From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

It would be me. Of course it would. But I couldn’t say the words then, as I stared into those eyes of his, our faces inches away from each other. All I could do was nod. And after a beat, then five, I said, “We’ll win.”

  His gaze went even more intense as he said, with no hesitation, “You’re goddamn right we will.” He pressed his mouth, so quick, so hard against me, I didn’t have a chance to react until he pulled back an inch and said, hoarsely, his fingers threading through the damp hair right above the nape of my neck, “I’ll drag you back on the ice if I have to, Jasmine. I swear on my life.”

  Something about his words made me shake on the inside. Maybe it was the conviction. Maybe it was the anger. The passion. The reality that he wasn’t leaving me any room to not do what he said.

  Mostly though, it was something else completely.

  I loved him.

  I loved this man so much that losing him was going to break my cold, dead heart into so many pieces I was just going to have to stick them in the same box I kept my dreams and carry it around with me forever.

  I didn’t want someone to pat my cheek and tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted this man who would never take my shit, who would never let me quit, and I had a feeling would never quit on me. Not ever. Not if I screamed, not if I kicked, not if I told him to go eat a thousand mounds of shit.

  This was my partner. This was more than my partner. He was my other half.

  And the only thing I could do to thank him for this gift he’d given me, this knowledge that he thought I was invincible, was to make sure we won.

  I’d give him the thing he had wanted me for in the first place.

  I’d give him my fucking all.

  Chapter 20

  Fall

  If I could describe the next four weeks of my life with one conversation, it would have been like this:

  Ivan: “Sit still.”

  Me: “No.”

  Ivan: “What do you think you’re doing? Do you want to get healthy or what? Stop walking around so much.”

  Me: [Trying to walk normal—but failing—across his living room with a new brace on] “Leave me alone.”

  Ivan: “I’m never going to leave you alone. Come sit your stubborn-ass back down, and I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  Chapter 21

  I was pretty positive I hadn’t imagined the words coming out of the wonderful doctor’s mouth, but I needed to be sure.

  “So… I’m cleared to skate again?” I asked her. Because I had to be sure. I needed to be sure.

  The doctor nodded, smiling, looking at me like she understood how much was hanging in the balance and how much her words would mean to me. “You’re as healed as you can be.”

  Excitement, relief, and nerves all barreled through me. But I had to ask. Just one more time. “For sure?”

  The doctor’s smile grew wider as her eyes slipped to the side briefly before saying, “Yes.”

  A hand landed my shoulder, rough, giving it a shake I could feel to my teeth, and I couldn’t help but beaming up at Ivan. He already had his other hand at my side, and I smacked my palm against his, linking my fingers through his and giving him a shake. His head moved forward, his chin landing on my shoulder, cheek to cheek. His chest to part of my back.

  “We’ve got this, Meatball,” he said, hugging me, telling me with his body that we were going to be able to do Skate North America, the next competition we—he—had been invited to.

  We were going to be able to do it.

  We were going to get another chance.

  Chapter 22

  It was a good thing that no one had told me taking eight weeks off right at the beginning of the season was going to be easy, because it hadn’t been.

  It absolutely hadn’t been.

  The past two weeks had been the most exhausting two weeks of my life, and that included the month that I had been going back to the LC to work out until midnight. But this time, I hadn’t been alone. I’d had my best friend with me the entire time.

  And I had enjoyed every sweaty, grueling, frustrating, painful moment.

  Especially right then, as I stared out the window of the van that had picked up Ivan, me, and six other pairs teams with their coaches, to take us to the facility where we would be competing at tomorrow. Relief like I didn’t know I had in me, flooded my lungs, freeing them, as I took in the giant building with banners located around it. SKATE NORTH AMERICA, NOVEMBER 23-26. One of them even had Ivan—by himself—right after landing a jump the year before.

  We were here and it was real.

  We were ready.

  Ivan had been quieter than normal over the last few days, while we’d done as many last-minute corrections as possible back at the LC. We had caught a flight to Lake Placid two days before, just in case the winter weather took a turn for the worst, but it hadn’t. Skate North America only offered one day of official practice, so the past two days, we had just taken advantage of the giant conference room the WSU—World Skating Union—had booked for everyone with the same plans as us.

  And when we hadn’t been in the conference room, Ivan, Coach Lee, me, and the Simmons husband and wife team—our choreographers—had taken a taxi trip around, walked the downtown area, visited the Olympic museum, eaten lunch out, and then gone back to our rooms. At least until Ivan had showed up to my room to see what my view was like and we’d ended up ordering takeout and eating in there while we watched a show about cats from hell, and he’d told me about the three cats he’d had up until a year ago, when the last one had passed away from old age.

