From Lukov with Love Page 4

  I hated feeling so insecure.

  I really hated being scared that the answer I was looking for was one I probably would have sold my soul for.

  But my mom had told me once that regret was worse than fear. I hadn’t understood it then, but I did now.

  It was with that thought that I made myself ask the question that a big part of me didn’t want to know the answer to, just in case it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Partner for what?” I asked slowly to be sure, trying to rack my brain for what the hell I could partner up with him for in this screwed-up dream I was having that seemed to be real. Fucking Pictionary?

  The man I’d watched grow up from a distance that was sometimes too close, rolled those ice blue eyes. And just like every other time he rolled his eyes, I narrowed mine in return.

  “To skate pairs,” he answered like “duh.” Like he was asking to get smacked. “What did you think? For square dancing?”

  I blinked.

  “Vanya!” Coach Lee hissed, and out of the corner of my eye, I might have seen her slap her palm across her forehead.

  But I wasn’t sure because I was too busy staring at the smart-ass in the seat and telling myself, Don’t do it, Jasmine. Be better. Shut your mouth…

  But then a smaller voice I knew really well whispered, At least until you figure out what they really want from you. Because this couldn’t be it. Not really.

  “What?” Ivan asked, still looking right at me, the only change to his nearly blank face being the hint of a baby smirk on his mouth.

  “We talked about this,” his coach said, shaking her head, and if I’d turned to look at her, I would have seen I wasn’t the only one glaring. I was too busy telling myself to be a better person though.

  But that comment snapped me out of it, and I turned my attention to the other woman and kept my narrowed gaze on her. “What did you talk about?” I asked slowly. I could take whatever she said. Good or bad. I had survived all kinds of things being said to me, I reminded myself. And when my stomach didn’t turn or clench at the reminder of those worse things, I felt better.

  Her gaze flicked to mine before she shot the idiot in the chair a frustrated look. “He wasn’t supposed to run his mouth until I talked to you about everything.”

  I drew out the one word. “Why?”

  The other woman let out a long breath in pure exasperation—I was familiar with that sound—and her eyes went back to the man on the chair as she answered, “Because we’re trying to get you to join the team, not remind you why you wouldn’t want to.”

  I blinked. Again.

  And then I couldn’t help but twist my head to smirk at the ass in the office chair. His own baby smirk hadn’t gone anywhere and didn’t go anywhere even as he took in me making a face at him.

  Dumbass, I mouthed before I could stop myself and remember to be better.

  Meatball, he mouthed back.

  That wiped the smirk off my face real quick, just like it always did.

  “All right,” Coach Lee said with a short huff of a laugh that wasn’t funny at all as I stood there, eyes locked on the demon in the chair, mad at myself for letting him get to me. “Let’s back up here a moment. Jasmine, please ignore you-know-who over there. He wasn’t supposed to open his mouth and ruin this important conversation he knew we were having.”

  It took everything in me to slide my gaze back to the other woman instead of focusing on the person to my left.

  Coach Lee gave me a smile I might have called desperate on anyone else. She kept right on going. “Ivan and I would like for you to be his new partner.” Her eyebrows went up, that weird smile I didn’t trust stayed on her face. “If you’re interested.”

  Ivan and I would like for you to be his new partner.

  If you’re interested.

  They—these two people that looked and sounded like Coach Lee and Ivan—wanted me to be his new partner?

  Me.

  This was a fucking joke, wasn’t it?

  For one split second, I thought Karina had something to do with this, but then I decided no way. It had been over a month since the last time we’d spoken. And she knew me too well to try and do something like this. Especially not with this Lukov of all people.

  But this was a joke… right? Ivan and me? Me and Ivan? Just a month ago, he had asked me if I was ever going to go through puberty. And in reply, I had told him I’d go through it when his balls decided to drop.

  All because we had both tried to get on the ice at the same time. She had been there. Coach Lee had overheard us. I knew it.

  “I don’t understand,” I told both of them, slowly, totally confused, a little annoyed, and not sure who the hell I should be looking at, or what the hell I should even be doing, because this didn’t make any sense. Not even a little bit.

  I didn’t miss how the two people in the room gave each other a look I couldn’t pick apart before Coach Lee asked, her expression almost tight, “What is it you don’t understand?”

  That there were a thousand other people they could go to, most of them younger than me, which in this sport was what everyone was looking for. There was no logical reason to ask me… other than the fact I was better than any of those other girls. At least technically, and by technically I meant jumps and spins, the two things I did best. But sometimes being able to jump the highest and spin the fastest wasn’t enough. Program components scores—skating skills, transitions, performance and execution, choreography and interpretation—were just as important to a total score.

  And I had never done so well at those things. People had blamed my choreographer. My coaches for choosing bad music. Me for “not having a soul” and not being “artistic enough” and “not having any feel.” My ex and I for not having that “oneness” factor. Me for not trusting him enough. And maybe all of those things had been a huge part of why I hadn’t done well.

  That and me choking.

  So.

