From Lukov with Love

I WASN’T that surprised that I slept like total shit that night.

I could have blamed the coffee I’d had after dinner—I didn’t usually drink caffeine in the afternoon or later because it made me crash, and I needed all the energy I had to get through the rest of my day—but it hadn’t been the coffee’s fault.

It had been my mom’s. And Coach Lee’s. But mostly my mom’s.

But that’s what would happen when she dropped a bomb on me I should have seen coming, but hadn’t. Since when the hell had I ever been able to pull something over on her, and why had I expected I was going to be able to do it now?

It was when she came to sit beside me on the couch after my brother and his husband had left, with her slinging her arm over my shoulder, that I knew without a doubt, I hadn’t hidden shit from her. We were pretty affectionate in my family… if you could call giving each other bruises, wedgies, and playing pranks affection… but we weren’t the type to constantly hug and kiss, unless someone needed it. The last time I’d randomly hugged my oldest brother, he’d asked if I was going to jail or dying.

So that night, when Mom hugged me to her side on the couch and squeezed my knee, I accepted that I made the same mistake most people made with her: I’d underestimated her. My brothers and sisters knew me really well, their significant others did too—I wasn’t that complicated—but no one knew me the way Mom did. My sister Ruby was close, but still not on her level. I doubted anyone would ever be.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Grumpy,” she said, calling me by the nickname she’d given me when I was four. “You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

“Mom, I talked half of dinner,” I said, eyes trained on the Unsolved Mysteries rerun on the television, and shook my head, not trusting myself to look her in the face and keep my dilemma to myself.

She rested her head against mine after setting down a normal-sized glass of red wine on the coffee table, pretty much falling on top of me, like she was expecting me to hold her up. “Yeah, to your brother and James. You barely said three words to me; you didn’t even tell me what happened at your meeting. You think I don’t know when something is off with you?” she accused, sounding insulted.

She had me there.

Mom squeezed my shoulder again. “Just because I didn’t say anything in front of Jojo and James doesn’t mean I didn’t notice.” She gave me one more squeeze before whispering like a total creep, “I know everything.”

That finally made me snort and glance at her out of the corner of my eye. I’d swear, she hadn’t aged a day in the last fifteen years. It was like time slowed for her. Preserving her. That, or she’d scored herself a wish with a genie a long time ago and was going to be immortal, or something pretty fucking close to it.

I stretched my legs out to rest my heels on the coffee table and wrinkled my nose, still looking away from her as I muttered, “Okay, 1-800-PSYCHIC.”

She snuggled herself closer into my side the same way she always did when she was being a pain, and I leaned away just a little to mess with her. “Tell me what’s wrong with you,” she insisted directly into my ear, her voice deceptively soft—and fake as fuck. Her breath, which smelled liked straight-up wine, wafted into my nostrils. “I’ll give you a milk chocolate covered cherry from my Valentine’s Day stash….”

Not even a chocolate covered cherry would get me to open my mouth. I leaned away from her even further, but she just followed me, hitting clinger level 100 as she threw a thigh over mine. “Good lord, lady, do you want me to just hook up a wine IV to your arm from now on? One of those wine connoisseurs could probably guess the years the wine was bottled from how strong your breath is.”

She ignored me and hugged me even closer. “The sooner you talk to me, the sooner I’ll leave you alone,” my mom tried to bribe me.

I couldn’t help but snort. Like anything was ever that easy with her. “You don’t even believe yourself when you say that, you know?”

That had her huffing and retreating all of an inch. “Give me a break and spill the beans. You’re going to tell me at some point anyway,” she let me know, which was the truth.

But…

There were only so many failures I could carry on my shoulders… and most days it felt like I’d hit my max a year ago.

My mom was the one I wanted to protect the most, because she’d been the one to singlehandedly pay for everything while I’d grown up because my dad had thought it was a waste of money, and “isn’t there something else Jasmine can do?” he’d always ask, not knowing she usually had him on speakerphone and my nosey ass was always listening. By the time he’d come around, my mom had told him we didn’t need or want his support… even if it meant there were years where she was constantly behind on bills. Years where looking back on it, I wasn’t sure how the hell she managed to make everything work; how she’d been able to keep a roof over our heads, pay the bills, and keep us fed.

I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do the same. But she’d done it for me. And the only way I’d ever been able to pay her back was by “winning” a couple of second place spots.

I’d never been able to win after I’d moved into the senior level and no one really knew why except for me.

She deserved better, and I wished I could have given her that.

“Jasmineeeee,” Mom playfully whined beside my ear as she snuggled closer to me, ignoring my squawk as she did it. “Just tell me. I know you want to. I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

“No,” I scoffed, obviously full of shit and knowing she was aware of it. “And you’re a liar.”

“I’m a liar?” she had the balls to ask like she honestly believed her own bullshit about keeping something to herself. I had a big mouth, but I had gotten it from somewhere: her.

“I’m not the one promising to keep a secret,” I insisted with a side glance, trying to give myself some more time to think about what I could say before digging myself into a deeper hole.

Should I tell her? She already knew I was hiding something.

I knew I had her when she made a noise, knowing she was what she was: a big, fat liar. “Fine, but I’ll only tell… one person. Deal?”

“Who?”

She paused. That’s how many people she usually blabbed to. She had to choose. God. “Ben.”

Her husband, Number Four. I could only see her red hair out of the corner of my eye, but I knew that was as good as I was going to get. She wasn’t about to let this go. Especially not now that I made it known that I knew she was full of crap.

I sighed. Now or never, right? “I don’t want you to get excited—”

“Oh my God,” she practically exhaled, telling me it was too late.

