I trembled. I panted. I could have been dying, but it would have been worth every second.
Holding me, Ivan walked us toward the bed and slowly lowered me onto it. His body came over mine, covering me. With his arms straight, legs bracketing mine, his smile was lopsided as he panted, “Practice makes perfect, Jas.”
Fuck.
I tried breathing out of my nose as I raised my eyebrows at him, his dick resting against my thigh, still half hard. “That wasn’t already perfect?”
“It was,” he said, hovering over me. “But I want to practice anyway.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, loud, so loud it kind of freaked me out.
But what didn’t freak me out was the giant smile that Ivan gave me from above. “Over and over again.”
“Who says I want to do it again?”
His hand went over the side of my head, his fingers brushing my temple. “You came all over me,” he said like I didn’t know that. “We do everything good together. You know that.”
I did know that, but he didn’t need to.
“We’re the best team. We do what we have to do to be the best,” he said as he lowered his weight to really cover me, his thighs were spread wide on top of mine, the tops of his feet touching the inside of my calves, his forearms on either side of my face.
“And this will help our skating?” I asked him.
He kissed my cheek and then the other one. “It’s not going to hurt it.”
I laughed again and curled up to plant a kiss on his chin that made him blink slowly.
“I love the way you smile,” he said with a dreamy, sleepy expression. “I want to tell you to do it more often, but I don’t.”
I took in every inch of that flawless face. “Why?”
He didn’t even have his eyes open as he responded. “Because you don’t give it to everyone.” His cheek rested against mine, that sweaty chest did the same as he said, “And I don’t plan on sharing you.”
Chapter 24
“One minute.”
Shaking my shoulders out, I took a deep breath in, let it out, and then did it all over again. It was easy to zone out the audience cheering for the pair on the ice who had literally just finished seconds ago. It was even easier to ignore the flowers and stuffed animals raining down from the crowd.
I was strong. I was smart. I could do anything.
I wasn’t weak or unprepared.
The world wouldn’t end if I blew it.
I could do this.
I was always going to be able to do this. Maybe I hadn’t exactly been born for it, but I’d made it mine. I had taken it for my own, and it would always be mine.
Four minutes and some seconds to show off a lifetime of hard work. No big deal.
“It’s time,” Coach Lee’s voice spoke almost directly into my ear, her hand coming to land lightly on my shoulder.
I nodded, shooting her a look out of the corner of my eye before she let go and took a step to the side, to do the same to Ivan, who was standing a foot away, shaking out his hands and thighs. I noticed him glancing at her, the same way I had, nodding, the same as me too.
And then he glanced over his shoulder at me.
Those bright blue-gray eyes landed directly into mine, and we didn’t need to nod or do anything. We just smiled at each other. Our own little secret. Our own thing.
We’d woken up this morning in my room, with me drooling on his hand and his leg thrown over one of mine, and it had been the best morning of both of our lives. He’d told me so, and I’d just known. Then he’d pinched the shit out of my ass cheek, and it was like it was supposed to be between us. Perfect.
We were going to do this.
We had this.
The smile that crept over his lips and cheek muscles was lazy… almost filthy… a fucking promise of what was for sure going to happen tonight regardless of anything else.
It was his trustful smile. The one he shared with me. It was mine.
And it zinged its way up my spine, this warm, comforting thing that told me he was as confident as I was. That we had this. But we had this together.
So I couldn’t help but smile right back at him, wider than before. It wasn’t anything big, but it was his and only his.
And he knew it was because his smile grew even wider.
I rolled my eyes as I looked away and stepped toward the ice, my heartbeat nice and even, my head calm and controlled. At the wall, I stood to the left to let the last skater off the ice and looked up. I’d already clocked my family when we’d first gotten to the tunnel, and they were still there. Each and every one of them holding up a sign, even my dad.
THAT’S MY SISTER.
GO JASMINE!
JASMINE!
WE LOVE YOU, JASMINE
JASMINE SANTOS 4 EVER
GET IT GIRL
YOU’RE AMAZING, JASMINE
But it was the NEVER GIVE UP, JASMINE that had me squinting. Because it was my dad holding it. He wasn’t jumping up and down like the rest of them, but he was smiling. He wasn’t embarrassed. He wasn’t bored.
But he was there. And that was more than I could have wanted or expected.
And it was what I needed. Another little piece of glue to my mind and my heart.
I let myself think for a second about the card I’d read that morning, lying in bed beside Ivan. The card from the nice girl at the LC.
Good luck, Jasmine!
You’re going to do great. Thanx for being so cool. I hope one day I can be like you.
Love, Patty
And I knew I could do this.
Once, when I’d been maybe fifteen or sixteen, Galina had told me that to win, I would have to be prepared to fail. Have to be okay with the idea of failing. And I had never completely understood what she meant by that then, because who the hell wanted to lose? I got her message now, and it had only taken me a decade to.
I took a step onto the ice and glided off just a couple feet away to give Ivan room to do the same. He followed after me, stopping just two feet away from me as the announcer called out our names.
That was when I looked over my shoulder at the man in the brown and gold costume that my sister had created, and found him already looking at me, with a smirk aimed right at me.
He looked happy.
And for the first time, I felt happy as I stood there, not nervous, not overwhelmed. I just felt happy. Ready.
So I smirked back at him.
We both seemed to let out a breath of air at the same time.
Just like that, Ivan extended his hand out at his side toward me. He watched my face as I gave him my own hand, draping my palm over his, both of us curling our fingers around the other’s.
He mouthed I love you, and I winked at him. Then, we skated toward the center of the ice, hand in hand, stopping in the spot we needed. Ivan got into position at the same time I did, both of us never looking anywhere else. If the crowd went quiet, I had no idea because I was zoning them out just as Ivan’s face came to pause an inch away from mine.
“You suck,” he whispered, his breath against my cheek.
I just barely held back a smile as I said, “You suck even more.”
A second, a split fucking second before the music started, he whispered, “Let’s do it.”
And we did.
Epilogue
“Look at the height on that!”
“I haven’t seen a twist like that since the 2018 Lukov team!” the announcer on the television claimed.
Ivan and I both snorted at the same time.
I didn’t need to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes.
Because I was too.
“That was clearly at least half a foot shorter than ours used to be,” Ivan muttered beside me.
I snorted again, keeping my eyes glued to the television.
“I was thinking more like a whole foot,” my mom, who loved coming over so much she was on steady allergy medication, agreed from her spot on the other side of the couch.
“Mark needs to retire from being a commentator. I’ve thought he’s needed glasses for at least the last three seasons, easy,” Jojo claimed from where he was lying on the floor, his head propped up on one hand while the other one held a bottle to Elena’s mouth.