You used to believe skating was enough.

If you landed the jumps, if your edges were clean, if you kept your head down and your mouth shut, the rest would fall into place. That’s what your first coach drilled into you after your parents stopped coming to competitions and the bills started stacking up on the kitchen counter. Skate well. Don’t ask for more. Talent would carry you.

It almost did.

By nineteen, you were nationally ranked but invisible—too quiet, too “unmarketable,” not dramatic enough for brands that wanted smiles and stories instead of scar tissue and early mornings. Sponsors passed you over for girls who filmed vlogs in their dressing rooms and cried prettily into cameras. You couldn’t blame them. You didn’t know how to sell yourself either.

Then your funding was cut.

The federation called it “a restructuring.” You called it panic. No money meant fewer competitions, fewer eyes, and eventually no career at all. You were already training at dawn and working nights. There was nothing left to sacrifice.

That’s when they suggested him. Timothy Lazen.

He was everything you weren’t—charismatic, photogenic, easy to love. A pairs skater turned singles star with a smile that made interviews effortless and fans loyal. You’d shared ice for years without ever crossing paths, orbiting the same world without touching. To him, skating had always come with attention. To you, it had come with silence.

The brand didn’t care about your history. They cared about optics.

Two elite skaters. Same rink. Same season. A romance that wrote itself. They said it would humanize you. Soften you. Make people root for you.

They never asked how it felt to be reduced to a storyline.

You told yourself it was temporary. A season of pretending in exchange for security. New skates. Travel covered. Enough stability to breathe again. You could endure hand-holding and staged smiles if it meant staying on the ice.

What you didn’t expect was how exhausting it would be to perform happiness when your entire life had been built on restraint.

Or how strange it felt when pretending started to blur—when he noticed things no one ever had. The way you retied your laces when you were nervous. How you skated better angry than calm. How your hands shook before competition even when your face didn’t.

You reminded yourself constantly: this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Your career had already taught you the danger of believing in things that weren’t guaranteed.

Still, every time the cameras turned on, every time your names were paired together like you were inevitable, you wondered how long you could balance on an edge this thin—between survival and surrender, between the story they sold and the one you were trying to protect.

Because ice doesn’t forgive hesitation.

And neither does love, even when it’s supposed to be fake.

“I don’t want you. I want that sponsorship.” I say to him.

“That hurts,” he says mildly. “Considering I’m your new boyfriend.”

You laugh once, sharp. “You can’t just decide that.”

“The brand can.” He taps the folder under his arm. “They want a wholesome image. Two elite skaters. Chemistry. Romance. The whole ice-princess-meets-golden-boy thing.”

“I don’t do romance,” You say. “I do triple Axels and minding my own business.”

“So,” he says, pushing off the boards and skating closer, “we date. Publicly. Smiles, hand-holding, Instagram captions with hearts.”