I rolled my eyes and turned my entire body to the side so I could give her a look. “No, Mom. No. Don’t get excited. I wasn’t even going to say anything—”

“Tell me,” she whispered in a throaty voice that almost made her sound like a possessed kid in a scary movie.

I blinked. “If you promise you’ll never make that voice again.”

My mom groaned and went back to doing her best spider monkey impersonation by smothering me with her arms. “Fine. I promise. Tell me.”

“I….” I paused and slid her a look, trying to pick my words so I could explain what was happening in the most calm, possible way. “Okay. But don’t get excited.”

“I already said I wouldn’t,” she said, but she didn’t even believe it herself.

“I had a meeting—”

“I know. You told me. For what?”

I sighed, shooting her a look she couldn’t see, which I was grateful for because she might smack me if she had. I wasn’t even sure why I’d thought I could keep it to myself. There were only about a handful of things I had ever not told her about and managed to still keep to myself. “Remember Coach Lee?”

Her body stilled. “Yes.”

“Coach Lee asked if I wanted to partner up with Ivan for next season.”

Silence.

She said nothing. Not one single thing. It might have been the first time she’d ever not said something.

I wiggled the shoulder she had her head on, taking in the fact that she still wasn’t moving around or saying anything. “I thought I still had a few years left until you got to that age where you start randomly falling asleep.”

“I should have left you at the fire station,” she threw back without missing a beat, her head not moving from its spot on my shoulder.

Then, she didn’t say anything else.

What the hell was up with that?

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I tipped my head just enough to the side so I could see the top of her head. I wasn’t tall, only five foot three, but my mom was even shorter at an even five feet tall that I was pretty sure she was exaggerating.

“I’m thinking,” she answered, honestly sounding distracted.

God help me. “What are you thinking?”

She still didn’t move. “About what you just said, Grumpy. You dropped that on me like I was ready for it, and I wasn’t. I thought you were finally going to tell me they offered you a coaching position at the LC.”

I made a face even though she couldn’t see me. How did she know about the coaching position? And why hadn’t she said something before?

As if sensing my confusion, she pulled herself upright and angled her body so she could face me. We were pretty much polar opposites of each other, except that our faces were shaped the same, we weren’t tall, and we both had freckles. She had long red hair that had just enough orange in it to look natural, her skin was basically pale, she was slim, beautiful, bossy but likable, smart, lovable… and I was none of those things. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t my mom and sisters. And the rest… well, I wasn’t any of those things either, except bossy sometimes.

The point was: she wasn’t excited or overjoyed at this opportunity. Half an hour ago, I would have bet my life she’d be all over it.

But she wasn’t. And I didn’t get why.

“Well?” I drew the word out.

Those dark blue eyes that reminded me of the sapphire in Titanic narrowed, and my mom’s mouth screwed to the side.

I narrowed my eyes at her, screwing my mouth to the side too. “What? Say something.”

She squinted one eye at me.

“I thought you would’ve been excited. What is it?” I asked before a thought barged into my head so unexpectedly it almost stole my breath away. Did she—

I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t think it. I didn’t want to.

But I had to.

Ignoring that awful, uneasy feeling in my belly, I blinked one more time, steeling myself for her response—I could handle it, I would handle it—as I asked in a steady voice I could be proud of even while my hands got clammy, “You don’t think I can do it anymore?”

Sometimes I regretted how brutally honest my mom and I were with each other. She might mince her words for my older sister, Squirt, and every once in a while she might try and word things more pleasantly for the rest of my siblings, but with me, she never had. At least not as far as I could remember.

If she said yes—

Her head snapped up so sharply, it eased the ache that had instantly built in my chest at the idea that she didn’t think I could do it anymore. “Don’t fish for compliments. You’re better than that.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course you can do it. Nobody’s better than you, don’t act like you don’t know that. Sheesh.”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath.

“What I’m thinking,” she emphasized, still squinting that one and only eye, “is that I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.”

Umm….

It was my turn to squint at her. “Why?”

She eyed me back. “You said they asked you to be his partner for next season… what does that mean?”

“It means, just for a season.”

That timeless face scrunched up in confusion. “Why only a season?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. All they told me was that Mindy was going to take the season off.” She had always been pretty decent to me. I hoped she was okay.

My mom’s facial expression didn’t change. “So, what happens after that?”

Of course she’d ask. I just barely held in a sigh and picked the most promising part of what I would get from a partnership with Ivan. “They said they’d help me find another partner.”

Her silence was so stiff and fucking weird I couldn’t help but stare at my mom, trying to figure out what she was thinking.

Luckily, she didn’t make me wait long. “Have you talked to Karina about it?”

“No. I haven’t talked to her in a month.” And it wasn’t like I was going to call her to ask her about her brother. What kind of shit would that be? We never talked about Ivan. Plus, we didn’t talk as much as we used to before she’d started college and got busy with school. We still liked each other and cared about each other, but… sometimes life split people up. It had nothing to do with caring about someone less. It just happened. And it wasn’t her fault I hadn’t been as busy as I was used to. Before that, I hadn’t really noticed much how we’d grown apart.

My mom hummed, and her mouth twisted to the opposite side like she was still in deep thought.

I watched her carefully, ignoring the weird feeling in my belly. “You don’t think I should do it?”

She glanced at me and tipped her head to the side, hesitating for a moment. “It’s not that I don’t think you should do it, but I want to make sure they’re not taking advantage of you.”

What?

“I barely made it last year without getting arrested, Grumpy. I don’t think I can handle keeping my hands to myself if somebody else screws around on you,” she explained, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I blinked. “You were just defending him two hours ago.”

She rolled her eyes. “That was before I heard he might be your partner.”

How did that make any sense?

