Chapter 6 #2
That one got an actual laugh out of me, and the sound seemed to surprise him as much as it did me.
“Careful,” I told him. “You’re starting to look relaxed.”
“I am not relaxed.”
The speed of the denial made me laugh again.
Eventually I pushed away from the boards before the conversation settled into something neither of us could handle.
“But seriously,” I called out, circling toward him, “I think you would’ve liked Montreal.”
The effect was immediate.
The warmth disappeared from his face so quickly it was almost jarring. Whatever openness had emerged over the last few minutes vanished behind the familiar reserve I’d come to associate with him.
I stopped skating.
Fuck. Whatever I’d said, I’d hit the same bruise again.
I still had no idea what Montreal actually meant.
I only knew I’d spent the last ten minutes watching Luka slowly relax, and I’d just watched it vanish.
The door had slammed shut again.
Luka
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
“I do not know what I would be allowed to like.”
The effect on Dean was immediate.
His head lifted sharply, surprise wiping away the easy humor that had been sitting in his eyes a moment earlier.
“Allowed?”
I looked away from him and out across the rink, following the path of a skater running jump entries near centre ice.
“It does not matter.”
Even as I said it, I knew the answer sounded inadequate.
Dean was quiet for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I think it does.”
I had not expected those words to matter. The fact that they did left me off balance.
Around us, practice continued uninterrupted. Music drifted through the arena. Coaches called corrections from the boards. Skaters crossed the ice in intersecting patterns, each one occupied by their own preparation, their own concerns.
None of it seemed real anymore.
My pulse had not settled since the conversation started.
And standing beside Dean, I could no longer remember why I had thought distance would make any of this easier.
I was acutely aware of Dean beside me. The space between us, the warmth of his presence.
The fact that I could still remember exactly how his hand had felt on my arm.
Kvrat.
This was getting worse.
Most people would have let the comment go. They would have recognized the hesitation behind it and moved the conversation somewhere safer. Dean, however, possessed a frustrating tendency to stay where other people retreated.
He wasn’t demanding answers.
That was part of the problem.
I could not remember the last time someone had looked at me as though understanding me mattered more than managing me.
For a dangerous moment, I found myself wanting to tell him. Not everything, but enough to make him understand why a simple conversation about Montreal had left me feeling as though I’d been standing on unstable ice ever since.
The thought unsettled me so badly that I almost stepped back.
Before I could, a familiar voice cut across the rink.
“Davorin.”
Years of habit took over before conscious thought had a chance to intervene. My shoulders straightened.
Sokolov stood near the entrance with Mila beside him. Neither looked pleased.
When I looked back at Dean, his attention hadn’t left me.
The realization sent a fresh pulse of unease through me.
I’d shown him too much.
Dean
Luka stepped back, and whatever had shifted between us folded neatly out of sight.
“Sokolov.” His voice was composed.
Across the rink, his coach stood at the boards with his arms folded, his attention fixed squarely on us. “You need to practice.” The words were directed at Luka, but his gaze lingered on me for a moment before moving away. “Now.”
Luka pushed off without another glance in my direction. Within seconds Mila had joined him, and whatever had existed between us a moment earlier vanished beneath the precision of practice.
I stayed where I was, watching them cross the ice together.
A few minutes ago, he’d been smiling. Now it was as though the conversation had never happened. The shift was unsettling.
The conversation might have been over.
I wasn’t done thinking about it.
Back in my room, I stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
Normally that would have been enough. Give my brain twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, and whatever strange interaction had happened during the day would sort itself into perspective.
This one refused.
Montreal kept resurfacing. Not the training camp itself, but Luka’s reaction to it. The same abrupt withdrawal I’d seen in the corridor. The same sense that I’d wandered into territory he guarded without ever explaining why.
I rolled onto my back and scrubbed both hands through my hair.
They wouldn’t let you.
The words still sounded ridiculous, not because I doubted him, but because he hadn’t sounded surprised by them, as though being told where he could train, who he could learn from, and what opportunities he was allowed to take was simply part of the landscape he lived in.
I got up and crossed to the window.
The view was forgettable: another Olympic building, more glass and concrete, lights glowing against the evening sky.
Usually having something external to focus on helped.
Tonight it didn’t.
My thoughts drifted back to the rink, to one sentence that hadn’t left me.
I do not know what I would be allowed to like.
The memory weighed heavy in my chest.
He hadn’t said it for sympathy. He hadn’t even seemed to realize how strange it sounded.
That was the part I couldn’t shake. Luka had said it like it was normal.
I rested a hand against the cool glass.
Luka Davorin was another athlete from another country with a complicated relationship to his federation. That should have been the beginning and end of it.
But then I found myself replaying every pause in the conversation, every answer that arrived too quickly. What he’d stopped himself from saying. What he was protecting.
Why I suddenly cared.
This isn’t my problem.