From Lukov with Love Read online

  I remember my first thought: bitch.

  But before I could say a word, those black eyebrows, which were a complete opposite of his sister’s light brown ones, had inched their way up his smooth forehead in this way that reminded me of the way that other girls looked at me sometimes… like I was less than them because I didn’t wear the same fancy clothes and brand-new skates they did. My mom couldn’t afford that stuff, and she had always avoided asking my dad for money if it was possible… but I’d always thought it had been more about her being worried he wouldn’t give her the money because it was for figure skating and not just because he was being cheap. I would have skated in my underwear back then as long as I had ice time. Not having fancy clothes hadn’t been an issue once she had explained to me that it was all she could afford.

  But the thing was, no one had ever made me feel bad about not wearing designer dresses and costumes. At least to my face. Behind my back was a different story. You couldn’t hide a person’s expressions or eye movement. You couldn’t shut off your ears from hearing what people thought they were whispering, but really weren’t. Back then, other girls hadn’t liked me because I was competitive and sometimes had a bad attitude when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to.

  I’d reared back just like he had, thinking about my sister who had made me my costume—this plain but pretty light blue leotard with rhinestones along the neckline and sleeves—and got pissed. And I’d said the only thing that came to mind, “I’m just telling you the truth. It looks dumb.”

  His cheeks had turned a shade darker than the normal near-peach they were. It wasn’t a blush or anything close to it, but for him, I think now it was basically the same thing. Ivan Lukov had leaned toward me and hissed a warning that would follow me for the next couple years, “Watch yourself, runt,” before he’d gone off toward the changing rooms or wherever the hell he went.

  Two weeks later, in his mambo outfit, he’d won his first US National Championship in pairs. People had talked a lot of shit about his costume, but even as gaudy as it was, it hadn’t been enough to shadow his talent. He’d deserved to win. Even if he’d hurt the eyes of the people who’d watched.

  One week after that, on his first day back at the LC, while I’d been feeling pretty bad about what I’d said and Karina had been no help in telling me what I could do to fix it because she had thought what I’d done was hilarious, Ivan went out of his way to talk to me. And by talk, I really meant mutter in passing, “You might as well quit now. You’re too old to get anywhere.”

  Me with the big mouth had been too shocked by what he’d said to have time to form a comeback before he’d skated away.

  I’d thought about his words all that day because the honesty in them had hurt my feelings and made me angry at the same time. It had been hard back then to not compare myself to the girls who had been skating since they were three and were more advanced than I was, even if Galina had told me I was naturally gifted and that if I worked hard enough I could be better than them one day soon.

  But I didn’t tell anyone what he’d said. No one else needed that idea in their heads.

  I didn’t say anything until a month later, when this asshole had gone out of his way to ask me to my face after practice, “Is that leotard supposed to be a size too small or…?” For no damn reason.

  That time, I did get out, “You bitch,” before he’d disappeared.

  And the rest… was history.

  By the time I finished telling the only parts of the story they needed to hear, my brother had his head tossed back and snorted. “You’re such a drama queen.”

  If I’d had anything other than noodles left on my plate, I would have flicked them at him. “What?”

  “You’re a drama queen,” the third biggest drama queen in the family after our mom and oldest sister, claimed. “You said he gave you hell, but none of that sounded like hell. He was messing with you,” he explained, shaking his head. “We give you more shit than that in an hour.”

  I blinked because he had a point. But it was different because we were family. Giving each other shit was pretty much mandatory.

  My friend’s brother, my rink mate, giving me hell… was not.

  “Yeah, Grumpy. That doesn’t sound so bad,” my mom piped in.

  Fucking traitors. “He told me once I needed to lose weight before my blades gave out on me!”

  What did all three people sitting around the kitchen island do? They laughed. They laughed their asses off.

  “You were chunky back then,” my fucking brother cackled, his face turning red.

  I reached toward him again to try and pinch him, but he lunged away, practically falling into James’s lap.

  “Why didn’t I ever think of telling you that?” Jonathan kept going, almost on the verge of crying-laughing from his body language as he draped himself over his husband, even further away from me. I’d seen him do it enough to recognize the signs.

  “I can’t believe y’all,” I said, not sure why the hell they still managed to surprise me. “He told me once before a competition, ‘Break a leg. Literally.’”

  Repeating another rude thing he’d said to me did nothing to convince my family Ivan had been a jerk; all it did was make them laugh harder. Even James, who was the nicest, lost the battle. I couldn’t believe it… but I probably should.

  “He’s been calling me Meatball for years,” I said, almost feeling my eyelid start to twitch at that fucking nickname that drove me insane no matter how much I told myself to get over it. Sticks and stones could break your bones, but I didn’t let people’s words hurt me.

  Usually.

  They were all choking though. All three of them.

  “Jasmine, honey,” James croaked out, his palm covering his eyes as he had his meltdown. “What I want to know is—what did you say back to him?”

