From Lukov with Love

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…