fucking narcissistic . . .”
I swallow hard.
“I’m sorry I ever lied to you, Nix. I promise you, I’ll never do it again, not for any reason. I’ll tell you the brutal truth, as long as we live.”
“I know you will,” Nix says. “You never wanted to lie, it’s not your nature.” She laughs, softly. “To be honest, you’re not even very good at it. There were a hundred things I would have noticed if I wasn’t so infatuated with you.”
I laugh along with her, remembering how miserably I failed at not falling in love with her.
Nix and I start to skate again, the cold air drying the tears on her face, brightening her eyes once more until they glint like green glass.
