From Lukov with Love

I DIDN’T like being scared—who the hell does other than people who love the shit out of creepy movies?—but the truth was, there wasn’t a whole lot that could have that effect on me. Spiders, flying roaches, mice, the dark, clowns, heights, carbs, gaining weight, death… none of that freaked me out. I could kill spiders, roaches, and mice. I could turn on a light in the dark. Unless he was a big-ass clown, chances were, I could kick his ass. I was strong for my size and had taken a few self-defense classes with my sister over the years. Heights did nothing for me. Carbs were great, and if I gained weight, I knew how to lose it. And we were all going to die at some point. None of that fazed me. Not even a little bit.

The things that kept me up at night weren’t physical.

Worrying about being a failure and a disappointment weren’t things you could just fix. They were just there. All the time. And if there was a way to work on them, I hadn’t learned how to yet.

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’d been freaked out in my life, and every single one of those times revolved around figure skating. Once was the third time I gave myself a concussion. My doctor at the time had told my mom that she should consider making me give up figure skating—and I’d genuinely thought for a while she would force me to call it quits. I could remember the two concussions following that one, and being worried that she would put her foot down and say that was it, that I wasn’t going to risk all the repercussions that came from continued brain trauma. She hadn’t.

And the other times when my mouth had tasted like cotton and my stomach had tightened and churned… I wasn’t going to think about those moments more than I needed to.

But that was it. My dad thought it was funny to say that I only had two emotions: indifferent and pissed off. It wasn’t true, but he didn’t know me well enough to be aware of that.

But as I stood there wondering if I was either dreaming this, on drugs, or if this was actually fucking real—and entertaining the idea that it was, that I wasn’t on some hallucinogenic drug—I felt a little scared. I didn’t want to ask if this was real… because what if it wasn’t? What if it was some screwed-up kind of joke?

I hated feeling so insecure.

I really hated being scared that the answer I was looking for was one I probably would have sold my soul for.

But my mom had told me once that regret was worse than fear. I hadn’t understood it then, but I did now.

It was with that thought that I made myself ask the question that a big part of me didn’t want to know the answer to, just in case it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Partner for what?” I asked slowly to be sure, trying to rack my brain for what the hell I could partner up with him for in this screwed-up dream I was having that seemed to be real. Fucking Pictionary?

The man I’d watched grow up from a distance that was sometimes too close, rolled those ice blue eyes. And just like every other time he rolled his eyes, I narrowed mine in return.

“To skate pairs,” he answered like “duh.” Like he was asking to get smacked. “What did you think? For square dancing?”

I blinked.

“Vanya!” Coach Lee hissed, and out of the corner of my eye, I might have seen her slap her palm across her forehead.

But I wasn’t sure because I was too busy staring at the smart-ass in the seat and telling myself, Don’t do it, Jasmine. Be better. Shut your mouth…

But then a smaller voice I knew really well whispered, At least until you figure out what they really want from you. Because this couldn’t be it. Not really.

“What?” Ivan asked, still looking right at me, the only change to his nearly blank face being the hint of a baby smirk on his mouth.

“We talked about this,” his coach said, shaking her head, and if I’d turned to look at her, I would have seen I wasn’t the only one glaring. I was too busy telling myself to be a better person though.

But that comment snapped me out of it, and I turned my attention to the other woman and kept my narrowed gaze on her. “What did you talk about?” I asked slowly. I could take whatever she said. Good or bad. I had survived all kinds of things being said to me, I reminded myself. And when my stomach didn’t turn or clench at the reminder of those worse things, I felt better.

Her gaze flicked to mine before she shot the idiot in the chair a frustrated look. “He wasn’t supposed to run his mouth until I talked to you about everything.”

I drew out the one word. “Why?”

The other woman let out a long breath in pure exasperation—I was familiar with that sound—and her eyes went back to the man on the chair as she answered, “Because we’re trying to get you to join the team, not remind you why you wouldn’t want to.”

I blinked. Again.

And then I couldn’t help but twist my head to smirk at the ass in the office chair. His own baby smirk hadn’t gone anywhere and didn’t go anywhere even as he took in me making a face at him.

Dumbass, I mouthed before I could stop myself and remember to be better.

Meatball, he mouthed back.

That wiped the smirk off my face real quick, just like it always did.

“All right,” Coach Lee said with a short huff of a laugh that wasn’t funny at all as I stood there, eyes locked on the demon in the chair, mad at myself for letting him get to me. “Let’s back up here a moment. Jasmine, please ignore you-know-who over there. He wasn’t supposed to open his mouth and ruin this important conversation he knew we were having.”

It took everything in me to slide my gaze back to the other woman instead of focusing on the person to my left.

Coach Lee gave me a smile I might have called desperate on anyone else. She kept right on going. “Ivan and I would like for you to be his new partner.” Her eyebrows went up, that weird smile I didn’t trust stayed on her face. “If you’re interested.”

Ivan and I would like for you to be his new partner.

If you’re interested.

They—these two people that looked and sounded like Coach Lee and Ivan—wanted me to be his new partner?

Me.

This was a fucking joke, wasn’t it?

For one split second, I thought Karina had something to do with this, but then I decided no way. It had been over a month since the last time we’d spoken. And she knew me too well to try and do something like this. Especially not with this Lukov of all people.

But this was a joke… right? Ivan and me? Me and Ivan? Just a month ago, he had asked me if I was ever going to go through puberty. And in reply, I had told him I’d go through it when his balls decided to drop.

All because we had both tried to get on the ice at the same time. She had been there. Coach Lee had overheard us. I knew it.

“I don’t understand,” I told both of them, slowly, totally confused, a little annoyed, and not sure who the hell I should be looking at, or what the hell I should even be doing, because this didn’t make any sense. Not even a little bit.

I didn’t miss how the two people in the room gave each other a look I couldn’t pick apart before Coach Lee asked, her expression almost tight, “What is it you don’t understand?”

That there were a thousand other people they could go to, most of them younger than me, which in this sport was what everyone was looking for. There was no logical reason to ask me… other than the fact I was better than any of those other girls. At least technically, and by technically I meant jumps and spins, the two things I did best. But sometimes being able to jump the highest and spin the fastest wasn’t enough. Program components scores—skating skills, transitions, performance and execution, choreography and interpretation—were just as important to a total score.

And I had never done so well at those things. People had blamed my choreographer. My coaches for choosing bad music. Me for “not having a soul” and not being “artistic enough” and “not having any feel.” My ex and I for not having that “oneness” factor. Me for not trusting him enough. And maybe all of those things had been a huge part of why I hadn’t done well.

