The man who had not once said a kind word to me in over ten years. That’s how I knew him. As the ass who I’d seen daily for years and had only ever bickered to me over the dumbest shit from time to time. The person I couldn’t have a conversation with without it ending in one of us insulting the other.
Yeah… I didn’t get why he was at the Lukov Complex barely a week after he’d won his third world championship, days after the season had ended—when he should have been resting or vacationing. At least that was what he’d done every year for as long as I could remember.
Did I care he was around? Nah. If I really wanted to know what was happening, I could just ask Karina. I just didn’t. There was no need to.
Because it wasn’t like Ivan and I were going to compete against each other anytime soon… or ever again, if things continued the way they were going.
And something told me, even if I didn’t want to believe it—never, ever, ever—as I stood there in the same changing room I’d been using for more than half my life, that that was the case: that I might be done. After so long, after so many months of being by myself… my dream might be over.
And I had not a single fucking thing to show for it.
Chapter 2
“Did you hear the news?”
I gave the laces on my boot an extra tight squeeze in the changing room before looping the ends into a knot tight enough to survive the next hour. I didn’t need to turn around to know there were two teenage girls down the bench from me in front of their lockers. They were there every morning, usually farting around. They could have had more time on the ice if they didn’t talk, but whatever. I wasn’t the one paying for their ice time. If they’d had my mom for their own, she would’ve gotten them out of that standing-around habit real quick.
“My mom told me last night,” the taller of the two said as she got to her feet.
I stood up and kept my attention forward, rolling back my shoulders even though I’d already spent an hour warming up and stretching. Maybe I wasn’t skating six or seven hours a day like I used to—when stretching for at least an hour was absolutely necessary—but old habits died hard. And suffering for days or weeks from a pulled muscle wasn’t worth the hour I’d save from skipping my warm-up.
“She said she overheard someone say that they think he’s retiring because he’s had so many problems with his partners.”
Now that caught my attention.
He. Retiring. Problems.
It had pretty much been a miracle that I’d graduated from high school on time, but even I knew who they had to be talking about. Ivan. Who the hell else? Other than a few younger boys, and the three years that Paul had spent training at the Lukov Ice and Sports Complex with me, there was no other “he” that anyone here would talk about. There were a couple of teenage boys, but none of them had the potential to go very far, if anybody gave a shit about my opinion. Not that they did.
“Maybe if he retires he’ll go into coaching,” one of the girls said. “I wouldn’t mind him yelling at me all day.”
I almost laughed. Ivan retiring? No way. There was no chance in hell he’d retire at twenty-nine, especially not while he was still killing it. Months ago, he’d won a US championship. And a month before that, he’d taken second place in the Major Prix final.
Why the hell was I even paying attention anyway?
I didn’t care what he did. His life was his business. We all had to quit sometime. And the less I had to look at his annoying face, the better.
Deciding that I didn’t need to be distracted starting the first of only two hours I had in the day to practice—especially not being distracted over Ivan of all people—I made my way out of the changing room, leaving the two teenagers in there to waste their own time gossiping. This early in the morning, there were six people on the ice, like usual. I didn’t come in as early as I had before—there wasn’t a point—but every face, I’d been seeing for years.
Some more than others.
Galina was already sitting on one of the bleachers outside the rink with her thermos of coffee that I knew from experience was so thick it looked and tasted like tar. With her favorite red scarf wound around her neck and ears, she had on a sweater I’d seen at least a hundred times in the past and what looked like a shawl on top of it. I’d swear she’d started adding an item of clothing to what she wore every year. When she had first plucked me out of lessons almost fourteen years ago, she had been fine in just a long sleeved shirt and a shawl, now she probably would have frozen to death.
Fourteen years was longer than some of these girls had been alive.
“Good morning,” I said in the choppy Russian I’d picked up from her over the years.
“Hello, yozik,” she greeted me, her eyes darting toward the ice for a brief moment before returning to me with a face that was the same as it had been when I’d been twelve, all weathered and fierce, like her skin was made of bulletproof material. “Your weekend, it was good?”
I nodded, briefly reminiscing on how I’d gone to the zoo with my brother and niece and then gone to his condo afterward for pizza—two things I couldn’t remember ever doing in the past, the pizza part included. “Did you have a good one?” I asked the woman who taught me so many things I could never give her credit for.
The dimples she rarely showed came out. She had a face I knew so well I could describe it to a sketch artist perfectly if she ever came missing. Round, thin eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, a thin mouth, a scar on her chin from taking a partner’s blade to the face back in her competing days, another scar at her temple from smacking her head on the ice. Not that she would ever go missing. Any kidnapper would probably release her within an hour. “I saw my grandchild.”
I thought about the dates for a second before it clicked. “It was his birthday, right?”
She nodded, her gaze moving toward the rink again in the direction of what I knew was the figure skater she’d been working with since I’d left her to start skating pairs four years ago. Well, I hadn’t wanted to leave her but… it didn’t matter. It didn’t make me jealous anymore to think of how quickly she’d replaced me. But sometimes, especially lately, it bothered me. Just a little. Just enough.
I’d never let her know that. “Did you finally buy him skates?” I asked.
My old coach tipped her head to the side and shrugged a shoulder, the gray eyes, which had stared me down countless times, still settled on the ice. “Yes. Used skates and video game. I waited. He’s almost same age you were. Little later, but still good.”
She’d finally done it. I remembered when he’d been born—before we’d split—and how we’d talked about him figure skating when he was old enough. It had only been a matter of time. We both knew that. Her own children hadn’t made it out of the junior level, but it hadn’t mattered.
But thinking about him, her grandson, just starting made me feel… almost homesick, remembering how much fun figure skating had been back then. Back before the bone-crushing pressure, the drama, and the fucking critics. Back before I’d learned the shitty taste of disappointment. Figure skating had always made me feel invincible. But more than anything, back then, it had made me feel amazing. I hadn’t known it was possible to feel like you could fly. To be so strong. To be so beautiful. To be good at something. Especially something that I cared about. Because I hadn’t known that contorting body parts and twisting and turning them into shapes that shouldn’t have been possible could be so impressive. It had made me feel special to go as fast as I could around the oval shape, that I would have no idea until years later, would change my life.
Galina’s chuckle snapped me out of my funk. At least for a moment.
“One day, you coach him,” she offered with a snort, like she was imagining me treating him the way she had treated me, and it made her laugh.