From Lukov with Love

“WHAT DO you think you’re doing?”

Stopping halfway into crunch number 108, I didn’t need to look to my side to know who was standing there. I’d recognize that annoying, condescending, bossy voice in a crowd of a thousand. Only one person could aggravate me so easily by asking a question.

“Minding my own business. The one thing you don’t know how to do,” I muttered, rolling up the little bit I had left to keep my ab workout going.

“Jasmine,” came Ivan’s sharp tone again.

I ignored him. Going back up into another crunch, I watched out of the corner of my eye as he closed the door behind him.

I did another crunch just as he came walking toward me, those big feet in bright blue running shoes landing centimeters from my side.

I didn’t look up at him, and I wasn’t going to. I knew what he was looking at. It wasn’t my body that was covered in sweat that he was eyeing, and it definitely wasn’t the fact that I wore a pair of loose basketball shorts that belonged to my brother that were riding high up my thighs. The fact I only had a sports bra on had nothing to do with what he wanted to focus on either.

He was looking at the cast boot I had on my left foot. The left foot I had propped up on a pillow right beside my right one, which was planted flat on the floor, knee bent. The black boot that was a reminder, every single minute of my day, that I had fucked up and fucked up big-time.

I did four more crunches, staring straight up at the ceiling.

I swallowed so hard my throat hurt.

I had done the same thing so many times over the last two weeks, I was surprised I could still talk. Not that I’d been doing much talking since I’d been let out of urgent care. I hadn’t been doing much of anything other than working out in my room, watching videotaped practices of Ivan and me before, and sleeping.

The tip of Ivan’s shoe nudged my rib, and I ignored it.

“Jasmine.”

“Ivan,” I said, making my voice sound as uncompromising as his.

He nudged me again. And again, I did nothing.

He sighed. “Are you going to stop so we can talk or what?”

“I’d rather not,” I answered, forcing myself to keep my gaze away from him.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when he quickly dropped into a deep squat, hovering just to my side, so close there was no way to ignore him. Unfortunately. Because when I went up to do another crunch, his palm went to my forehead and gently pushed my head back down so that I lay there, on my back.

Looking around and past him, I focused on my ceiling fan.

“Meatball, that’s enough,” he said, his hand still on my face.

I waited a second and tried to go up into another crunch, but he must have been expecting it, because I couldn’t even get an inch off the floor.

“Enough,” he repeated. “Stop. Talk to me.”

Talk to him?

That had me flicking my gaze in his direction, taking in that face I hadn’t seen in over two weeks. That face I had gotten used to seeing six days a week but had somehow become more like seven days a week from all the extra time we spent together. That face that the last time I had seen, had been beside me as I sat on an exam table, listening to the doctor tell me that, best-case scenario, I might be back on my feet in six weeks. But no promises. Grade 2 sprains to your ATFL and your CFL are problematic, the doctor had warned before dropping the recovery time period on me.

Eight weeks had never seemed so long before.

Especially when you couldn’t forgive yourself for being a reckless moron.

It took everything in me to ask him, keeping my voice steady, “What do you want to talk about?”

He stared at me, those gray-blue eyes as intense as ever, and I watched his chest expand with a breath I knew was a steadying one. He was annoyed.

Tough shit for him, I was more annoyed than he was.

“I’ve tried calling you,” he said, like I didn’t know he’d called me at least six times every day for the last twelve days. Today alone, he’d called twice. And like every time my phone rang, I didn’t pick up. I hadn’t picked up. Not once. Not for anyone. Not for my siblings, not for my dad who had left moments before my fall, not Coach Lee, not Galina. Nobody.

I kept my gaze steady on him as I answered. “I haven’t felt like talking. Nothing has changed. I don’t get the boot off for another two days.”

And then, after the doctor gave me the okay to take the boot off, I’d be replacing it with an Aircast air-stirrup ankle brace. The physical therapist I’d been driving myself to for the last nine days had been optimistic I was healing “just fine.”

But fine had never been good enough for me.

Especially not when it had been my own damn fault I was in this situation.

But Ivan blinked, and he sighed again, and I knew he was this fucking close to losing his shit. The thing was, I didn’t care. What was he going to do? Yell at me? “I know nothing has changed, dumbass.”

This asshole….

“Get your shit together. You’re coming with me.”

It was my turn to blink and then stare at him blankly. “What?”