That and me choking.

So.

I swallowed down the bitterness—at least for now—and took my time glancing at both of these people that I knew but didn’t. “You want me to try out to be his”—I hooked my thumb in the direction of where Ivan sat to make sure we were definitely on the same page—“partner?” I blinked again and sucked in a breath through my nose to calm my blood pressure. “Me?”

The other woman nodded. No hesitation. No side glances. Just a clean, crisp nod.

“Why?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question, but what the hell was I going to do? Act like this was nothing?

Ivan snorted as he shifted in the chair he was sitting in, drawing his extended legs in until they were flat on the carpeted floor. One of his knees jiggled. “You want an explanation?”

Don’t flip him off. Don’t flip him off. Don’t do it, Jasmine.

I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.

Don’t do it.

“Yeah,” I told him dryly, but a lot nicer than he deserved and would have usually gotten, as this feeling of uneasiness covered my entire body. Sometimes things really were too good to be true. I would never forget that. I couldn’t. “Why?” I asked again, not about to back down until we got this shit sorted.

Neither one of them said a word. Or maybe I was just being impatient because I kept talking before either of them did. “We all know there are younger skaters out there you can ask,” I added, because what would be the damage if this was exactly what I thought it was? AKA total bullshit. A trick. A nightmare. One of the most asshole-ish things anyone had ever done to me… if it wasn’t real.

And what the hell was going on with my blood pressure? I felt sick all of a sudden. Tracing my bracelet with the fingers of my opposite hand, I swallowed and looked at both of these basic strangers, trying to keep my voice steady, my emotions in check. “I want to know why you’re asking me. Besides there being girls five years younger than me you could ask, there are some with more experience in pairs. You both know why I haven’t been able to find another partner,” I spit out before I could stop myself, leaving the “why” out in the open like a ticking time bomb set up specifically for me.

The answering silence said they were aware of all that. How could they not? Years ago, I’d earned a shitty reputation, and I hadn’t been able to shake it off, no matter what I did. It hadn’t been my fault people only repeated the parts they wanted to hear instead of the entire story.

She’s difficult to work with, Paul had said, for anyone who gave a shit about pairs skating to read.

Maybe things would have been different if I’d explained every single one of my actions every time they happened, but I hadn’t. And I didn’t regret it. I didn’t care what other people thought about me.

At least until it had come back to bite me on the ass.

But it was too late now. All I had left was to own it. And I did.

I had shoved some speed skater dickwad once for grabbing my ass, and I was the bad guy.

I had called one of my rink mate’s mom a whore once after she’d made a comment about my mom having to be great at blow jobs for having a husband twenty years younger than her, but I was the rude asshole.

I was difficult because I gave a shit. But how the hell could I not give one when this sport was what I woke up every morning excited for?

Little things built up, and up, and up until my sarcasm—until everything that came out of my mouth—was taken as a rude comment. My mom had always warned me that some people would always be eager to believe the worst. That was the unfortunate and shit truth.

But I knew who I was and what I did. I couldn’t find it in me to regret it. At least most of the time. Maybe life would have been a lot easier if I’d had my sister’s sweetness or my mom’s personality, but I didn’t and I never would.

You are who you are in life, and you either live that time trying to bend yourself to make other people happy, or… you don’t.

And I sure as hell had better things to do with my time.

I just wanted to make sure, if this was what I thought it was, that I was walking into it with my eyes open. I’d never close my eyes again and expect the best. Especially not when this involved the same person, who after every competition in my singles days, wrote out all the mistakes I’d done in my programs—the pieces I competed with, one short, the other longer and called a free skate—and made sure I knew why the hell I had lost. Like a fucking dick.

“Are you that desperate?” I asked the man directly, meeting those gray-blue eyes, totally on. My words were rude, but I didn’t care. I wanted the truth. “No one else wants to pair up with you now?”

Those glacier-like eyes didn’t look away. That muscular, long body didn’t flinch. He didn’t even make a face like he normally would have pretty much every time I opened my mouth and directed words at him.

In that way that only someone who was so sure of himself, so sure of his talents, of his place in the world, in the fact that he was the one in a position of power, Ivan just met my gaze like he was measuring me too in return. And then the asshole I knew came out.

“You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

This mother—

“Vanya,” Coach Lee damn near shouted, shaking her head like a mom scolding her toddler for just saying what was on his brain. “I’m sorry, Jasmine—”

Under normal circumstances, I would have mouthed I’m gonna kick your fucking ass but managed not to. Just barely. Instead, I stared at that clear face with its perfect bone structure… and imagined myself wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezed the shit out of it. I wouldn’t even be able to tell anyone about the amount of restraint I was showing, because they wouldn’t believe me.

Maybe I was growing up.

Then I stared at him a second longer and thought, I’m going to spit in his mouth the first chance I get, and decided maybe the growing-up thing was a stretch. Luckily, all I decided to say was, “I do know what that’s like, shitface.”

Coach Lee muttered something under her breath that I didn’t hear clearly, but when she didn’t tell me not to talk to Ivan like that, I kept going.

“Actually, Satan”—his nostrils flared, and I didn’t miss that—“all I want is to know if you’re coming to me because no one else wants to deal with you—because that doesn’t make sense, so don’t think I’m stupid and don’t know that—or if there’s some other ulterior motive I’m not getting.” Like him making this the meanest, early April Fool’s joke in history. I might actually finally kill him if it was.

Coach Lee let out another sigh that drew my gaze to her. She was shaking her head and honestly looked like she wanted to pull her hair out, which was an expression I had never ever seen on her face before, and it made me nervous. She was probably realizing the truth: Ivan and I were like oil and water. We didn’t mix. Not unless we didn’t speak to each other, but even then there were dirty looks and middle fingers exchanged. More than a handful of dinners at his parents’ house had gone down that way.

But after a moment that stretched the nauseous feeling in my stomach to almost the breaking point, Coach Lee set her shoulders. Glancing up at the ceiling, she nodded, like it was more for herself than for my benefit, before finally saying, “I’m going to trust that this stays in this room.”

Ivan made a noise that she ignored, but I was too busy taking in the fact that she wasn’t telling me not to call Ivan Satan or shitface to care.

I snapped out of it and focused. “I don’t have anyone else to tell,” I told her, and it was the truth. I was good with secrets. I was really good with secrets.

The other woman dipped her chin and settled her gaze on me before going on. “We—”

The idiot in the seat made another noise before sitting up straight and cutting her off. “There’s no one else.”

I blinked.

