From Lukov with Love

IT WAS a good thing that no one had told me taking eight weeks off right at the beginning of the season was going to be easy, because it hadn’t been.

It absolutely hadn’t been.

The past two weeks had been the most exhausting two weeks of my life, and that included the month that I had been going back to the LC to work out until midnight. But this time, I hadn’t been alone. I’d had my best friend with me the entire time.

And I had enjoyed every sweaty, grueling, frustrating, painful moment.

Especially right then, as I stared out the window of the van that had picked up Ivan, me, and six other pairs teams with their coaches, to take us to the facility where we would be competing at tomorrow. Relief like I didn’t know I had in me, flooded my lungs, freeing them, as I took in the giant building with banners located around it. SKATE NORTH AMERICA, NOVEMBER 23-26. One of them even had Ivan—by himself—right after landing a jump the year before.

We were here and it was real.

We were ready.

Ivan had been quieter than normal over the last few days, while we’d done as many last-minute corrections as possible back at the LC. We had caught a flight to Lake Placid two days before, just in case the winter weather took a turn for the worst, but it hadn’t. Skate North America only offered one day of official practice, so the past two days, we had just taken advantage of the giant conference room the WSU—World Skating Union—had booked for everyone with the same plans as us.

And when we hadn’t been in the conference room, Ivan, Coach Lee, me, and the Simmons husband and wife team—our choreographers—had taken a taxi trip around, walked the downtown area, visited the Olympic museum, eaten lunch out, and then gone back to our rooms. At least until Ivan had showed up to my room to see what my view was like and we’d ended up ordering takeout and eating in there while we watched a show about cats from hell, and he’d told me about the three cats he’d had up until a year ago, when the last one had passed away from old age.

I didn’t need to tell Ivan that this trip was different from every other trip I’d ever taken before, by myself and with Paul. But I thought he knew. I was excited—and I was nervous for the first time ever—but the excitement overwhelmed the rest.

And we were here. One step closer. One last thirty-minute practice away from the beginning of the end that I was trying so hard not to focus on.

We had just climbed out of the van when Ivan grabbed my hand out of the blue.

I glanced at him, not frowning but wondering what the hell he was doing. It wasn’t like I minded it. I didn’t. I grabbed his hand for random reasons every once in a while. But, I still didn’t know why he was doing it. And it amped up my nerves a kick more.

“What is it?” I asked, when I took in the expression on his face as he turned his body to face mine.

Pulling my hand, he tugged me to the side to let the other teams we had ridden over with pass. We were all in Group B with practice times. Ivan’s breath puffed white in the bitter New York air, and I shivered, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and why it had to be happening outside. Those bright blue eyes were focused on my face when the man who had driven me to every physical therapy appointment after he’d barged into my room so many weeks ago said, “I need you to promise me something.”

This was going to be bad, wasn’t it?

“It depends on what it is,” I replied, worrying, trying to rack my brain for whatever the hell was so serious he wanted a promise out of me first.

That perfect face with its perfect skin and structure didn’t sigh or give me an exasperated expression that he usually would have. “Promise me, Jasmine.”

Shit.

“Not before you tell me what it is. I don’t want to break my promise.” I frowned, dread quickly filling my stomach cavity.

Chances were I would probably do whatever he asked but… what if he asked me not to fuck up. Or not to make a scene if he introduced me to the next partner he had lined up, if he didn’t go back to Mindy. We hadn’t talked about the future at all. Not once.

Shit.

Ivan’s eyes roamed my face, slowly. His breathing slowed and his too-calm features, relaxed even more. Then, he sighed, glanced up at the sky for all of a moment and then back down at me with a swallow that made his Adam’s apple bob. “Please, promise me. I’m not asking you for anything you aren’t capable of.”

I must have made a face, because he tugged at the hand he was still holding.

“Promise me, Meatball. You know you can trust me,” he said, not making it a question but a well-known fact.

And he’d be right.

But still, I hated that he was trying to use that against me. I didn’t want to break a promise to him. Not ever. But I also didn’t want to do something I probably wasn’t capable of… like smiling at the person he was going to replace me with in a few months. I glanced away, and it was probably my imagination that the air grew colder by the second. I shivered. “Fine, I promise. What is it?” I asked, hearing the attitude in my voice.

The smile he gave me in response, slow and smirkish, put me at ease a little, but just a little. “Promise me that if you see Paul and Mary, you won’t try to start a fight with him—”

The fuck? That’s what this was about? Paul and Mary?

