Ignoring the other girls in the room who were looking in my direction in confusion because I was never at the facility this late, I made my way as fast as I could toward the rink. Luckily, there were only about five other people on the ice at eight in the evening. The younger kids were already home and in bed, and the teenagers were heading there.
But I didn’t give a fuck about any of them.
The second my blades touched the ice, I was off, skating so close to the walls, only millimeters separated me from them. I went faster and faster, needing to get this shit out. Out. Out, out, out. I needed to remember why this had been worth so much.
I don’t know how many times I circled my way around, taking on speed skater speed, and I wasn’t sure when I started going into jumps. Jumps I hadn’t warmed up for. Jumps that I had no business doing while my body had already gone through a tough practice and I hadn’t refueled since. I did a triple Salchow—what we called an edge jump because you didn’t have the assistance of your blade’s toe-pick, you took off from the back inside edge and landed on the opposite foot’s back outside edge—followed by another one. A quadruple toe loop that I stumbled out of, and then did over and over again until I landed it. And then I went for a triple Lutz I was too burned out and exhausted to do, busting my ass hard on each landing. Falling and falling, one time after another and then another, my ass cheek hurting somewhere in the back of my head, but I wasn’t focusing on it.
I had to land it.
I had to do it.
My hip ached. My wrist started hurting from trying to break my fall like a dumbass. The skin above my ankle began to chafe.
And I kept falling. Over and over again. I fell.
And the more I failed, the angrier I became with myself.
Fuck this. Fuck everything. Fuck me.
It was on another fall that went so bad, the back of my head grazed the ice that I finally lay there and closed my eyes, breathing hard, feeling like shit, anger burning through me so brightly I felt it everywhere. I made my hands into fists. And I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry.
I loved my family. I loved figure skating.
And I sucked at loving both.
“Get up, Meatball.”
I didn’t think I’d ever opened my eyes faster than I did right then.
And when I did, a familiar face was there, hovering, staring down at me with two black eyebrows arched upward. In the time it took me to blink, there were fingers there too, halfway between the face and me, fingers wiggling in my direction. The eyebrows went up even further when I didn’t say anything or move.
What was he doing here?
“Let’s go,” Ivan said as he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read on that face I had seen so much of already.
I didn’t get up.
Ivan blinked.
I did too, swallowing hard as I did it, fire filling my throat.
With a sigh, Ivan reached into his pocket and then extended his hand out again, holding a Hershey’s Kiss between his index and middle finger. He raised his eyebrows again as he gave the candy a shake between his fingers. Why the hell he was carrying around chocolate in his pocket was beyond me.
But I took it, keeping my eyes on him the entire time. I unwrapped it like a pro and popped it into my mouth. It only took about three seconds for the sweetness to soothe the pain in my throat, just a little, but it was something.
“You ready to get up now?” he asked after I’d had the chocolate in my mouth for a few seconds.
Shoving it to my cheek, I shook my head, not trusting my lips to form the right words and not really feeling like sacrificing the small bit of joy and comfort coating my tongue. At least not yet. My temples gave a throb that I hadn’t even noticed before.
Ivan blinked down at me twice.
I still said nothing as the chocolate kept on melting inside my mouth.
“I’m not dealing with you if you get sick,” he went on after another minute, crossing his arms over his chest as he did so, still watching me. Expecting something. I thought.
Still, I didn’t say a word. I just kept sucking on the chocolate, ignoring the cold at my back that was finally beginning to sting.
“Jasmine, get off the ice.”
I licked my lips as I stared up at him.
He sighed and tipped his head back to look at the rafters, probably taking in the banners with his name hanging from them and wondering where his life had gone wrong to the point where he was here at night, with me.
God. Did everyone think I was a piece of self-centered crap? Even him?
The throbbing at my head got worse when he sighed again.
“You have three seconds to get up or I’m dragging you out of here,” he got out, still facing the ceiling and more than likely closing his eyes as he did it, if I knew him correctly.
It was my turn to blink. “I’d like to see you try.”
But in the back of my head, I knew that if he said he’d drag me off the ice, he probably would.
Those blue-gray eyes narrowed on me, and he said, still speaking carefully, “All right. I won’t drag you.” Something about the expression on that classic face that had grown only the slightest brush of a shadow of facial hair on his cheeks, put me on edge, like I couldn’t trust it. Like a reminder of what we had been like before. “But you have two seconds from now to get up.”
The or else hung in the air.
The stinging on my back was getting sharper, genuinely hurting my back and ass, and honestly, I wanted to get up. I would have gotten up if I’d been by myself. Chances were, I would have been on my way to the changing room if I’d been alone.
But now I was going to have to get frostbite because I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it since he’d asked.
And Ivan seemed to sense that because those glacier-colored eyes narrowed into slits.
Then he began counting.
“Two,” Ivan started, not even giving me a warning.
I didn’t move.
“One.”
I still didn’t move. Fuck it. I didn’t give a shit.