Then it was her turn to blink. “What I want to know is why you didn’t automatically agree to it.”

All I could do was answer with one word. “Because.”

“Because what?”

I shrugged the shoulder closest to her. I didn’t want to tell her my worry about not winning and everything that would come from it, so I kept that part to myself. “I’m working more hours for Matty now, Mom. I’ve made plans with Jojo to go to the gym twice a week even though he half-asses every workout. I’ve made plans with Sebastian. I’m going out rock climbing with Tali once every other week. I don’t want to just back out on them. I don’t want them to think they don’t mean enough to me.” Especially not when they already assumed I was a flake who didn’t care about them, when it was the total opposite.

Mom’s forehead scrunched up, and her face was a little too watchful. “Is that it?”

I lifted my shoulder again, the lies and the truths clotting up my throat, trying to pour out of my mouth.

She didn’t look like she totally believed me, but she didn’t make another comment, when she normally would have. “So, you’re worried about the time aspect of it?”

I swallowed. “I don’t want to go back on my word. I’ve done it enough.” I hadn’t realized how much I missed them—my siblings, her—but I did. I had. It was just easy not to think about what you didn’t have when you had your mind on other things.

A small, sad smile crossed her mouth, but she knew better than to try and baby or coo at me. But the words that came out of her mouth next went totally against the expression on her face. “That sounds like a bunch of BS to me, Grumps, but okay. We can focus on one thing at a time for now.”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Talk to Matty about your hours. You weren’t working that many before and he was surviving. Talk to your brothers and your sister. If you start training again, you can still spend time with them, Jasmine. All they want is to be with you, it doesn’t matter what you do together.”

My stomach clenched in frustration, but probably mostly guilt at her words.

“They don’t each need six hours a week from you. They don’t even need three. Just some. Not even every week either, I bet.”

I grit my teeth to keep from wincing, but I wasn’t sure it worked.

She knew what I was thinking and feeling but didn’t give a shit because she kept going. “You can have a life outside of figure skating. You can do anything you want, you know that. You just have to make it work.”

How many times had she said those exact same words to me in the past? A hundred? Thousand?

I swallowed but didn’t shift my gaze. “What are you trying to say?”

She slid me another look. “You know what I’m trying to say. You can do whatever you want in this life, Jasmine. But I want you to be happy. I want you to be appreciated.”

My nose started to sting, but I couldn’t help but hang on to the caution in her voice. “So you don’t think I should do it?”

The woman who had gone to every single competition she’d ever been able to afford, who had always made sure I had a ride to every lesson I’d ever needed to take, who had cheered me on even when I sucked, cocked her head to the side and raised up a shoulder. “I think you should do it, but I don’t think you should sell yourself short. There’s no one else he could ask that’s better than you. Even if it’s only for a year. He’s not doing you a favor by asking. You’re doing him the favor. And if he’s dumb enough to screw this up somehow—” She smiled. “—I’ll be your alibi if something happens to that fancy car of his. I know what it looks like.”

I didn’t want to smile at her offer, but I couldn’t help it.

My mom’s face softened, and she touched my cheek with her fingertips. “I know you miss it.“

Miss it? This swell of emotion, or some shit awfully close to it, made my throat close up, and just like that, I wanted to cry. Me. Wanting to cry. It had been a long time since I’d thought about doing that.

I more than missed it—competing. Figure skating in general, for a purpose. For the last year, I’d felt like a part of me had been ripped away without my consent one night while I hadn’t been expecting it. And since then, every night, it was like I waited for it to be returned to me. But it hadn’t been.

And my eyes must have agreed with how much I missed it because they started to burn as I sat there. And if my voice cracked, neither one of us paid attention to it, and I told her the truth that she didn’t need to hear, “I’ve missed it so much.”

That beautiful face fell, and her fingertips turned into her palms as she cupped my cheek. “I want my normal, happy grumpy old woman back,” she said carefully. “So if he tries to do something like that son of a whore….” Mom hooked a thumb out and brought it up to her neck, dragging an imaginary line across it, her smile as weak as the coffee Ben made.

I smiled at her as one tiny tear welled up in my right eye, but fortunately the bastard didn’t jump out and shame me. My voice did sound watery though as I practically croaked, “Have you been watching The Godfather again?”

She raised her red-blonde eyebrows and smiled her creepy, crazy woman smile she usually only brought out around her exes. “What do I always tell you?”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Besides that. We always do what we gotta do in this family. You’ve always tried harder at everything than any of the rest of your brothers and sisters combined, and I never wanted that for you, but it’s never stopped you from anything. I’d tell you, ‘no, don’t jump on the bed,’ and you’d wrap a sheet around your neck to jump off the roof instead. Maybe you make terrible decisions sometimes—”

I sniffed. “Rude.”

She kept on going, reaching out to take my hand. “But you’ve always jumped right back up after a fall. You don’t know anything else. Things don’t always work out the way we want them to, but no girl of mine, especially not you, is a quitter,” she said to me. “And whatever else happens, you’re more than this sport. Understand me?”

And what was there for me to say after that? Nothing. We’d sat there for another half hour before she begged off, claiming she needed her beauty sleep, leaving me to dwell on everything we had talked about and everything we hadn’t.

But one thing was for certain: my mom hadn’t raised me to be a quitter.

I had a serious fucking decision to make.

So instead of sleeping, I tried to think through all the pros and cons of Coach Lee and Ivan’s proposal while I lay in bed that night.

What I came up with as pros were: I’d get to compete again. Obviously. My partner would be someone who didn’t just have a real chance of winning, but someone who probably wanted it just as much as I did. Even if I didn’t get another chance to continue after our year was up, it would be the best fighting chance I’d ever have. But if I did manage to snag a partner after this was over….