Get the fuck out. I hadn’t thought about either of those two assholes in months. Not since he’d talked me into doing the photo shoot.

My scoff was so loud, it genuinely aggravated my throat. “Oh come on, that’s what you want me to promise you? You think I’m going to go out of my way to fight with him and risk getting in trouble?”

He blinked, and his hand gave mine a squeeze. “You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that you should save it up until after the competition, then go for it. We’ll kill them with our scores, and then you can give the knockout punch.”

I opened my mouth, and then I closed it.

Those gray-blue eyes lingered on my face even as his eyebrows went up, and he covered the top of my hand with his other one. “Is that a deal?”

I could only blink before I managed to get out, “What do you think?”

And his smile was just… ugh. “I think Mirror Lake across from the hotel is pretty convenient.”

“You’ll be my alibi?”

Ivan scrunched up his nose. “I know your sisters are here and all, but I thought you’d want me to help out. I’m stronger than they are. We wouldn’t have to leave a trail.”

What I wanted was him forever, but I’d take what I could get.

“Deal,” I said.

He grinned. “One more thing.”

Damn it.

“I want to know because you never told me, but what do you have against Mary McDonald?” he asked. “I want to know why we hate her.”

Why we hate her. Ivan. Fucking Ivan. All I could do was shrug so that I wouldn’t say anything else I had no business sharing. “When we were younger, before I was even in pairs, she used to talk shit about me behind my back. You can ask Karina. Mary didn’t know Karina was my friend, and she talked about my weight, made some really racist, asshole comments about me being half-Filipino, and she was just a bitch in general.”

Ivan blinked. “Did you say anything to her?” The question had just come out of his mouth when he snorted. “That’s a stupid question. Of course you did.”

I tugged on his hand. “You already know I did. I told her the next time she talked about me, I would open a can of whoop-ass on her.”

“Son of a bitch!” I hissed as I burned my scalp again trying to get my straightening iron as close to the roots as possible. Skate North America wasn’t the most televised event in the season, but…

It didn’t matter to me.

What did matter was getting my hair as straight as possible, even though it already was. Only, I couldn’t see or reach the back of my head well. We had three hours before the event even started, and we weren’t scheduled to skate until almost the end. But my makeup was on, so was the black long-sleeved lacy dress that Ruby had finished months ago, before I’d gotten injured.

Ivan had decided to go change in the men’s restroom because he didn’t want “any riots starting” if people saw him in his underwear.

The idiot.

And now I needed his help. He would help me straighten the rest of my hair. I knew he would.

But I was going to try and do as much as I could without hopefully burning myself for the sixth time. Turning back to one of the three illuminated mirrors in the room we were sharing with two of the teams we had worked out with at the same time the day before, I leaned into it and tried to angle my head as well as I could to catch a glimpse of what I was doing. I’d seen the other four people we were competing against—two teams that Ivan knew and had already said were nice—but they hadn’t even changed yet.

I’d done two chunks of hair when the door opened, but I didn’t think anything of it.

Until a voice I recognized spoke up.

And it wasn’t Ivan’s.

“Jasmine, I want to talk to you,” the semi-familiar voice requested as I turned to face him, instantly wondering where the hell Ivan was.

I’d made a promise to him.

I will not talk shit to Paul. I will not talk shit to Paul. I will not talk shit to Paul. He’d made me say it seven times total the day before when I’d sworn I’d seen him while we had been waiting for the van to pick us up following our practice session, because apparently, once you did something seven times you couldn’t forget it.

I had promised him I wouldn’t start anything or do anything. I was a lot of things, and half of them weren’t good, but Ivan was.

And I wouldn’t go back on my word. Especially not to him. Not after everything he had done for me.

But…

There was no way either one of us could have predicted that Paul would be dumb enough to try and come talk to me before our first skate—our short program. I had always thought I was the one who wasn’t as smart as other people, but apparently, this guy I had spent three years of my life teamed up with was the real fucking idiot.

Keeping my gaze on my own reflection in the mirror, I set my straightening iron down on the counter and made my hand into a fist.

“Jasmine, please,” the second man in my life to ever do shit to my heart kept going as I kept on looking at myself in the mirror.

I didn’t think I looked that different from back when I was nineteen. My face was a little slimmer. My hair was longer, and I was more muscular. But on the inside… well, on the inside, I was definitely different.

Because nineteen-year-old Jasmine would have already thrown her straightening iron at Paul and hoped it magically burned his balls through his costume.

