Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Luka
A full day had passed since the locker room, and I still hadn’t regained the level of control I expected from myself.
That bothered me far more than the moment itself.
I woke before my alarm in the unfamiliar dark of the Olympic Village, lying still beneath thin blankets while the building hummed around me.
Usually mornings followed an easy pattern during competition season.
My brain organized itself before I even opened my eyes, a constant mental inventory that kept everything running cleanly.
I ran through all of it now: ice time, lift entries, timing adjustments from yesterday’s run-through. Everything lined up where it belonged.
Then Dean Foster appeared in my head without permission.
Dean in the showers. Damp hair. Water sliding down bare skin while I tried—and failed—not to stare like a teenager with no self-control.
I sat upright.
No.
I dragged both hands down my face and forced the image away before it could root itself more deeply.
This was becoming dangerous in ways I did not have time for.
By the time I left for the arena, I’d rebuilt enough composure to trust myself again.
Mostly. Not achieving one hundred percent was becoming a bad habit.
Cold air hit my face during the walk from the metro while Milan moved around me in a blurred motion of morning traffic, accompanied by voices and steam rising from street vendors setting up for the day.
I barely registered any of it. My focus narrowed as the arena came into view, every part of me settling into familiar routines the closer I got to the ice.
Thank God that still worked.
The rink smelled the same as every major competition arena in the world, and the familiarity steadied me.
Skaters were already warming up when I stepped inside.
I tracked them without thinking, eyes moving automatically toward weak landings, unstable edges, small technical errors hidden inside otherwise polished programs. Mistakes always drew my attention first. Years of training had wired my brain that way.
I did not look for Dean.
Mila stood near the boards tightening the tape around one wrist when I joined her. She glanced at me once before looking back toward the ice again.
No greeting was necessary. With Mila, silence rarely meant absence of communication.
We started the short program run-through without delay. The first pass felt clean beneath me, our timing centered, Mila’s weight exactly where I expected it during the lift entry. My body settled into repetition while movement drowned out the lingering noise in my head.
Sokolov stopped us after the third run-through. “Again.”
He never raised his voice. He didn’t need to.
Mila exhaled beside me while we reset position, though I knew her well enough to recognize the sound for what it was, a sign of readiness.
We pushed off together.
The lift rose cleanly. Mila hit position above me while I adjusted beneath the weight and momentum, every correction precise enough to remain invisible. By the exit, my breathing had steadied again.
“Better,” Sokolov said.
Approval from him always sounded clinical.
Then his gaze settled on me, and my skin prickled.
“You are being watched.”
I stayed still.
“There is increased media attention,” he continued. “Commentary. Expectations.”
That was normal at the Olympics. Cameras followed momentum aggressively, especially when smaller federations threatened podium placements.
But I knew Sokolov wasn’t talking about scores.
“They call you reliable. Disciplined. Precise.” His eyes narrowed. “Do not give them a reason to reconsider that assessment.”
My stomach tightened.
Beside me, Mila went very still.
I waited for the words that instinct told me were lurking beneath the surface.
They never came.
“We skate as we train,” Sokolov continued. “And we train without distraction.”
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.
Mila echoed me a second later.
Sokolov watched us both for another moment before nodding once toward center ice. “Again.”
We pushed off, and this time I focused harder, stripping every movement down to mechanics alone: edge pressure, timing, rotation speed. The familiar rhythm steadied me while repetition forced everything else into the background.
For a while, that worked.
Then Dean walked onto the ice.
I didn’t see him immediately. My attention stayed where it belonged, fixed on the sequence beneath my blades while Mila matched my timing beside me.
Awareness hit first.
Then I looked up, and my pulse stuttered.
Dean pushed into a warm-up lap with effortless speed, moving with a confidence that seemed totally unconscious. He moved freely, every transition flowing into the next without hesitation.
I dragged my attention away at once.
Focus elsewhere.
Another skater near the boards. A jump sequence. Anything.
It lasted maybe five seconds before I found him again.
My jaw tightened.
This was becoming a problem.
I drove into the next edge and gathered speed.
It didn’t help. No matter where I looked, some part of me remained aware of him.
Then he gazed straight at me.
The moment our eyes met, I knew he’d caught me. Again.
Heat surged through me so quickly that it felt like a physical blow.
Suddenly I was fourteen years old, lying awake in the dark and wishing I could unknow something I already understood. Dean’s expression held no calculation whatsoever. No caution either. He simply stared at me.
My breath stalled.
I broke eye contact first and pushed harder into the next pass, letting speed swallow the reaction while my heart hammered against my ribs.
The feeling stayed anyway.
“Stop.”
Sokolov’s voice cut across the rink.
I hadn’t made a visible mistake. The edge remained clean, the timing correct. Mila stayed perfectly aligned beside me.
We both slowed and skated toward the boards where Sokolov waited without moving.
That was worse than anger.
I stopped in front of him, my breathing already controlled again.
His eyes settled on me. “You are ahead of your partner.”
I blinked. “Within tolerance.”
“Yes.” Nothing changed in his expression. “But you are no longer fully present in the program.”
I couldn’t argue. He was right.
Beside me, Mila shifted. I felt the movement through the sleeve of my training jacket.
Sokolov’s gaze didn’t leave mine. “You are compensating, overcorrecting to conceal distraction.”
My chest tingled, and breathing became a chore.
“There is no technical failure,” he continued. “That is why this concerns me.”
I understood then how visible this had already become to him.
“Focus,” I answered.
Sokolov’s gaze sharpened. “Focus is maintained before disruption occurs, not repaired afterward.”
There was no point pretending he’d missed it.
“You are allowing external interference into the ice.”
External.