His sigh was deep, deep, deep, and he even shook his head as he said, “Last chance.”
I stared at him.
He stared back at me and finally shrugged. “You asked for it. Remember that.”
This bastard was going to drag me off the ice? What the—
Ivan bent at the waist, his eyes intent on me, and just as he reached toward my head with one arm—and I tilted my mouth to the side to bite whatever I could reach if he decided to try and pull my hair—his palm shoved itself beneath my shoulders and the ice. His other arm went under my knees, and in a move that was so fast, I forgot this man had built up his life and accomplishments lifting women for a living, I went over his shoulder, ass in the air, head and arms dangling along his back.
This bitch.
Be better. Be better. Be better. Don’t punch him in his giant balls. At least not yet.
“Ivan,” I told him, sounding calmer than I felt, barely realizing he had put on his skates before coming out to hunt me down. He was skating toward the boards, and I didn’t know where we were going. “Ivan, put me down right now, or I’m going to kick you in the face and not feel bad about it.”
“Meatball,” he said, just as calmly and quietly as I had been talking. “I’d like to see you try,” the asshole claimed, mirroring my words right back at me just as what had to be his forearm locked down over my calves, holding them against his chest before I did what he figured I was capable of.
And he would be right.
“Ivan,” I said again, still calm, part of me kind of hoping I was the kind of person who would yell and try to bite his ass so he’d put me down. But I’d promised. I’d promised to behave in public. So my voice was still nice and quiet as I said, “I swear to God, put me down this second.”
His response? A soft “No.”
�
��Ivan.”
“No,” he repeated, stepped off the ice, grabbing something out of my vision, and continuing walking… somewhere. I couldn’t see. What I could see was that he didn’t have his skate guards on either.
“I’m not playing with you right now,” I let him know, beginning to get really mad.
“I’m not either,” he replied, giving my calves a squeeze closer into him. “I gave you a chance. I gave you several chances, and you didn’t want to listen or let this go the easy way, so don’t get pissed off at me because you’re stubborn.”
My hands clenched from where they dangled, and I seriously considered biting his ass if I could reach it. Fuck it. He’d brought this on himself. I was more of a wedgie person than a biting-on-the-ass person, but I wasn’t about to stick my hand in the back of his pants.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you right now, but I drove all the way over here, so you’re not going to act like a spoiled brat with me,” he let me know before shifting me on his shoulder and huffing. “Jesus Christ, you’re heavy.”
“Fuck you,” I spat, seriously talking myself out of biting him.
“Fuck you too,” he replied, not missing a beat, not sounding at all angry or frustrated, which annoyed me even more.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“I will kick you in the face.”
“You make me bleed, and we’ll have to take time off from practicing, and we both know you don’t want to do that.”
He had a point, damn it.
“I’m going to beat the shit out of you the first chance I get when the season is over,” I hissed, arching my back for a moment when the blood rushing into my head started to make my nose sting.
“You can try,” he replied.
“You’re so lucky I don’t want to make a scene,” I pretty much growled.
His “I know” only annoyed me more as he took a turn down a hall.
Where were we going?
“Why are you even here?” I asked, trying to lift my upper body again to get a look at the hall we were in.
Ivan didn’t say a word. He just kept walking down the hall, before turning down another hall that I’d never bothered going down because I’d never had any business going to it.
“Ivan.”
Still nothing.
Fuck me. I didn’t want to hurt him… because I didn’t want to delay practices… so I couldn’t kick my legs… and biting his ass was way more personal than necessary… so I reached toward his butt, which I belatedly realized was in a different pair of sweat pants than the ones he’d been wearing during our afternoon session, and reached for the curve I knew was laying beneath… and I pinched it. Hard.
He didn’t even flinch.
So, I did it again. In a different spot.
And still no response.
What the fuck kind of cyborg was he? I’d pinched my brother half as hard, and he’d acted like I’d shot him.
Before I could figure out if he was an alien, he turned us to the left and stopped. I peeked around his leg to see that he was standing in front of a door, and at that point, was punching buttons on a numeric keypad above a doorknob. Where the hell were we?
“What is this?” I asked him.
He hit what I could only assume was “enter” just as he replied with, “My room.”
His room?
And then, with his free hand, he turned the knob, shoved the door open, and took a step forward, his one and only free hand going to what had to be the light switch, because a split second later, everything was lit up. And by “everything” I meant the twenty-by-twenty-foot room with what looked like a kitchenette along one wall, a couch in the middle with a small coffee table in front of it, and who knew what else on the other side that I couldn’t see from where I was dangling, arching my neck one way and then the other to get a look around.
“Since when do you have your own—goddamn it! What the hell was that for?” I cried out at the sudden sharp pain coming from my right ass cheek. “Did you just pinch me?” I cried, reaching back to cup my cheek over the spot that hurt like hell.