“Jas, just… five minutes, please,” my old partner basically pleaded from wherever he was out of the way from the mirror’s reflection.

I fisted my hand tighter. Held my breath. Then I rolled my eyes because fuck him. Repeatedly. I hadn’t given Paul a single thought in so long, I had genuinely forgotten how much I hated his ass.

But I remembered real quick. Real fucking quick.

You promised Vanya, that calm part of my brain reminded me.

And easily, so easily, I got myself under control… and I exhaled.

“You’re just going to pretend I’m not here?” my ex asked, stepping so close behind me I could finally see him in the mirror. So close, I was pretty sure if I kicked out backward, I could easy-peasy kick him in the nuts.

You’d figure after three years together, he would know how dangerous of a position he was putting himself into.

Fucking idiot.

God, Ivan would know better.

Tall, slim, and brown-haired, he looked the exact same as he had almost two years ago, when he’d walked out of the LC and never came back.

Paul looked pale in the lights and the reflection. His hands were in front of him, and I could tell he was anxious.

Good.

“Look, all I want to do is talk.”

I didn’t mean to snort, but it happened just as I straightened. I was still so short, I had a clear view of me from the waist up. The front of the costume had a sweetheart-neckline in the center of my chest, the dark fabric covering everything important—no beads on mine or Ivan’s costumes because they got caught on everything—with lace overlapping everything else, but ending a few inches above my wrist so that the lace wouldn’t get in the way of my grip. I loved it. When Ruby had told me her idea for Dracula, I couldn’t have picked a better costume design. Ivan had agreed.

Paul’s dumbass took that sound for the opposite of what it was—an invitation—and kept on yapping his mouth. “After all the time we were together, you owe me, Jasmine.”

And, there it was. The three words he had no business using. The same three words that just like that had me seeing red and hoping Ivan would forgive me for breaking my word to him.

But I could tell him that it was because of him, and because of what we’d agreed on, that I didn’t punch my ex in the balls from the get-go. If that wasn’t an achievement, I didn’t know what was. He would get it.

That’s what I was going to tell myself as I turned around slowly on the balls of my feet and looked up at the man who I had wasted so much of my time on. Tall but not as tall as Ivan, and with shoulders that weren’t as broad, with light brown hair and an almost tan complexion, handsome, sure… he was just like how I remembered him. It had been almost two years, after all.

Little fucking bitch.

“I don’t owe you shit,” I said up to him, sounding so calm I was honest to God proud of myself.

This buttfuck sighed as he ran a hand through his short hair and said, “Give me a break, Jas. We have history—”

Yep, I went from seeing red to seeing fucking magenta. “Yeah, that history ended the day I heard about you pairing up with Mary from someone who had read an article about it online.”

He flinched. Paul hesitated. Then he seemed to shake it off as he demanded, “What else was I supposed to do?” He shook his head, swallowed hard, and steeled his shoulders.

But it was pointless because he’d already pissed me off.

He wasn’t about to try and guilt trip me or intimidate my ass. “You could have told me like a normal human being that respected the person who had stuck with them for three years?” I snapped, barely managing not to yell at the reminder of what he had done to me. “I tried calling you, Paul, calling you and calling you, and you not once picked up, you fucker,” I spat. “You didn’t have the balls to warn me or explain shit, not once over the last two years.”

“It’s not—”

I gave him a look that I knew was my crazy expression. “If you fucking say that’s not what it’s like, I will punch you right now, on the dick, as hard as I can.”

He shut his mouth, because he knew I would.

But he’d broken this dam, and now he was going to have to live with it.

“I gave you three years of my life, Paul. Three. You were my partner, I would have done almost anything for you, and you treated me like a piece of shit. You just ran away and did what you wanted to do, without telling me. Don’t tell me I owe you anything. I don’t. I don’t owe you a single fucking thing,” I hissed at him, pointing my finger at him because there was no way I could keep my hand from doing something when all it really wanted to do was form a ball and break his nose or his dick.

“You make it seem like I could have just… told you. Like it would have been that easy,” he replied, his hand still caught in his hair, his expression twisted.

I blinked. “Yeah, it would have been that easy. Hey, Jasmine, I quit. I’m going to pair up with someone you can’t stand. Good luck,” I mocked, shaking my head. “Done.”

His laughter held a sharp edge. “That’s not how it would have gone, and you know it. You would’ve yelled at me, called me a quitter, a bitch, a pussy, all those things and more. You know you would have. You wouldn’t have let me leave that easily.”