My stomach clenched.
Mila’s shoulder brushed mine, a gesture of warning or support. Maybe both.
“It will not happen again,” I assured him.
Sokolov studied me long enough that my skin prickled beneath the scrutiny.
Then he folded his arms. “See that it doesn’t.”
We returned to the program, and this time I kept my eyes fixed firmly ahead while the routine rebuilt itself beneath me with sharp, disciplined precision.
The movements stayed clean.
My concentration did not.
The ice had always been simple.
Then Dean Foster had walked onto it.
Mila and I didn’t speak until we were off the ice.
We never did while Sokolov remained within earshot. Years of training under him had turned caution into instinct.
I crouched beside the benches and clipped the guards onto my blades. Usually Mila would already be halfway down the corridor by now.
This time she stayed where she was.
“You’re slipping.”
I didn’t look up. “The lift was clean.”
I knew I’d replied too quickly.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I finished with the second blade and rose slowly. “Then what do you mean?”
Mila folded her arms. “Sokolov wasn’t talking about skating.”
I swallowed, then covered it by reaching into my bag. “He’s imagining problems that don’t exist.” The lie tasted stale even to me.
“Luka.” Her voice was sharp enough to stop me in my tracks. “You disappeared out there.”
My pulse quickened, my jaw tightened. “There was no technical issue.”
The words sounded defensive the moment they left my mouth.
“Listen to yourself.” She shook her head. “You’re still doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Answering a different question.”
Silence fell between us.
I slung my bag over my shoulder. “This conversation is finished.”
I wanted it finished. That wasn’t the same thing.
“And I say it isn’t.”
I started walking.
“You know why Sokolov stopped us.”
My steps stopped before I could prevent it.
“I saw your face when he looked at you.” Her voice was lower now. “I saw you, Luka.”
The air seemed to leave my lungs.
I turned back toward her.
She adjusted her bag higher onto her shoulder. “Just be careful. You know what happens if Sokolov starts asking harder questions.”
Yes, that was the problem.
Mila held my gaze for another second before heading toward the exit.
I stood there for another few seconds, then I walked the other way.
It should have felt like winning an argument.
Except I couldn’t stop hearing:
I saw you, Luka.
The words followed me all the way down the corridor.
Dean
I wasn’t paying enough attention to my own skating.
That became obvious about halfway through the step sequence when Mark called for another run and I realized I couldn’t actually remember the last correction he’d given me. Edge control, maybe. Timing through the transition. Hold the curve longer before the turn.
I nodded anyway, reset, and pushed through the sequence again on instinct alone.
My body still knew what to do even while my concentration drifted somewhere else.
I came out of the final turn clean and slowed near the boards, breathing evenly while the momentum bled out of my legs.
“That them?” Ethan’s voice came from beside me.
“Who?”
Ethan gave me a look.
“Blond Tragic Figure and company.”
I knew who he meant before I looked.
Davorin and his partner stood just outside the rink entrance near the benches.
“Yeah.”
Ethan was quiet for a second. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Everybody keeps talking about their chemistry. The media’s eating it alive this week.”
I looked back toward them. Davorin hadn’t moved. Neither had she.
“You think they’re together?” Ethan asked.
“Maybe.” It was a reasonable assumption. Half the pair teams blurred professional and personal lines anyway.
Ethan tilted his head. “I don’t know.”
“What?”
“Something’s off.”
I frowned. “You got all that from thirty seconds across a rink?”
“You watch people long enough, you start recognizing patterns.” He inclined his head toward them. “Look at her.”
She was saying something low and direct while holding Davorin’s gaze. Whatever the conversation was about, she wasn’t backing down. There was pressure in the way she stood there, steady and deliberate.
Davorin barely reacted. Somehow, that made the whole thing look worse.
“She’s not calming him down,” Ethan muttered.
“You think she’s making it worse?”
“No.” Ethan folded his arms across the top of the boards. “I think she’s the only person saying the thing he doesn’t want said aloud.”
That felt awkwardly close to what I’d been thinking.
Davorin still hadn’t moved. Then he reached for his bag with a sharp movement, ending the conversation.
“That’s not just Olympic stress,” I said before I could stop myself.
“No, definitely not.”
A whistle blew somewhere across the rink while another team reset for lifts near center ice, but neither of us looked away.
The woman finally walked past him first. Davorin stayed where he was a second or two before following.
I straightened beside the boards, unsettled by how much the whole exchange had gotten under my skin. It wasn’t the tension that bothered me.
It was the feeling that I’d just watched someone spend five minutes pretending they were fine.
“I’ve seen that before,” Ethan said suddenly.
I glanced sideways. “Where?”
His eyes stayed fixed on the corridor Davorin had disappeared into.
“Places where people stop breathing properly because they’re afraid to take up the wrong amount of space.”
I didn’t want to think about that.
“Dean.”
Mark again.
“Yeah, I know.”
I drove into the next turn with enough force that the blade carved deep across the ice. Speed usually helped clear my head when thoughts started crowding too close together.
Today it barely touched the problem.
You saw a stressed athlete. That’s all.
A different coaching style. Different pressure. Different federation culture.
There were logical explanations everywhere if I wanted them badly enough.
Except none of those explanations accounted for the look on Davorin’s face while his partner spoke to him.
Or the way I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I slowed near the boards again and dragged a hand through damp hair while my pulse settled gradually beneath the exertion.
Davorin didn’t matter.
His federation didn’t either.
Whatever was happening over there had absolutely nothing to do with me.
My attention drifted toward the far entrance anyway when movement caught at the edge of my vision.
Davorin stepped back onto the ice.
And just like that, every other thought in my head lost the fight for space.