Ivan hummed thoughtfully, and I knew that never meant anything good. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him other than on Father’s Day when you said you weren’t going to call him. I figured….”
I glanced at my phone sitting on the floor and caught myself shaking my leg. Months ago, I would have changed the subject. But Ivan had grown into… he’d grown into someone I didn’t lie to. Not ever. Even knowing all that and accepting it, I still only told him a part of it. Telling him everything was too much. For me. I was happy. I didn’t want to ruin it. “We’re not close. He lives in California,” I explained.
“So? He’s a dick? Didn’t pay child support every month?” he asked bluntly.
I shook my head, prying more honesty out of myself and realizing it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected it to be. “No. He paid child support, came to visit a lot back in the day when Rubes, Seb, and Tali were still growing up. He still comes to visit once a year now. Calls on birthdays. Sends gift cards for Christmas….” While he spent it with his step-kids. But I didn’t say that. What was the point?
Something funny came over his face, but he didn’t say anything, and it only made me sigh. I could see him trying to figure out what my deal was. And he either got it out of me now, or he’d pester me over it for as long as it took to get it.
“He’s just not very supportive of me figure skating, that’s all.” I shrugged. “You can guess how that makes me feel. Anyway, he’s visiting and my family is doing a group dinner tonight with everyone, and I don’t want to go.”
He leaned forward and flicked me on the forehead. “Then don’t. Say we have to practice.”
I gave him a side-look but kept my hands to myself. “I used to do that to him every time he came to visit. For years.”
“So?”
“I’m not trying to do that anymore,” I repeated. “And I don’t like the idea of running away from seeing my dad just because I don’t want to hear him call me a disappointment.”
Ivan’s blink was slow. The tick that pulsed at his jaw, even slower, and he lowered his voice in a way that I hadn’t heard since the morning over two months ago when he had sat beside me as I deleted my personal Picturegram account after the rude comments and messages had kept coming. When he had asked to go with me to check on my PO Box from then on, I hadn’t even argued, but nothing must have come in because Ivan hadn’t brought up creepy letters since. “He’s called you that before?”
Shit.
“No, but some people are really good at sugarcoating what they really think.” I sighed again and rubbed at my forehead one more time. Should I go? Should I lie and stay home or go do something with Ivan instead? I knew what I really wanted to do. It wasn’t even a choice. But… fuck. “It’ll be fine. I’ve grown up. I can keep my mouth shut and not argue with him for two hours.”
At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.
Ivan nudged my arm with the one he hugged me with several times a week, usually for no reason at all, but always when we nailed something or just had a great workout. “I’m free tonight.”
I snorted. “You’re free every night.”
Because he was. Other than his family and me, the only other thing he spent his time on were his babies at home. He’d told me once that he’d been away so much growing up, that now he just liked being home as much as possible.
He nudged me again. “I can pinch you if you start to argue with him,” he offered.
I couldn’t help but give him a smile. “I’m sure you’d pinch me even if I didn’t argue with him.”
The smile that came over his features lit me up, and I bottled it up and set it aside for later, just like I always did. “You want me to clear my busy schedule with Lacey then?”
Oh, Lacey. The distrustful, grudge-holding, cute monster had only just barely started letting me pet her. But only when she wanted. And only for a second. And not on her head. “You don’t have to do that. I know you’d rather hang out with the crew at home.”
“Yeah, because it’s the only time people aren’t looking at me and talking about me,” he replied, the honesty in it catching me off guard. “But I don’t like you dreading going to see your dad more.” He gave me another one of those bright-ass smiles. “You know I’ll keep you in check.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “You can try.”
Ivan leaned back on his hands, his grin widening. “Meatball, you know I can. I’m not scared of you. You like my face too much to punch it.”
What an idiot. An idiot. And I only egged him on by snickering because I wasn’t about to laugh and make it that much worse. “One of these days, I’m going to shove my foot up your ass so you can keep that in check.”
He laughed, loud, grinning. “You can try.”
I rolled my eyes and pretended like I didn’t have a smirk on my face.
“Did you get your Anatomy issue already?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked. “It’s out?”
Ivan nodded. “Yesterday,” he replied, already reaching toward his bag and dragging it over. It only took him a moment to pull out a shiny black magazine with a familiar-looking football player on the cover and drop it on my lap. “Page 208.”
Flipping through the magazine and catching bits and pieces of thighs, biceps and sculpted backs, I found the page and stared at the spread. I had thought for sure they would use one of the shots the photographer had taken of us doing a star lift, a move where Ivan had me over his head with his hand on my hip, while I looked like I was upside down in a split position. The photographer had shown it to us when we had wrapped up for the day.
But the magazine hadn’t chosen that image.
Instead, it was the most perfect shot of us doing a death spiral that was in the issue. Well, a modified death spiral because instead of having my arm at my side, mostly parallel to the ice, I had it over my tits, covering the two pieces I wasn’t about to show: my nipples. With Ivan in a pivot position, which basically looked like he was sitting in an imaginary chair with one leg slightly back so that his toe was anchored in the ice, one of his hands was holding one of my hands. In motion, he would have been spinning me around in a circle, with my body parallel to the ice, my head level with my knee, so I was inches from grazing the ice.
It was one of my favorite elements period.
But looking at us on the magazine… it was something else.
The lines of muscle at Ivan’s thighs and calves were unbelievable. The arm holding mine was long and strong, his visible shoulder and neck were graceful as hell. Ivan looked amazing. A perfect physical example of all the things that made up figure skating: elegant, powerful, and limber.
And I looked pretty fucking good too. Jojo wouldn’t be crying too much. The angle the picture was taken at mostly showed a whole lot of thigh, the profile of one butt cheek, and skin at my hips, some abs, ribs, and flesh all the way up to the hand holding Ivan’s.
It was a work of art. A work of art that would be worth any shit I might get in the mail that Ivan was now screening for me. It was beautiful.
I was going to need to get a copy and frame it.
“What do you think?” the man beside me asked.
I was looking at the ridge of muscles that wrapped from his ribs around to his back as I answered, “It came out all right.”
I couldn’t even be surprised when he elbowed me in response.
I had made a horrible mistake.
A terrible, terrible mistake.
I should have stayed home. I should have gone to Ivan’s. I should have stayed at the LC.
I should have done anything other than come to dinner with my family to see my dad.
Because it was easy to forget that love was complicated. That someone could love you and want the best for you, and at the same time, break you in half. There was such a thing as loving someone the wrong way. It was possible to love someone too much. Too forcefully.
And with me, my dad had mastered that shit.
I’d sat all the way on the other side of the table, trying my best not to bring any attention to myself after I’d given my dad his first hug in over a year. It had been awkward, for me at least. All of my siblings and even my mom had given him one, so I had too.
My goal had been to shut up as much as possible to prevent myself from saying anything that could trigger the f-word that came up way too often when we were around each other.
But it had come up, like it always did, no matter how much I didn’t want it to.
And I had Ruby to thank for it.
Ruby who brought up my awesome new partner—who had taken a seat beside me and on the other side of Benny—and how we had several competitions coming up over the next seven months.
And just like that, without congratulating me on teaming up with the man he probably didn’t know was a gold medalist, a world champion, who had fan pages and even an unauthorized biography written about him, my dad had just jumped right in to a conversation that had never, ever ended well between us.
He had leaned over the table, a good-looking man with skin and hair color the exact shade as mine, and asked with a condescending smile, “I’m happy for you, Jasmine, but what I want to know is, what are you going to do afterward?”