The fuck? That’s what this was about? Paul and Mary?
Get the fuck out. I hadn’t thought about either of those two assholes in months. Not since he’d talked me into doing the photo shoot.
My scoff was so loud, it genuinely aggravated my throat. “Oh come on, that’s what you want me to promise you? You think I’m going to go out of my way to fight with him and risk getting in trouble?”
He blinked, and his hand gave mine a squeeze. “You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that you should save it up until after the competition, then go for it. We’ll kill them with our scores, and then you can give the knockout punch.”
I opened my mouth, and then I closed it.
Those gray-blue eyes lingered on my face even as his eyebrows went up, and he covered the top of my hand with his other one. “Is that a deal?”
I could only blink before I managed to get out, “What do you think?”
And his smile was just… ugh. “I think Lake Mirror across from the hotel is pretty convenient.”
“You’ll be my alibi?”
Ivan scrunched up his nose. “I know your sisters are here and all, but I thought you’d want me to help out. I’m stronger than they are. We wouldn’t have to leave a trail.”
What I wanted was him forever, but I’d take what I could get.
“Deal,” I said.
He grinned. “One more thing.”
Damn it.
“I want to know because you never told me, but what do you have against Mary McDonald?” he asked. “I want to know why we hate her.”
Why we hate her. Ivan. Fucking Ivan. All I could do was shrug so that I wouldn’t say anything else I had no business sharing. “When we were younger, before I was even in pairs, she used to talk shit about me behind my back. You can ask Karina. Mary didn’t know Karina was my friend, and she talked about my weight, made some really racist, asshole comments about me being half-Filipino, and she was just a bitch in general.”
Ivan blinked. “Did you say anything to her?” The question had just come out of his mouth when he snorted. “That’s a stupid question. Of course you did.”
I tugged on his hand. “You already know I did. I told her the next time she talked about me, I would open a can of whoop-ass on her.”
“Son of a bitch!” I hissed as I burned my scalp again trying to get my straightening iron as close to the roots as possible. Skate North America wasn’t the most televised event in the season, but…
It didn’t matter to me.
What did matter was getting my hair as straight as possible, even though it already was. Only, I couldn’t see or reach the back of my head well. We had three hours before the event even started, and we weren’t scheduled to skate until almost the end. But my makeup was on, so was the black long-sleeved lacy dress that Ruby had finished months ago, before I’d gotten injured.
Ivan had decided to go change in the men’s restroom because he didn’t want “any riots starting” if people saw him in his underwear.
The idiot.
And now I needed his help. He would help me straighten the rest of my hair. I knew he would.
But I was going to try and do as much as I could without hopefully burning myself for the sixth time. Turning back to one of the three illuminated mirrors in the room we were sharing with two of the teams we had worked out with at the same time the day before, I leaned into it and tried to angle my head as well as I could to catch a glimpse of what I was doing. I’d seen the other four people we were competing against—two teams that Ivan knew and had already said were nice—but they hadn’t even changed yet.
I’d done two chunks of hair when the door opened, but I didn’t think anything of it.
Until a voice I recognized spoke up.
And it wasn’t Ivan’s.
“Jasmine, I want to talk to you,” the semi-familiar voice requested as I turned to face him, instantly wondering where the hell Ivan was.
I’d made a promise to him.
I will not talk shit to Paul. I will not talk shit to Paul. I will not talk shit to Paul. He’d made me say it seven times total the day before when I’d sworn I’d seen him while we had been waiting for the van to pick us up following our practice session, because apparently, once you did something seven times you couldn’t forget it.
I had promised him I wouldn’t start anything or do anything. I was a lot of things, and half of them weren’t good, but Ivan was.
And I wouldn’t go back on my word. Especially not to him. Not after everything he had done for me.
But…
There was no way either one of us could have predicted that Paul would be dumb enough to try and come talk to me before our first skate—our short program. I had always thought I was the one who wasn’t as smart as other people, but apparently, this guy I had spent three years of my life teamed up with was the real fucking idiot.
Keeping my gaze on my own reflection in the mirror, I set my straightening iron down on the counter and made my hand into a fist.
“Jasmine, please,” the second man in my life to ever do shit to my heart kept going as I kept on looking at myself in the mirror.
I didn’t think I looked that different from back when I was nineteen. My face was a little slimmer. My hair was longer, and I was more muscular. But on the inside… well, on the inside, I was definitely different.
Because nineteen-year-old Jasmine would have already thrown her straightening iron at Paul and hoped it magically burned his balls through his costume.
“Jas, just… five minutes, please,” my old partner basically pleaded from wherever he was out of the way from the mirror’s reflection.
I fisted my hand tighter. Held my breath. Then I rolled my eyes because fuck him. Repeatedly. I hadn’t given Paul a single thought in so long, I had genuinely forgotten how much I hated his ass.
But I remembered real quick. Real fucking quick.
You promised Vanya, that calm part of my brain reminded me.
And easily, so easily, I got myself under control… and I exhaled.
“You’re just going to pretend I’m not here?” my ex asked, stepping so close behind me I could finally see him in the mirror. So close, I was pretty sure if I kicked out backward, I could easy-peasy kick him in the nuts.
You’d figure after three years together, he would know how dangerous of a position he was putting himself into.
Fucking idiot.
God, Ivan would know better.
Tall, slim, and brown-haired, he looked the exact same as he had almost two years ago, when he’d walked out of the LC and never came back.
Paul looked pale in the lights and the reflection. His hands were in front of him, and I could tell he was anxious.
Good.
“Look, all I want to do is talk.”
I didn’t mean to snort, but it happened just as I straightened. I was still so short, I had a clear view of me from the waist up. The front of the costume had a sweetheart-neckline in the center of my chest, the dark fabric covering everything important—no beads on mine or Ivan’s costumes because they got caught on everything—with lace overlapping everything else, but ending a few inches above my wrist so that the lace wouldn’t get in the way of my grip. I loved it. When Ruby had told me her idea for Dracula, I couldn’t have picked a better costume design. Ivan had agreed.
Paul’s dumbass took that sound for the opposite of what it was—an invitation—and kept on yapping his mouth. “After all the time we were together, you owe me, Jasmine.”
And, there it was. The three words he had no business using. The same three words that just like that had me seeing red and hoping Ivan would forgive me for breaking my word to him.