I gave him a short nod. I zoned out the crowd cheering as the scores were called. Then we made our way toward the opening into the ice. The only person I was competing against that night was… myself. The person I had been with Paul. As long as I could do better than that version of me had… I couldn’t ask for anything more.
It felt like a distant memory I could look back on later, me taking my skate guards off and handing them to Coach Lee before I got on the ice and waited alongside the wall as Ivan came on after me, doing the same. Coach Lee was right though, she wasn’t much for pep talks or last-minute suggestions other than the ones she had just told us and the ones she had beat into us in past practices.
It honestly felt surreal standing out on the ice that night, listening to people cheering at Ivan and chanting his name like we were at a damn basketball game or something.
Ivan! Ivan! Ivan!
Lukov! Lukov! Lukov!
I’d heard it and witnessed it before from a distance—from the sidelines or the audience—but never while I was on the ice beside the man that these people were going fucking nuts for.
But as I stood there and listened, I could hear a small, tiny, itsy-bitsy hum in the crowd.
Jasmine! Jasmine! Jasmine!
And if it sounded exactly like a mash of all of my family members’ voices… it was more than enough for me.
It was so much more than I deserved, but that familiar feeling I’d gotten earlier when Ivan had given me my bracelet and just minutes ago when Coach Lee had told me to be myself, it felt like home. It felt right. It felt an awful fucking lot like love.
Fingers squeezed the back of my neck, and I glanced up to see Ivan grinning down at me.
And I smiled back at him.
We turned around at the same time to face the center of the ice, and just like we had done without a single prompt or word every time before during practice, Ivan held out his hand to the side, between us, watching me. And I looked at him and put my hand in his. And we skated out toward the middle together, holding each other’s hands as the crowd’s chants turned into screams.
“Whatever happens, right?” I asked him as we skated to our starting point and stopped there.
Ivan didn’t let go of my hand as he nodded and took a step back to get into place. Whatever happens, he mouthed to me. But then his lips kept forming words. Three words exactly. I love you.
If I’d had anything other than skates on, I would have tripped or fallen over or some shit like that.
I would have busted my goddamn ass and probably split my chin open.
But luckily, I was in the one thing I had more confidence in than tennis shoes or flip-flops. But that didn’t stop me from having my entire body go tense as I stood there, knowing I needed to get into position but being too fucking dumbstruck to do anything other than hiss, What? Thinking I hadn’t read his lips right.
Ivan stopped in front of me, a small smile on his face as he placed all of his arms and legs and fingers where they needed to be. I love you, he repeated like it was something he’d said a thousand times in the past. Like we weren’t on the ice about to start our first short program in front of an audience that included more people than the other amateur figure skaters at the LC.
I blinked at him, trying to get my hands into position but not able to think about anything else besides the fucking I love you that had just come out of his lips. “Ivan,” I started to say, forgetting that he couldn’t hear me, swallowing hard and looking into his eyes as my hands and knees got into the place we had practiced so many times, getting into position because my mouth had stopped working but my brain hadn’t.
The smile that came over his face was slow… and sweet.
And alarming.
“You suck, Meatball,” he called out a second before I knew the music was about to start. But I love you, his lips formed.
My heart thumped. Thumped. Then thumped some more.
My world didn’t tilt, my legs didn’t give out from under me, but that feeling that had only intensified throughout the day, grew and grew and grew until it seemed to cover every inch of me, inside and out.
Ivan loved me.
Ivan fucking loved me.
And he didn’t care if we won or lost.
And all I could do was get mad that he’d cut me off when I’d been about to tell him the same thing, and now he’d won.
“You couldn’t have chosen a better time to say something?” I asked loudly, trying so hard not to move my lips.
I swore to God, this idiot puckered his lips and blew me a kiss so small there was no way that any of the cameras around the building could have caught it. Nope, he slipped out.
And then the music started.
He was so fucking lucky I could do our short program without thinking, because if we hadn’t done it a thousand and a half times together, and I hadn’t done it another five hundred times by myself, I would have screwed it up big-time.
And luckily for him, he was all business once the music started, and only sent me a wink and a smile once each during the entire two-minutes and forty seconds.
By some miracle, I managed to focus on what we had to do instead of the words that had come out of nowhere… at least until the second we hit our final poses and the music ended.
And then I remembered.
I remembered his I love you, and it pissed me off all over again.
Because. What. The. Fuck?
“You had to tell me right before we started?” I hissed, panting and out of breath.
His chest was puffing in and out as he gasped, “Uh-huh.”
Uh-huh.
Just uh-huh.
“You—”
Before I could stop him, before I could realize what the hell he was doing, as we stood there, both panting, our faces inches apart, both high off adrenaline and power and something that I was 99 percent certain was love, he smiled that soft, slow smile.
He leaned forward, quick as lightning, and pecked me on the nose.
Ivan Lukov kissed me on the tip of my nose at the end of our short program.
And the fact that some of the audience made a soft coo, an “aww” that would have made me cringe under most circumstances, didn’t even register to me.
It didn’t register to me because I was too focused on the fact that he’d even done it to begin with. Let alone on television. Let alone three minutes after he told me he loved me.
“What is wrong with you?” I hissed a second before stepping out of our finishing poses to go into a bow.
He didn’t let my tone stop him from flashing me that slow, slick grin as he got into place at my side. “You.”
“Bitch,” I whispered just as I bowed. I’d never liked curtsies. They felt too fake.
“Loser,” he said while we rolled up.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, barely able to get the sentence out as we turned to the other side of the arena to do the same.
His hand slipped into mine, linking our fingers together as we bowed in that direction next. “Because I wanted to, Meatball.” He squeezed my hand as we stood straight up and waved to the people throwing stuffed animals and flowers out onto the ice. I’d never seen so many for me before. Never. “Smile. We did it,” he said, still breathing hard.
I smiled, but because I wanted to.
“Stop looking at me like you want to kill me. We can talk about this later. Don’t be awkward,” he murmured, pulling my hand once we were standing straight up again. “We both know you love me.”
I wanted to deny it. I really did. Mostly because I hated the fact that he sounded so smug.
But we both knew I’d be lying.
Maybe I’d never said the words, but he knew. Like he’d known about my learning disability but never said anything. Like he knew chocolate was my weakness and fed it to me when I needed it most.
It was my turn to pull at his hand as I tried to lead him off the ice, whispering, angrily, “Don’t sound so smug about it.”
“Too bad,” he whispered.
Squirt: JASMINE, YOU WERE AMAZING
Squirt: Omg! Omg! Omg!
Squirt: You looked like a queen out there.
Squirt: You flew!
Squirt: You were a totally different skater.
Squirt: OMG.
Squirt: I cried.
Squirt: I wish I could have been there.
Squirt: I’m going to nationals. Aaron can stay with the kids. I’m not missing it.