A long index finger poked me right in the forehead. “Get your shit together. You’re coming with me,” he repeated, taking his time with every word. “You hurt your ankle, not your ears.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

The smile that went over his mouth basically creeped me out and instantly made me wary. “You are.”

I stared right at him, ignoring the weird sensation in my belly as I did.

That creepy smile didn’t go anywhere. “You haven’t left your room in two weeks other than to go to physical therapy.”

I said nothing.

“It smells like you haven’t showered in two weeks.”

I had. Two days ago.

“Have you even been sleeping?” That finger gave my forehead another poke. “You look like shit.”

It was that, that had me gritting out, “Yes, I’ve been sleeping.” He didn’t need to know not very well.

He didn’t look like he believed me, but he still said, “You need to get out of here.”

“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself, sounding just as angry as I felt.

“Because there’s no point in you moping around in here, acting like GI Jane working out randomly, Jesus Christ, Jasmine.”

That had me smacking his hand away from my face and sitting up straight, turning my upper body just enough so I could look him in the eye. “I’m not moping, ass. I’ve been working out. I can’t just sit around and rest and totally let myself go.”

“You’re not working out so that you don’t let yourself go. You’re working out because you’re pissed off and in a bad mood. You think I don’t know you?”

I opened my mouth to say no, I wasn’t working out for that reason, but he’d see right through my bullshit. Instead, I said, “I’m not in a bad mood. I haven’t taken anything out on anybody. You can’t call it being in a bad mood if I’m not being mean to other people.”

“All right, then what do you call it when you’re only being mean to yourself?”

I hated it when he asked me things I didn’t know how to answer.

Ivan’s face twisted up into this frustrated expression. “Your mom has invited you to do things with her, and you ignore her.”

“I did not ignore her. I said no.” I blinked and felt another wave of irritation. “Has she been snitching to you?” When? How?

“It’s still rude and mean,” he explained. “And your brothers and sisters have tried calling, but you’re ignoring their calls too. I bet Galina’s called and you haven’t answered her either.”

It was true. It was all true. But I wasn’t about to admit or deny it.

“You’re not doing this shit to yourself, Jasmine,” he let me know. Like he’d made this decision for me and I was going to fucking listen.

He could get the fuck out.

Something swelled up in me that almost took the breath right out of me. “I’m not doing anything to myself, Ivan. I’m minding my own business. Hanging out by myself. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that. I’m healing. Resting. Like everyone told me to do.”

The blink he gave me made me feel bad. Really. But before I could apologize for snapping at him, he went back to frowning. “Don’t get an attitude with me. We both know you’re hiding, and I’m not letting you do it any longer. I was waiting, hoping you’d get out of this funk on your own, once you realized you didn’t completely tear the ligaments or get a fracture like we had been worried about… but you’re not, so I’m dragging you out of it if I have to. I’m done waiting for you to quit being a baby, and I’m not cutting you any slack, even if this is the first time you’ve pulled some shit like that.”

It wasn’t the first time I had pulled some shit like this. He hadn’t seen me back when Paul had left. It had been just as bad, but this time felt worse than then.

I poked him in the forehead the same way he had me and said one thing. “No.”

Ivan blinked those bright blue eyes, his eyelids hanging low over them, and he grit out, “Jasmine, you’re about to get your ass up, get out of this house, and go to mine. You’re either doing it on your own, or I’m doing it for you. You get to choose.”

“I’m not leaving the house.”

He shook his head. “You’re leaving the house.”

“I’m not leaving the house.”

“Yes, you are. You choose. You do it or I do it.”

I poked him in the forehead again. Twice. “No.”

His nostrils flared. “I’m going to count to five, and you have to make a decision between now and then, or I’m choosing for you, and you know what I’m choosing.”

“Ivan, I don’t want to go with you.”

“I don’t give a shit. You could have left with anyone else in your family, but you didn’t, so now you’re coming with me.”

Rage filled me in no time. Instantly, and I hissed, “No, I’m fucking not!”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one about to get pissed off, because he hissed back, “Yes, you fucking are!”

“I don’t want to go with you, how hard is that for you to understand? I don’t want to be around anyone right now or anytime soon,” I fucking snapped, sounding like so much of an asshole, it made me cringe on the inside.

His eyelids swung even lower over his eyes, so they were barely slits. “Why? Are you over me now?”

I jerked my head back. “Over you? What the hell are you talking about?”

