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The headlights from the bus swept over us like a spotlight.

He tensed. “This is uh . . . this is me.”

“Yeah, sure.” I stepped back. “Say hi to your dad for me.” I smiled, so he knew I was joking. There was no way Ren was saying hi to his dad for the bisexual disaster ice dancer who had cost his son the Meridian Cup.

I had about five seconds to say or do something, or to just walk away. Walking away was the right thing to do. Leave it at a quick hello, like two strangers meeting in a park. No weirdness, no distractions.

“So uh . . . you wanna hang out sometime?” I asked.

“Hang out?”

I shrugged both puffy shoulders, making my coat rustle, and scratched my cheek with gloved fingers. “You know. Have breakfast in the cafeteria?” My heart thumped against my ribs.

His eyes widened. “I uh . . .”

The shuttle pulled to a stop. Its door opened. Ren loitered at the curb.

“Or not?” I gave him the out he was clearly reaching for.

“I think not, probably.”

“Yeah.” Another shrug. Wow, this was going so well. Congratulations, Camden, on making it clear you’re an idiot and he’s the professional who obviously wants nothing to do with you, just in case you weren’t clear about the whole eighteen months of separation thing.

“Right,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Getting on?” the driver asked in heavily accented English.

“Yes.” Ren climbed the steps onto the bus.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and watched him take a seat, alone, the only person on the bus, and then watched it take the loop around the central road and head out of sight behind the apartment buildings toward the exit. He hadn’t once looked out the window at me.

He couldn’t have been clearer.

We were not going to meet for breakfast. We were not going to meet at all.

We weren’t friends.

We were barely acquaintances.

We were people who’d met, performed together, and gotten off a few times. Because when two humans touched each other for months, resisting became impossible, and that was it. It was over. We really were done.

I closed my eyes and tipped my face to the light dusting of falling snow.

Hasegawa was someone who I used to know.

And it kinda broke my heart right there, on a frozen sidewalk in the Olympic Village.

SEVEN

REN

My father was talking. He hadn’t stopped. He had the pen and paper out and was walking me through a program I knew back to front and upside down by now, but he still needed to go over it.

I wasn’t listening.