You promised Ivan you wouldn’t do this. You promised.

And I had.

And that’s why I kept my hand at my side, still.

“Yeah, I would have. I would have done all of those things. We both know that. But you’re an idiot for not understanding why. I would have given you a hard time because we were in it together. Because we were a team, and I wouldn’t just give up on you like it was nothing. But you’re a grown-ass man that makes his own decisions. I wouldn’t have tied you up and forced you to stay. Give me a fucking break.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I was genuinely surprised by them. I don’t even think I had ever thought that way before. Much less felt that way.

But I had.

He’d hurt me, and I wanted him to know. I wanted him to know that I had cared about him. And I wasn’t above wanting him to know that I would have fought for him.

But that was two years ago.

One year ago, I would have wanted to beat the shit out of him. I would have been too prideful to ever admit any of this. But I wasn’t. Not anymore. At this point, all I wanted was to get this horrible guilt and anger I’d been suffering with off my chest. I wanted it out of my life. Out of me.

I wanted to move on. Maybe I already had. Mostly.

I still wanted to beat his ass, but I’d settle for making him regret the day he’d met me. The only way to do that was to kick the shit out of him and Mary on the ice. And I would. Ivan and I would.

“I cared about you too, Jasmine,” he said, making me roll my eyes. “I still care about you. When I heard about your sprain, I was worried. I wanted to call you, but… I couldn’t.”

Yeah, he got another eye roll for that shitty lie. “Okay.”

“You don’t understand….”

I raised my hands at my sides and let them fall right back down. “Okay, Paul. Tell me. Right now. What is it you want me to hear, huh? That you left me because you wanted a better chance at winning?”

This man gulped again, dragging his hand down his face and over the white and blue spandex bodysuit costume he had on. “Why do you always turn shit around? I miss you, Jas. I’ve picked up the phone to call you at least a dozen times….”

All I wanted was for him to shut. The. Fuck. Up.

“Honest to God, cross my heart and hope to die, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Or ever again. Whatever you thought you felt, whatever excuses you’ve talked yourself into believing to justify the way you treated me… live with it. Deal with it. If you know me half as well as you think you do, you know I’m not ever going to forgive you.”

“Jasmine, I—”

“Nope. Don’t even bother. If you see my mom, run the other way. If you see me, turn around and pretend that you don’t,” I said to him, sounding oddly calm. “I would have forgiven you if you’d talked to me first. I would have forgiven you for saying all that shit you did about finding a partner you can ‘really work with.’ And I could have forgiven you eventually for shoving me out of your life. But I’m not going to. I’m not that good of a person.” I swept my eyes to the side, giving him my best blank expression and said, “You better go. I have shit to do, and I don’t want you as an audience.”

Paul Jones blinked. I’d swear maybe even his chin wobbled a little bit. But in that way that was his, he glanced away and sighed, pressing his lips together. “Jasmine, look—”

“Just go.”

“I just want to tell you—”

“I don’t care,” I said, giving him my back again.

He was so full of shit. Ugh.

“Do you even know why I never called you back any of those times you’d leave me voice mails cussing me out right after? Or that time you called me drunk months later, yelling at me?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” I told him, my voice even, almost robotic as I looked past him toward the door and prayed, prayed that Ivan was coming.

He frowned so deeply lines formed across his forehead. Those brown eyes sliced away from me before they came back. “Jasmine, it was because Ivan called me a week afterward and said he would ‘fuck me up’ if I ever contacted you again.”

The hell did he just say?

“Stop looking at me like you think I’m lying. I’m not. He called me and said that if I knew what was good for me, I would leave you alone, but if I didn’t, he was going to fuck me up so bad I would regret the day I ever decided to skate pairs.”

Ivan.

Ivan had said that? Done that? But that had been a year before we’d paired up, weeks after we’d flipped each other off in a hallway, I was pretty sure.

Ivan had done that?

“I also said that I’d destroy you. You missed that part,” a familiar voice piped up, making both of us turn to find Ivan peeking his head inside the room, the door barely cracked, hair perfectly gelled into place, his face shaved clean, everything about him bright and sparkling. And he was smiling. And holding red roses.

I loved him.

Goddamn I had no idea what the hell had happened or why it had happened, but I loved him so much in that moment, my heart could have burst.

“But Jasmine can too. She’s so small and cute, it’s deceiving how strong she is. And it’s weird how mad she can get. She’s like a little Gremlin; you better not put any water on her because she’ll go crazy,” he went on, smiling at me with affection as he stepped into the room fully, showing off his matching black costume. “But you should know that.”

