Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Dean
By the fourth day, the rink should have felt settled.
That was usually how competition weeks worked for me. Timing got locked in and muscle memory took over. The longer I stayed somewhere, the less I had to think.
Today that wasn’t happening.
I pushed through another run, relying on habit to carry me while my attention wandered. The skating itself was fine, clean entry, clean landing. Nothing Mark could point to and complain about.
Halfway through the footwork, I caught myself looking for him again.
I drove into the next pass, sharpening every transition as though precision alone could solve the problem.
It didn’t.
“Do it again.” Mark’s voice carried across the ice.
I circled back toward the boards. “It was fine.”
“You rushed the exit.”
“It still worked.”
Mark didn’t answer right away. His attention drifted past me toward the far side of the rink.
Unfortunately, mine followed.
That was apparently all the confirmation he needed.
“Why is Luka Davorin staring at you?”
I looked back at him sharply. That wasn’t a question I wanted my coach asking. “Everybody watches everybody. Shared practice, remember?”
“Not like this.”
I adjusted my grip on my gloves.
Mark had spent years coaching elite athletes. Pretending he hadn’t noticed things was not one of his skills.
His expression remained infuriatingly neutral. “Dean, you’re skating like you know exactly when he’s looking.”
That hit a little too close to home.
I pushed off before he could say anything else.
“Again,” Mark called after me.
I stayed on the ice long enough to finish the session without embarrassing myself, though the ease I normally relied on never fully returned. The elements stayed clean enough that nobody else would have noticed a difference, but my concentration kept catching on the same point.
Luka.
By the time practice ended, my legs felt fine, breathing steady, but irritation still sat under my skin because none of this made sense. I wasn’t somebody who got thrown off balance by another skater.
Apparently, that was no longer true.
I toweled off quickly and headed toward the locker rooms while the noise of the rink faded behind me into the usual blur of blades, voices, and coaches calling corrections across the ice.
The corridor was crowded now, athletes moving between sessions in half-zipped jackets and skate guards, conversations overlapping. Normally I barely noticed any of it.
Today every detail registered. Conversations. Movement. People.
I tightened my grip on my bag and turned the corner toward the locker rooms.
Then stopped.
Luka stood several feet ahead near the wall.
For a second I thought he hadn’t noticed me. He looked kinda distant, staring down the corridor without really seeming to see it.
Then his gaze found mine.
The reaction was immediate.
His chest rose sharply. The reaction vanished a second later, composure sliding back into place so fast I might have questioned it if I hadn’t been looking straight at him.
“Foster.” His voice stayed perfectly level.
“Davorin.”
That should have been the end of it, two athletes acknowledging each other in passing before continuing on with their day.
Instead, I heard myself say, “I thought I saw you at the Montreal training camp last year.”
The moment the words left my mouth, Luka changed.
Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed anything at all. But I watched his expression close off, like a door sliding shut just before I could see what lay behind it.
“No.” The word came out flat.
I blinked. “I thought—”
“I was not there.”
The pressure beneath the words was harder to miss than the words themselves.
“Okay.” I cocked my head. “Did I say something wrong?”
His gaze held mine for a second longer. “No.”
Another answer that was far too quick.
“Right.”
Luka stepped back. “Good luck in your next session.”
A second earlier he’d felt almost approachable.
Now he sounded like someone addressing a reporter.
“You too.”
He nodded, then walked past me.
I watched him disappear down the corridor, then continued toward the locker room, wondering why a simple question about Montreal had felt so much like crossing a line.
It was just a training camp, one of dozens that took place every year. Different coaches, different ice. The same promise of improvement if you worked hard enough to take advantage of it. It hadn’t been a loaded question. I’d meant nothing personal by it.
But the way he shut me down.
The way he held everything so tightly.
I headed into the shower.
It’s probably nothing. I’m overreacting.
Maybe.
There was a part of me that doubted this.
The same part that had started wondering what Luka was trying so hard to keep hidden behind those doors.
Luka
I should have gone straight back to the rink.
That would have been normal. Another session, another hour spent concentrating on problems I actually knew how to solve.
I slowed in the corridor without meaning to.
Athletes and coaches flowed around me toward their next sessions. Voices echoed. Doors opened and closed. Blades scraped against rubber flooring.
I barely noticed any of it.
The conversation with Dean stayed lodged in my head.
I thought I saw you at the Montreal training camp last year.
A harmless statement, but enough for me to shut the conversation down so fast that even he noticed.
I drifted toward one of the smaller practice rinks before realizing where I was going. Only a handful of skaters occupied the ice, running isolated elements beneath dimmer lights.
The quieter space suited me.
I sat against the far wall and closed my eyes.
What came to mind was not Dean’s simple statement about Montreal, but his hand.
The memory returned with humiliating clarity: his fingers closing around my arm after the near collision, the warmth of his grip through my sleeve, and the momentary stillness before either of us moved away.
My jaw tightened.
I bent to remove my skates, focusing on the laces beneath my fingers.
Montreal was safer.
I hadn’t thought about it in years.
One second I was sitting beneath fluorescent lights in Milan.
The next I stood in a narrow office thousands of kilometers away, winter pressed white against the windows.
An envelope rested in my hands.
Official seal.
Opportunity.
A letter that could have changed everything.
No.
Montreal wasn’t safer. I’d buried it, along with the anger, the regret, the memory of what we’d lost.
And with one innocent remark, Dean had unearthed all of it, and made me look at it again.