**SEQUEL TO BREAKING THE ICE**
Liam Astor is home. Home where his family is. Home where is skating partner stayed. Home where he trains every day to make his Olympic dreams come true. Home, where he had to throw himself into his career, so he doesn'...
*This chapter contains multimedia relevant to the plot*
(this time, I'll include a comment on each image with the transcript in case someone doesn't have internet, or there's a problem with Wattpad)
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January 2024
It's New Year's day.
Natalie is home for the holidays. Mack is not.
Natalie's brother, Nathan Sullyvan - former golden hockey boy - is also back, as is my sister Logan and bunch of other siblings and cousins of people I grew up with. And for some reason, the fact I am no longer in high school meant to my parents that I am no longer allowed to go shut myself inside my bedroom with my friends after some brief socializing.
Gus seemed about as thrilled with this as I was, or maybe even less, back at my parents' party.
He has always been even worse at dealing with this kind of thing than I am. He tried to smile and nod and give all the right answers when people asked him about his life, but he seemed even more uncomfortable at being shown off by his parents as the town's very own Olympic medalist than he used to look when his parents used to just pretend he wasn't there.
Natalie was good at this, though. Which made her the perfect buffer. She knew just when and how to smile, and exactly what to say.
If people asked me about my dating life she'd bring up the new engagement, marriage or vows renewal happening in their family tree. If people asked me about plans to go to college eventually if skating didn't work out after all, she would ask about whatever impressive graduation or academic achievement was next in calendar in their own family. If people asked if I ever thought about following in Logan's footsteps, she'd talk about the next promotion or professional milestone in their lives.
It was almost like she knew a question asked at these kind of events was just foreplay to get to your own bragging.
I never loved her so much.
When the ball finally dropped and the New Year commenced, we made our usual escape. This year, we had the recreational center for ourselves.
The Wong twins joined us for the second half of the night's celebrations, and Trey Coleman handled all the drinks with the other former hockey boys who came home. Which means it didn't take long for people to get absolutely hammered.
I poured myself a drink, but it still rested on the armrest of my seat, barely touched nearly two hours later. It was strange to do this without Mack. Chloe and Nat aren't really the drinking type and Gus has a tendency to get gloomy after a few drinks these days.
I sat back for a minute and that minute turned into an hour. Next thing I knew, I was starting my new year reviewing the previous one in texts.
One particular text thread, to be honest.
Chloe and I actually became national champions last year, and Eli actually called.
I'm down with being your overseas, whenever-we-can, secret booty call.
I actually said that to him, almost a year ago. What the fuck was I thinking?
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