He kept going. “This would only be for a year—”

Wait.

A year?

Son of a bitch, I’d known this was too good to be true. I’d known it.

“Mindy is taking… the season off,” the black-haired man explained, his tone tight and a little annoyed as he referred to the same partner he’d had for the last three seasons. “I need a partner for the time being.”

Of course. Of course. I tipped my chin up to look at the ceiling and shook my head, feeling that blunt tip of disappointment jab me right in the gut, reminding me it was always there, just waiting for the perfect moment to say it never went anywhere.

Because it didn’t.

I couldn’t think of the last time I hadn’t felt disappointed in something—mostly myself.

Damn it. I should have known better. Why else would he be coming to me? To be his permanent partner? Of course not.

God, I was so lame. Even if I had just considered the possibility for a second… I was an idiot. I knew better. Good shit like this didn’t happen to me. It never had.

“Jasmine.” Coach Lee’s voice was calm, but I didn’t look over. “This would be a great opportunity for you—”

I should just go. What the hell was the point of me still being here, just eating up time so I got to work later and later? Stupid, stupid, stupid Jasmine.

“—You would gain more experience. You’d be competing with the reigning national and world champion,” she kept going, throwing words out that I was mostly ignoring.

Maybe it was time for me to hang up my skates now. What better sign did I need? God, I was an idiot.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

“Jasmine,” Coach Lee said, almost sweetly, almost, just almost kindly. “You could possibly win a championship or at least a Cup—”

And that had me tipping my chin down to look at her.

She raised an eyebrow, as if she’d known that would get my attention, and for good reason. “You could easily find a partner after that. I could help. Ivan could help.”

I ignored the part about Ivan helping me find a partner, because I highly doubted that shit would ever happen, but—but—what I didn’t ignore was the rest of it.

A championship. Fuck it, a Cup. Any Cup.

I hadn’t actually won one since my junior days before I’d moved into the senior level, which was where I was at now and had been for years.

Then there was the other thing: Coach Lee helping me find a partner.

But mostly: a fucking championship. Or at least the chance of it, the real possibility of it. Hope.

It was like a stranger offering a little kid candy if they got into their car, and I was the dumbass little kid. Except instead of candy, this woman and this ass-face were waving the two things I wanted more than anything right in front of me. It was enough to get me to stop thinking and keep my mouth shut.

“It might seem like a great endeavor, but with a lot of hard work, we think it would work,” the woman went on, her gaze straightforward. “I don’t see how it couldn’t, if I’m going to be totally honest. Ivan hasn’t had a bad year in almost a decade.”

Wait.

Reality set in, and I made myself think of what she was really saying and assuming.

We were supposed to win a championship in less than a year?

Forget the fact that she said Ivan hadn’t had a bad year in forever, where I’d had so many bad years, it was like I sucked it all up for him.

She was saying we were supposed to win a championship in less than a year.

Shit. Most new pairs teams took a season off to learn how one another skated, to work on technical elements—everything from jumps to lifts to throws—until they did them together seamlessly… and even then, things could be rough after twelve months. Pairs skating was about unity, about trust, timing, anticipation, and synchronization. It was about two people almost becoming one, but still somehow maintaining their individuality.

And what they were asking for was something we only had months to do—to perfect—before choreography would have to be learned and then mastered. Months to do what would normally take a year or more.

The damn near impossible. That’s what they wanted.

“You want a championship, don’t you?” came Ivan’s question, like a shank straight into my chest.

I glanced at him sitting there in his slacks and a thick sweater, the hair that was longer at the top and faded at the sides styled perfectly back, the bone structure that was in thanks to generations of selective breeding making him look every bit like the trust fund baby he was, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat that felt like the size of a grapefruit… if it was covered in nails.

Did I want the one thing I’d sacrificed most of my life for?

Did I want the opportunity to keep going? To have a future? To finally make my family proud?

Of course I did. I wanted it so bad that my palms were getting sweaty, and I had to sneak them behind my back so that neither one of them could see me wiping them on my work pants. They didn’t need to know how bad my need was.

But fuck.

One year for the one thing I wanted more than anything. For a championship. For the thing my mom had nearly gone bankrupt for, for the thing my whole family had always dreamed of for me. What I had always expected of myself but had always failed at.

And now, for a year, I could team up with this asshole, someone who could give me the best chance I’d ever had at getting what I had started to believe was lost.

But…

Reality and facts.

It wasn’t for sure we would win. There weren’t any promises that, even if we did win something—anything—I would get a partner of my own. There weren’t any assurances things would work out. I had been lucky in my career that I hadn’t been injured regularly, but it had happened, and sometimes those injuries were season-enders.

Plus, I could only begin to imagine all the work we would have to put in to be ready. Plans that would interfere with other plans I’d made that I couldn’t back out on because I had made promises. And I took my promises seriously.

“We want it to be an easy transition. It’s business. Mindy likes to keep her private life private. Ivan does as well,” she said, like I didn’t know that. Karina didn’t even have a Picturegram account, and her Facebook was under a fake name.

“Our focus would be on the sport,” Coach Lee took her time explaining, watching me carefully as I stood there trying to process everything and mostly failing at it. “With you, Jasmine, it would look good that you’ve been training at the same facility as Ivan for years. You’re a friend of the family as well. You’re a known face in this business, and you’re talented. You have the experience under your belt to compete at this level without having to start from the beginning, which we can’t afford to do with this time limit. We can work with what you bring.” She paused, glanced at Ivan, and threw out one last thing. “The age difference between both of you also helps. I feel very strongly that you would make a good partner for Ivan.”

Ah.

The age difference. My twenty-six to Ivan’s nearly thirty. She had a point I hadn’t thought about. It would look strange if this grown-ass man paired up with a teenager. That would probably actually hurt him more than it helped.

Then there was her comment about them being able to “work” with what I could bring to this partnership, but I’d think about that later. Much later. When I wasn’t standing there, the center of attention, feeling like my world had just been kicked out from under me at the same time as it seemed like I’d been given it back.

It would be a lot of work. There were no promises. I had a life outside of here that I’d slowly built up, even though I hadn’t necessarily wanted to, a life I was still building up and couldn’t just ignore.

These were all facts.

But…

I had to think. Think first, talk later, or something like that, right? I’d already learned the problems that could come with running my mouth before I realized what was coming out of it.