A shiver had run down my spine at the possibility.

When I tried to think of cons, I couldn’t come up with a single one besides my pride getting injured if we didn’t win. That I might not get a partner at the end. That I would be left with nothing.

But what the hell did I have now anyway?

What did I have to be proud of? Failing? Getting second place? Getting remembered for being dumped?

Nothing else about the situation worried me. Not all the work I’d have to put in to learn the way Ivan moved and the way he held, and the speed and length of each glide of his blades on the ice. I wasn’t worried about all the falls I’d probably take until we figured out how to work with each other doing lifts and throws—which were exactly what they sounded like, when a male partner threw his partner across the ice with the expectation she’d do some rotations and land on her own. I was also okay with having to watch my diet again. Sure, I loved the hell out of cheese and chocolate and not having bruises and being sore daily, but there was something I loved more. Much more.

Plus, maybe this time, maybe, if I was really good, I could figure out how to balance having a tiny personal life with the huge job I’d have ahead of me. Everything in life required a sacrifice. Being able to see my niece more often just meant that instead of going home and doing my best impersonation of a beached whale every chance I had, I could go see her instead for an hour.

I could make it work.

When you want something bad enough, you can always make it happen.

Waking up before the sun rose, I got dressed and followed my usual morning routine perfectly. I didn’t know if Lee or Ivan would be at the rink so early, but if they were… then I’d talk to them. I thought about writing my friend an e-mail but didn’t bother. It wasn’t like she would tell me not to partner up with him.

I ate my first breakfast, made my second breakfast and lunch, ran through my list to make sure I’d done everything I needed to do, and collected my things for the day before getting into the car. When I got in, I hooked my phone up to listen to one of my playlists, keeping my nerves nice and even on the drive to the rink. In the lot, there were only eight other cars, including a shiny black Tesla I knew had to belong to Ivan because no one else could afford one, and a gold-colored Mercedes that I recognized as Coach Lee’s.

But when I went inside, I didn’t find them in the general manager’s office. So, I decided to go about my routine like I was used to, finding my little spot of quiet on the side of the rink furthest from the changing rooms. Forty minutes of solid stretching and then twenty minutes of practicing my jumps on solid ground, I eyed the clean, barely used ice. And I felt this weight lift off my chest; it was the same effect the rink always had on me.

I could look for them after my morning skate.

I’d been on the ice for forty-five minutes when I noticed the two well-dressed figures sitting in the stands, watching.

Watching me specifically.

Watching me go through the same section of the only short program I could remember from my singles days, more than likely because the two minutes and fifty seconds of choreography had been my favorite. For me, memorizing programs—one of the two routines you perfected and then competed with each season—was hard enough. I had to rely on muscle memory more than actually thinking about what I was doing, which meant I had to do every move and sequence over and over and over again because my mind might struggle with what was next, but my muscles wouldn’t. Not after enough repetitions.

My old coach, Galina, used to say that specific program I was doing was a jump extravaganza. It was one hard jump after another; I hadn’t wanted to hold back. Sure, I’d never done the program perfectly, but if I had, it would have been magical. I’d been too stubborn to listen to her when she said the routine was too difficult and that I wasn’t consistent enough when it mattered.

But like my mom had always said, usually shaking her head or rolling her eyes as she did it, I “came out doing things the hard way” because I’d decided to come out of her feet first. And ever since, nothing had ever been easy for me.

But it was fine. Challenges were only hard if you went into them expecting not to succeed.

So, when I spotted Ivan Lukov because of his gray pullover sweater and that hair the shade of the purest black—which he probably spent fifteen minutes styling every day until every strand was perfect—and the much shorter, equally dark-haired woman beside him, I kept going. I turned my body around to skate backward so I could go into a triple Lutz, one of the hardest jumps I could do, mostly because you had to counter-rotate your body in the opposite direction of how you went into it. It was my favorite, even though I realized it was a huge factor in all my back pain over the years. Your body didn’t want to turn in a different direction than the rest of it. It was awkward and hard, especially when you had to go into it as fast as possible.

I hadn’t been able to land anything for days, but on that day, thank God, halle-fucking-lujah, at that moment, I landed it as good as I ever did. That was the thing about figure skating: it was all about muscle memory, and the only way to make your body memorize anything was to do it thousands of times. Not hundreds. Thousands. Then, once you did that, you had to make it look effortless when it was anything but. And that triple Lutz I had worked on twice as much as any other jump because I’d been determined to make it my bitch, and I had. I’d been able to do a decent triple Axel on a good day, and had landed quads in practice when I attempted them in practice for the hell of it, but the 3L—what we called the triple Lutz—that’s what I had focused all of my energy on in my singles days. It was one beautiful thing that no one could take away from me. Or do as well, I thought.

Even though I realized it was stupid to cut my time short because I’d already paid for it, I decided to go ahead and get this next conversation over with. I didn’t want to get to work late if I didn’t have to.

Work. Shit.

I was going to need to talk to my mom’s longtime friend about my hours again. Not that it would be a problem, but I hated bailing on him after I’d made a commitment to work more, months ago. He would understand and even be overjoyed, but it still made me feel like a flake. Plus, I was going to need the money. I was going to have to figure it out. More money and less hours. That wasn’t going to be easy.

With my heart still racing from the series of jumps I’d just done in the routine before the 3L, I skated toward the exit of the rink, passing by the other skaters on the ice but keeping my attention mostly downward as I did it. It wasn’t until I got to the wall right beside the opening in it that I looked up and found Galina leaning over the edge a few feet away, her eyes intent on me.

I dipped my chin at her.

After a moment, she nodded back at me, a strange expression on her face that I couldn’t remember seeing before. She looked really thoughtful. Maybe even sad.

