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• From the cover Chapter 1
  
  Once I was satisfied, I handed him the knife.
  
  Heath stood up on his knees, and I stretched out in the warm spot he’d left on the bed, watching him: the way his black hair shone in the moonlight, the press of his teeth on his lower lip as he concentrated, making his first mark with the tip of the blade. He was more precise than I had been, drawing curved, graceful lines underneath my savage slashes.
  
  Shaw & Rocha, the carving read when he finished. It was the way our names would be written on the scoreboard at our first U.S. Figure Skating Championships in a few days’ time. The way they’d be announced in medal ceremonies and reported in newspapers and entered in the record books. We’d cut the letters into the center of my antique rosewood headboard, deep enough that no amount of sanding could remove them.
  
  We were sixteen, and so sure of everything.
  
  Our bags were already packed for the National Championships, costumes and skates in a neat stack next to my bedroom door. As many years as we’d been waiting, working, preparing for this moment, those few final hours felt like torture. I wanted to leave right then.
  
  I wished we never had to come back.
  
  Heath left the knife on my bedside table and settled down beside me to admire our handiwork. “Are you nervous?” he whispered.
  
  I looked past him, at the pictures collaged around the drafty leaded glass window—all images of my favorite figure skater, Sheila Lin. Two-time Olympic gold medalist in ice dance, living legend. Sheila never seemed nervous, no matter how much pressure she faced.
  
  “No,” I told him.
  
  Heath smiled and slid his hand up the back of the stretched-out Stars on Ice 1996 sweatshirt I always wore to bed. “Liar.”
  
  Nosebleed seats to see that tour were the closest I’d ever come to Sheila Lin in real life. My father sprung for a signed commemorative photo of her too, which was tacked up on my wall with the rest of my shrine. She was the woman, and the athlete, I wanted to be—not when I grew up, but as soon as possible.
  
  When Sheila and her partner, Kirk Lockwood, won their first U.S. title, she was still a teenager. Winning was a long shot for Heath and me, since we’d never been to Nationals before. We had qualified the previous season but didn’t have the means to travel to the competition venue in Salt Lake City. Luckily, the championships were in Cleveland this time, a comparably short and affordable Greyhound bus ride away. I was certain the competition would change everything for us.
  
  I was right. Just not in the way I imagined.
  
  Heath kissed my shoulder. “Well, I’m not nervous. I’m skating with Katarina Shaw.” He said my name slow, reverent, savoring the sound. “And there’s nothing she can’t do.”
  
  We stared at each other in the shadows, so close we were sharing breath. Later, we’d become world famous for that: stretching out the moment before a kiss until it was almost unbearable, until every member of the audience felt the quickening of our pulses, the pure want reflected in our eyes.
  
  But that was choreography. This was real.
  
  Heath’s mouth finally met mine—soft, unhurried. We thought we had all night.
  
  By the time we heard the footsteps, it was too late.
  
  Nicole Bradford, a middle-aged blond woman wearing a sparkly cardigan and heavy makeup, sits at the center island in her white-on-white suburban dream kitchen.
  
  NICOLE BRADFORD (Figure Skating Coach): There’s always a surge after the Winter Olympics. All...

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• 

  September 9, 2024
  Thriller writer Fargo (They Never Learn) tries her hand at women’s fiction in this melodramatic story of two ice dancers’ obsessive love affair and their long-held dreams to make it to the Olympics. Kat Shaw and Heath Rocha are children when they begin skating together in 1990s Lake Forest, Ill., fueled by Kat’s “gnawing ache of ambition” to follow in the footsteps of gold medalist Sheila Lin. In 2000, Kat and Heath travel to Cleveland to compete against Sheila’s twins, Bella and Garrett. Though Kat and Heath come in sixth, Sheila invites them to join her training facility in California. There, Kat’s drive outruns her loyalty, and she breaks it off with Heath, claiming he’s holding her back. What follows over the next 14 years are a series of betrayals between Kat and Heath, as well as feuds pitting them against the Lins, a retired skater turned blogger, and others. After many thwarted attempts at making the Olympic team, Kat and Heath get one last chance to compete in the 2014 Sochi games. The overly long story is sunk by the repetitive interpersonal drama, and by a foggy attempt to parallel the themes of Wuthering Heights (Heath/Heathcliff, Shaw/Earnshaw). Like the characters’ lives, it’s a bit of a mess. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

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