[Maddie’s POV]

I’m watching Emily only for strategic reasons.

That’s the story I’m telling myself, anyway, and I’ve always been excellent at stories. Know your competition. Anticipate her moves. Study her weaknesses before she can exploit yours.

The problem is that my attention keeps snagging on things that have nothing to do with strategy.

The line of her throat when she tilts her head back to stretch. The way she bites her lower lip during difficult sequences. The way her ass looks in those practice leggings that should be illegal in at least forty-eight states.

It’s fucking irritating.

It’s deeply, profoundly irritating, and I can’t seem to make it stop.

She’s running through her footwork sequence again, and I should be cataloging technical flaws but I can’t stop noticing the flush that spreads across her cheekbones when she pushes herself.

The tendons in her forearms. The flex of her thigh muscles. The set of her jaw.

Then she does this thing where she arches her back during a spiral, and my brain just… stops. Like someone pulled the plug.

“Maddie!” Jenna’s voice hits me like a bucket of ice water. “Are you even listening?”

She’s waving her phone in my face, showing me something from the new Prada collection. I haven’t actually looked because I’m too busy having a sexuality crisis over my former best friend’s hip flexibility.

“Gorgeous,” I say automatically. “Love the… details.”

“Right? It’s from spring’s preview. Daddy’s friend got me early access.”

She launches into a story about private shopping and salespeople who recognize her by her follower count, and I make appropriate rich-girl noises while my eyes track Emily across the ice.

She skates past us toward the water station in front of me, she’s close enough that I can smell her—clean sweat and something floral underneath. She pauses to drink, throat working, and I’m having thoughts that would make a nun blush.

“My mom’s been looking at their resort collection,” I offer, because silence would be suspicious. “Something about a trunk show next month.”

My actual mother has never attended a trunk show in her life. She clips coupons and shops end-of-season sales and pretends we don’t notice the worry lines deepening around her eyes every time tuition bills arrive.

This is the game I play now. Ice princess with the trust fund and the perfect life.

Never mind that my designer bag is a really good fake from Canal Street.

Never mind that my “trust fund” is actually two part-time jobs and a scholarship I can’t afford to lose.

Never mind that underneath all this carefully constructed perfection is just Madison. The girl who wore hand-me-down skates and whose dad still has grease permanently embedded under his fingernails.

I could play this game blindfolded. One-upmanship disguised as friendship, status measured in designer labels and casual name-drops.

I hate every second of it. I’m also very, very fucking good at it.

But then Emily, who probably eavesdropped, opens her mouth and ruins everything.

“Hey, Maddie,” she says, casual as a grenade. “Did your dad switch careers?”

The words land like ice water down my spine. Jenna’s eyes light up like a shark sensing blood in the water with immediate, predatory interest.

No. No no no no no.

The question is seemingly out of nowhere. Except I see her logic perfectly.

And not only I.

“He considered it,” I say, my smile perfectly calibrated. “But the family business took off, and you know how it is. Hard to walk away from success.”

The family business. That’s a nice way of describing my father’s auto repair shop.

Her expression flickers with something like confusion, but she doesn’t push. Just takes another drink and skates away, leaving me to deal with Jenna’s laser focus.

“You two have history,” she says, voice honey-sweet and laced with venom. “Childhood besties. How adorable.”

“Ancient history. We were kids.” I examine my manicure like this conversation is beneath me. “She barely remembers anything real.”

Lie. She remembers everything.

She remembers the girl you killed to become Maddie.

She remembers everything and that ignites something ugly inside me.

The rest of practice passes in a blur of drills and corrections. I hit every mark, land every jump, smile at Coach’s feedback like the model captain I’m supposed to be.

I wait until the locker room empties too slowly. Girls filter out in twos and threes, chattering about weekend plans and dining hall food. I take my time, organizing my bag, checking my phone. Waiting.

“Oh my god, Madison.” She draws out my full name like it tastes bitter. “You’re really selling the whole rich girl fantasy, aren’t you? Designer clothes, family business success story… Let me guess, you’ve got a trust fund too?”

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