Chapter 13
Isla
“Let’s go again!” Coach Linden’s booming voice carries across the ice to where I sit on my ass after landing awkwardly out of a triple throw jump.
Spencer reaches down, offering me a hand. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I say, taking his hand and allowing him to pull me vertical as if I weigh nothing. “But I’m starting to hate her.”
He laughs, letting go of my hand once I’m standing solidly on my skates. “You won’t when we’re on the podium with gold medals around our necks. Trust me.”
I nod, ignoring the sting still vibrating my skin.
Spencer knows what it takes to win. We might have gotten connected through friends, but he chose me for my skill and determination.
He took a gamble on me, ignoring the narrative that developed after my incident at Skate America and the dramatic collapse of my last partnership. I will not let him down.
“What’s going on?” He taps the side of my forehead, arching a brown eyebrow.
I place my hands on my hips and bend my neck forward until all I can see are my skates and the ice beneath them. “I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “But I’ll figure it out.”
Spencer skates beside me until he bumps my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
I look up to see that silly boyish grin on his face, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. My skating career has never included someone so relaxed. Competitive, but balanced.
“This is all new to me.”
“Skating? You’re a natural.”
I sigh overdramatically, tilting my head to give him a look.
“Tell me,” he encourages softly.
My hands land on my hips again. “My last partner got unhinged during practices when our timing was off. He blamed me, yelling any time I didn’t land a jump. I couldn’t talk to him.”
Spencer shakes his head. “You can talk to me about anything, Isla. I’m your partner. I’ve got your back no matter what. You’ve got mine?”
I nod decisively. “Of course.”
“Spencer!” The sharp yell comes from the bench that hockey teams use during games.
He holds up his hand to Linden. “Give us a few. We need a reset.”
She huffs out an exaggerated sigh, but says nothing else.
The benefits that gold medals bring you.
There’s also something about Spencer Davidson that makes a person want to say yes to him.
Blame his boy-next-door looks or his persistently sunny demeanor, but having spent the last two weeks with him, I think it’s deeper than that.
Goodness radiates from him, and it doesn’t fall away when he faces an obstacle or an inconvenience.
“I also have a family dinner next week,” I blurt out, admitting the rest of the reason I’ve been distracted all morning.
I have no clue how they discovered I’m in town, but my mother threatened Brooks that they’ll find ways to see me if I don’t come to family dinner. I don’t want them showing up unexpectedly, so I agreed to go. I can get through one night.
“Let me guess, it’s not something you’re looking forward to.”
I stub the front of my skate into the ice. “I’d rather smash into the ice another hundred times.” I let out a long and heavy sigh. “I have a feeling my ex-husband will be there.”
“Why would he be at your family dinner?”
“He’s the heir apparent for Randolph-Covington Transportation,” I say, every word coated with bitterness.
Spencer’s eyebrows shoot sky high, but he keeps silent, waiting for me to explain.
“Brooks and I had no interest in the business, so my father took my then-husband under his wing so he could eventually run it. You’d think that our divorce would change the plan, but my father doubled down.
Maybe to punish me for bringing ‘shame’ on our family, or he agrees with my mother that we’ll get back together. ”
Spencer shifts on his skates. “Why’d you break up?”
I push down the instinct to side-step the question.
It’s part of building trust, of making this a true partnership.
“He didn’t support my skating. Well, he did at first, or at least he pretended to.
I loved him, so I ignored the subtle signs through the years that he didn’t.
Until he stated flat out that it was time for me to grow up, and if I loved him, I would retire and focus on growing our family. ”
“That’s bullshit, Isla.”
“Yeah, but I’m glad it happened. I might still be with him if it didn’t. Giving me that ultimatum made the choice to leave so obvious. I’m mad at myself for not doing it sooner.”
Spencer throws an arm around my shoulder. “Selfishly, I’m glad you didn’t give up on skating. I worried about finding the right partner.”
I glance up at him. “There are other skaters that would be easier to deal with.”
He shrugs. “But you keep me on my toes. I’ve never skated like this with anyone else.”
“Like what?”
“With an aggressiveness and an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. I’ve always been so by-the-book and buttoned up, but with you…I think we’re going to make a statement, Isla.”
The sentiment is so foreign that it takes a moment for his words to settle in my mind. No one has embraced my preferred brand of skating. Instead, my coaches and partners tried to rein me in because they thought that’s what we needed to succeed.
Figure skating culture has long expected a certain kind of woman on the ice, one that’s graceful, controlled, and demure.
Fitting myself into that mold did bring me success, but I always wondered what would happen if I embraced my natural style.
Now, I’m paired with someone who doesn’t want me to dim myself for the sake of anyone else.
“Do you want to take our practice off-ice?”
“Not unless you want to toss me over your shoulder and drag me out of here.” I continue to glide along beside him as we drift slowly toward center ice.
“Not my style,” he says with another grin. I wonder what, if anything, could bring this ray of sunshine down to earth. We’ve been busting our asses, struggling to get onto the same page and learning to trust each other, and not once has he ever lost his joy. “Is that what you’re used to?”
I shrug.
“Isla.” Spencer’s gentle command draws me to a stop. “This”—he motions between us with one hand—“is how we learn to skate better.”
“By sharing sob stories?” I scoff. “Doubtful.”
He belts out a genuine laugh. “Damn, sometimes you remind me so much of him.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who?”
“My brother.”
I point at him. “You take that back.”
Spencer sticks out his tongue and begins skating backwards away from me. He opens his mouth and pauses dramatically before his quick, “No.”
I take off in his direction, accelerating as quickly as I can to reach him. But Spencer picks up the pace, beating me to the end of the rink before he speeds along the curve and heads to the other side. We take turns chasing after each other, and eventually, stop at center ice.