Paul looked between Ivan and me for a moment before taking a step to the side, away from me.

“I—”

“She’s my partner now, Paulie, and she’s going to keep being my partner. And you know what? I’m not real good with sharing, so it might be a good idea if you got out of here before all those things I had warned you about come true,” Ivan cut him off, as he came to stand at my side.

Ivan didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. I knew he was there, and he knew I knew that.

That was the thing with us. We understood each other. We knew the length and depth of our trust and loyalty. And that meant more than any empty-ass words ever would.

“Don’t you have something you need to go do?” Ivan asked with a deceptively lazy blink.

Paul sighed, then took a step back. He glanced at me over his shoulder, his lingering look might have made me feel bad if I hadn’t wanted to kill him, before he headed toward the exit. He’d barely opened the door when Ivan’s fingers slipped through mine.

“You handled that better than I would have expected,” he said, not even lowering his voice considering Paul wasn’t out of the room yet.

I peeked up at him. “You think?”

His nod was so enthusiastic, it made me almost laugh. “Yeah. Coach Lee and I thought you’d at least slap him.”

“You told me not to.” Damn it.

“No, I told you to wait until after this was over. I didn’t think he’d actually come up to you and try and talk to you. He doesn’t know you at all, does he?” Ivan snickered. “Dumbass. I bet he has no clue how close he was to dying. I could hear it in your voice, and once I saw your face, I was honestly worried you were going to do some John Wick shit with the comb I left on the counter.”

I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. I couldn’t remember ever laughing before a competition. Ever. Not once.

The tug he gave my hand made me look at him as I kept on laughing.

“You good?” he asked, pressing our joined hands against his hip.

I nodded, and once I’d stopped laughing and still had a smile on my face, I narrowed my eyes on him. “Did you really call him and tell him not to contact me ever again?”

That was the thing about Ivan. He didn’t bullshit. Not ever. I didn’t think he was even capable of being embarrassed either. Because there was no hesitation as he responded. “Yes.”

“Why?”

His body didn’t move from its spot beside me, his hand didn’t let go of mine either as he said, “Because Karina called and told me what happened. She asked if there was anything I could do. If I knew anyone else that you could pair up with.”

This low-level hum began in my ears, but I made myself ask, “Then what happened?”

“I told her I didn’t. Then I called him and told him how it was going to be, I was that pissed,” he explained easily.

I felt like a dumb, pathetic girl asking for reassurances, but I didn’t care enough to let it stop me. “You were mad for me?”

“No shit, Sherlock. The idea of you being upset over that waste of breath pissed me off. You deserved better.” He smiled and pressed our hands tight against his side. “If you were going to cry for anyone, it was going to be me.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I know.”

But then Ivan moved his body. He moved it to face mine, to stand in front of me, forcing me to tip my head back just enough so I could look at his eyes, the bouquet between us. Slowly, taking his time, his forehead dropped to mine. “Do you regret what happened?”

I looked right into those clear blue eyes and told him, “It was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“Me too, Jas.”

And this… this thing that I knew was love bubbled up inside of me, and I knew it was a stupid idea. I knew I needed to shut the fuck up. But as I looked into those beautiful eyes and held that hand that had been there to hold me up so many times, I reminded myself that I was nobody’s bitch.

Not even my own.

“Vanya,” I started to say, oddly not nervous, so close his breath touched my lips. “I don’t expect anything from you, and I don’t want to make this weird, but I want you to know—”

His “Shut up” caught me off guard.

I blinked. “Don’t tell me to shut up. I want to tell you something.”

He suddenly dropped our hands, smiled, and took a step away. “I got something for you.”

“You got me flowers?” I asked.

He shook his head as he set them on the counter beside me. “No, they’re from Karina.”

I smiled at the thought of her sending flowers. I’d have to send her a text later to say thank you.

“I did get you something, and someone else sent you something too.”

I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes. “Who?”

Ivan smiled. “Patty.”

“Who is Patty?”

His smile drooped. “That teenager at the LC you stood up for. The one who looks just like you and is really outgoing?”

“Oh.” Her. I hadn’t realized we looked alike. “She sent me something?” Why?

“A card.”

Huh. “She didn’t have to do that.”

“No, she didn’t, but she found me the day before we left and begged me to give it to you,” he said. “But I got you something too. It’s not the souls of everyone that has ever pissed you off, but….”