Huh.

Putting my skate guards on, I grabbed my bottle of water too and asked myself if I was sure—really, really sure—this was what I wanted. If I wanted to get back into this world with a partner who more than likely didn’t accept mistakes any better than I did. A partner that I couldn’t talk to without bickering with. A world with people judging every single tiny thing about me. A world with zero guarantees. I was going to have to work harder than I ever had before to get this to work in a season. Was I ready for it?

I sure as fuck was.

My mom had been right. There were very few things worse than regret. And I would definitely regret not taking this chance—even if it meant stretching myself thin—more than I would taking it and getting nothing out of it.

Plus, I’d never been that much of a little bitch before. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about jumping into this opportunity, even if I got nothing out of it. Now… well, burns leave scars sometimes, and I wouldn’t forget it.

With adrenaline pumping through my veins, and still slightly out of breath, I made my way over to the part of the stands where Ivan and Coach Lee were still sitting. They weren’t even trying to be discreet with their stares. One last chance to make sure they knew what they were getting? Probably.

My hands didn’t shake, and my knees didn’t feel weak as I approached them; it was only my breathing that was choppy and irregular, but my stomach gave this roll of nerves I wasn’t used to and sure as hell would never admit to.

“I hope you don’t mind we came to see you,” Coach Lee started the conversation while I was still feet away from them, confirming my suspicions.

I shook my head as my gaze briefly slipped in Ivan’s direction, taking in that cool but somehow still smug face, before just as quickly glancing back at the other woman. I couldn’t screw this up by opening my mouth and arguing with him. At least not yet.

“Not at all,” I told her. I understood why they did it. I would have done the same. “Morning.”

The corners of her mouth slipped up at the edges just enough to be a fraction of a smile. “Morning.”

Ivan didn’t say shit.

Good. Maybe he was doing the same thing I was: keeping his mouth shut so we could get through this as painlessly as possible. That reassured me more than I would have liked, because if he wasn’t arguing with me, maybe he did want to be my partner.

Okay, want was the wrong word to use. Need might have been more like it. Whatever.

I had no idea what the situation was, and honestly, I didn’t give a shit. All I cared about was this opportunity. I wasn’t about to screw it up for myself.

Getting to her feet and putting her at an inch shorter than me, Coach Lee crossed her arms over her chest and said something I wasn’t expecting. “Your triple Lutz is beautiful. Your height, your speed, the amount of ice you cover, and your technique… I forgot that was your signature move until you did it. It’s perfect, Jasmine, really. You should be proud of it.” Her smile turned into a grin. “It reminds me of Ivan’s.”

I ignored the part about Ivan and focused on the rest. I was proud of it. I didn’t say that though. I’d torn that jump apart to perfect it. I’d watched and re-watched the best figure skaters doing it to see what it was that made it so spectacular, so I could do it too. There were even hours of footage at home of me doing it over and over again, just so I could see how to improve what I was doing. My mom had wanted to kill me back then for forcing her to record the same thing over and over again for hours and days. And once I had figured it out, she’d tried to take all the credit for it.

“When did you do that last combination? I don’t remember it from any competition,” she said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t think Paul was very good at Lutzes….”

He hadn’t been. And I told her she was right. “It’s from an old short program from my singles days,” I explained.

Both her eyebrows went up at the same time like “ah.” “That’s a shame,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me one day the story behind you switching from singles to pairs. I was always curious about it.”

And it was that comment that made me shrug and say, easy and smooth, “It’s not that interesting of a story, but one day.”

It was the “one day” that had her eyes widening. “You’re sure?”

Was I? Was I really?

I looked at her, and only her, and said, “I have a few questions, and a few stipulations.”

“Stipulations?” Ivan drawled out the question from where he was on the bench, all lazy and in that snobby voice that said he didn’t think I was in any position to bargain.

Wrong.

I glanced at him for all of a second then moved my gaze back to his coach before I said something stupid. “Nothing crazy.” I used the same words she had used on me the day before when she had basically said I was going to have to agree to not be stubborn to making changes.

Coach Lee slid a look toward Ivan that I didn’t absorb before agreeing. “Would you like to talk here or should I see if the office is open?”

I didn’t need to glance around to know we had privacy. “We can do it here and save time.”

The other woman raised her eyebrows but nodded.

I moved my left hand to my right wrist without thinking about it, spinning my bracelet for moral support. I could do this. I could make everything work.

I had to try.

Ivan might be an amazing skater, but I had worked just as hard as he had. Maybe for not as long as him, because I hadn’t started skating before I was three years old, but in all the ways that mattered, I had done almost everything I could. He wasn’t doing me a favor. This was going to be an equal partnership or it wasn’t going to be anything. I wasn’t going to accept less.

“What’s on your mind?” Coach Lee finally asked.

I spun the bracelet on my wrist again. I can do anything, I reminded myself. Then I started. “I want to make sure that you won’t be asking me to do a makeover and start kissing babies in public if I agree to be Ivan’s partner.”

There.

I was pretty sure her cheek twitched, but her expression was so neutral, I might have imagined it. “No kissing babies and no makeovers. That’s not an issue. What else?”

I could really start to like this woman and her directness. So I kept going. “You can’t get rid of me before the year is over.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ivan shifting around from his spot on the bench, but I still didn’t look at him. Instead, I watched the woman I was practically doing business with, our mediator. She didn’t flinch at my demand, but her eyebrow did do this quirk thing that she couldn’t smooth out fast enough.

“Why would you think we would terminate the agreement before the year is up?” she asked slowly.

That time I did glance at Ivan. On purpose. Then I pointed at him with the thumb closest to him so that there wasn’t any confusion. “Because I’m not sure how he and I are going to get along.”

