Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Dean
Mark didn’t stop the session immediately, and that alone told me I’d screwed up badly enough for him to start watching instead of correcting.
We had the rink to ourselves for twenty minutes before Ethan’s practice slot began.
Usually Mark used every second of that time aggressively—adjusting timing, calling out corrections mid-sequence, stopping me halfway through a pass if an edge looked wrong by half an inch.
Today he let me skate straight through the program without interruption, arms folded at the boards while that unreadable look settled deeper across his face with every lap.
By the time the music cut out, I already knew what he’d seen.
He handed me a towel. “Walk with me.”
His neutral tone made it worse.
I followed him along the edge of the rink while cold air clung damply to my skin beneath my training jacket. When we stopped near the far boards, he pulled out his phone and held it toward me.
“I need you to watch this.”
Then he hit play.
I frowned. “Since when are you recording my practices?”
“Since I needed proof.”
I watched the video, my stomach clenched.
“See that?” He paused the replay. “You’re skating like you’re trying to get somewhere faster than the music allows. You stop listening to the program when your head’s somewhere else.”
I opened my mouth automatically, ready to argue out of reflex, then shut it again because he was right and we both knew it.
I’d spent the entire session trying to overpower hesitation instead of skating through it. Every turn carried too much force behind it. Every landing felt driven instead of natural. My body kept trying to outrun thoughts I couldn’t shut off long enough to settle properly into the ice.
Mark studied me for another second. “Whatever’s going on, handle it now. Don’t drag it into competition.”
“I’ve got it.”
He held my gaze for a moment, then nodded.
“Good. Because if you skate like this in four days, you’ll bleed points everywhere.”
No lecture followed. No drawn-out speech about pressure or Olympic expectations.
Mark never wasted words like that.
The US needed points from me in the team event, and the media had already crowned me before I’d skated a single Olympic program. Gold favorite. America’s best shot. The guy who supposedly thrived under pressure.
Right then I felt one bad thought away from skating straight into the boards.
Mark headed for the exit just as Ethan swaggered through the rink doors carrying his guards in one hand.
“There he is,” Ethan called. “Golden Boy himself.”
I left before he could start a conversation I wasn’t equipped to survive.
Out in the corridor, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
Usually that was enough. Mark pointed out a problem. I fixed it.
Simple.
This time I already knew what the problem was.
I pushed away from the wall and headed for the exit.
Training wouldn’t help. Another run-through wouldn’t help. Neither would talking to Ethan, Tomasz, or Mark.
The city moved around me in a blur of traffic and late-afternoon light.
I barely noticed.
I’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying to convince myself this was a bad idea. Bad timing. Supremely bad timing.
It hadn’t worked.
All I could think about was kissing Luka.
And, God help me, doing it again.
Luka
Mila didn’t say a word during practice, which told me immediately how bad it had been.
She always noticed. A hesitation half a beat too long.
Timing that failed to settle properly. A lift entered with too much force because my concentration fractured at exactly the wrong moment.
After years skating together, she could read the smallest inconsistency in me before I registered it myself.
Today I had given her far too much to work with.
We finished the session on instinct, moving through the familiar routine without conversation. Blade guards snapped into place. Towels disappeared into bags. Other skaters passed around us in a blur of movement and noise while the silence between Mila and me settled into something heavier.
Only once we reached the corridor did she stop.
“I don’t want details.”
Relief arrived so quickly it was almost embarrassing.
“Good,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
For a moment she simply looked at me.
“We have four days.”
There it was.
The team event. The reason we were here.
“You’ve already said this. I know.”
“Do you?”
The worry behind the question landed harder than the words themselves.
Then she sighed. “Luka.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
That was the problem.
I was trying. But every time my thoughts slipped, they found Dean.
Dean standing close enough to send heat flooding through me.
Dean kissing me.
The memory tightened low in my chest.
“I won’t let it affect us,” I said.
Mila held my gaze for a long moment.
Neither of us said anything.
We both knew what I was promising.
I wished I felt as certain as I sounded.
Dean
By the time I got back to the Village, my head still hadn’t settled into any place useful.
The kiss kept returning in fragments. Luka’s hand fisted in my shirt. The rough catch in his breathing. The look on his face afterward, as though he’d stepped over a line he’d spent years trying not to cross.
A line I’d never once thought about crossing, and yet since those fragile minutes in my room, all I wanted was to do it again.
I cut through the courtyard with my hands shoved into my pockets, trying to focus on something else. Anything else.
All avenues kept leading me back to Luka’s mouth.
“Dean!”
I looked up to find Noah Bennett heading straight for me, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “You look suspiciously pleased with yourself.”
“Better.” He held up a bright yellow packet stamped with the Olympic rings.
It took me a second. Then I groaned. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.” Before I could stop him, he dumped a handful of condoms into my hands. “Apparently they restocked.” Noah looked delighted.
I stared at the wrappers, then shook my head. “What exactly do you think is happening in my life right now?”
He snorted. “Please. Half the women at these Games would commit crimes for your attention.”
The image that flashed through my head was Luka pressed against me.
I nearly choked.
Noah kept talking.
I heard none of it.
A minute later he wandered off, leaving me alone with a pocket full of condoms and an increasingly ridiculous situation.
By the time I reached my room, I was still thinking about Luka.
I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and tossed my keys onto the desk. The condoms landed beside them.
For a moment I stood there staring at the wall, trying not to look at them, and especially not to think about them.
Then someone knocked. I crossed the room and opened the door.
Luka stood on the other side.
His composure looked as if it was hanging on by a thread. I could see it in the tension around his mouth, the restless movement of his hands, the way his chest rose and fell a little too quickly.
“Can I come in?” His voice sounded rough.
“Yeah.”
His gaze flicked down the corridor before he stepped inside.
I shut the door behind him. “Luka—”
“As you Americans say,” he interrupted, a strained edge of humor creeping into the words, “let us not pretend I came here to talk.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
He didn’t.
He scraped his fingers over his scalp, not for the first time that day, I suspected. His blond hair was more unruly than ever. “I know we said after the team event.”
My pulse picked up.
He lowered his gaze briefly before looking back at me. “But I have spent the last hour discovering that I do not possess the discipline I thought I did.”
Oh dear God.
“Four days suddenly feels like an unreasonable amount of time. I did try to think about nothing but skating.”
Despite my quickening heartbeat, I couldn’t hold back my smile. “And how’d that go for you?” Lord knows it had played havoc with my training.
Luka looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.
“Catastrophically.”