Chapter Twenty
LUKA
I stand at the foot of the bed, the early sunrise barely seeping through the blinds, my hand on the zipper of my bag as I listen to the soft rhythm of Natalia’s breathing, still lying naked in my bed.
The storm outside has eased, snow sliding off the roof in sheets. The heat in here smells faintly of chlorine from the hot tub. It’s proof that last night happened.
Last night was a mistake, wasn’t it?
Not because I didn't want it—God, I wanted it.
I invited her into the hot tub. I positioned her over the jet.
I asked permission and then touched her until she came apart in my hands like she were mine to unmake.
I asked her for one chance… one time to show her what I could do to her, and she agreed against her better judgment.
The mistake was how much I wanted to stay after.
How I didn't feel the urge to run when her breathing evened out, and she curled against my chest like I was someone safe. How I fell asleep with her body pressed against mine and didn't wake up clawing for distance as I would have with anyone else.
The mistake is realizing that I want more.
I blink hard, irritated at my own body for remembering it. For craving her. For wanting to go back into that bedroom, slide into the sheets, and pull her close like she belongs to me.
Because she doesn't belong to me. I’m just a boundary she crossed. A client that she feels a strong pull toward, and she needed to let out some of the steam as much as I did.
Natalia is here on a contract. She’s here to keep her job and get me out of the mess I made.
She’s here for damage control.
That's what I remind myself as I step into the hall after leaving her a sticky note to let her know that I went to the gym. I pause at the bedroom door and then pull the door mostly shut, leaving it cracked as if I’m waiting for her to wake. A soft detail that is unlike me.
I hate soft things. They get broken, like my mother and her fight against her own body, like my childhood with a father who wanted me to harden up for the world he was preparing me for.
My boots are by the entryway. I slide them on and grab my coat.
If I don't leave now, I'll realize that I've started wanting things that don't belong to men like me.
I opened the door.
Cold air snaps across my face, stinging and biting at any bare skin.
The reminder that the world is still real, and no longer softened by steam and skin and the sound of her trying not to moan my name.
It’s why the rink and the slopes are the places that clear my mind the most. Nothing thrives in the ice. It’s too brutal.
I step outside and pull the door shut, the lock clicking behind me.
I stand there for a second longer than necessary, staring at the snow piled along the steps, watching my breath fog.
Then I turn and walk away.
The resort gym is open early. A small crowd of people is already working out. Diehards or people still on different time zone schedules. The smell of rubber and sweat, and the sounds of TV news stations mounted over the treadmills fill the space.
I sign in without making eye contact, nod once at the employee behind the desk, and head straight for the weights.
No warm-up or easing into it. I need this to hurt.
I load the bar until the plates clank like warning bells and start lifting like the only thing I can do is punish the weakness out of my body.
My muscles remember what my mind is trying to forget.
Every push is a refusal, and every pull a reminder.
Her laugh, bright and startled, when I teased her, floats through my mind.
The way she looked at me like I was something she didn't understand but couldn't stop studying.
The way her body softened when I touched her shoulders in the hot tub, like she'd been carrying everything alone for too long. My body’s reaction the first time I kissed her neck.
That's what gets me. It wasn’t the heat, or how perfect she looks naked. It was the trust she was giving me, whether she knew she was doing it or not. I liked it… her trust in me.
I lift harder, to punish myself, to sweat out thoughts that last night wasn’t a onetime thing.
My chest burns, my arms begin to shake, and sweat drips into my eyes, and I don't wipe it away.
On the bench across from the mirrors, a couple in matching resort hoodies stretches side by side, murmuring to each other in German, smiling like they live in their own personal bubble.
I look away.
The bar dips toward my throat, and I shove it back up, like the idea of wanting more is something I can press out of myself.
I rack the bar with a loud clank and stand there breathing like I've run a mile. My forearms are pumped, veins standing out, fingers tingling with the leftover electricity of exertion.
It isn't enough.
It's never enough when the problem isn't your body. When the problem is that something inside you keeps trying to reach for a life you don't believe you deserve.
I grab my towel and head out. I don’t head back to the chalet, or to her.
Anywhere but there, because the voice I can’t escape is my father’s: You're just like me, son. You’re not made for love. You’re made for results.
The rink is quieter than the gym, and that's why I came here next.
The ice doesn't care about women with sharp mouths and soft eyes and a stubborn refusal to back down, even when you want them gone.
I lace my skates as I have for most of my life, the leather creaking, my fingers sure. The moment my blades touch the ice, something inside me settles—not peace, exactly, but focus.
A place I bury the noise.
I grab a bucket of pucks and drag it to the circle. There’s no distraction of music or teammates, or a coach blowing whistles. Just me and the boards and the net and the clean crack of impact.
First shot.
The slapshot explodes off my stick, the puck hits the back of the net with a satisfying thud.
My shoulders loosen. This is exactly what I needed. My breath turns rhythmic. My body falls into the groove like it was built for this and only this.
I shoot until my wrists ache. Until my thighs burn. Until sweat drips down my spine for the second time this morning and soaks the collar of my shirt, as if I’m trying to sweat her out of my system.
Still, my head won't shut up.
Natalia's voice repeats in my mind—We can barely stand each other… right?
Her tone when she said it. Like she wanted me to deny it, like she wanted me to admit the truth. The truth is—she's wrong.
I can stand her… I can stand her too well, and that’s the problem.
She doesn’t know that I’ve wanted her since I saw her in the back of that media room, her press pass dangling from around her neck.
I couldn’t stop watching her, wanting to know her name, where she’s from, if she grew up with a Siberian Husky named Mishka, too.
How I’ve been intrigued about her ever since, but tried to keep a reasonable distance.