He scoffed and opened his mouth like he was about to argue, but I didn’t let him.

“I’m just trying to cover my bases. I know how I am, and I know how he is too.” I called him a “he” because even though I was looking at him, I was really speaking to Lee. “If something is my fault, I’ll work at it until I fix it. I promise you that, but if it’s his fault….”

He changed his posture from sitting in that relaxed position to leaning forward, spreading his knees and planting his elbows on them. His pale blue eyes were so intense it was like they were trying to bore a hole right into me. The tip of his tongue was poking at the inside of his cheek. He’d made that face at me enough times in the past for me to recognize it.

He was giving me a death glare.

Good.

It would have been weird if he’d pretended like everything was fine and dandy.

“If it’s Ivan’s fault…” I glanced at him that time. “Yours,” I emphasized because he needed to get that he wasn’t perfect and that he and his coach couldn’t blame me for everything. “I trust that you’ll bust your ass not to make the same mistake again either. If something is wrong, we’ll both work at it. We both agree to do whatever we have to do to make this work.”

Because I was still looking in his direction, I could see his jaw move from one side to the other the entire time I talked, and I could feel the argument hanging in the air.

“All I want is to make sure the responsibility is split evenly between us. We’re a team or we aren’t. I won’t be treated like the redheaded step-kid. This can’t be just The Ivan Show.”

“The Ivan Show?” he echoed, still giving me his death glare.

I shrugged a shoulder, feeling my nose beginning to wrinkle in a sneer that I only barely wrangled in before it turned into a full one. I dragged my gaze back to Coach Lee just barely. “And when the year is over, I want your word that you’ll both find me another partner. Not just help me find one, but actually find me one.” I swallowed and said, “That’s all I want. I’ll do just about anything you ask, but I want those two things, and I want to be sure it isn’t debatable.”

There was a beat of silence.

I didn’t need to look to know they were both looking at me and not at each other.

Andddd. Why the hell were they taking so long to say yes? I wasn’t asking for that much.

Was I?

Standing there, looking at both of them, I asked what felt like the most important question of my life because I just wanted to get it over with. Either we were doing this or we weren’t. I wasn’t good with anticipation. I wasn’t patient. “Do we have a deal?”

There was another pause, and Coach Lee finally glanced in Ivan’s direction for what must have been half a minute at least before she made an amused noise. Her mouth twisted to the side and then back. She took her time moving her attention back to me, and then blinked.

And I thought, we don’t have a deal.

And my stomach sank.

And for the first time in forever, I thought I was going to throw up and I wanted to kick my own ass.

“Fine,” came the unexpected reply straight out of Ivan’s mouth, not looking at all like he was excited to do it… and still watching me carefully. Still not making a face. Not looking at all like this was a major decision when it was the total opposite for me.

But I didn’t let his little bitch face distract me from what the hell had just happened.

He’d agreed.

He had agreed.

Holy fuck.

I was going to compete again.

Once, when I was younger on vacation, I’d gone with my brother to the beach and we’d decided to go cliff diving. I remember jumping in from a spot so high, my mom would have killed me if she’d seen it. Even my brother had chickened out at the last minute. But I hadn’t.

I hadn’t been expecting how far under the water I would go when I dove in. I’d had to hold my breath for so long as I kicked and kicked and kicked to reach the surface, it had felt like I’d never make it. For maybe half a second, I had thought I was going to drown. But when I reached the surface, I would probably always remember what it was like to take that first breath of air. To take that first breath of air and think I had done it.

Sometimes it’s easy to take something so essential to your existence for granted.

More than ever, I understood it then as I stood there, taking turns looking between Coach Lee and Ivan and feeling… feeling like I was supposed to be feeling. Like I was alive again. Like I was right.

But…

There was one more thing that I hadn’t taken into consideration while I’d been worried about everything else. Something that was just as important as the other two things. Maybe even more.

It was a deal breaker. A deal breaker that my pride didn’t want to even factor but had to. I was trying to be an adult. “There’s one more thing.” I swallowed and fought back the temptation to keep my mouth shut. “How much are coaching and choreography fees going to be?”

I wasn’t going to ask my mom to contribute as much as she used to. But I also had a vague idea how much Ivan paid his choreographers. I had called one once and gotten pissed off when he told me his rates.

I was already cringing on the inside, expecting the worst. There was no way Coach Lee was cheap either. My past two coaches hadn’t been the most expensive, but they hadn’t been the cheapest either, because they coached other figure skaters at the same time at different levels in their careers.

So when Ivan blinked at me and Coach Lee said nothing, my thoughts went straight to shit.

I was going to have to ask them to let me defer my payment until the season was over so I could sell a kidney. Fuck it, I could wear a wig and strip. I didn’t have any birthmarks to give me away.

“Ivan will cover coaching and choreography fees, but you’ll be responsible for travel and your wardrobe,” the other woman said after a moment too long.

The muscles at my shoulders went tight, my gaze went to Ivan, and I asked him, when I knew better, “You will?”

Those gray-blue eyes lazily blinked before he said, “You can pay for half if you want.”

I wasn’t that prideful.

So I blinked right back at him. “Nope.”

He straightened in his seat, that face, which had been on a lip balm commercial once, stayed perfectly even. “You’re sure?” he asked, that annoying tone prickling at his words.

“I’m sure.”

“Positive?”

This bitch. I narrowed my eyes. “Positive.”

“I don’t mind splitting it,” he kept going, the corner of his mouth coming up into a baby smirk I was way too familiar with.

I ground down on my molars. “Nope,” I repeated myself.

“Because we—”

“Okay,” Coach Lee butted in, shaking her head. “I think I’m going to need a raise to deal with both of you.”