That had me shutting my mouth. For all of a second.

“I was going to give it to you after, but I think I should give it to you now.”

I pressed my lips together and asked slowly, “What is it?” as he turned to his giant rolling suitcase and dug his hand into large pocket on the outside of it.

“I thought we were past you thinking I’m going to randomly kill you.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever be past that.”

Ivan laughed with his back to me. “My plan is to kill you after worlds. Get it right.”

“I’ll write it down in my calendar then. Thank you for the warning.”

His head shook as he yanked his hand out of the pocket, holding something wrapped in tissue paper and something else in a white envelope.

“I was kind of expecting a scorpion, but I don’t think you’d put your own life in danger to kill me.”

“Shut up, I’ll put the card here for you to read later,” he murmured again, amusement in his voice as he turned to face me. “Let me see your hand.”

I held out my right hand, but he smacked it gently down. So I raised the other one. I watched as he set the tissue-paper-wrapped thing on the counter and took my wrist with both of his big hands. He tugged the sleeve of my costume up about three inches on my forearm, exposing the bracelet I always wore. I had tightened the leather straps on it that morning so I could wear it under my costume, like I normally did.

I didn’t think much of it until his thumb brushed over the slim metal plate held on by the leather straps I’d had to replace once a year since I’d originally gotten it made when I was twelve at a fair. To Jasmine. From your best friend, Jasmine was engraved on it. My mom had rolled her eyes when she’d paid for it. I’d showed her the documentary about another figure skater I admired who had worn the same thing. She had been amazing for her time, competitive and had never given a single fuck what other people thought about her. I thought she had been the shit, but mostly, she thought she was the shit.

It had always been my reminder that I had to believe in myself.

And I’d been wearing it proudly since.

But Ivan’s fingers went to the straps I had just retied, and he began undoing the tiny knot with those long, graceful fingers. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing and why he was taking it off, but… I trusted him. So, I kept my mouth shut as he pulled it off and set it on the counter beside the tissue-wrapped whatever it was.

Okay.

He grabbed the thing off the counter in the same move and opened the tissue paper, pulling out something that looked almost identical. A sliver of metal with a leather band around it. Except the leather was bright pink.

“I don’t want you to get nervous tonight,” he started to say as he held the bracelet in one hand, his eyes on me.

I switched back and forth between looking at him and the thing in his hand. “I’m not nervous.”

He snickered. “Fine, you’re not nervous. But I want you to know that regardless of what happens today and tomorrow, it doesn’t matter, Meatball.”

And that had me snapping my head up to look him in the eye. The fuck was he talking about? “Of course it matters.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he insisted. “It’s just a competition. If we win or lose, it doesn’t change anything.”

What the hell did he mean by anything?

Ivan took my hand with the one not holding the bracelet and rubbed his thumb over the back of my wrist. “I’m not going to be mad. I’m not going to be disappointed. I hope you’re not either.”

I watched him carefully but didn’t say anything.

His jaw moved, and his eyelids hung low over those spectacular eyes as he asked, “Will you?”

“Be disappointed if we don’t win?”

I didn’t like the nod he gave me.

But I thought about his words for one tiny moment. Would I be disappointed if I fucked up or if he fucked up and everything went to shit and we ended up in sixth place tonight and tomorrow? Would I be furious like I had been in the past?

“No.” I wouldn’t. “You’d be in sixth place with me. I wouldn’t be alone. If I’m going to fail, at least we’d do it together,” I whispered, this funny fucking feeling going over my body.

It felt like… it felt like relief. Like acceptance. And it was the second single most beautiful thing I had ever felt in my life.

Second to loving this idiot and my family.

And that had to be the right fucking answer he was looking for because the smile that came over his face was the best one he’d ever shared with me yet. “Give me back your wrist, you little shit,” he ordered, beaming that smile that I wished with all my heart was mine and only mine.

And except for his dogs and his pig and his bunny, it might very well be.

So I gave him my wrist.

And I watched as he tied the pink leather straps together, tight but not too tight, and left the bracelet up high on my arm like I’d had the other one, in the perfect spot to be hidden by the sleeve of my costume. He’d barely finished the knot when I brought my forearm to my face and read the tiny inscription on the metal.

To Meatball

From your best friend, Ivan

And in the time it took me to read the metal plate about four times, Ivan had already tied my bracelet to his own wrist.

But it didn’t fit under his sleeve.

And when he smiled at me, I knew he didn’t even care.