Chapter 5Mahiro stands in front of the full-length cheval mirror in his room and slowly peels his gym shorts down his hips. His knuckles bump the dark purple, angry-looking bruise that still spills across his skin, a mottled and ugly testament to the triple lutz he utterly failed on Wednesday, and he winces.
He’d made the triple axel, though.
Meeting Alex, being with him in person, has given Mahiro the sort of joy and verve in skating he hasn’t felt in years, even though he kept up with it, kept himself in shape and sharp as a knife because he couldn’t not, after all the hours and blood and sweat he’d poured into it.
But that bruise, though. It’s a waving red flag to anyone who had any experience in skating, advertising what it was from, and Alex certainly wouldn’t have missed it, espec