That had both of us turning our heads toward her.

“I’m fine. It’s him,” I said at the same time Ivan said, “It’s her fault.”

The older woman shook her head some more, giving us both expressions that said she was already fed up with our shit. “You’re both professionals and mostly adults—”

Mostly an adult?

It was just because I didn’t know Coach Lee well enough yet that I kept the scoff in my mouth.

“This is going to be a lot of work, and both of you are aware of that. This bickering thing you have going on, save it for the evenings when we’re done if you can’t get past it. We don’t have time to waste,” she said, using that tone my mom used when she was fed up with our shit.

I kept my mouth shut.

Ivan didn’t.

“I’m professional,” he muttered.

The other woman just stared at him. “We talked about this.”

He gave her a look, and she gave him one right back.

I almost smiled… until I took in what they were saying… and what they weren’t. What the hell had they talked about? How we always argued and needed to get past it if we were going to partner up? Because that would actually make a lot of sense. It was one of my biggest worries, but I knew I could keep it to myself.

At least most of the time.

The woman turned her head to look at me. “Jasmine, will that be a problem?”

I didn’t trust myself to look at Ivan, so I kept my gaze on my new coach. God, that felt weird to even think that. “Save it for afterward. I can do that.” It would probably be harder than actually practicing so much, but I could do it.

“Ivan?”

If he glanced at me or didn’t, I had no idea, all I heard was what was basically a grumbled, “Yes.”

“Constructive criticisms won’t be a problem either,” the other woman kept going, telling us, not asking.

No shit, we could handle constructive criticism—

“From each other,” she finished.

That time I did glance at Ivan, but he was already looking at me, his eyelids slit like he was thinking the same thing I was. We could already barely talk to each other. We hardly were, because we both knew what happened when we opened our mouths and aimed them at each other.

But…

I was trying to be better, and I would be. I wasn’t going to let my mouth ruin anything for me. Much less my pride. I told them I’d do anything for this, and I would.

Even if it meant dealing with this jackass.

So I nodded, because what else was I going to do? Ruin something that in the future might give me everything I wanted? Possibly lead to other great things? I wasn’t that dumb.

“Fine,” came the bit off response from the only male nearby.

“Good, I’m glad that’s settled now before we go any further.”

I glanced at Ivan again, but he’d beat me to it. He was already looking at me….

And I didn’t like it.

Stop looking at me, I mouthed.

No, he mouthed back.

Coach Lee sighed. “Excellent. Lip whatever you want to each other as long as I don’t have to hear it.”

I swear on my life he smacked his lips together.

I wanted to smack him.

Then he opened his mouth to talk. “You’re going to need to get a physical before we start.”

What? Was he for real? I was in prime fucking health—

Shut up, Jasmine. It isn’t a big deal. And maybe I wasn’t exactly in my prime, but none of my injuries would pop up in a physical.

I shut up and dipped my chin down like okay, uh-huh. What was a little checkup when I’d have this opportunity again? Nothing, that’s what.

“We need to make sure you don’t have any pre-existing conditions that you aren’t telling us about that might come up later on,” he continued on, slowly, still making a face like this entire conversation—and situation—was costing him.

The smart-ass crept up my throat, not going anywhere, especially not after his hand went up to his cheek and his middle finger scratched at the tip of his nose. Ass. “That’s what I figured you wanted when you said you wanted a physical, not to get my weight or cholesterol levels,” I muttered, stopping myself before I said anything more aggressive.

It was his turn to be a smart-ass apparently. “Speaking of your weight—”

No he didn’t.

Coach Lee cleared her throat just as I’d started to raise my hand to point at him. With my middle finger. “All right,” she said tightly. “Let’s focus. We just talked about this. We’ll have an agreement drawn up that you’ll need to sign, Jasmine. Other than that, practice will be six days a week, twice a day. Will that be a problem?”

It took every ounce of self-control in me to tear my gaze away from the idiot who had been just about to say something about my weight. I could feel my nostrils flare as I swallowed and focused back on the woman. “It’s not a problem.” She didn’t need to tell me we needed all the training we could get in with less than six months before the start of the next season. “What times?” I asked, my hand twirling my bracelet.

It was Ivan that answered as he shifted around on the bench. “Four hours at four in the morning at the LC, and a three hour workout at one in the afternoon.”

Shit.

That would only leave me four hours to work and that was going to be cutting it close, but I couldn’t quit. I wouldn’t. Maybe I could pick up a shift here or there too on my day off. I’d make it work. Somehow.

I managed to nod before I caught on to something he said. “You said at the LC. Are there going to be more practices somewhere else?”

Coach Lee didn’t even try to hide the glance she cast in Ivan’s direction. A glance that again put me on edge. I hated secrets and secret looks. I wanted to ask what those faces were for but decided to wait. Patience. I could be patient. If I tried really hard.

Luckily, she didn’t make me wait long. “You understand we’ve discussed your strengths and weaknesses before we asked you to join the team?”

“Yeah.” Did I like that they had talked about me? No. But it was part of it, and I couldn’t hold it against them. Before I’d gotten to this point of desperation, I would have done the same.

“You’re a strong athlete, Jasmine,” she started to say, and I made sure I had my armor on so I could handle whatever non-compliment was going to eventually come out of her mouth. That’s what coaches did. They tore apart all the things you were bad at and helped you try to fix them. At least that was the goal. “I’ve always thought you had an amazing amount of potential—”

A “but” was about to come out of her mouth. I could feel it. There was always a “but” when someone paid you a compliment.

Maybe it was just me.

I kept my face even, but it was a little harder than I would have wanted it to be.

