Ivan blinked at me, and I blinked right back.
One of those big, strong hands that could hold my hundred-plus pound ass all by itself over his head drifted to the back of his neck. His jaw twitched again. His breathing slowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “What did I do that you don’t want to do it with me?” he asked slowly. “You talk shit right back. I thought we agreed to be friends.” Those eyes drifted across my face, which was covered in makeup that had taken the artist almost an hour to apply. “We had dinner together,” he reminded me, as if I’d forgotten he’d spent three hours in my mom’s kitchen, playing Jenga with my family, eating lasagna, gobbling down the smallest sliver of chocolate cake while I’d eaten three times the amount because why the hell not.
He’d gotten me a paper towel—maybe because he genuinely thought I couldn’t reach across the table, maybe not. He’d driven me home. He’d asked me to be his friend, even though the more I thought about it, the more I figured he wasn’t so familiar with what the hell that meant.
Gentle. Be better.
So, I tried. “Ivan, I have to look at you every day. Isn’t that reason enough to not want to be naked in front of you?” I asked, keeping my voice as far away from aggressive as possible as I tried to be an adult.
He didn’t hesitate. “I don’t care if you see me naked.”
Shit.
Okay. I was going to have to go at this more directly. “Well, I don’t care if the whole world sees me naked either, but I don’t want you to see it, all right? Can you respect that?”
“But why?” he asked, honestly sounding confused.
Exasperation, or maybe frustration, hit me hard. Real hard. The last thing I’d expected was for him to want an explanation. “Because. I already told you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I blinked. “Yes, I did.”
“No. You. Didn’t.”
“Yes. I. Did.”
“No. I want you to tell me. What did I do over the last week to make you not want to do this anymore?”
He wasn’t going to let this go. I tried not to be a dick. But he wanted an explanation, so I gave it to him. “Ivan, do you think I want you to tease me about skipping puberty after you’ve seen my tits? Because I don’t. Not even a little bit, all right? Is that what you want to hear? That I don’t want you looking at me and judging me when I have to see your face all the time? I like myself just fine. I don’t want to listen to you make fun of me, of things I can’t change. I have little tits. Okay. We both know that. What if you think my nipples are too big, or you think they’re too small, or you’ll laugh at my stretch marks, or tell me you get where all my weight comes from! My thighs!”
“What?”
I shrugged at him again, my stomach giving this uncomfortable roll as I told him more of the tiny truth I was sharing. “I like my body, all right? I don’t want you to make me not. I know I’m not….” I shook my head, not finishing the sentence. “I’m good with who I am and what I look like, and I’ll trim down a little more before the season starts.”
I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t noticed it gradually happening, or if it happened in the blink of an eye, but at some point, his face had gone pale, and in the next blink, he was off the ice, going around the barrier and standing two feet away from me, looking totally and completely stricken, like I’d stabbed him. “Jasmine,” he said my name slowly and in almost a hiss, for one of the rare times he didn’t call me Meatball. “Come on.”
I just looked at him. “No come on, Ivan. I hate the fact that I care what you think, okay? You don’t need to rub it in. I’m trying… to be friends with you,” I tried to make a joke, but it didn’t work when nothing about him changed even a little bit.
If anything, Ivan looked surprised. “Jasmine,” he repeated my name, his voice low and almost hoarse.
“I’m not doing it,” it was my turn to repeat. “Sorry. Nothing you say or do will get me to change my mind, so get out there, tiger, and get your part over with, so I can do mine. I’m sure everything will look fine, and if it doesn’t… sorry not sorry.” If I could tell him the other half of the truth, he would understand. I knew it.
But I didn’t.
Ivan though, didn’t get over there. He didn’t move. Didn’t look away. Ivan just stared down at me, his breathing even, the smooth skin between his pecs clearly visible in the V-shape of the robe he had on. Those blue eyes bounced all over my face, and I hated it. I hated the fact that I’d admitted I wasn’t about to strip down because of him, because I didn’t want to hear teasing later on about the shape of my barely B-cups or the shape and size of my ass or the million other things he could nitpick. Because there were a lot of them. I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t my mom or Tali or Ruby.
“Meatball,” he said, still speaking slowly, still not moving. He struggled with a swallow. Struggled with his words, if the strange expression on his face said anything. “I’m just fucking with you when I make fun of you,” he claimed, watching me. “You know that, don’t you?”
I glanced away and nodded, barely suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, I know you’re fucking with me. I can handle it. Sometimes….” God, it pained me to tell him this, but fuck it. “Sometimes, you almost make me laugh. But I don’t want to do this with you naked. It feels too personal now. We’re too… close.”
I heard more than saw him exhale. But what I felt was him taking another step closer to me. “The only reason I give you so much shit is because you were a pain in the ass, and then you were the only one who dished it back to me. You know you’re beautiful.”
I snickered and rolled my eyes that time, because come the fuck on. Really? Now I knew he was trying too hard. Please. God. “If you think flattering me is going to convince me to do this, you don’t know me at all, Lukov.”
“Not Lukov. Ivan,” he replied easily, his tone so gentle, it made me uncomfortable, because that wasn’t what I wanted from him. Much less what I expected from him. “I’m sure you’re perfect under there.”
I snorted that time, because goddamn, he was laying the bullshit on thick to convince me. Jesus.
But he kept going. “I’m sure there’s nothing under your robe that wouldn’t give every man here a hard-on. Some of the women too, I bet.”
I side-eyed him using the h-word and shook myself out of it. He was full of shit. I knew that. He knew that. Even Coach Lee would have known that if she could hear him now. Who the hell did he think he was talking to? Someone who hadn’t known him for over a decade and been the focus of his petty, asshole comments that entire time? Now he was just pissing me off. “Would you shut up? I don’t need to hear you saying this, all right?” I snapped.
His hand touched my wrist, and by some miracle, I didn’t jerk it out of his reach. “I’m not just saying all this,” he said in a tone so quiet, so… I don’t know, tender or shit, that it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t think anyone had ever spoken to me like that before. Not even James, the nicest guy in the world. Ivan kept going. “I’m just giving you shit when I tell you that you haven’t gone through puberty. Come on,” he insisted, still using that voice that I didn’t know what to do with. What to think of. “I didn’t think you were that sensitive.”
I blinked. “I’m not that sensitive.”
“Jasmine,” he breathed out, wrapping his fingers around my wrist tightly but not painfully. That dark head of hair and that flawless face that might have had makeup but might have not, dipped closer to me as he asked, “What the hell is going on with you right now?”
“Nothing,” I insisted.