“You must be pretty happy with yourself.”
He winks at me. “I usually am.”
I roll my eyes, but swallow down the retorts at the ready on my tongue. The smile lines bracketing his mouth vanish from his face as it slips into somberness. My muscles brace for bad news.
“You know, he’s the reason that I had no hesitation pairing up with you.”
My heart stops. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve spent a lifetime watching that hardass face down every challenge. I want my last years in this sport to count. I want to challenge myself, and I think I can do that with you.”
I’d wondered why Spencer chose me over other figure skaters, plenty with more accolades, better reputations, and bigger fanbases. This reason—that I could challenge him to take risks—never crossed my mind.
Spencer spins one hundred and eighty degrees to face the bench. “Linden, can you queue up my emergency playlist? Please.”
“Emergency playlist?” I ask. “What’s the emergency?”
He flashes me a smile. “Trust me, Isla.”
Moments later, I’m shocked when our stick-up-her-ass coach obeys Spencer.
Earlier, we walked through our program, pausing the music to talk through each element and practice it to her heart’s content.
This time, the repetition of three notes on the electric guitar blares through the rink speakers, the widely recognized beginning to What’s My Age Again?
The notes hit my bloodstream instantly, and my feet move of their own accord to the beat of the music, skating into a camel spin.
I bend at the waist, dropping to a ninety-degree angle while my leg holds straight out, creating one long line in the air from head to foot as I skate in a circle.
When I come out of the spin, I spot Spencer heading my way, opening his arms like he expects me to walk into them. He holds out his hand as he slides down the ice in front of me.
“Double axel-Euler-double sal,” Spencer says suddenly, releasing my hands and speeding toward me until he’s at my side. “You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Spencer shifts to skate backward as we approach the curve in the rink, and I follow suit, keeping sufficient distance so we can perform the skills together without running into each other. “On three. One…two…three.”
I shift forward again after gaining sufficient speed, squatting down with my left leg and propelling my right leg into the air, bending it once I’m airborne as I complete a double axel, two and a half turns.
I land on my left leg and immediately launch into half rotation to allow for an edge change before performing a double salchow, completing two revolutions in the air again and landing on my left skate.
Spencer lands beside me with a grin on his face that likely matches my own. It’s hard to describe the unmatched invincibility that comes with a perfect landing.
He croons the last line of the song, pointing at me while he drags out the final syllable.
I shake my head at his absurdity. “You might be the most unserious person I’ve ever met.”
“Also, the happiest.” He places his hands underneath his chin, palms down, fingers facing each other. Adorable.
Claps ring out as our music cuts off. My head whips to the sidelines to find the man who has made inconvenient appearances in my dreams since the night he drove me home.
My stomach plummets, staring at Wes Davidson leaning against the side railing of the tunnel, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.
The intense hunger in his stare causes my knees to buckle.
Every time I’ve made the mistake of looking at him these past two weeks, a shiver has shot down my spine, and I’ve headed in the other direction. I can’t have any distractions.
Thea stands beside him, clad in her hockey gear sans her helmet. I’m happy to see her smiling face, especially after how down she was when I last saw her.
Spencer snaps his fingers. “Oh! I have a solution for your problem. You should bring a date to your family dinner.”
A laugh burst from deep in my chest. Why would I ever torture someone like that?
“What?” Spencer presses on. He begins skating again, in a circle around me. “It’s a great idea. Some guy shows up and makes heart eyes at you, and it’ll make it harder for them to pull their usual bullshit. It’ll show your ex and your mom that you’ve moved on.”
I follow Spencer’s lead, drifting into a slow circle around him as he continues to spin. “This is a joke, right?”
“Isla, trust me. It’ll work. Just find a guy—”
“Is this your way of trying to snag a front seat to the trainwreck that is my family?”
“I got someone better,” he says before taking off toward the other side of the rink.
I realize a half-second too late the someone he has in mind. “Spencer, don’t!” I call while chasing after him.
“—needs a favor,” I hear Spencer finish to a furrowed-brow Wes.
I hold my hands up. “No, I don’t. No favors needed at all. Do not listen to him.”
One side of Wes’s lips lifts infinitesimally. “Now I need to hear this.”
“Isla needs a date,” Spencer announces without an ounce of finesse.
I cross my arms across my chest. “I do not need a date.”
Spencer places a finger over my mouth and shushes me. “She needs someone to show her family and her ex that she’s moved on. It’s an hour or two tops, and you’ll make her life so much easier.”
Right, like Wes will care about that.
“A date and a meet-the-family. You’re going to owe me, Covington.” Wes smirks.
Everything between us has turned on its head since we found out that we both remember our chance meeting as kids, and I don’t know what to do about it.
“This dinner will be a nightmare. My dad will grill you. My mom will undercut you. My ex will get mean. I wouldn’t wish my family on my worst enemy.”
But it would be nice to have someone other than Brooks with me. He has his own baggage with our family to contend with.
“I don’t scare so easy, Red.”
I skate to the rink barrier, passing Thea and Spencer talking while she warms up for practice. I prop my elbows on the top of the boards. “What do you want in exchange?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Isla.”
An inferno sparks to life in my belly as we hold eye contact. I want him once, to extinguish this curiosity. That’s all this is: a hot man, a long stretch of celibacy, and a fucked-up imagination causing my body to react this way.
What if I want the answer? The words claw up my throat, but I suppress them. “I can’t accept your help if I don’t know the payment.”
“Or you could take a risk, Covington.”
I continue to stare him down, staying silent, hoping he’ll buckle and tell me his terms. His gaze remains steady, unruffled by my intensity. Has my stubbornness met its match?
“Just a thought,” Wes says, turning away from me and heading down the tunnel, leaving me staring after him, wondering whether I’ll survive whatever he throws my way.