  I thought about slamming my mouth closed and not saying anything, but if anyone in the world knew me, it was these people—and my other brother and sisters. God, how the hell could I work with Ivan after ten years of this history we had? His own coach made him keep his mouth closed so that he wouldn’t be tempted to say something that might get me to deny their offer.

  We’d probably throw down into a fistfight after a week. If we even made it that long. It was honestly only a matter of time. We’d been building up to it over the years.

  I had a lot to think about.

  “Stuff,” was all I went with, purposely not thinking about all the shit I’d said back to him.

  “What kind of stuff?” James asked, his tan face turning red as he pinched the tip of his nose.

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and gave him a little smile he didn’t see as I repeated myself. “Stuff.”

  James laughed and barely managed to get out, “All right. I’ll let it go for now. You two don’t talk shit to each other anymore though?”

  I blinked. “We still do. I called him Satan today.”

  “Jasmine!” my mom hissed before she fell over onto the empty stool beside her, laughing.

  I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt… at least until I remembered what I was keeping from them.

  Was I willing to wake up before the sun was out to train for six or seven hours a day with the same man who had asked me if I’d been cast as Ugly Betty? With the intention to win a championship?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Chapter 4

  I wasn’t that surprised that I slept like total shit that night.

  I could have blamed the coffee I’d had after dinner—I didn’t usually drink caffeine in the afternoon or later because it made me crash, and I needed all the energy I had to get through the rest of my day—but it hadn’t been the coffee’s fault.

  It had been my mom’s. And Coach Lee’s. But mostly my mom’s.

  But that’s what would happen when she dropped a bomb on me I should have seen coming, but hadn’t. Since when the hell had I ever been able to pull something over on her, and why had I expected I was going
to be able to do it now?

  It was when she came to sit beside me on the couch after my brother and his husband had left, with her slinging her arm over my shoulder, that I knew without a doubt, I hadn’t hidden shit from her. We were pretty affectionate in my family… if you could call giving each other bruises, wedgies, and playing pranks affection… but we weren’t the type to constantly hug and kiss, unless someone needed it. The last time I’d randomly hugged my oldest brother, he’d asked if I was going to jail or dying.

  So that night, when Mom hugged me to her side on the couch and squeezed my knee, I accepted that I made the same mistake most people made with her: I’d underestimated her. My brothers and sisters knew me really well, their significant others did too—I wasn’t that complicated—but no one knew me the way Mom did. My sister Ruby was close, but still not on her level. I doubted anyone would ever be.

  “Tell me what’s wrong, Grumpy,” she said, calling me by the nickname she’d given me when I was four. “You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

  “Mom, I talked half of dinner,” I said, eyes trained on the Unsolved Mysteries rerun on the television, and shook my head, not trusting myself to look her in the face and keep my dilemma to myself.

  She rested her head against mine after setting down a normal-sized glass of red wine on the coffee table, pretty much falling on top of me, like she was expecting me to hold her up. “Yeah, to your brother and James. You barely said three words to me; you didn’t even tell me what happened at your meeting. You think I don’t know when something is off with you?” she accused, sounding insulted.

  She had me there.

  Mom squeezed my shoulder again. “Just because I didn’t say anything in front of Jojo and James doesn’t mean I didn’t notice.” She gave me one more squeeze before whispering like a total creep, “I know everything.”

  That finally made me snort and glance at her out of the corner of my eye. I’d swear, she hadn’t aged a day in the last fifteen years. It was like time slowed for her. Preserving her. That, or she’d scored herself a wish with a genie a long time ago and was going to be immortal, or something pretty fucking close to it.

  I stretched my legs out to rest my heels on the coffee table and wrinkled my nose, still looking away from her as I muttered, “Okay, 1-800-PSYCHIC.”

  She snuggled herself closer into my side the same way she always did when she was being a pain, and I leaned away just a little to mess with her. “Tell me what’s wrong with you,” she insisted directly into my ear, her voice deceptively soft—and fake as fuck. Her breath, which smelled liked straight-up wine, wafted into my nostrils. “I’ll give you a milk chocolate covered cherry from my Valentine’s Day stash….”

  Not even a chocolate covered cherry would get me to open my mouth. I leaned away from her even further, but she just followed me, hitting clinger level 100 as she threw a thigh over mine. “Good lord, lady, do you want me to just hook up a wine IV to your arm from now on? One of those wine connoisseurs could probably guess the years the wine was bottled from how strong your breath is.”

  She ignored me and hugged me even closer. “The sooner you talk to me, the sooner I’ll leave you alone,” my mom tried to bribe me.

  I couldn’t help but snort. Like anything was ever that easy with her. “You don’t even believe yourself when you say that, you know?”

  That had her huffing and retreating all of an inch. “Give me a break and spill the beans. You’re going to tell me at some point anyway,” she let me know, which was the truth.

  But…

  There were only so many failures I could carry on my shoulders… and most days it felt like I’d hit my max a year ago.

