Going for Gold (Heart of Gold #2)

Chapter 1

In a normal year, the men’s gym at Round Lake would be deserted after a Saturday practice, everyone hurrying from the locker rooms to enjoy what was left of the weekend.

Sasha would be in the dining hall right now, sitting with Kirill, Ilya, and Oleg at their usual table, and the four of them would inevitably wind up in someone’s dorm room later that night, drinking and playing video games or cards.

But this isn’t a normal year.

It’s an Olympic year.

“Well?”

Sasha glances up from the notebook he’s been using to calculate the difficulty score on Kirill’s pommel horse routine. “5.9,” he reports.

“Fuck.” Kirill looks around as if in search of inspiration, his dark eyes narrowed as he sucks on the insides of his cheeks.

Even though practice technically ended an hour ago, the gym is a hive of activity, with most of the senior team still running through routines or conditioning drills.

A few yards away from Sasha and Kirill, Ilya’s working Diamidovs on the parallel bars, his coach calling out corrections from the side; at the other end of the gym, Oleg is red-faced and sweating on the rings, muscling his way through a set of crosses.

It’s been like this all week, ever since they got back from winter break, and the pace won’t be letting up anytime soon.

They have the Russian Championships in two months, followed by the European Championships in May and the Russian Cup in July—three competitions, three chances to convince the coaches they deserve a spot on the Olympic team.

“Almost there,” Sasha says. “You just need to change one of your Cs to a D.”

He tosses over the binder with the international Code of Points, a massive and borderline overwhelming list of every gymnastics skill in existence. The skills are graded according to how difficult they are, and a D is worth one-tenth more than a C, which would bring Kirill up to the 6.0 he wants.

As Kirill sits down and starts flipping through the pages, Sasha rereads the skills he’s already listed in his notebook, trying to think of something else his friend can add before the Olympics.

Pommel horse is Kirill’s weakest event, and when they’re with the other seniors, he talks about wanting to be competitive with the Japanese and the Chinese; but privately, he’s told Sasha that his real goal is to qualify for the all-around final in Rio.

Because unlike Sasha, Kirill doesn’t have to worry about making the team first. Barring injury, he, Ilya, and Oleg are the clear frontrunners: Ilya as their strongest all-arounder, Kirill and Oleg neck in neck behind him.

With those three spots sewn up, there are only two left for everyone else—and the coaches have already announced that one of them will go to a specialist on either pommel horse or high bar, traditionally their lowest-scoring events.

Which means Sasha and about ten other seniors are all fighting for that very last spot.

It’s what no one says aloud about the Olympics—before you compete against the other countries, you have to beat out your own teammates.

A disgruntled noise from Kirill interrupts his thoughts. “Have you seen this?” Kirill asks, spinning around the Code of Points and jabbing his finger at one of the illustrations. “Hartman has a skill named after him.”

Sasha’s face grows hot, and he quickly leans over to look, hoping Kirill doesn’t notice.

He recognizes the move right away—it’s the double scissor that Danny always does at the beginning of his pommel horse routine, his body twisting around as he switches from one end of the horse to the other—but he hadn’t realized Danny had actually invented it.

“Huh,” he says, feigning disinterest as he pushes the binder back.

“What the fuck even is this?” Kirill squints at the page, trying to decipher the diagram. “He just took a regular double scissor and went from the other side of the pommel? And they gave that to him?”

That’s exactly how it works—if you’re the first person to successfully compete a skill at an international meet, it gets named after you, even if it’s a variation on something that already exists.

But Sasha doesn’t say anything, because this clearly isn’t about that.

It’s about Danny, and the fact that he has something Kirill’s always wanted: a skill named after himself.

“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you,” Kirill says, glowering at the binder. “I bet he never fucking shuts up about it.”

Danny hasn’t so much as mentioned it, actually, and Sasha has to swallow the urge to correct Kirill.

At least he isn’t calling Danny an idiot anymore, not since Sasha confronted him in Glasgow; but for the most part, he seems to have decided that not being a dick to Danny only applies when they’re in the same country.

Sasha tries not to let it get to him—they don’t talk about Danny often, and when they do, it usually feels safer to redirect Kirill’s attention as soon as possible. Today, however, he can’t resist needling his friend. Just a little.