  I swallowed down the bitterness—at least for now—and took my time glancing at both of these people that I knew but didn’t. “You want me to try out to be his”—I hooked my thumb in the direction of where Ivan sat to make sure we were definitely on the same page—“partner?” I blinked again and sucked in a breath through my nose to calm my blood pressure. “Me?”

  The other woman nodded. No hesitation. No side glances. Just a clean, crisp nod.

  “Why?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question, but what the hell was I going to do? Act like this was nothing?

  Ivan snorted as he shifted in the chair he was sitting in, drawing his extended legs in until they were flat on the carpeted floor. One of his knees jiggled. “You want an explanation?”

  Don’t flip him off. Don’t flip him off. Don’t do it, Jasmine.

  I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.

  Don’t do it.

  “Yeah,” I told him dryly, but a lot nicer than he deserved and would have usually gotten, as this feeling of uneasiness covered my entire body. Sometimes things really were too good to be true. I would never forget that. I couldn’t. “Why?” I asked again, not about to back down until we got this shit sorted.

  Neither one of them said a word. Or maybe I was just being impatient because I kept talking before either of them did. “We all know there’s younger skaters out there you can ask,” I added, because what would be the damage if this was exactly what I thought it was? AKA total bullshit. A trick. A nightmare. One of the most asshole-ish things anyone had ever done to me… if it wasn’t real.

  And what the hell was going on with my blood pressure? I felt sick all of a sudden. Tracing my bracelet with the fingers of my opposite hand, I swallowed and looked at both of these basic strangers, trying to keep my voice steady, my emotions in check. “I want to know why you’re asking me. Besides there being girls five years younger than me you could ask, there are some with more experience in pairs. You both know why I haven’t been able to find another partner,” I spit out before I could stop myself, leaving the “why
” out in the open like a ticking time bomb set up specifically for me.

  The answering silence said they were aware of all that. How could they not? Years ago, I’d earned a shitty reputation, and I hadn’t been able to shake it off, no matter what I did. It hadn’t been my fault people only repeated the parts they wanted to hear instead of the entire story.

  She’s difficult to work with, Paul had said, for anyone who gave a shit about pairs skating to read.

  Maybe things would have been different if I’d explained every single one of my actions every time they happened, but I hadn’t. And I didn’t regret it. I didn’t care what other people thought about me.

  At least until it had come back to bite me on the ass.

  But it was too late now. All I had left was to own it. And I did.

  I had shoved some speed skater dickwad once for grabbing my ass, and I was the bad guy.

  I had called one of my rink mate’s mom a whore once after she’d made a comment about my mom having to be great at blow jobs for having a husband twenty years younger than her, but I was the rude asshole.

  I was difficult because I gave a shit. But how the hell could I not give one when this sport was what I woke up every morning excited for?

  Little things built up, and up, and up until my sarcasm—until everything that came out of my mouth—was taken as a rude comment. My mom had always warned me that some people would always be eager to believe the worst. That was the unfortunate and shit truth.

  But I knew who I was and what I did. I couldn’t find it in me to regret it. At least most of the time. Maybe life would have been a lot easier if I’d had my sister’s sweetness or my mom’s personality, but I didn’t and I never would.

  You are who you are in life, and you either live that time trying to bend yourself to make other people happy, or… you don’t.

  And I sure as hell had better things to do with my time.

  I just wanted to make sure, if this was what I thought it was, that I was walking into it with my eyes open. I’d never close my eyes again and expect the best. Especially not when this involved the same person, who after every competition in my singles days, wrote out all the mistakes I’d done in my programs—the pieces I competed with, one short, the other longer and called a free skate—and made sure I knew why the hell I had lost. Like a fucking dick.

  “Are you that desperate?” I asked the man directly, meeting those gray-blue eyes, totally on. My words were rude, but I didn’t care. I wanted the truth. “No one else wants to pair up with you now?”

  Those glacier-like eyes didn’t look away. That muscular, long body didn’t flinch. He didn’t even make a face like he normally would have pretty much every time I opened my mouth and directed words at him.

  In that way that only someone who was so sure of himself, so sure of his talents, of his place in the world, in the fact that he was the one in a position of power, Ivan just met my gaze like he was measuring me too in return. And then the asshole I knew came out.

  “You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

  This mother—

  “Vanya,” Coach Lee damn near shouted, shaking her head like a mom scolding her toddler for just saying what was on his brain. “I’m sorry, Jasmine—”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have mouthed I’m gonna kick your fucking ass but managed not to. Just barely. Instead, I stared at that clear face with its perfect bone structure… and imagined myself wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezed the shit out of it. I wouldn’t even be able to tell anyone about the amount of restraint I was showing, because they wouldn’t believe me.

  Maybe I was growing up.

  Then I stared at him a second longer and thought, I’m going to spit in his mouth the first chance I get, and decided maybe the growing-up thing was a stretch. Luckily, all I decided to say was, “I do know what that’s like, shitface.”

  Coach Lee muttered something under her breath that I didn’t hear clearly, but when she didn’t tell me not to talk to Ivan like that, I kept going.

  “Actually, Satan”—his nostrils flared, and I didn’t miss that—“all I want is to know if you’re coming to me because no one else wants to deal with you—because that doesn’t make sense, so don’t think I’m stupid and don’t know that—or if there’s some other ulterior motive I’m not getting.” Like him making this the meanest, early April Fool’s joke in history. I might actually finally kill him if it was.