That angular jaw of his went tight. “Are you over me? Are you pissed off at me and don’t want to be my partner anymore?”

What in the fuck was he talking about? I gaped at him. Blinked. Then gaped a little more, because what the hell was wrong with him? “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, Ivan.”

His nostrils flared, and his eyes stayed just short of closing as he asked, “Do you not want to be my partner anymore?”

“Why would I not want to be your partner anymore?” I asked him, sounding angry.

“Because of what happened!” he shouted.

“Why would I not want to be your partner? Because I fell like a dumbass? How is that your fault, idiot?”

When his face had started turning pink, I had no idea. But by the time I realized it, it was all rosy. “Because I could tell you were distracted and didn’t give you a chance to get focused. I landed too close to you.”

Was he seriously blaming himself? “You didn’t land that close to me, stupid.”

He shot me a look that could have burned my eyebrows off. “I did, Jasmine. I landed way too close to you.”

“Oh, shut up. No, you didn’t. I landed wrong because I was distracted. Because I screwed up. That wasn’t your fault.”

He glared at me so hard, it made my blood pressure go up. Why would he think something so stupid? Why would he blame himself? How did that make any sense?

“You really thought I didn’t want to see you because I blamed you?” I spat, looking at him like he was a jackass, because he was.

He still glared at me, telling me that answer was yes.

“You’re so dumb.”

“I’m dumb? Then why haven’t you answered your phone?”

It was my turn to have my face close off, and I shut my mouth and shrugged my shoulders instead.

“No. You don’t get to shrug at me and think that’s enough of an answer. I’ve called you over and over again. I thought you were pissed off at me. I thought you didn’t answer because you were mad at me, so now I want to know why you didn’t other than you blaming yourself for being distracted.”

I rolled my eyes and looked away, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. It matters a lot.”

I lifted my shoulders again.

“Jasmine.”

Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

“Jasmine.”

Why would he think something so stupid?

“Jasmine.”

I grunted and turned back toward him, hissing, “Because what the hell would I tell you, Ivan? I’m sorry? I’m so fucking sorry? That I didn’t mean to sprain my ankle and ruin everything?” I basically yelled at him. Horror filled me from the tip of my tongue down to the pit of my belly. Why was I yelling at him? And why the hell was I telling him this? Why didn’t he already know it?

His mouth opened, and he looked at me like I’d punched him in the stomach. “Jasmine—”

“I’m sorry, Ivan,” I croaked, horror and helplessness pulsing through my body. “I screwed up. I keep screwing up. I don’t know why I’m yelling at you. You didn’t do anything. It was me.” My voice cracked, and I felt my hand fist. “I fucked up. It was my fault. Not yours.”

I could feel a shout coming up, clogging my throat. Ripping me inside out. And I hated it. I didn’t want it to come out.

“Stop it,” he said, slowly, those eyes bouncing all over my face, something in them still looking like they were in shock. “Get your shit together. You’re coming with me.“

I looked into his eyes and sucked in a breath. “No.”

“No. You want to make it up to me? Get your things for a few days and come with me. I’m not leaving here without you, and I will take you kicking and screaming. If you yell something about being kidnapped, I’ll tell anyone who listens that you’re on drugs.”

I stared at him.

“You owe me the next six weeks, Jasmine. Get your shit together now. We’re going.”

“Ivan….”

He stared at me.

Anger and pain twisted my insides into a thousand knots. “I’m really sorry.”

It was his throat bobbing that caught my attention. His response was a slow, “I know.”

I had fucked up. It made my chest hurt. “I didn’t mean to.”

His throat bobbed again. “I know.”

“I’ve landed that a thousand times.”

Again. “I know, Jasmine.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

If it wasn’t for the breath on my chin, I wouldn’t know he had let a long, low breath out. “I know you don’t,” he basically whispered, so at ease from how he’d just been speaking to me a second ago.

I almost choked. Almost. “I promise I’ll do whatever I have to do to get better.”

But it was Ivan who choked. Ivan who blinked, one, two, three, four, five times, fast, fast, fast. His eyelashes fluttered from how fast he’d done it. Like something got caught in his throat that he couldn’t do anything about.

“Everything and anything. I swear. I know we’ll have to skip most of the Discovery Series and the WHK, but maybe we can still do Skate North America—”

It was his hands that cut me off. Those hands that I was so familiar with, I could pick out from a crowd by touch. The hands that had held mine, held me, so many times I couldn’t count.

