Maddie’s POV
Victoria's message stays on my phone screen long after the vibration fades. Extra private session tonight. No excuses.
I stare at it from the edge of my bed, my wrist resting on my knee. It still aches from yesterday's fall — a steady, unhurried pulse that reminds me exactly how hard I hit the ice.
For a moment I consider replying. Instead, I toss the phone onto the mattress, because if I don't, I'll cry.
My body feels wrung out. Every muscle aches from the repetition blocks, and the sharp precision that used to define my skating feels slightly dulled by exhaustion.
This was supposed to be discipline. Now it feels like endurance, and the difference between those two things is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
I stand and pace the room once before grabbing my phone again. My thumb hovers over Dad's name long enough that the screen almost dims.
"Fantastic idea," I mutter to the empty room. "Let's ask the architect of this entire plan for advice."
I press call anyway. He answers on the third ring.
"Maddie?" David says, sounding surprised in the way people sound when they were hoping for the call and didn't quite expect it. "Everything alright?"
"I was hoping to ask you something similar," I reply, and my voice betrays me. "There's a café near campus. Do you have time?"
There's a pause, brief and careful. "I can be there in twenty minutes," he says.
"Make it thirty," I say, glancing at myself in the mirror above the desk. "I need to look less like I just survived a war."
"Skating counts as a war," he says, lightly enough that I can tell he's trying to joke.
"That's comforting," I mutter, not laughing, and hang up.
The café near campus is full of students with laptops and coffee cups, their conversations overlapping into a steady, indifferent buzz.
David is already at a small table when I arrive, standing when he sees me come through the door in the slightly awkward way of someone who has been rehearsing how to greet their daughter and isn't sure any version was right.
"You look tired," he says carefully, his eyes on me.
"Thank you," I reply, dropping into the chair across from him. "That's exactly the look I was going for."
"Coffee?" he asks, already half-rising from his seat.
"Please," I say, pressing my palms flat on the table. "Preferably something strong enough to revive the dead."
He returns with two cups and slides one toward me. "I ordered you a latte," he says, something almost apologetic in the way he sets it down.
"That's suspiciously thoughtful," I say, wrapping my hands around it and letting the warmth travel up through my fingers.
David watches me for a moment. "So. What's going on?"
I take a sip before answering, organizing my thoughts into something that doesn't start with I think I made a mistake. "Training," I say.
"It's intense. Double sessions. Extra repetition blocks. Private training on top of everything else."
David nods slowly. "Victoria is known for pushing athletes," he says, which is the polished version of what he actually knows about her.
"That's a generous way of saying relentless," I reply, and my tone betrays me with trembling.
His eyes narrow, dropping to my wrist. "What happened there?" he asks, his voice carrying the particular quietness of someone who has clocked something and is deciding how to ask.
"It's fine," I say, pulling my hand back. "I fell during a jump. Happens all the time in this sport."
"Does it hurt?" he asks, direct enough that I don't have room to sidestep it.
"Everything hurts," I say, trying to sound joking but only sounding bitter. "That's more or less the job description."
David doesn't smile. I stare at the coffee foam gathering at the edge of the cup.
"Do you ever feel like you made a decision that seemed right at the time," I ask slowly, "and then realized later it might have been a terrible idea?"
He leans forward, both hands around his own cup. "Yes," he says quietly, and without the kind of pause that makes it sound rehearsed. "I've made decisions like that."
"Good," I exhale. "Because I'm starting to think this transfer might have been one of them."
David stays very still in the way he does when he's deciding how to respond carefully. "What makes you say that?" he asks.
"The training is harsher than I expected," I say. "Some days my body barely makes it through the schedule. And the more exhausted I get, the worse my skating becomes, which defeats the entire point."
His expression tightens. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he asks.
"Because you helped arrange it," I say, my throat suspiciously tight "And I agreed. I'm not here to blame you."
He rubs the back of his neck, and for a second he looks less like the man who gave ultimatums and more like someone who has been carrying something heavy and recently set it down.
"I pushed you," he says. "I thought it would help. You've always had extraordinary potential."
"And potential apparently requires suffering," I say, which comes out more tired than bitter.
"No," David says, firmly enough that I look up. "It requires balance. That's something I should have understood a long time ago."
"That's a new philosophy," I say, searching his face for something I recognize. I'm not used to his softness.
"Maybe I'm learning," he says quietly, and holds my gaze when he says it.
We sit in the café noise for a moment, letting it settle around us. Then he asks, carefully, "What about Emily?"
The name drops into the conversation like something heavy. "That's not part of this equation," I say quickly, tightening my grip on the cup, my eyes drifting. "She was a distraction. That's all."
David tilts his head. "That doesn't sound like something you believe," he says.
"It's something I need to believe," I reply, and the honesty of it surprises me as much as it probably surprises him.
The silence that follows is different from the ones we used to have — less like a standoff, more like two people sitting in the same difficult truth without flinching from it.
"If I decide this training isn't right for me," I say finally, quieter now, "would you be angry?"
David shakes his head slowly. "No," he says, with a certainty that settles something I didn't realize was unsettled. "Whatever you choose next, I'll support it. That should have always been true."
Maybe for the first time, I actually believe it.