I took a deep breath through my nose and then asked the first thing that came to mind. “Your sponsors would be okay with me?” Because they could try and recruit me all they wanted, but if the sponsors said no, it would be for nothing. It wasn’t like I’d had more than a handful of sponsors on and off my entire career, if I didn’t include all the dresses my sister made me for me, which was all of them. I still got my skates for free, but I knew how it worked for the people who won, the figure skaters the masses adored. It wasn’t like Ivan needed the help financially, but they were still a real and necessary thing.

The sponsors and the ASF, the American Skating Federation, could hate us together, and I wasn’t about to let them build up this opportunity for me and then have them rip it out from under me.

Coach Lee shrugged almost immediately. “It wouldn’t be an issue. People can and have come back from worse, Jasmine.”

Why did that comment make me feel like a drug addict?

She kept going before I could think about her word choice any more. “You can fix an image. That wouldn’t be a problem. With the right decisions, it would work out fine. We would just have to have you… on board for the changes we’d need to make.”

Her last sentence had claws. She was admitting there was something wrong with me, but it wasn’t like I didn’t know that. Still, it was one thing for me to acknowledge I had issues, but it was another thing for her to.

“Changes like what?” I asked, taking my time with my words as I glanced between her and Ivan for hints. Because if they told me I needed a makeover, or that I’d have to start kissing babies… or becoming some fake-ass that made it seem like she was made out of ice and was up for sainthood… it wasn’t going to happen. Ever. I’d tried being an ice princess once when I’d been too young to know any better. Prim, proper, angelic, and sweet. It had lasted about thirty minutes. Now, I was too old to pretend to be this perfect little beauty queen who didn’t cuss and shitted rainbows for breakfast, all for people to like me.

Coach Lee tipped her head to the side. “Nothing serious. We can talk about it later.”

Later? “Let’s talk about it now.” Because I wasn’t going to think about anything before I knew what I was getting myself into.

The other woman scrunched her nose before making a noise. “I don’t know. I would just be throwing things out—”

“Okay.”

Her eyes went to the side for a second before moving back to me. “Okay.” Her shrug almost looked uncomfortable. “Maybe you could smile more.”

I blinked at her and thought I might have heard Ivan snort, but I wasn’t sure.

“You could do photo shoots together, a gala or two. Your social media presence needs work, but being more active, even if it’s posting a picture of your life off the ice every once in a while, would make a big difference.”

She wanted us to do all this when we’d only be paired up for a year? Was she fucking kidding me?

Then it hit me.

An almost sickening feeling made the back of my neck itch when I finally processed her social media request. I’d once had different accounts, but I’d ended up deleting all of them once I’d started losing sleep. I should tell her that, I thought, even as my head told me nothing good would come of posting pictures of myself online.

I should probably also admit to her that I was going to need… extra help. But I couldn’t. Not if it meant I would lose this opportunity, which it might.

This was my chance. More than likely my last one.

I could be safe. Couldn’t I? I could watch what I posted. Be more careful. I could be smart about it if things started happening again. Especially if this opportunity was real and mine.

I could record our sessions so I could practice them more later on by myself. I’d done it before. My mom and siblings would help if I asked. I could be more focused and make Ivan skate everything first once we got to doing choreography. I could figure it out. I could make it work without telling them.

Anything was possible… wasn’t it? I was strong, smart, and wasn’t scared to work.

Just fail.

So, I kept my fucking mouth shut.

“We’re not going to ask you to change anything major, Jasmine. I swear to you right now, that won’t be the case. I just need to know you’re on board for doing whatever is best for the team. This is going to be a lot of work for all of us, but it’s doable.”

I’d do anything for the sake of winning. Even start up another social media account if I had to. I’d lie, cheat, and steal… to a certain extent.

I mean, I wouldn’t beat up a competitor or take steroids or give Ivan a blow job, but everything else I’d probably be game for if this chance was real. From the look on Coach Lee’s face and the almost pained expression on Ivan’s… I was starting to think it was.

Ivan was the most successful and highly decorated pairs skater in the last two decades. I hadn’t even been able to move on to the Major Prix Final the last season I’d competed and nationals had gone terrible. My ex and I had gotten fifth and sixth place in both competitions we’d been in.

This was a better opportunity than any I had ever hoped for after I’d been left partnerless.

“Are you interested?” the other woman asked, her expression and tone cool and even, like this wasn’t in a way exactly what I wanted.

Was I interested? Duh.

It was just everything else I couldn’t ignore.

Every pairs skater in the world knew you had to trust your partner completely. A female pairs skater—especially the female—pretty much put her life in the hands of her partner every single day. I didn’t need to tell Coach Lee or Ivan that. Trust was the foundation for every partnership. Whether it was trust that someone might hate you, but they wanted to win badly enough that they wouldn’t jeopardize the chance, or that straight, pure trust that you gave away to people who earned it and could only hope it didn’t backfire on you.

But I wanted to win. I wanted this. I’d always wanted it. I’d bled for it, cried for it, bruised for it, had broken bones, had concussions, pulled just about every muscle in my body, never made friends, never went to a single school anything, never loved anyone, ignored my family, all for this. For this love that was greater than just about everything and anything I had ever known. For this sport that had given me the confidence to know I could get up after every fall I’d ever take.

A year ago… six months ago… this would have been the answer to every prayer in my life.

I glanced between both of them, torn between getting excited at this chance, even if it was with the reincarnated version of Lucifer—that’s how bad I wanted it, that I was willing not to factor that in. But like my mom said when we were kids and didn’t want to eat whatever she’d made for dinner, beggars can’t be choosers—and still, still I couldn’t help but worry that this was some kind of fucked-up ploy that they were playing. It wouldn’t be unheard of. It really wouldn’t. Some people in this world didn’t care what or who they hurt to get what they wanted.

I couldn’t handle being used. Not again. I wouldn’t say it, but I’d give them everything in me if they gave me this chance. Everything.

But…

I’d made commitments. Compromises and promises I didn’t want to go back on. As much as I wanted to say yes! Yes! Yes! I needed to think about it. Not everything was about me, and it had taken me a long, long time to come to terms with that.

I still was.

“If this is some kind of trick, or if you’re going to try and use me to make a point with another skater you’re interested in”—I wasn’t going to get excited. I didn’t trust these two people to not be playing with me, regardless that they were saying otherwise—“don’t even think about it.” Ivan should already know I’d kill him. Hell, his sister would kill him if he did this to me.

There was a pause in the room, and I didn’t know what it meant. Guilt? Or acknowledgment that it was a shitty thing that I even had to bring it up?

“No,” Coach Lee said after a moment so full, it left the room with this heavy sensation I couldn’t pick apart. “That isn’t it. This isn’t a trick. We want you to do it, Jasmine.”