“That’s for pinching me.” Then the son of a bitch did it again, and I tried to kick my leg out, making me forget I hadn’t wanted to hurt him. “And that’s what you get for not paying attention,” he answered easily, still standing there with me over his shoulder.
“For not paying attention?” I shouted again, rubbing my soon-to-be-bruised ass. “That fucking hurt, Ivan.” Because it had. Jesus Christ, he was strong.
“You tried to hurt me too. I’m only giving you exactly what you planned on giving me.” He had a point, but still. “If you paid more attention, you’d know I fall on my right cheek. I know you fall on your left one.”
Shit.
He had another point. I had less sensation on my left cheek than I did my right from so many falls. I bet half the nerves on my ass were dead.
And it was annoying he knew that and used it against me.
And it was even more annoying that I’d tried pinching the butt cheek on him with the same trauma and failed, damn it.
“We’re even,” he said before going into a squat position, bending over and dropping me ass and back first onto the carpet floor, like I was a sack of worthless potatoes.
I glared at him.
Those pure black eyebrows of his went up. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” he let me know right before he kneeled in front of me. Those intense eyes lingered on me for a moment before he glanced down and his hands went to one of my right skate. I jerked my leg toward me, but he didn’t let that stop him. His fingers went to the laces of my boots, and he began plucking at the tight double knots I always made.
Some part of me wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing… but I didn’t. I just sat there, with my ass hurting, and watched as he undid one set of laces, pulled the boot off my foot, and then did the same to the other. He didn’t say a word and neither did I as he then sat down and undid his own skates, setting them beside mine. Ivan did glance at me as he got to his feet and headed toward the kitchen area, taking up an entire wall along the back of the room.
Rubbing my ass cheek, I sat there, wondering what the fuck was going on, and then getting onto my knees and looking around the room, taking in this place that I hadn’t known existed. How long had it been here? Did anyone else know about it?
But I asked him the most important question bouncing around in my head, as I sat there. “What are you doing here?”
He was bent over, rummaging through what looked like a small fridge built into the cabinets when he answered, “I came to check on you.”
What?
Ivan didn’t look back at me as he stood up straight, holding a carton of almond milk in his hand as he kicked the door to the fridge closed. “Galina called Lee, who called me,” he went on, like he was reading my mind.
Galina? Where the hell had Galina been? And why would she call Lee? I wondered before shoving the questions to the side and focusing.
“You didn’t have to come,” I blurted, wincing afterward at how much of an asshole I sounded like and kind of regretting it. Just a little.
My partner said nothing as he opened up more cabinets and started pulling things out of them.
I pinched the bridge of my nose with one hand while the other one went to my ass again to rub at the spot he’d pinched the shit out of. “I don’t even know why she called. Everything was fine,” I snapped, gritting my teeth at just how much my butt hurt.
His snicker was loud.
“What?”
He had his back to me as he said, “Everything was fine. Sure, Jasmine. Keep telling yourself that.”
I straightened on my spot on the floor and tried to tell myself to keep my attitude in check. Be better. I could be better. “It was fine.”
Maybe not.
I could see him shake his head as he messed around with whatever he had taken out of the cabinets. “So you come back to practice after working o
ut for hours, and instead, work on your jumps, falling and getting back up like you’re possessed, and you’re fine?” he threw back, messing with something on the countertop.
“Yes,” I lied.
He snorted. “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, sounding awfully close to bitter but deciding to ignore it. I moved to get my legs under me and stood up.
Ivan sighed at the same time something opened, closed, and beeped.
“I’m fine,” I kept going as I straightened and gave my ass cheek another rub, glancing at things around the room out of the corner of my eye.
He turned around and leaned against the counter behind him, raising his eyebrows, his expression… irritated. Really irritated. Huh. “What happened?” he asked.
I looked away, deciding to see the rest of the room. There were racks of clothes along the wall to the right, filled with costume after vaguely familiar costume. I had always wondered what he did with all of them. I had mine stuffed into every closet that had space at my mom’s.
“Jasmine.”
I ignored the frustration in his voice and kept on taking in the pale gray painted room, taking in how organized and clean it all was. That didn’t surprise me. Ivan was meticulous about everything. His clothes, his hair, his technique, his car. Of course he wouldn’t have a mess.
I couldn’t say anything. I was almost a clean freak. Almost. I was definitely a time freak.
“Jasmine, tell me what’s wrong.”
I kept my eyes glued on his rows of costumes, kicking myself mentally in the ass for not checking to make sure Coach Lee or Galina hadn’t been around when I’d first showed up. I hadn’t even looked to see if their cars were in the lot. Rookie mistake.
“You can tell me anything. You know I know what this life is like,” he murmured the words I hadn’t expected from him. Words that cleaved deep into my gut.
Because he was right. If anyone did know, it was him. Of course he would. He might even know better than I did since he’d been doing it for longer.
Except, he’d done what he wanted to do, and kept on doing what he wanted to do.
From Lukov with Love Page 24