  My mom was the one I wanted to protect the most, because she’d been the one to singlehandedly pay for everything while I’d grown up because my dad had thought it was a waste of money, and “isn’t there something else Jasmine can do?” he’d always ask, not knowing she usually had him on speakerphone and my nosey ass was always listening. By the time he’d come around, my mom had told him we didn’t need or want his support… even if it meant there were years where she was constantly behind on bills. Years where looking back on it, I wasn’t sure how the hell she managed to make everything work; how she’d been able to keep a roof over our heads, pay the bills, and keep us fed.

  I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do the same. But she’d done it for me. And the only way I’d ever been able to pay her back was by “winning” a couple of second place spots.

  I’d never been able to win after I’d moved into the senior level and no one really knew why except for me.

  She deserved better, and I wished I could have given her that.

  “Jasmineeeee,” Mom playfully whined beside my ear as she snuggled closer to me, ignoring my squawk as she did it. “Just tell me. I know you want to. I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

  “No,” I scoffed, obviously full of shit and knowing she was aware of it. “And you’re a liar.”

  “I’m a liar?” she had the balls to ask like she honestly believed her own bullshit about keeping something to herself. I had a big mouth, but I had gotten it from somewhere: her.

  “I’m not the one promising to keep a secret,” I insisted with a side glance, trying to give myself some more time to think about what I could say before digging myself into a deeper hole.

  Should I tell her? She already knew I was hiding something.

  I knew I had her when she made a noise, knowing she was what she was: a big, fat liar. “Fine, but I’ll only tell… one person. Deal?”

  “Who?”

  She paused. That’s how many people she usually blabbed to. She had to choose. God. “Ben.”

  Her husband, Number Four. I could only see her red hair out of the corner of my eye, but I knew that was as good as I was going to get. She wasn’t about to let this go. Especially not now that I made it known that I knew she was full of crap.

  I sighed. Now or never, right? “I don’t want you to get excited—”

  “Oh my God,” she practically exhaled, telling me it was too late.

  I rolled my eyes and turned my entire body to the side so I could give her a look. “No, Mom. No. Don’t get excited. I wasn’t even going to say anything—”

  “Tell me,” she whispered in a throaty voice that almost made her sound like a possessed kid in a scary movie.

  I blinked. “If you promise you’ll never make that voice again.”

  My mom groaned and went back to doing her best spider monkey impersonation by smothering me with her arms. “Fine. I promise. Tell me.”

  “I….” I paused and slid her a look, trying to pick my words so I could explain what was happening in the most calm, possible way. “Okay. But don’t get excited.”

  “I already said I wouldn’t,” she said, but she didn’t even believe it herself.

  “I had a meeting—”

  “I know. You told me. For what?”

  I sighed, shooting her a look she couldn’t see, which I was grateful for because she might smack me if she had. I wasn’t even sure why I’d thought I could keep it to myself. There were only about a handful of things I had ever not told her about and managed to still keep to myself. “Remember Coach Lee?”

  Her body stilled. “Yes.”

  “Coach Lee asked if I wanted to partner up with Ivan for next season.”

  Silence.

  She said nothing. Not one single thing. It might have been the first time she’d ever not said something.

  I wiggled the shoulder she had her head on, taking in the fact that she still wasn’t moving around or saying anything. “I thought I still had a few years left until you got to that age where you start randomly falling asleep.”

  “I should have left you at the fire station,” she threw back without missing a beat, her head not moving from its spot on my shoulder.

  Then, she didn’t say anything else.

  What the hell was up with that?

  “Why aren’t you
saying anything?” I tipped my head just enough to the side so I could see the top of her head. I wasn’t tall, only five foot three, but my mom was even shorter at an even five feet tall that I was pretty sure she was exaggerating.

  “I’m thinking,” she answered, honestly sounding distracted.

  God help me. “What are you thinking?”

  She still didn’t move. “About what you just said, Grumpy. You dropped that on me like I was ready for it, and I wasn’t. I thought you were finally going to tell me they offered you a coaching position at the LC.”

  I made a face even though she couldn’t see me. How did she know about the coaching position? And why hadn’t she said something before?

  As if sensing my confusion, she pulled herself upright and angled her body so she could face me. We were pretty much polar opposites of each other, except that our faces were shaped the same, we weren’t tall, and we both had freckles. She had long red hair that had just enough orange in it to look natural, her skin was basically pale, she was slim, beautiful, bossy but likable, smart, lovable… and I was none of those things. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t my mom and sisters. And the rest… well, I wasn’t any of those things either, except bossy sometimes.

  The point was: she wasn’t excited or overjoyed at this opportunity. Half an hour ago, I would have bet my life she’d be all over it.

  But she wasn’t. And I didn’t get why.

  “Well?” I drew the word out.

  Those dark blue eyes that reminded me of the sapphire in Titanic narrowed, and my mom’s mouth screwed to the side.

  I narrowed my eyes at her, screwing my mouth to the side too. “What? Say something.”

  She squinted one eye at me.

  “I thought you would’ve been excited. What is it?” I asked before a thought barged into my head so unexpectedly it almost stole my breath away. Did she—

  I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t think it. I didn’t want to.