If my heart gave a little pinch at her saying they wanted me to do something, I wasn’t going to focus on it.

I looked at the man sitting in front of the desk, quiet, so freaking quiet and watchful… and I wondered what had made his other partner decide to take a year off. Maybe she was getting married. Maybe someone was sick. Maybe she couldn’t stand his ass and needed a break. I wished I had her phone number so I could just text her and ask. She had always been nice.

“You can take a picture if you’re going to stare,” Ivan said dryly, leaning back against his chair.

I rolled my eyes and glanced over at Coach Lee to hopefully keep me from saying anything to the shitface before I ruined this opportunity. I could save it up for later.

Luckily, Coach Lee rolled her eyes too, like she wasn’t surprised by his dumbass comment and focused on me, the strain on her face saying she was trying to keep this professional. “You don’t have to give us an answer right now. You can have some time to think about it, but we do need one sooner than later. Time is ticking, and if you’re both going to compete next season, we need every minute we can get to get ready.”

“What’s up your ass?” my brother Jonathan asked, not even five minutes after I’d sat down beside him with a plate of our mom’s chicken parmesan. It was something that a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to eat unless it’d been my once a week cheat meal. Now, almost every day had a cheat meal. All of my pants—and bras and underwear and shirts—showed that reality. My damn boobs had gone up a full cup size, not that that meant much. My mom had cursed all of her girls with mosquito bites for tits; the greatest ass-et—literally—passed down through our genes were our butts. My slightly larger boobs and even bigger ass were one of the only benefits of toning down my training in competitive figure skating. Going from skating six or seven hours a day to two was a giant difference.

And now… well, now I might be getting back to that point.

Maybe.

It had almost been twelve hours since my meeting, and I hadn’t reached a decision.

If, and that was a big if, I said yes to Coach Lee and Ivan’s proposal, I’d be saying goodbye to the bag of M&Ms I’d been eating three times a week. It was a sacrifice I’d willingly make though. If I did it.

But I was getting ahead of myself. Maybe I’d sleep on it like I’d promised Coach Lee and decide I didn’t want to risk everything again for just a possibility. I needed to consider and weigh every option. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Not during work, not afterward during my second workout session, and not during the Pilates class I still took once a week.

I hadn’t been surprised when I’d pulled into the driveway to find a familiar car parked on the street half an hour ago. My family came over whenever they wanted; it wasn’t limited to just weekends or holidays. With two older brothers and two older sisters, someone was always over. My brothers and sisters randomly showed up for dinner, even though they had all moved out years ago, leaving me alone with my roommates… AKA my mom and her husband.

My mom, my brother Jonathan, and his husband, James, were all in the living room when I walked in.

The first thing any of them said to me was, “Go shower!”

I gave my brother the middle finger because he’d been the one to yell about the shower, and kept my words to myself as I jogged up the stairs and headed toward my room. It didn’t take me long to gather clothes, shower, and get dressed—all the while thinking about the conversation I’d had in the office before the most distracted day of work I’d had since I’d found out my last partner had ditched me.

I made it back downstairs to find my family in the kitchen, filling plates with whatever Mom had made for dinner. I gave each of them a kiss on the cheek, and in return got an annoying wet kiss from my brother, a peck from his husband, and a slap on the butt from my mom, before I started scooping food onto a plate.

Trying my best not to constantly think about Satan and his coach, I had loaded my plate up with a portion of noodles and chicken parm before I took a stool around the kitchen island we were all eating at. The only time the dining room was ever used was if it was a holiday. I’d only gotten about three bites in, chewing slowly, when my brother asked the question I should have seen coming. I’d been too quiet, and that didn’t happen often.

Before I could think of what the hell to tell them, my mom made a noise as she made her way around the island, one hand holding a plate, her other hand holding a glass of wine so big, she had to have poured at least half a bottle inside of it.

“Damn, Mom. You should have just brought the bottle over instead of dirtying a glass.” I snickered as she set the glass down more carefully than she’d probably ever set me down as a baby.

She rolled her eyes as she put her plate down beside it. “Mind your own business. I’ve had a long day, and it’s good for the heart.”

I snorted and raised my eyebrows as I finally got a chance to take in her clothes: skinny jeans I’m pretty sure were mine and a bright red blouse I thought I could remember my sister wearing before she’d moved out.

“Anyway, Grumpy. What’s up your butt? Did you get in trouble at the LC?” she asked as she took a seat, oblivious to the looks I was giving her for “borrowing” my clothes.

She had sent me a message halfway through the day asking how the meeting had gone. I hadn’t responded. I hadn’t even given myself a chance to think about whether I wanted to tell them anything about my offer or not. It wasn’t like I lied regularly. I didn’t. But… what if it didn’t work out? What if I got them excited for no reason? I’d let them down enough over the years.

Yeah, that thought was a shard of glass right down the windpipe.

Drawing my gaze away from the woman who got hit on more in a week than I had in my entire life, I focused back down on my plate, twirling the tines of my fork into the noodles with a shrug. “Nothing,” I answered too quickly, immediately aware that I’d screwed up by saying that.

There were three different scoffs around the island. I didn’t need to look up to know they were all sharing a look with each other like they thought I was full of shit—which I was—but it was my brother that finally snorted. “Damn, Jas, you didn’t even try to pull that lie off.”

I made a face at my food before looking at him and bringing the middle finger closest to Jonathan up to my face and pretending to rub at my inner eye with it.

The only member of my family that sort of looked like me with his kind of tan skin, black hair, and dark eyes, stuck his tongue out. Thirty-two years old and he stuck his tongue out at me. What a little bitch.

“We might have believed you if you hadn’t said ‘nothing.’ Now we know you’re lying,” our mom egged him on. “You not telling us when something is bothering you?” She pretty much snorted, her attention down on the chicken she was cutting into pieces. “Ha! Since when have you done that?”

This was what I got for making them my best friends over the years. Other than Karina, who I spoke to less and less over the last few years, and a couple of other people I didn’t mind, my family was it for me. My mom said I had serious trust issues, but honestly, the more people I met, the more I didn’t want to meet more.

“You okay, Jas?” James, my brother’s much better half for the last ten-ish years, give or take, asked, his tone worried.

Moving my fork tines in the noodles some more, I looked over at the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life and nodded my head. With dark hair, the clearest hazel eyes, and his skin color a shade of honey brown that didn’t give anyone a single clue about his heritage, he could have dated anyone. Anyone. Literally. I’d seen straight men check him out countless times. If he had decided to be a model, it would have been over for every other male model in the world. Even my sister, who was all about women 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, had said before she’d marry him if he asked. I would marry him even if he didn’t ask. He was the nicest man, good looking, successful, and down-to-earth. We all loved him.