“It’s a D,” he points out. “That’ll get you a 6.0.”

“I’d rather die,” Kirill says flatly.

He keeps looking at the diagram, though, and Sasha wonders if he’s tempted to go for it anyway—just to see if he can do it better than Danny, of course. But when he glances up, his eyes fix speculatively on Sasha.

“You should try it.”

That’s exactly what Sasha’s been thinking ever since he saw the Hartman, a plan forming in the back of his mind to practice Danny’s skill as soon as he has a moment alone in the gym—but it’s also the last thing he would have expected to hear from Kirill. “Me? Why?”

Kirill shrugs. “Your scissors are better than mine. And you need a higher start value anyway, that’s where…” He lowers his voice, glancing at the other seniors working nearby. “That’s where Felix is getting you.”

As if on a string, Sasha’s gaze is pulled across the gym to the weight machines, where their teammate Felix Tabakov is in the middle of a conditioning circuit.

Felix was out for most of last year with a knee injury, but he’d come back after Worlds looking stronger than ever, and at the Voronin Cup in December, he’d outscored Sasha in the all-around by just a few tenths.

The all-around’s not what worries Sasha; he’d been recovering from a stomach bug at the time, and he likely would have beaten Felix if he’d been able to perform at full strength.

What worries Sasha is that even though Felix isn’t a specialist on either pommel horse or high bar, he’s still better at both of them than Sasha, and those are the events where Russia needs the most help.

“Besides,” Kirill continues, his voice going back to normal as he smirks, “I’d love to see Hartman’s face when you do his own skill better than him.”

“What?” Distracted from Felix, Sasha stares at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

Kirill snorts, like it’s obvious. “His form’s a joke compared to yours.

And mine, usually.” He pauses for a moment, lost in thought.

“You know, he’s only outscoring us because of his difficulty.

Once we catch up to him on that—well, I already have him on floor and vault, but for everything else, too—it’s over. ”

Before Sasha can protest the outrageousness of that statement—Danny routinely ranks among the top ten in the world, while Kirill and Sasha are still in the twenties and thirties, respectively—Kirill gives him a sharp look. “But you need to beat Felix first. And you need more upgrades for that.”

He swivels the binder around to Sasha, who tries not to seem too eager as he scans the description of the Hartman.

At an encouraging nod from Kirill, he gets up in front of the pommel horse, gripping the handles and closing his eyes—picturing not the static illustrations in the Code of Points, but rather Danny at the American Cup last year, confidently swinging his way through this exact skill as the crowd cheered him on.

Once he’s sure he’s remembered the sequence correctly, he takes a deep breath and jumps, hoisting his legs up in the air before twisting around and attempting to switch handles.

He manages it, but barely—without enough momentum to finish the rest of the skill, he winds up astride the horse and has to haul his legs through the last swings.

“That was good,” Kirill says, impressed. “You almost had it.”

Sasha goes again, slowly getting used to the feel of it, the timing of each hand placement as his legs swing over the horse.

On his fourth attempt, he makes it all the way through the skill, catching the handle and bringing his legs back around again.

He slides off the horse, panting, and tries not to look too pleased.

“You should put that in your routine,” Kirill says, and Sasha scoffs, even as his stomach swoops at the idea. “I’m serious. Let me get my phone, I’ll film you.”

Normally, they’re not supposed to use their phones at practice; but the coaches aren’t as strict about it if they’re staying late, and no one says anything when Kirill comes back from the locker room.

Sasha tries the Hartman a few more times, then casually asks Kirill to send him the videos, like he just wants a closer look and has no intention whatsoever of sharing them with Danny.

“Want me to get one of you?” he can’t resist teasing Kirill again. “For the vlog?”

Over winter break, Kirill had gotten it into his head to create a YouTube channel documenting his training for the Olympics.

So far, Sasha’s been conscripted into being his first subscriber, filming his workouts, and even participating in a video, the two of them doing handstands all over Moscow.

(When Sasha asked what this had to do with training, Kirill started earnestly explaining the concept of lifestyle vlogging; now, Sasha just points the camera where he’s told.)