  Coach Lee let out another sigh that drew my gaze to her. She was shaking her head and honestly looked like she wanted to pull her hair out, which was an expression I had never ever seen on her face before, and it made me nervous. She was probably realizing the truth: Ivan and I were like oil and water. We didn’t mix. Not unless we didn’t speak to each other, but even then there were dirty looks and middle fingers exchanged. More than a handful of dinners at his parents’ house had gone down that way.

  But after a moment that stretched the nauseous feeling in my stomach to almost the breaking point, Coach Lee set her shoulders. Glancing up at the ceiling, she nodded, like it was more for herself than for my benefit, before finally saying, “I’m going to trust that this stays in this room.”

  Ivan made a noise that she ignored, but I was too busy taking in the fact that she wasn’t telling me not to call Ivan Satan or shitface to care.

  I snapped out of it and focused. “I don’t have anyone else to tell,” I told her, and it was the truth. I was good with secrets. I was really good with secrets.

  The other woman dipped her chin and settled her gaze on me before going on. “We—”

  The idiot in the seat made another noise before sitting up straight and cutting her off. “There’s no one else.”

  I blinked.

  He kept going. “This would only be for a year—”

  Wait.

  A year?

  Son of a bitch, I’d known this was too good to be true. I’d known it.

  “Mindy is taking… the season off,” the black-haired man explained, his tone tight and a little annoyed as he referred to the same partner he’d had for the last three seasons. “I need a partner for the time being.”

  Of course. Of course. I tipped my chin up to look at the ceiling and shook my head, feeling that blunt tip of disappointment jab me right in the gut, reminding me it was always there, just waiting for the perfect moment to say it never went anywhere.

  Because it didn’t.

  I couldn’t think of the last time I hadn’t felt disappointed in something—mostly myself.

  Damn it. I should have known better. Why else would he be coming to me? To be his permanent partner? Of course not.

  God, I was so lame. Even if I had just considered the possibility for a second… I was an idiot. I knew better. Good shit like this didn’t happen to me. It never had.

  “Jasmine.” Coach Lee’s voice was calm, but I didn’t look over. “This would be a great opportunity for you—”

  I should just go. What the hell was the point of me still being here, just eating up time so I got to work later and later? Stupid, stupid, stupid Jasmine.

  “—You would gain more experience. You’d be competing with the reigning national and world champion,” she kept going, throwing words out that I was mostly ignoring.

  Maybe it was time for me to hang up my skates now. What better sign did I need? God, I was an idiot.

  Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  “Jasmine,” Coach Lee said, almost sweetly, almost, just almost kindly. “You could possibly win a championship or at least a Cup—”

  And that had me tipping my chin down to look at her.

  She raised an eyebrow, as if she’d known that would get my attention, and for good reason. “You could easily find a partner after that. I could help. Ivan could help.”

  I ignored the part about Ivan helping me find a partner, because I highly doubted that shit would ever happen, but—but—what I didn’t ignore was the rest of it.

  A c
hampionship. Fuck it, a Cup. Any Cup.

  I hadn’t actually won one since my junior days before I’d moved into the senior level, which was where I was at now and had been for years.

  Then there was the other thing: Coach Lee helping me find a partner.

  But mostly: a fucking championship. Or at least the chance of it, the real possibility of it. Hope.

  It was like a stranger offering a little kid candy if they got into their car, and I was the dumbass little kid. Except instead of candy, this woman and this ass-face were waving the two things I wanted more than anything right in front of me. It was enough to get me to stop thinking and keep my mouth shut.

  “It might seem like a great endeavor, but with a lot of hard work, we think it would work,” the woman went on, her gaze straightforward. “I don’t see how it couldn’t, if I’m going to be totally honest. Ivan hasn’t had a bad year in almost a decade.”

  Wait.

  Reality set in, and I made myself think of what she was really saying and assuming.

  We were supposed to win a championship in less than a year?

  Forget the fact that she said Ivan hadn’t had a bad year in forever, where I’d had so many bad years, it was like I sucked it all up for him.

  She was saying we were supposed to win a championship in less than a year.

  Shit. Most new pairs teams took a season off to learn how one another skated, to work on technical elements—everything from jumps to lifts to throws—until they did them together seamlessly… and even then, things could be rough after twelve months. Pairs skating was about unity, about trust, timing, anticipation, and synchronization. It was about two people almost becoming one, but still somehow maintaining their individuality.

  And what they were asking for was something we only had months to do—to perfect—before choreography would have to be learned and then mastered. Months to do what would normally take a year or more.

  The damn near impossible. That’s what they wanted.

  “You want a championship, don’t you?” came Ivan’s question, like a shank straight into my chest.

  I glanced at him sitting there in his slacks and a thick sweater, the hair that was longer at the top and faded at the sides styled perfectly back, the bone structure that was in thanks to generations of selective breeding making him look every bit like the trust fund baby he was, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat that felt like the size of a grapefruit… if it was covered in nails.