He loved us back, but not the same way he loved my brother Jojo.

People liked to say love was blind, but there was no way love could be that blind. I’d stopped trying to figure out my brother Jonathan and James’s relationship a long time ago. How he’d ended up with the biggest idiot in the family, I didn’t get. My brother had giant Dumbo ears and a gap between his two front teeth that my mom had claimed was so adorable his whole life, he’d never bothered getting braces. I’d had a little bit of an overbite and ended up with braces for three years.

Not that I was hung up over it or anything.

“I’m good. Don’t listen to them,” I said to James, sounding distracted enough that I knew I was messing up again. So I tried to change the subject and chose the most obvious one: my mom’s husband, who should have been at the table with us… but wasn’t. “Where’s Ben at, Mom?”

“He’s out with his friends,” the redheaded woman who had given birth to me, explained quickly before raising her gaze and aiming her fork in my direction. “Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong with you?”

Of course that didn’t work.

I just barely held back a groan as I shoveled a piece of chicken into my mouth and chewed slowly before answering, “I’m fine. I’m just… thinking about stuff, and it’s putting me in a bad mood.”

My brother snickered beside me. “You? In a bad mood? No.”

I reached over before he knew what was happening and pinched him on the puny thing he called a biceps.

“Oww,” he cried, yanking his arm away and cradling it.

I tried to do it again, but he flailed his elbow to keep me from being able to.

“Mom! Look at her!” my brother whined, gesturing toward me like there was someone else attacking him. “James, help me!”

“Snitch,” I whispered, still trying to pinch him. “Bitch.”

His husband laughed but didn’t choose sides. No wonder I liked him so much.

“Quit hurting your brother,” Mom said for probably the thousandth time in my entire life.

When he moved his hands to block me around the area of his waist, I reached up, quick, quick, quick and flicked him on the neck before he turned his mouth to try and bite me. “Momma’s boy,” I whispered, snatching my hand back.

He tipped his head from side to side with a smirk, mocking me like he always had when Mom took his side. She always did. The suck-up was her favorite, even though she’d never admit it, but the rest of us knew the truth. I loved both my brothers, but I got why my mom loved him the most. If you ignored the similarities between him and Pluto, he always put a smile on someone’s face. Those giant ears had that effect on people.

“Baby girl, even I know something’s up with you just from the way you’re talking. What’s wrong?” my brother’s husband asked, leaning forward over the table with an expression so full of concern, it made me feel guiltier than anything my mom or Jojo could have said.

I wanted to tell them.

But…

I could, and probably always would, clearly remember how my brother had cried angry tears when we first found out I’d been left without a partner. My mom would never admit she’d been devastated, but I knew her too well to not see the signs. I’d seen the same signs after every marriage before her current one had failed, when she knew her life was changed forever and there was no going back to the way things were before.

Right after I’d quit training to compete—because you couldn’t exactly practice a lot of elements in pairs skating by yourself, and I’d been totally aware of how slim my hopes were in women’s singles—I had emotionally turned into myself majorly. The right term might have been depression, but I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened; I was a sore loser.

It hadn’t been a secret how heartsick seeing my dream slipping away had made me… how angry and hurt and upset I’d been. How angry and hurt and upset I still was. Honestly, part of me worried I would never get over it. I held grudges like a motherfucker. But my family had all ridden this ride with me, year after year, one up and five downs, over and over again.

Most importantly, they had all been there for me in the aftermath of me slowly trying to build up this new life I had outside of the rink, from forcing me to do little things like eating dinner with my family while all I wanted was to hole up in my room alone, to threatening me into going out with them, and guilt-tripping me into doing things I hadn’t made time for before. They had done that over and over again until it had begun to feel like second nature. All those things I hadn’t done enough of in the past, but could once I told my mom she wasn’t going to have to keep paying the astronomical fees that came with coaching because I didn’t have one anymore. He had ditched me too.

It was one thing for me to be sad and heartbroken, but I didn’t want them to feel that way too. Never again. Not if I could prevent it.

And I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

The selfish part of me wanted to do it. Duh.

But the other part of me, that tiny part that didn’t want to be a selfish shit, didn’t want to let these people down by turning into the person I’d been before. The one who was never around. The one who everyone thought didn’t care… probably because I hadn’t cared enough to.

Then there was the whole part of me not being sure I could handle things not working out… as much as that made me a pussy.

And the whole it-being-Ivan this deal was with.

Ivan. Ugh. I wanted it that bad that I wasn’t immediately saying no to the possibility of spending most of my days with him of all people. This was what my life had come to. Possibly spending time with that arrogant dipshit.

I really had no idea what to do, damn it.

So, for that moment… I lied. “I think it’s just my period on the way.”

“Ahh,” was Jonathan’s response, because girls being on their periods was old news after sharing a bathroom with three sisters for the first eighteen years of his life.

My mom, on the other hand, squinted a little, watching me for two moments too long. So long that I thought she was going to call me out on my shit, but right as I assumed that, she shrugged and then dropped another bomb. “So, is it true Lukov and his partner split up?”

I blinked, not sure why I was surprised.

She always knew everyone’s business. Someway, somehow.

It was James, my brother’s husband, who sucked in a loud breath first. That’s how long he’d been with Jonathan, that the name meant something. I could remember a time, many, many years ago when James hadn’t known a single thing about figure skating. But now he’d been a member of the family long enough that he knew more about the sport than I’d bet he’d ever imagined he would.

“He got rid of his partner?” Jonathan perked up, shoving his glasses up his nose, like this was the best gossip he’d heard in a while.

Mom raised her eyebrows and nodded. “From what I heard, it happened a few days ago.”

I made sure to shove a big piece of chicken into my mouth so that I wouldn’t make a face that said that’s not what happened.

Luckily, my nosey-ass brother gasped. “Hadn’t they just paired up a few years ago?” Jojo asked, aiming the question at our mom because he knew she had all the gossip.

“Uh-huh. The partner before her fell twice at the Major Prix final. They won a bronze, but with this girl he won a national title and worlds with.”

The Major Prix. Worlds. Nationals. They were three of the most prestigious competitions in the figure skating world, and only he could screw up that much in a competition and still win something. That should have reassured me that I’d be making a good choice if I accepted his offer, but all it did was make me resentful toward myself for fucking up so much that I had nothing.

“Karina didn’t tell you anything about it?” My mom turned her attention to me.

