Chapter 6
six
. . .
Monday morning, I arrive at the arena fifteen minutes early, my heart racing with anticipation. I’m meeting my mother later, but Finn should be back today.
The parking lot is empty except for a familiar black truck, and relief floods through me.
Finn’s already on the ice when I emerge from the locker room, moving through stick-handling drills with the kind of fluid precision that makes my breath catch. He looks up when he hears my skates, and that dangerous smile spreads across his face.
“Morning, Kitten. Miss me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, but I’m grinning as I glide onto the ice. “I just missed having someone to race.”
“Is that a challenge?”
Before I can answer, another voice echoes across the arena. “Oh, for the love of—you two are already at it?”
Dax Rogers emerges from the tunnel, goalie gear making him look like a hockey robot. His mask is pushed up on his head, revealing a face that’s all sharp angles and mischief.
“Dax, meet Ivy,” Finn says, skating over to bump fists with his teammate. “Ivy, this is the guy who’s going to make our mornings infinitely more complicated.”
“Complicated?” Dax grins at me. “I prefer ‘entertaining.’ The tension in here is so thick I could cut it with a skate blade.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “There’s no tension—we don’t have—” I flap my hand toward Finn and then the rest of the arena.
“Oh-ho, this is even better than Finn described.” Clearly giddy, Dax looks between us like he’s watching the world’s most amusing tennis match. “You’re both completely gone for each other and trying to pretend you’re not.”
“Shut up, man,” Finn says at the same time I mutter, “Can we just practice?”
I don’t dare look at Finn before I push away from the pair of them. My whole body flames, and I’m surprised the ice isn’t melting around me with every step I take.
“Ivy, come back.” Dax claps his gloved hands together. “I have some drills that require teamwork. Your boy here needs some hand-stick-puck…coordination.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Dax is not kidding. He wants me to skate straight at Finn while he passes the puck around me and does complicated stick-handling patterns, all right before he does a flat wrist-shot at the goal.
“Great,” Dax says after several iterations of this drill. “Now, I want you two to skate together between the cones.”
“What—cones?”
Finn and Dax have clearly choreographed this, because Finn glides to the side and picks up a stack of the same neon orange cones he’s used before. He sets them up as if he reserved the ice for himself and had forgotten I’m even here.
But when he turns to face me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. A tiny smile starts, and though I fight it, my lips still tip up and up until Finn’s standing right in front of me.
“You need to skate in perfect sync,” Dax says, and I very nearly jump out of my skin. It seems impossible that I could forget he was there, but somehow, I had. “Finny here will have his stick and I want you to match him stroke for stroke.”
“How does this—?”
Dax holds up one giant gloved hand. “Don’t make me explain our hockey drills to you.” He grins with the wattage of five thousands suns, and I’ll eat both of my ice skates if this is a real hockey drill.
It so isn’t.
But I line up with Finn, and we start through the cones together, with me bumping one into his way every so often.
We flow through the drill like we’ve been skating together for years, and I lose myself in the rhythm of it.
This is what I’ve been missing in my regular practice sessions—joy.
The pure, uncomplicated pleasure of moving across the ice with someone who understands the magic of it.
I’m so caught up in the moment that I don’t notice when Dax sets up a more complex pattern. This drill requires a sharp turn at high speed, something I’ve done a thousand times. But I’m thinking about the way Finn’s watching me instead of focusing on my edge work.
I approach the turn with too much speed, and the only thing to do with too much speed and power is to…leap.
I launch into the air, rotating once, twice, pushing for the third revolution even though I know I don’t have quite the right setup. Time slows as I realize that I’m going to land hard—and wrong.
My ankle twists as I hit the ice, sending a sharp spike of pain up my leg. I go down in a tangle of limbs and wounded pride, sliding several feet before bashing right into the boards with a thud! that makes me feel like a giant instead of a petite figure skater.
“Ivy!” Finn’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, but I’m slow to look in his direction.
Suddenly, he’s there, sliding on his knees in front of me, reaching to stop himself before we collide.
“I’m okay,” I gasp, leaning my weight against the boards, but I don’t try to stand.
“No, you’re not.” Finn’s gaze darts all around my body, as if trying to find where I’m injured just by looking. “Don’t try to move.”
“It’s just a sprain,” I say, but tears burn behind my eyes. Not from the pain, but from the crushing weight of what this could mean. Two weeks until my qualifier. Two weeks, and I might have just ruined everything by free-skating with a hockey player.
A handsome hockey player, but still.
“Can you wiggle your toes?” Dax asks as he arrives.
I test the movement carefully. “Yes. It’s not broken.”
Finn’s relief comes out in a quick burst of a sigh. “Let’s get you off the ice. Now.”
Before I can protest, he scoops me up in his arms like I weigh nothing. The gesture is so protective, so tender, that the tears I’ve been holding back finally spill over.
“Hey,” he whispers as he carries me toward the first aid room. “It’s going to be okay.”
But I can’t stop crying, can’t stop thinking about my mother’s threats, and the look of disappointment that will cross her face when she learns about this injury.
In the quiet of the first aid room, Finn settles me on the examination table and kneels in front of me, carefully removing my skate. His touch is gentle, reverent almost, as he examines my ankle.
“It’s swollen, but not too bad,” he says, taking the ice pack that Dax brings him. “You’ll need to rest it for a few days.”
“I can’t rest it.” The words come out as a sob. “I have two weeks, Finn. Two weeks to prove I deserve a spot on Team USA, and I can’t afford to lose even one day of practice.”
“One day won’t matter.”
“You don’t understand.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, feeling pathetic and vulnerable. “I already failed once. Four years ago at Nationals, I fell during my long program and lost my chance at the Olympics. My mother has never forgiven me for it, and if I fail again...”
“You won’t fail.”
“But what if—?”
He silences me with a kiss that’s different from the others. This one is deeper, more urgent, like he’s trying to transfer some of his certainty into me through the connection of our lips.
He breaks the kiss as roughly as he started it, and he doesn’t go far. “What if what?” he whispers against my mouth.
“What if I’m not good enough?” Even with a healthy ankle—what if I’m just not good enough to do what my mother wants me to do?
I search his face, and he wears that same fierce determination I’ve seen on his face while he works on his technique, when he tried to set up a time to pick me up for our first date, when he’s on the ice, trying to win the game for his team.
“You are absolutely good enough, for anything and anyone.”
The simple certainty in his voice nearly undoes me. I’ve never had someone believe in me so completely, so unconditionally. My mother’s love comes with conditions and expectations. My father’s is gentle but distant. But Finn looks at me like I’m already a champion, twisted ankle and all.
“We should get you home,” he says finally, pressing another soft kiss to my forehead. “You need ice and elevation and rest.”
He helps me down from the table, supporting most of my weight as we make our way slowly toward the exit. My ankle throbs with each step, but it’s manageable. I’ll be able to skate tomorrow, maybe even this afternoon if I’m careful.
The thought of having to tell my mom I can’t make it to our session later has my stomach tightening until I feel like throwing up.
“I’m really sorry, Ivy,” Dax says as he darts ahead of us to open the door.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s not your fault.”
“Who else is here?” he asks, and I look up to see a dark red sedan parked next to Finn’s truck.
I suck in a breath, and my body goes still.
“Ivy?” Finn asks.
“That’s my mother’s car,” I whisper, my voice unable to be louder than that.