After the disastrous live interview, Katarina and Heath return to their room with less than two hours before practice, and the tension immediately turns into an argument. Heath fixates on Katarina publicly saying she does not want children, not only because of the answer itself but because it makes him realize how much of their future remains unspoken. Katarina is incredulous that this is his main concern, since she has never imagined a domestic life that included anyone besides the two of them.

The argument widens from children to the larger question of what happens after skating. Heath says he does not know if he can keep doing this cycle of competition after competition, and he insists the problem is not the delayed wedding. What he wants is reassurance that Katarina will still choose him when skating is over, because he fears she may only need him as a partner until she gets what she wants.

When Katarina says she loves him, Heath admits he no longer knows when she is being truthful and when she is performing. He points to her reaction after Lee died: she did not cry and would not talk about it. Privately, Katarina remembers that her feelings about Lee's death were tangled and dangerous, mixing relief, grief, anger, guilt, and even suspicion about where Heath had been after the gala, so she buried all of it to protect her focus on becoming an Olympic champion.

Heath softens and asks Katarina to let him in, but Katarina resents being asked for vulnerability when Heath has kept his own past sealed off. Terrified that an honest conversation this close to the Olympics could destroy them, she chooses a tactic she understands better: persuasion through physical intimacy. Their sex becomes rough and punitive rather than healing, and by the time it ends they have missed practice entirely. Katarina is not sure she has truly convinced Heath of anything, but she convinces herself that she has regained control.