“But there are things you can work on to take it to the next level, specifically your showmanship. I’ve spoken to Galina in the past, and she confirmed that you didn’t have a heavy amount of training in ballet. I think your skating would really benefit from it.”

When the hell had she spoken to Galina?

“We want you to take some one-on-one training with the instructor Ivan has used in the past to tweak a few bad habits—”

Bad habits?

“—and work on improving what’s already good but could be better. Apart from that, you will be taking lessons with Ivan at the same time. There’s always room for improvement. I’m sure you’re familiar with that.”

Was she saying that just to make me feel better about basically telling me that I had none of the grace that came from having a serious background in ballet? It wasn’t like I didn’t know that Ivan did. Karina had only taken figure skating lessons up until she was fourteen—which was how we had met—but she had focused on dance before and afterward. Plus, there was something really elegant and graceful about Ivan’s movements that could only come from a ballet instructor with a drill sergeant’s heart. He’d had the money. He could afford someone to teach him everything he needed to know.

My mom had been able to afford two group lessons a week for an hour each, so that’s what I had done for years. I wasn’t going to apologize for it. And I’d said I would do whatever I needed to make this work. So, all I said was, “Okay.”

The corners of Coach Lee’s mouth tightened for a moment before her expression went back to normal. “Good. I’ll call tomorrow and see what’s available so you can pick the times that work for you on your schedule. Ivan attends Monday and Saturday mornings from nine until eleven. Will that be a problem?”

It was, but I would have to make it work. I was going to end up quitting my job and stripping. Jesus Christ. “No, not a problem.” My stomach hurt for a moment, but I shoved it aside and focused on what was important. “I also take a Pilates class once a week to work on my flexibility. I’m planning on still taking it.”

“Good, keep doing that,” the woman replied with a slow nod.

I tried to put all my thoughts in order. “What do you want the season to look like?” I asked.

It was Ivan that answered. “We’ll do the Discovery Series, the Major Prix, nationals, and worlds.” He blinked. “We can skip the rest.”

I did the math in my head and swallowed back the nerves at the realization that would be seven different events we would be competing in. At least. Two or three competitions in the Discovery Series. Three in the Major Prix, if we made it to the final. Then one each for nationals and worlds.

Money. Money. Money. And more money.

But I didn’t even care. All the more chances to win.

Or fail, that negative-ass voice in my head whispered until I shoved it away. I needed to stop thinking that way. It hadn’t done me any good ever before, and it never would. I couldn’t get psyched out so early.

“Okay,” I got out with another nod, feeling this tightness in my chest that I didn’t love.

Coach Lee dipped her own chin down. “Now that that’s all sorted, can you start tomorrow?”

Tomorrow? Fuck.

I was too worried about my voice being all high and pitchy and giving away how overwhelmed I was at what was happening, that I decided to keep my mouth shut and nod again. I was going to need to talk to my boss today. Holy shit.

“Is that it then? You don’t want me to do a tryout?” I asked, just to be sure.

“That’s it,” she confirmed. The expression on Coach Lee’s face wasn’t exactly a smile, but she looked… pleased. She extended her hand out in my direction, and I took it. “Good. Tomorrow we get to work then. I’ll schedule your physical today and let you know where to go and what time.”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed on an exhale, feeling this weight lift off my chest for all of a second before crashing back down. Feeling heavy, I pulled my hand back to my side and turned to where Ivan had been sitting the entire time. He hadn’t moved. His elbows were still on his knees, hands hanging loosely between his legs, and his attention was still on me. That long, blunt line of his jaw was set firmly, and it was an expression I’d seen enough.

I had a feeling it was one I was going to keep on seeing a whole lot of over the next year.

The next year. Shit.

I had told Coach Lee we could get past this, or at least put up with each other, and I wasn’t about to back down or take my word back. I wasn’t going to screw this up for myself. I could be the better person… and thinking about it like that put a smile on my face.

Hesitating for just a moment, I extended my hand out toward him.

And it hovered there. For a second. For two seconds. For three seconds.

Three more seconds and I was going to slap him in the face.

Ivan was watching me in return as he stood up, going up to that full height that put him at an inch shy of being a foot taller than me… and he slipped his hand into mine for the first time ever.

His eyes met mine, and I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing.

Once—just once—years ago, I’d fallen badly after a jump. He had been on the rink with me at the same time. I’d been lying there on the ice, blinking up at the rafters, trying to catch my breath because even my brain had hurt after hitting the ice so hard. This bitch had skated up to me for some reason. And he’d stretched his hand out toward me, looking down at me with a smirk on his face.

I hadn’t been thinking. All I’d seen was a hand reaching out toward me, so I’d tried to take it. Like an idiot.

My fingers had probably been inches away from Ivan’s when he’d snatched his hand back, smirked even wider, and left me there. On the ice. Just like that.

Bitch.

So he could only blame himself when it took me a minute to close my fingers around his, giving him a look the whole time, expecting the worst. But nothing happened. His palm was cold and wide, and his fingers were longer than I’d expected. In all the years we’d gravitated around each other, we’d never touched except for the one Thanksgiving I’d spent at his family’s house and he’d sat beside me and had taken my hand during their prayer. We spent the whole three minutes squeezing each other’s hands as hard as we could, at least until Karina had kicked him under the table, probably seeing my fingertips going white.

If he was expecting me to say something, he was going to be waiting forever because there was nothing I needed to say to him. Okay, maybe I just didn’t trust myself not to say something stupid before we were too deep into this to go back. Apparently, there was nothing he needed to say to me either. Fine by me.

That was the good thing about figure skating. You didn’t have to talk to do it.

Ivan gave my fingers a hard squeeze.

And I squeezed his as hard as I could right back.