But they had never held my face before. At least not the way he did right then. Because his palms went to my cheeks and he cupped them.

And then he cut me off.

With his mouth.

His lips pressed to mine. Surged to mine. Covered them. Hard.

And then he kissed my upper lip between his while I was still trying to figure out what the fuck was happening.

Ivan was kissing me.

Kissing me.

His mouth went to my eyes suddenly, and he pressed his lips from one of my eyelids to the other, quick, fluttering, so light I could barely feel it. One brow bone and then the other. And I just sat there.

I sat there and I didn’t move away or push him away or tell him no.

His mouth went over my cheeks, warm and everything wonderful in the world. “You tried to get up,” he said to me in a voice so low I barely understood his words. “You tried to get up and keep skating, and I swear I almost started crying right then.”

He kissed one cheek and then the other, soft, his mouth brushing over the bridge of my nose as he moved around.

“Only you would sprain the shit out of your ankle and try to get up to keep going,” he said to me, his voice hitching. “You kept saying, I’m sorry, Ivan. I’m sorry, Ivan. I’m so sorry, and I told you to shut up because if you kept saying it any more, I would have been the one….” His breath came out stuttered and choppy over my face, and his hands moved from my cheeks to cup my ears.

His mouth shifted over mine, grazing it, so light and sweet, something in me constricted.

Friends could kiss in relief. He wasn’t shoving his tongue in my mouth or copping a feel. He was just happy I was fine. He was just kissing me because… why not?

He cared about me.

People had kissed for much less, knowing each other not even a little bit.

I let Ivan kiss the places he wanted to, telling myself it was fine, that he’d been scared for me, because he had been. He had. And with that one thought, all I could focus on at that point were his words. His hurt. All shit I had caused.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I repeated, because I was. I was so sad it hurt me that we were here. It hurt me that I had let him down. “You’ve only had to pull out of a few events before me, and now I’m making you do it. I’m sorry, Ivan. I didn’t mean to fall.”

Ivan’s head shook in front of me. “Stop saying that.”

“But I am,” I whispered. “It’s my fault.”

“It was an accident,” he finished for me, sharply. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“But I ruined—”

“You didn’t ruin anything. Shut the hell up,” he said.

“We’re out for six more weeks if everything goes well,” I reminded him, like he didn’t know.

“For two months total, Jasmine. Not the whole season. Not forever,” he also said, like I didn’t know that.

“But we’ve worked so hard—”

“Meatball, it doesn’t matter.“

I sucked in a breath at the reminder of how we were losing so much time out of the one and only year we had together. Eight less weeks that I’d get to be around this man who meant the world to me. Before he left me for someone else and I was on my own, the captain of my own destiny or whatever the hell it was called.

And I blinked.

“Don’t start. It’s only two months, and we were doing great. It was easy for us. Too easy.” He pressed his warm cotton candy pink lips to mine like he’d done it a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times again. “If anyone can come back from this in six weeks, it’s you.”

It would be me. Of course it would. But I couldn’t say the words then, as I stared into those eyes of his, our faces inches away from each other. All I could do was nod. And after a beat, then five, I said, “We’ll win.”

His gaze went even more intense as he said, with no hesitation, “You’re goddamn right we will.” He pressed his mouth, so quick, so hard against me, I didn’t have a chance to react until he pulled back an inch and said, hoarsely, his fingers threading through the damp hair right above the nape of my neck, “I’ll drag you back on the ice if I have to, Jasmine. I swear on my life.”

Something about his words made me shake on the inside. Maybe it was the conviction. Maybe it was the anger. The passion. The reality that he wasn’t leaving me any room to not do what he said.

Mostly though, it was something else completely.

I loved him.

I loved this man so much that losing him was going to break my cold, dead heart into so many pieces I was just going to have to stick them in the same box I kept my dreams and carry it around with me forever.

I didn’t want someone to pat my cheek and tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted this man who would never take my shit, who would never let me quit, and I had a feeling would never quit on me. Not ever. Not if I screamed, not if I kicked, not if I told him to go eat a thousand mounds of shit.

This was my partner. This was more than my partner. He was my other half.

And the only thing I could do to thank him for this gift he’d given me, this knowledge that he thought I was invincible, was to make sure we won.

I’d give him the thing he had wanted me for in the first place.

I’d give him my fucking all.