Maybe I weighed more than Ivan’s last partner.
“Let me see where you’re putting your hands, Ivan,” Coach Lee called out. “Then push up as slow as you can do it, so I can see Jasmine’s movement too.”
Nodding, I made myself look up at Ivan after I got into position directly in front of him. In his fitted and tapered gray sweatpants and a T-shirt so white it might have been brand new, his hair was combed and parted in that perfect way it always was, he looked more like he was about to do a modeling shoot for sweatpants than to actually work out.
With his chin to his throat, he looked down at me with those almost clear gray-blue eyes and nodded at me like “let’s do it.” We hadn’t said anything to each other so far. We hadn’t even mouthed anything either.
Yet.
I dropped my chin to my throat too, to tell him “let’s do it.” So we did. His hands went into position in a place that I hadn’t let very many guys touch me, and we went into it.
I knew the second he had me at about his head level that something was wrong, and I needed to figure out what it was.
“What is it?” Coach Lee asked, like she read my mind.
“His palm is weird,” I told her immediately, trying not to squirm too much before I ended up on the floor again.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Ivan claimed from under me, sounding just as insulted as I figured he would.
I rolled my eyes. I had promised I wouldn’t talk shit, that didn’t mean I couldn’t roll my eyes, especially not when he couldn’t see me.
“I don’t know what it is. I think his hands are bigger—” I started to tell Coach Lee before the man under me made a snickering sound that had me rolling my eyes again. “It feels strange.” The lift went as high as it could possibly go, and I was in the same position I’d been in when he’d let me fall. I sucked in my stomach and grit my teeth, tensing my biceps as I tried to move the weight around a little on my palms and fingers. I could do this.
“I know what I’m doing,” came the idiot under me.
“I’ll get used to it,” I told Coach Lee, pretending like I didn’t hear Ivan.
“Put her down and do it again,” the other woman said.
And Ivan did, lowering me to the ground a lot faster and not as carefully as he could have. Fucker. I glared up at him, but he was too busy looking at Coach Lee to notice.
We did it again.
Again and again and again.
That was all we did for the next three hours, the entrance into the lift one time after another and after another, until it stopped feeling so different… and my arms—and Ivan’s—were shaking with exhaustion. My shoulders were sore, and I couldn’t imagine what his had to feel like. But neither one of us complained or asked for a break.
By the time four o’clock rolled around, ab muscles I’d forgotten I had were exhausted, and I was 90 percent sure I’d have a giant bruise on my stomach the next day.
“One more time and we’ll call it a day,” Coach said from the spot she’d taken sitting cross-legged on the mat a few feet away from the circle of space Ivan and I had been working in. We hadn’t even gotten to the point where he was walking with me over his head yet; we were still just doing the same lift.
I didn’t look up as I took a step back before leaning forward at the same time Ivan’s hands went into position. And he raised me, a little more swiftly even though I knew he had to be tired, a little easier and consistent. It lasted all of twenty seconds before I was back on my feet, biting back a grimace at the ache coming from my abs. I was going to need to apply the arnica ointment in my bag the second after I showered so I wouldn’t be dying tomorrow.
“Ice your stomach tonight, Jasmine. We can’t afford you being in pain,” Coach Lee called out almost immediately after I landed on both feet. I looked at her and gave a nod. “Good work today.”
Was it? Part of me thought it would have gone better, or at least faster, but it wasn’t like I had anything or anyone else to compare to. I wasn’t going to let myself get overwhelmed. One step at a time. I knew that. One small step at a time, to build another step and another until we had an entire staircase.
“Rest, ice what you need to ice, and I’ll see you both tomorrow,” the other woman called out. I already knew from experience that she had her younger figure skaters she usually focused on once Ivan’s season was done. I watched her as she turned around and then was gone.
Okay.
I didn’t want to stand around talking either.
Raising my eyebrows to myself, I headed toward where I’d kicked off my shoes and socks. The silence in the huge room was weird; it was one of a couple of different practice spaces set up at the LC that any skater was free to use. Bending at the waist, I grabbed both socks and slipped each one on, noticing I had a chip in my hot pink nail polish on my big toe. Maybe tonight I could redo them if bending over didn’t make me tear up. The color never lasted longer than a couple of days at a time, and they especially wouldn’t with this new training schedule, but I liked having them painted. I liked getting pedicures more than doing them myself, but that wasn’t going to be happening again.
At least not for a year.
I’d just straightened to slip my feet into my shoes when I heard a deep sigh from behind.
I pretended like I didn’t hear him.
But I couldn’t pretend not to hear him when he said in that voice that was somewhere between deep and baritone, “We need to work on your trusting me if you want me to help you find another partner when this is over next year.”
And… I paused with my hands filled with shoelaces and glanced over my shoulder to find Ivan standing where he’d been the last time I’d seen him: barefoot on the middle of the mats; except this time, his hands were on his hips and his attention was focused on me. “What?” I asked, frowning.
The muscle along Ivan’s jawbone twitched. “We. Need. To. Work. On. You. Trusting. Me. If. You. Want. Me. To. Help. You. Find. Another. Partner,” the smart-ass repeated himself.
I blinked, and then if my eye started twitching, it wasn’t intentional. Lee was gone, wasn’t she? We had only talked about watching our words during practice. Right? “I. Know. How. To. Listen. The. First. Time,” I replied, taking my time just like he had. “I. Want. To. Know. What. You. Mean. By. That.”
“I. Mean. You. Need. To. Trust. Me. Or. This. Will. Never. Work.”
This son of a bitch. Calm down, Jasmine. Talk to him normally. Be the better person.
But I couldn’t. “Are you threatening me?”
It was his turn to blink. His turn for his eyebrows to go up. His turn to shrug a shoulder.
“It’s been a day and you’re already threatening not to help me?” I asked him, taking my time with each word.
“All I’m saying is that this isn’t going to go well unless you trust me, and even you know that,” he said.
My eye was twitching, and I swear to God my fingers ached with the need to pull on someone’s hair. “You dropped me.”
“Once, and it’s not going to be the last time. You know that,” was his excuse.
I blinked at him. I did know that. I didn’t expect anything different.
But…
It was still him that had let me fall.
Ivan blinked. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” Yeah, I didn’t exactly believe him, and he must have expected that because he shook his head, those slim nostrils on that perfectly straight nose flared, and he repeated himself. “I didn’t.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not going to risk hurting you,” he tried to say before his cheek went tight. “Not while you’re my partner.”
“That’s real reassuring.”
His cheek twitched.
“I trust you enough,” I said, liar, liar, liar tickling at the base of my throat. “I’m just not used to the way you hold, that’s all.” And it was hard to trust someone I’d called a shitface for years, but….