I made sure I still had chicken in my mouth while I shook my head and said with a mouthful, “She’s still in Mexico.” They knew she was in school.

“E-mail her and find out,” she urged.

I frowned. “You e-mail her and ask.”

Mom snorted like bring it on. “I will.”

“I always forget Karina is his sister,” James noted, leaning across the table. “Is he just as good looking up close, in person?”

I snickered. “No.”

Jojo snorted out, “Uh-huh,” but the tone put me on edge and had me glancing in his direction to find him leaning into James’s shoulder. He pretended like he was trying to whisper, but the idiot looked right at me as he added, “Jasmine used to always flirt with him. You should have seen it.”

I gagged on the chicken I hadn’t swallowed yet before coughing out, “The hell did you just say?”

His “ha!” made me get my middle finger ready. “Don’t even pretend. You used to always come home talking about him,” the five-foot-seven-inch man who had always been a perfect balance between a supportive older brother and an annoying pain in the ass with boundary issues claimed. “You had a thing for him. We all knew.” He looked at James and raised his eyebrows. “We knew.”

Was he fucking with me? He was fucking with me, wasn’t he? Me flirting with Ivan? Ivan?

“No,” I told him calmly, only because if I said it too aggressively they would cry bullshit. I knew how they worked. “I did not flirt with him.” And just so James knew, I emphasized it. “Ever.”

Mom made a noise that basically said, “Well.”

I swung my gaze toward her and shook my head. “No. No, I didn’t. He’s all right looking”—I only said that because, if I said he wasn’t my type, they would assume I was trying to hide something, and I wasn’t. “—but it was never like that. Not even a little bit. He’s kind of a jerk. His sister and I are friends. That’s it.”

“He wasn’t a jerk,” my mom interjected. “He’s always very polite. He’s very good with his fans. He seems like a very nice boy.” She slid me a look. “And you did like him.”

A nice boy? What the hell were they on?

Yeah, everyone did love him, and they all thought the world of him. Handsome, talented Ivan Lukov, who had won the world over as a cute, winking, cocky teenager. He knew how to play the game. I would give him that. But I had never liked him. Not ever. “Nope, no I didn’t,” I argued, shaking my head in disbelief they would be trying to claim that kind of crap. Were they for real? “You’re imagining shit. We say a sentence to each other once a month, and it’s always sarcastic and a little mean.”

“Some people might consider that foreplay—” my brother started to say before I cut him off.

I made a horrible noise again, still shaking my head. “Hell no—”

Jonathan burst out laughing. “Why’s your face turning red then, Jas?” he asked, slapping his palm over the top of my head and giving it a shake before I could jerk it out of the way.

“Shut your mouth,” I said to Jojo, thinking of a dozen different comebacks and knowing I couldn’t use any of them because they would all come out way too defensive and make me look guilty. Or, worse, I’d tell them about the offer I’d been given that morning. “I didn’t like him though. I don’t know why you two would ever even think that.”

Mom snickered. “It’s okay to admit you used to have a crush on him. There are plenty of girls around the world who have. I might have even had a little crush on him back in the day—”

Forgetting we were on opposite teams, Jojo and I both gagged.

Mom groaned. “Oh, stop. I didn’t even mean it like that!”

Of course the woman who was married to a man not even ten years older than me would have to clarify that comment. Mom wasn’t just a cougar, she was The Cougar. All other cougars hailed to her.

“I’m going to pretend you just didn’t say that so I can sleep tonight, Ma,” Jojo muttered with a borderline sick look on his face before he physically shook it off. Then he elbowed me. “You did used to talk about him a lot, Jas.”

I blinked. “I was like seventeen, and it was only because he’d been an asshole.“

Mom opened her mouth, but I kept going.

“No, no. He was. I swear he was. Y’all never heard him, but it happened, he just made sure not to ever get caught. Karina knows.”

“What did he do to you?” James asked, the only one who seemed to still be on my side. At least because he wasn’t denying my claim and sounded interested to actually hear the facts.

I was going to give them too, because the last thing I wanted was for Mom and Jonathan to keep assuming that crazy shit. Especially with what might happen. Maybe. Possibly.

So, I told them.

Shit hit the fan the day Ivan Lukov wore the ugliest costume I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.

I had been sixteen back then, and Ivan had just turned twenty. I remembered that because it had always amazed me that he wasn’t even four years older than me but already so much further ahead in his career. He had already won multiple championships as a junior with his longtime partner before going into the senior level at seventeen. At twenty, people had already been shitting themselves all over him for years. Little did I know, nothing would change over the next decade.

By that point, his sister and I had already been friends for a few years. I’d already spent the night at her house more than a handful of times. She had already spent the night at my house more than a handful of times. Ivan had just been that family member I saw on her birthdays and randomly at her house when he’d drop by to visit. He’d never really said anything to me directly up until then, apart from shooting me reluctant expressions that existed because his parents expected him to have good manners.

So, on that day years ago, when he’d skated out on the ice as I was stretching on the floor, I hadn’t been able to hide my horror, and I didn’t even bother trying. What he had been wearing resembled something the Chiquita Banana lady would have worn. Frills, yellow, red, green… there’d even been a flower somewhere in there, and these awful yellow pants that made his legs look like genuine bananas in his boy-man body back then.

That costume was the worst. The absolute worst. I’d worn some leotards my sister had made me that had been… experimental, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings so I’d put them on anyway.

But what I wore had nothing on what the hell he’d been wearing that day.

Ivan had then started skating with his partner, some girl that he’d skated with for years before then but hadn’t lasted much longer after that. Bethany something. Whatever she had been wearing hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as his costume though. I’d seen their program in bits and pieces when I wasn’t busy; I’d heard the music that would go along with it too, obviously. But I hadn’t seen the costumes until then. It was like watching someone break dance to Mozart. It didn’t make sense. And in my mind, the train wreck he’d been wearing had taken away from the piece he and his partner were performing, which wasn’t exactly a mambo.

I’d blame that for being the reason I opened my big mouth that day. I thought he’d be doing a disservice to his routine. So, I thought I was doing him a solid by saying something.

I know for sure I hadn’t thought about what I was doing before I went up to him as he’d been getting off the ice following the end of his practice, clipping his skate guards on to the blade below his black boots. And in that moment, I told the boy-man who had said zero to me before that, “You should really change your costume.”

He hadn’t even blinked as he’d turned his head to look at me and asked, in the one and only polite sentence that he had ever and would ever direct at me, “Excuse me?”

