A Figure Skating Queen Who Can’t Be Lifted But I Was Born To Fly Chapter 10

A Figure Skating Queen Who Can’t Be Lifted But I Was Born To Fly Chapter 10

I stepped back, clean and decisive, out of reach of Ethan’s grasping hand.

I looked at this man, reduced to the most pathetic version of himself.

I felt nothing.

No thrill of revenge. No flicker of sympathy.

Just the bone-deep disgust that comes from years and years of swallowed grief finally crystallizing into

something permanent.

“Ethan, do you honestly believe that the second you lower your head and say sorry, I’m supposed to just stand here waiting for you with no standards and no self-respect?”

My voice was perfectly level.

“Ten years of us. They died every single time you chose Scarlett Brown over me.”

“You’re not crawling back because you love me.”

“You’re crawling back because you finally realized that without me, you’re nothing.”

Every drop of color left Ethan’s face.

“That’s not… Chloe, I really do know I was wrong. I’ve changed, I swear…”

He broke completely.

His knees buckled and he dropped hard onto the cold corridor floor.

Club staff passing through the hallway stopped and stared.

Ethan Parker. Once the golden boy, brimming with swagger.

Now a wreck on his knees, a man with nowhere left to go.

“I’m begging you!”

“If I don’t have a good result from Regionals, the club is going to cut me loose!”

“My career, my entire life, it’s all over!”

I looked down at him, cold and unmoved.

“Whether your life falls apart, whether your future goes up in smoke, that has absolutely nothing to do with

The day of the Northwest Regional Championships, the arena was packed and roaring.

Backstage in the locker room, the atmosphere was suffocating.

Ethan was white-knuckling that black-and-gold business card, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights.

He’d been losing his mind for days.

He’d pulled every string he had to dig into Damien’s background.

What he found sent him into freefall.

The man he’d mocked as an “amateur con artist” was the real thing.

The legend who’d briefly retired after a car accident and had now returned to the U.S. Figure Skating system

as a high-performance coach.

And Chloe had become his only publicly acknowledged athlete.

“Ethan, what’s wrong?”

Scarlett Brown tiptoed over in her pink competition dress, her face gaunt from weeks of starvation.

“We’re almost up. Stop spacing out.”

Ethan snapped back to the present and looked at the girl in front of him, skin sallow, starved down to

nothing.

A wave of raw irritation hit him out of nowhere.

“Can you hold your axis today? One more fall and I’m done covering for you.”

Scarlett Brown’s eyes went red.

“Why are you yelling at me? I’ve been doing everything you said. I’m so dehydrated I’m afraid to even drink

water!”

Ethan raked his fingers through his hair.

“Fine. Let’s just get out there.”

In the independent warm-up room on the other side of the building.

I was finishing my final stretch.
I stood in the athlete staging area, listening through the heavy doors to the thunder of applause from inside

the arena. My heartbeat was steady and strong, free of the old anxiety and dread. All that remained was

certainty and calm.

Damien walked up to me.

He reached out and carefully straightened my collar, then smoothed a crease in the skirt of my competition

dress.

“Ready?”

I lifted my gaze and looked into his deep, gentle eyes.

“Ready.”

The next second, the announcer’s voice rang out clear across the arena with my name.

I drew a long breath, quieted the flutter in my chest, and pushed open the doors.

This time, I wasn’t skating to please anyone else.

I was flying for myself.

The blade cut into the ice.

I leaned into the wind and launched into the air.