Chapter 52 What Jenna knew

Chapter 52 What Jenna knew
Mia's POV

Coach Jenna was waiting in the corridor outside the studio.

Not pacing. Not checking her phone. Just standing against the wall with her arms at her sides and her notebook under her elbow. She had the face she wore when she was not watching you practice but was going to say something about it anyway.

Zack went past us toward Blair Reid. I stopped.

"You were on the phone," I said. "During the interview. I saw you."

"I know you did."

"What was it."

"That's what I need to talk to you about." She pushed off the wall. "Walk with me."

We went down the corridor away from the studio. Away from Blair Reid and her clipboard and her satisfied expression. Jenna's heels were quiet on the floor. She was not a loud woman. Everything about her was precise. Economical. She did not speak until we were far enough from the studio that no one could hear.

"The clip is going to be online in two hours."

"Blair said that."

"The line about getting there first." She paused. "Luca is going to see it."

"I know."

"I want to tell you something before he does."

I looked at her. Her face was the same as always. Still. Nothing on the surface she had not put there deliberately.

"He came to me last month," she said. "Luca. He asked me to reconsider partnering him with you."

I stopped walking.

She took two more steps. Then she stopped and turned.

"You didn't tell me."

"Because I said no. The same way your father did. Because you had committed to Zack and I wasn't going to interrupt your season over something I had already shut down."

"Coach."

"Mia."

"How many people knew about this before me?"

She held my gaze. She did not flinch. Jenna never flinched. I had known her since I was seven years old and I had never once seen her flinch.

"Three. Your father. Me. And Portia."

"Portia."

"She was in the room when he asked."

I stared at her. "He asked you in front of Portia."

"He didn't know she was there. She had come back for her training bag. She walked in. She heard it." Jenna paused. "She walked back out and didn't speak to him for a week."

I stood in that corridor and I let the shape of it settle. Portia had known. She had known when she cornered me at the boards. She had known when she told me Luca tried to leave the partnership. She had known and she had handed me one piece of the picture and kept the rest.

"Why are you telling me now," I said. "The interview is done. The clip is going up. You can't take any of it back."

"I'm telling you because Luca is going to watch that clip and he is going to react. And I want you to go into that conversation knowing what I knew and when I knew it."

"That's not an answer, Jenna."

She looked at me. She pressed her lips together once. Then she said it.

"I'm telling you because I owe you that. And because I should have told you sooner. And because watching you sit in that studio today and perform feelings you have not fully worked out for a national audience made me realize that every adult in your life has been making decisions on your behalf since your mother died, and that is not fair to you, and I am part of that, and I'm sorry."

The corridor was quiet. Someone laughed from inside the studio. Blair Reid's voice somewhere. The ordinary sounds of an ordinary afternoon.

"How many times did he ask," I said.

"Once. But he meant it. He prepared what he was going to say. He had reasons. He had a whole case laid out."

"What did he say."

"That you and he had unfinished business on the ice. That you belonged together as partners. That he had made a mistake two years ago letting the situation fall apart without fighting for it."

"Letting the situation fall apart." The words tasted wrong. "That's how he put it."

"That's how he put it, yes."

"He let the situation fall apart. As if I had nothing to do with it. As if I was just a thing that happened to him."

"I don't think that's what he meant."

"I don't care what he meant. That's what he said." I picked up my bag. "Did he say anything about me? Not about the partnership. About me."

Jenna was quiet for a moment. Her hand tightened on her notebook.

"He said he has been in love with you since he was fifteen and that he does not think that is going to stop."

I did not answer that. I could not answer that. I stood in the corridor with my bag on my shoulder and my jaw tight and two years of absence and one honest sentence from a conversation I had not been in the room for.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" I said. "If he hadn't asked. If none of this had happened. Were you ever going to tell me he came to you."

She did not answer immediately. She looked at me with the expression she used when the honest answer and the kind answer were in two different rooms.

"Probably not," she said.

I nodded. I walked back toward the exit.

"Mia."

I did not stop.

"I did what I thought was right for you."

"I know you did," I said. "That's the part that bothers me."

I pushed through the door at the end of the corridor. The cold air hit me. I stopped on the pavement outside and stood there for a minute. My bag was on my shoulder. My phone was in my pocket. The clip was going up in two hours.

Luca was going to see it.

And now I was walking toward that conversation carrying everything Jenna had just handed me. What he said. How he said it. That he told her he had been in love with me since he was fifteen.

I had not asked for that information. I had not needed it.

I needed it.

I started walking to the car.