Or how I haven’t gone home with a single woman since that day in the Hawkeyes stadium when she stopped me, the shape of her hand against my chest permanently etched on my skin, like a ghost of a tattoo that no one but me can see and feel.
I tried to scare her away for her own good and mine. But then she showed up here, forcing me to face something I’ve been running from my entire life.
The idea that love only makes you weak, that no one can be trusted, and that, despite my best efforts, I might be more like my father than I want to admit.
I rip another slapshot so hard the puck rebounds off the inside post with a metallic ring.
I skate hard to chase the puck down, letting speed replace thought. I dig my edges into the ice as I sprint back and forth on the ice until my lungs are burning. This is the only kind of control I understand.
My father used a different kind. He didn’t use speed or skill… he used fear and disappointment. He’d pull back his attention as punishment.
When I was a boy, he used to stand at the edge of the rink during my practices back in Moscow, coat collar up, eyes flat, watching like I was a business investment he expected returns on.
When I played well, he nodded once—approval like a stamp. When I made a mistake, he didn't shout. That would've been too normal. He'd just look… disappointed, and I knew that he’d use weeks of his silence to teach me never to embarrass him again.
I skate to the boards, breathing hard, the image of my mother in bed, pale skin almost translucent, his hand holding hers like he was capable of tenderness. Like he knew how to love.
I remember being stunned by it. A monster with a soft palm… but only for her. A man who could order pain on his enemies and on me, and yet still stroke a dying woman's hair like she was sacred.
I didn't understand it then, and I still don't. That he was capable of love… but not for me, and not for my sister once he could no longer control her.
That he could hold my mother's hand and then ruin other people's lives without blinking? I shove off the boards and skate faster. If love didn't make him better, what the hell would it do to me?
My phone vibrates against the bench where I tossed it. I ignore it, but then it buzzes again, and then again. There’s only one person who calls like that. Relentless, stubborn, refusing to accept silence.
My sister.
I stop skating and glide to the bench, chest heaving. I grab the phone.
"Katerina," I answer.
Her voice hits my ear like sunshine. She’s so much like our mother now that she’s happy with Scottie. It’s almost painful to be reminded of the woman who birthed us, but it also makes me happy to hear it in Katerina’s voice now.
"Luka," she says, and I can hear the smile. "Tell me you're not doing something stupid."
"I'm skating," I say.
"You're always skating." A pause. "Are you alone?"
I glance at the empty rink. "Yes."
"You're supposed to be on vacation," she says, as if she's scolding me for working too hard. Like she doesn't know that rest is something I know nothing about. "You know… normal stuff like pedicures at the luxury spa. Eating bonbons in the hot tub. Ordering room service and eating until you puke."
I almost laugh at the word normal.
"Our ideas of a vacation are vastly different," I say.
"Yeah, that’s because I know how to relax and you don’t."
I don’t argue her point. It’s probably true.
"Playoffs are in three months. I can’t afford to get soft. Neither can Scottie, by the way. Is he with you?" I ask.
A muffled voice in the background that’s both too cheerful for how early it is there.
"Tell him if he's being an asshole to stop ruining the view," Scottie calls.
Katerina laughs. "I looked up your little PR friend. She has quite the resume."
"Kat—" I start until Scottie interrupts.
"Yeah, leave the guy alone, KitKat. Your brother is a dirty hockey slut when he’s on vacation. She’s out of his league… literally."
"Eew gross…" she mumbles.
"Thanks, asshole…" I say back to Scottie.
I hear his chuckle over the line. "Just keeping it real."
"Scottie, you’re doing the opposite of helping," I hear my sister say, attempting to muffle the speaker so I can’t hear her berate her husband.
"Kat, nothing is going on with Natalia," I lie. "Besides, Scottie’s right, she’s out of my league."
Which I won’t challenge. Arguably, she is.
Kat's voice softened again. "Luka… you deserve to love and be loved."
I let out a deep sigh. Of course my sister thinks that.
"Katerina—"
"You're not Dad," she says, firmer now. "You're not him."
The words punch straight through the places I keep locked up.
"I don't want to talk about this," I say, voice flat.
Kat doesn't flinch. "Of course you don't. You never want to talk about anything that matters."
"Stop," I warned.
"Just… don't punish yourself for wanting something good," she exhales. "You can lie to yourself, you can lie to everyone else… but you can’t lie to me. I know you better than anyone else. There are people out there who deserve a chance at loving you and receiving your love in return. I know because I’m one of the lucky few. "
"You’re the only one.."
"What the hell?" Scottie yells back. "What about me?"
I stare at the ice. Wanting isn't the problem; trusting is.
Because trust is how you hand someone a knife. And I've seen enough knives to know what people do with them.
"I have to go," I say.
Kat's sigh is quiet. Sad.
"Call me later," she says. "And Luka?"
"What."
"I mean it," she says, and this time there's no humor. Just truth. "You're not him."
I swallow hard. "I know," I lie.
And then I hung up.
I sit on the bench for a long time after the call ends, staring at my skates, my gloves, the pucks scattered like evidence. Kat's words haunt me.
You're not Dad.
I don't know if that's true, but I do know that I’ve made different choices trying not to become him. I know I left. I know I didn't take his empire when he tried to hand it to me like a crown.
But I also know what I'm capable of. I know what lives under my skin when someone threatens what's mine. And last night—God!
Last night, for a second, Natalia felt like she could be mine.
Not in the possessive way my father used people.
Mine in the way that she’s mine to protect, mine to pick up when she falls…to carry her to safety, to ice her ankle, to hold her hands when she’s learning a new skill that she’s scared of, to rub her shoulders when they’re sore and tell her how beautiful she is.
I skate one last lap around the rink to shake off the conversation with my sister, and then I'm done.
I take my skates off and shove them into my bag.
I leave before I can sit down and start thinking again.