The morning of the competition the sky was the color of old steel.
I woke before my alarm and lay still for a long time, listening to the thin winter light push against the curtains. The silence Damian had given me still filled the room like a living thing. Four days of exact, unbroken distance. Four days of him existing on the same ice and never once crossing the invisible line I had drawn. The absence had stopped feeling like safety somewhere around the third night. Now it felt like standing in an empty rink after the lights have been turned off—too quiet, too wide, and full of the shape of what used to be there.
I dressed in the half-dark, layering the competition jersey over my base layers with hands that only trembled once. The crest sat heavy over my heart. Outside, snow fell in sl