Maybe I could blame my mom or even my siblings for not stressing enough that I needed to shut up and keep my opinions to myself. Because of all the things I could have said to soften my words, I didn’t pick any of them. “It’s ugly,” was exactly what had come out of my mouth.

Not “It takes away from your lines and the height in your jumps.” Not “It’s a little too bright.”

I didn’t say any of those things to make my comment less asshole-ish.

Then to let him know that it wasn’t just horrific, I’d added, “It’s butt ugly.”

And everything changed after that.

The twenty-year-old had blinked at me like it was his first time seeing me, which it wasn’t, and then reared back. He spit out in a low, low voice from that boy-man body, “It’s not my costume you should be worried about.”

I remember my first thought: bitch.

But before I could say a word, those black eyebrows, which were a complete opposite of his sister’s light brown ones, had inched their way up his smooth forehead in this way that reminded me of the way that other girls looked at me sometimes… like I was less than them because I didn’t wear the same fancy clothes and brand-new skates they did. My mom couldn’t afford that stuff, and she had always avoided asking my dad for money if it was possible… but I’d always thought it had been more about her being worried he wouldn’t give her the money because it was for figure skating and not just because he was being cheap. I would have skated in my underwear back then as long as I had ice time. Not having fancy clothes hadn’t been an issue once she had explained to me that it was all she could afford.

But the thing was, no one had ever made me feel bad about not wearing designer dresses and costumes. At least to my face. Behind my back was a different story. You couldn’t hide a person’s expressions or eye movement. You couldn’t shut off your ears from hearing what people thought they were whispering, but really weren’t. Back then, other girls hadn’t liked me because I was competitive and sometimes had a bad attitude when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to.

I’d reared back just like he had, thinking about my sister who had made me my costume—this plain but pretty light blue leotard with rhinestones along the neckline and sleeves—and got pissed. And I’d said the only thing that came to mind, “I’m just telling you the truth. It looks dumb.”

His cheeks had turned a shade darker than the normal near-peach they were. It wasn’t a blush or anything close to it, but for him, I think now it was basically the same thing. Ivan Lukov had leaned toward me and hissed a warning that would follow me for the next couple years, “Watch yourself, runt,” before he’d gone off toward the changing rooms or wherever the hell he went.

Two weeks later, in his mambo outfit, he’d won his first US National Championship in pairs. People had talked a lot of shit about his costume, but even as gaudy as it was, it hadn’t been enough to shadow his talent. He’d deserved to win. Even if he’d hurt the eyes of the people who’d watched.

One week after that, on his first day back at the LC, while I’d been feeling pretty bad about what I’d said and Karina had been no help in telling me what I could do to fix it because she had thought what I’d done was hilarious, Ivan went out of his way to talk to me. And by talk, I really meant mutter in passing, “You might as well quit now. You’re too old to get anywhere.”

Me with the big mouth had been too shocked by what he’d said to have time to form a comeback before he’d skated away.

I’d thought about his words all that day because the honesty in them had hurt my feelings and made me angry at the same time. It had been hard back then to not compare myself to the girls who had been skating since they were three and were more advanced than I was, even if Galina had told me I was naturally gifted and that if I worked hard enough I could be better than them one day soon.

But I didn’t tell anyone what he’d said. No one else needed that idea in their heads.

I didn’t say anything until a month later, when this asshole had gone out of his way to ask me to my face after practice, “Is that leotard supposed to be a size too small or…?” For no damn reason.

That time, I did get out, “You bitch,” before he’d disappeared.

And the rest… was history.

By the time I finished telling the only parts of the story they needed to hear, my brother had his head tossed back and snorted. “You’re such a drama queen.”

If I’d had anything other than noodles left on my plate, I would have flicked them at him. “What?”

“You’re a drama queen,” the third biggest drama queen in the family after our mom and oldest sister, claimed. “You said he gave you hell, but none of that sounded like hell. He was messing with you,” he explained, shaking his head. “We give you more shit than that in an hour.”

I blinked because he had a point. But it was different because we were family. Giving each other shit was pretty much mandatory.

My friend’s brother, my rink mate, giving me hell… was not.

“Yeah, Grumpy. That doesn’t sound so bad,” my mom piped in.

Fucking traitors. “He told me once I needed to lose weight before my blades gave out on me!”

What did all three people sitting around the kitchen island do? They laughed. They laughed their asses off.

“You were chunky back then,” my fucking brother cackled, his face turning red.

I reached toward him again to try and pinch him, but he lunged away, practically falling into James’s lap.

“Why didn’t I ever think of telling you that?” Jonathan kept going, almost on the verge of crying-laughing from his body language as he draped himself over his husband, even further away from me. I’d seen him do it enough to recognize the signs.

“I can’t believe y’all,” I said, not sure why the hell they still managed to surprise me. “He told me once before a competition, ‘Break a leg. Literally.’”

Repeating another rude thing he’d said to me did nothing to convince my family Ivan had been a jerk; all it did was make them laugh harder. Even James, who was the nicest, lost the battle. I couldn’t believe it… but I probably should.

“He’s been calling me Meatball for years,” I said, almost feeling my eyelid start to twitch at that fucking nickname that drove me insane no matter how much I told myself to get over it. Sticks and stones could break your bones, but I didn’t let people’s words hurt me.

Usually.

They were all choking though. All three of them.

“Jasmine, honey,” James croaked out, his palm covering his eyes as he had his meltdown. “What I want to know is—what did you say back to him?”

I thought about slamming my mouth closed and not saying anything, but if anyone in the world knew me, it was these people—and my other brother and sisters. God, how the hell could I work with Ivan after ten years of this history we had? His own coach made him keep his mouth closed so that he wouldn’t be tempted to say something that might get me to deny their offer.

We’d probably throw down into a fistfight after a week. If we even made it that long. It was honestly only a matter of time. We’d been building up to it over the years.

I had a lot to think about.

“Stuff,” was all I went with, purposely not thinking about all the shit I’d said back to him.

“What kind of stuff?” James asked, his tan face turning red as he pinched the tip of his nose.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and gave him a little smile he didn’t see as I repeated myself. “Stuff.”

James laughed and barely managed to get out, “All right. I’ll let it go for now. You two don’t talk shit to each other anymore though?”

I blinked. “We still do. I called him Satan today.”

“Jasmine!” my mom hissed before she fell over onto the empty stool beside her, laughing.

I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt… at least until I remembered what I was keeping from them.

Was I willing to wake up before the sun was out to train for six or seven hours a day with the same man who had asked me if I’d been cast as Ugly Betty? With the intention to win a championship?

I wasn’t sure.