“You warned me, but I didn’t believe you,” he went on, some part of his face still pressed against the top of my head.
“I told you,” I said, the miserable feeling inside of me growing by the second. “I told you. I didn’t even want to come. I knew it was going to happen, but I’m stupid, and I hoped maybe this time would be different. Maybe I could shut up and he could pretend I wasn’t there, like he always used to. Maybe this time he wouldn’t criticize me and tell me all the different things I could be doing with my life, but no. It’s my fault. I’m a fucking idiot. I don’t even know why I still bother. I’m not going to be an engineer like Sebastian. I’m not going to use my GI bill to work in marketing. I’m not going to be a project manager like Tali, or even just be Ruby. I’m never going to live up to my brothers or my sisters. I never have—”
My voice broke. Totally just snapped in half.
And that was when the first wave of tears hit my eyes, and I gasped to keep them inside of me. To fucking keep them in because I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to fucking do it, especially not over my dad’s comments.
But your body doesn’t always listen to what you tell it. I was well aware of that. But it still felt like a betrayal when it didn’t hold in the tears I was trying to keep a rein on.
And Ivan’s arms tightened even more, pulling me in the millimeter left until we were plastered together from thighs to hips to chest.
“I was a mistake, you know? My parents had already been on the rocks, and then my mom got pregnant and my dad stuck around for another couple of years, hoping things would get better, but they didn’t. And I wasn’t enough for him to stick around, so he left. He just fucking left and came back once a year, and my brothers and sisters loved him, and he loved them, and—”
“You are not a fucking mistake, Jasmine,” Ivan’s voice shook into my ear and my shoulders went so tight, I started trembling. Me. Trembling.
And I cried. Because my dad had left when I was three, and instead of watching me grow up, instead of being there to try and teach me how to ride a bike like he’d taught all of my brothers and sisters, it had been my mom who had.
“Your parents splitting up had nothing to do with you, and your dad leaving is on him. It wasn’t up to you to keep them together,” he continued on, anger hanging onto the softness like a shield.
And I just kept on crying.
His arms were steel around me, his face and his mouth and his whole head over mine and to the side like he could block me and protect me.
“You’re enough. You will always be enough. Hear me?”
But I kept on crying into him, his button-down shirt getting wet beneath my face, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help it. I cried like I hadn’t cried… ever.
Because there were a million things wrong with me, and the one thing that wasn’t, was one of the biggest things that disappointed my dad… and everyone else I loved.
Ivan cursed. He hugged me tighter. He cursed some more.
“Jasmine,” he said. “Jasmine, stop. You’re trembling,” he let me know, as if I couldn’t feel it for myself. “You said once in an interview that you skated because it made you feel special. But you’ll always be special. Figure skating or not. Medals or not. Your family loves you. Galina loves you. You think Galina wastes her love on people who don’t deserve it? Lee admires you so much she texts me in her car to tell me how good she thinks you are. You think she feels that way about just anybody? You have more heart in you than anybody I’ve ever met. Your dad loves you too in his own fucked-up way.”
His head dipped down to my ear and he whispered, “And when we win a fucking gold medal, he’s going to be watching you, thinking he couldn’t be prouder of you. He’s going to walk around telling everyone his daughter won a gold medal, and you’re going to know you did it without him. That you did it when so many people didn’t believe in you, even though those people don’t matter. The ones that matter are the ones who have always known what you’re capable of.” He swallowed so loud I heard it. “I believe in you. In us. Regardless of what happens, you will always be the best partner I’ve ever had. You’ll always be the hardest working person I’ve ever known. There will only ever be you.”
I sobbed into him. These fucking tears just purging themselves from me. His affection, his words, his belief were just… too much. They were too everything.
And I was so greedy, I needed them. I needed them like I needed to breath.
“I’d give you every ribbon, trophy, medal, anything at my house or at the LC if it meant something,” he told me. “I’ll give you anything you want if you stop crying.”
But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. Not for every medal in the world could I stop. Not for any and every figure skating honor I’d been dreaming about for half my life, could I have stopped.
I just kept on crying. For my dad. For my mom. For my siblings. For myself.
For not feeling good enough. For not feeling enough. For doing what I wanted to do despite all the noes and the eye rolls and all the things I’d had to give up along the way. All the things I’d lost that I might someday regret more than I already did.
But mostly, I cried because while I didn’t care what most people thought of me, I cared too much about the people whose opinion I did value.
Ivan held me and kept on hugging me the entire time I stood there, letting out things I didn’t even know I had in me. It might have been a couple of minutes, but considering I’d only cried two other times in the last ten years at least, it was probably more like half an hour that we stood outside the restaurant, ignoring the people going in and out. Watching us or not watching us, who the fuck knew.
But he didn’t go anywhere.
When the hiccups weren’t so bad, when I finally began to wind down, and I felt like I could breathe again, one of the forearms draped horizontally across my spine moved. The flat of Ivan’s hand went to the base of my spine and slid upward, making small circles there, one, two, three, four, five, before it made its trek back down and up.
I hated crying. But I didn’t realize I hated being alone more.
And I wasn’t going to overanalyze Ivan being the one bringing me comfort, being the one who understood me better than anyone else in that restaurant.
Slowly, and way more timidly than necessary when there was no sense of personal space between Ivan and me—when he’d seen more of me than any man and touched me more often than anyone else probably ever would, and hugged me more than anyone before him—I wrapped my own arms around his waist and hugged him back.
I didn’t tell him thank you. I figured he would take my hug for what it was. A thank you and a thank you and a bigger thank you that was so large and pure, my mouth couldn’t have done it any justice. It was always my mouth that got me into trouble, but actions couldn’t lie.
In the middle of making a circle with his palm across my shoulder blades, Ivan said—not asked—“You’re all right.”
I nodded against him, the tip of my nose touching the lean, powerful pectoral muscle in front of it. Because I was all right. Because he’d been right about all the things he’d said. And a lot of me knowing I was going to be okay was because he believed in me. Ivan. Someone. Finally.
I sucked in a strangled breath, feeling shitty but not totally pathetic anymore. Some part of my brain tried to tell my nervous system that I should feel embarrassed, but I couldn’t. Not even a little bit. I’d never thought my sister was weak because she cried over the most random shit.
My dad had hurt me.
And baby and adult Jasmine had never known what to do with that.
“You want to leave or you want to go back inside?” he whispered, still rubbing my back.