Chapter 23: THE MEDALS

Georgia

I finally told someone about the medals at the bottom of my suitcase, and it wasn’t who I expected.

Three days after the storm, I find Puck at the rink’s edge, lacing his skates with unusual precision, each pull of the laces deliberate enough to avoid looking up. "Hey," I say, and he glances at me for exactly a second before his attention drops back to his boots.

"Morning," he says, and that’s all. No jokes, no lingering, nothing like the warmth that had passed between us under that narrow walkway. He stands, skates off toward center ice without another word, and I’m left standing there with the cold settling into my chest more thoroughly than the rink ever could.

That’s how it goes now. I catch him sometimes across the rink, watching me with an expression I can’t quite name before he looks away, as if he’s rationing himself, allowing only small, controlled doses of my presence. I don’t push. I’ve learned by now that pushing doesn’t get me anywhere with him, not when he’s decided to retreat. It only makes him dig in further, like a door bracing itself shut.

I run into Liam outside the dining hall on a gray afternoon, the kind of sky that makes everything look flatter, quieter, like the world is holding its breath along with me. He wears the same easy, deflecting charm as always, and for some reason, maybe because he’s not tangled up in whatever’s happening with Puck the way everyone else at this school seems to be, maybe because his jokes have started to feel less like walls and more like a person who’s just genuinely trying to make things lighter, I let him fall into step beside me without steering the conversation anywhere in particular. There’s something restful about his company, an absence of the constant vigilance I feel around everyone else here.

"You look like you’re carrying something heavy," he offers, light and unbothered.

"That obvious?" I ask, tugging my sleeves over my hands.

"You’ve got a very specific face for it," he teases, bumping my shoulder with his. "I’ve seen it a few times now."

We end up sitting on a low stone wall near the quad, the gray afternoon settling around us like a held breath, and somehow, without really deciding to, I start talking. Not about Puck, not about gold eyes or golden shadows in the forest or any of the strange things I’ve been cataloging in my notebook. About Mollie. About skating. About the thing I haven’t actually said out loud to anyone since I got here, the thing I’ve carried so long it’s practically fused to my ribs.

"I have all these medals," I confess, staring hard at my own hands instead of looking at him. "And I buried them at the bottom of my suitcase when I packed for here. Not displayed. Not celebrated. Just hidden. Regional bronze. Sectional silver. A bunch of smaller ones that don’t matter to anyone but me."

"Why?" he asks, genuinely curious, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Because if I look at them, really look at them, I don’t know how much of what they represent is actually mine." I finally glance over at him, my jaw tight, expecting some version of *why would you hide something you worked so hard for*. Instead his expression stays open, listening, waiting for me to keep going if I want to, without a trace of judgment anywhere in it. "My mom built my entire life around this. Every practice, every competition, every choice about costumes and music and choreography, none of it’s ever really been about what I wanted. It’s been about her. About what she needed me to prove, or become, or make up for in her own life that never quite worked out the way she wanted."

"That’s a lot to carry," he says quietly, no trace of a joke in it.

"It’s exhausting," I admit, and something loosens in my chest just saying it plainly like that, no qualifiers, no softening it into something more palatable. My hands twist together in my lap. "I love skating. I really do. But sometimes I can’t tell anymore if I love it because it’s mine or because loving it is the only way I’ve ever known how to make her happy."

Liam doesn’t say anything right away. His hands go still in his lap, his usual restlessness gone. He doesn’t rush to fix it, doesn’t offer some quick, easy solution the way I half expect him to, doesn’t crack a joke to lighten the moment the way he does with almost everything else. He just sits there, quiet, present, letting the weight of what I said actually settle instead of trying to talk me out of feeling it. The silence between us doesn’t feel empty; it feels like room being made, like space cleared just for me to exist in without having to perform anything.

It surprises me more than anything else he could have said.

"That sounds lonely," he says finally, gentle, no attempt to dress it up into something more comfortable.

"Yeah." I look back down at my hands, my throat tight, blinking against the sudden, unwelcome sting behind my eyes. "It is."

We sit there for a while longer, the gray afternoon settling deeper around us, the cold creeping up slowly enough that I barely notice it at first. He doesn’t try to steer the conversation anywhere else, doesn’t deflect the way he usually does the second something gets close to uncomfortable. He just lets it sit, lets me have the silence without filling it with something easier, and somehow that feels like the kindest thing anyone’s done for me since I got to this school. I find myself wondering, not for the first time, how someone so easily dismissed as charming and shallow can also be this steady, this careful with someone else’s unraveling.

Eventually the cold starts to actually bite through my jacket, insistent now, and I stand, gathering my things, the conversation winding down into something quieter and more ordinary.

"Thanks for listening," I say, managing a small smile. "I don’t really talk about that stuff. Ever."

"Anytime," he replies, simple and unguarded, no performance in it, and for the first time since I met him, I believe the ease in his voice is actually real instead of just well practiced.

I’m halfway turned to leave when he stops me, his voice dropping into something quieter, almost like he’s deciding whether to say it at all even as the words are already coming out.

"For what it’s worth," he says, careful, "Puck’s never talked about anyone the way he talks about you."

I stop walking, my stomach flipping over, a strange mix of hope and dread tangling together somewhere beneath my ribs. "What do you mean?"

"Just that." He shrugs, casual on the surface, but there’s something guarded underneath the gesture, something he’s weighing even as he says it, like a man deciding how much truth is safe to hand over. "He doesn’t talk about the things that matter to him. Not to me, anyway."

I turn that over, the implication settling slowly. Liam offers a small, unreadable smile, tucks his hands into his pockets, and starts walking the other direction across the quad, his silhouette shrinking against the gray.