  I didn’t need to tell Ivan that this trip was different from every other trip I’d ever taken before, by myself and with Paul. But I thought he knew. I was excited—and I was nervous for the first time ever—but the excitement overwhelmed the rest.

  And we were here. One step closer. One last thirty-minute practice away from the beginning of the end that I was trying so hard not to focus on.

  We had just climbed out of the van when Ivan grabbed my hand out of the blue.

  I glanced at him, not frowning but wondering what the hell he was doing. It wasn’t like I minded it. I didn’t. I grabbed his hand for random reasons every once in a while. But, I still didn’t know why he was doing it. And it amped up my nerves a kick more.

  “What is it?” I asked, when I took in the expression on his face as he turned his body to face mine.

  Pulling my hand, he tugged me to the side to let the other teams we had ridden over with pass. We were all in Group B with practice times. Ivan’s breath puffed white in the bitter Michigan air, and I shivered, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and why it had to be happening outside. Those bright blue eyes were focused on my face when the man who had driven me to every physical therapy appointment after he’d barged into my room so many weeks ago said, “I need you to promise me something.”

  This was going to be bad, wasn’t it?

  “It depends on what it is,” I replied, worrying, trying to rack my brain for whatever the hell was so serious he wanted a promise out of me first.

  That perfect face with its perfect skin and structure didn’t sigh or give me an exasperated expression that he usually would have. “Promise me, Jasmine.”

  Shit.

  “Not before you tell me what it is. I don’t want to break my promise.” I frowned, dread quickly filling my stomach cavity.

  Chances were I would probably do whatever he asked but… what if he asked me not to fuck up. Or not to make a scene if he introduced me to the next partner he had lined up, if he didn’t go back to Mindy. We hadn’t talked about the future at all. Not once.

  Shit.

  Ivan’s eyes roamed my face, slowly. His breathing slowed and his too-calm features, relaxed even more. Then, he sighed, glanced up at the sky for all of a moment and then back down at me with a swallow that made his Adam’s apple bob. “Please, promise me. I’m not asking you for anything you aren’t capable of.”

  I must have made a f
ace, because he tugged at the hand he was still holding.

  “Promise me, Meatball. You know you can trust me,” he said, not making it a question but a well-known fact.

  And he’d be right.

  But still, I hated that he was trying to use that against me. I didn’t want to break a promise to him. Not ever. But I also didn’t want to do something I probably wasn’t capable of… like smiling at the person he was going to replace me with in a few months. I glanced away, and it was probably my imagination that the air grew colder by the second. I shivered. “Fine, I promise. What is it?” I asked, hearing the attitude in my voice.

  The smile he gave me in response, slow and smirkish, put me at ease a little, but just a little. “Promise me that if you see Paul and Mary, you won’t try to start a fight with him—”

  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 t
hat 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.

  But I could tell him that it was because of him, and because of what we’d agreed on, that I didn’t punch my ex in the balls from the get-go. If that wasn’t an achievement, I didn’t know what was. He would get it.

  That’s what I was going to tell myself as I turned around slowly on the balls of my feet and looked up at the man who I had wasted so much of my time on. Tall but not as tall as Ivan, and with shoulders that weren’t as broad, with light brown hair and an almost tan complexion, handsome, sure… he was just like how I remembered him. It had been almost two years, after all.

  Little fucking bitch.

  “I don’t owe you shit,” I said up to him, sounding so calm I was honest to God proud of myself.

  This buttfuck sighed as he ran a hand through his short hair and said, “Give me a break, Jas. We have history—”

  Yep, I went from seeing red to seeing fucking magenta. “Yeah, that history ended the day I heard about you pairing up with Mary from someone who had read an article about it online.”

  He flinched. Paul hesitated. Then he seemed to shake it off as he demanded, “What else was I supposed to do?” He shook his head, swallowed hard, and steeled his shoulders.

  But it was pointless because he’d already pissed me off.

  He wasn’t about to try and guilt trip me or intimidate my ass. “You could have told me like a normal human being that respected the person who had stuck with them for three years?” I snapped, barely managing not to yell at the reminder of what he had done to me. “I tried calling you, Paul, calling you and calling you, and you not once picked up, you fucker,” I spat. “You didn’t have the balls to warn me or explain shit, not once over the last two years.”