Chapter 21 #2
He’d smiled, declined politely, and gone back to his coffee, as though the decision had never required thought.
Beside me, Dean’s knee brushed against mine again beneath the table, lingering this time. One hand rested beside his coffee cup, but the other was on his thigh, palm upward where no one else could see.
An offering. A choice.
My pulse jumped, and I pressed my palm to his. Dean’s hand closed around mine, warm and steady.
Sitting among athletes who flirted, laughed, made mistakes, and reached for each other without fear, I realized something terrifying.
I wanted that.
And the prospect of spending the rest of my life without it suddenly felt unbearable.
Dean
I was still thinking about my dad.
It wasn’t the same sharp, suffocating panic that had hit me in the corridor after my skate, but the thought sat underneath everything now, steady and heavy.
Every few minutes my brain circled back to it automatically.
Hospital. Tests. Chest pain.
Then I’d remember Mom telling me he was stable and I forced myself to breathe again.
Luka’s hand tightened around mine, and I knew that was for me, telling me he saw my pain. Then he pulled free of my grasp.
“I should go,” he said, a note of reluctance in his voice. “We have practice.”
Except he hadn’t even finished his coffee.
“Norway is out, so I’ll be watching you from the stands tonight.” Ingrid pointed her fork at him. “But I’ll see you on the fifteenth.”
Luka blinked. “For pairs.”
“Yes.” She grinned. “I’ll be the one in the scandalously sparkly blue dress.”
Noah huffed. “I always think it’s so unfair that the guys don’t get to wear the dresses.”
His ice dance partner, Sasha, let out a loud snort. “Sorry, babe, but you really don’t have the legs for it.”
“I’m with her,” Ethan said with a grin.
Ingrid’s eyes sparkled. “Magnus tried on one of my dresses once.”
Keisha nearly choked laughing. “No.”
“Oh yes.” Ingrid nodded solemnly. “He split the seams during warm-up.” Her hand clutched at her chest. “It was very traumatic for everyone involved.”
The entire table dissolved into laughter. Even Luka smiled into his coffee.
Ingrid’s expression softened as she looked back at him. “Seriously, though. Skate well tonight.” Her voice became gentle. “I know there’s a lot riding on it.”
Luka’s smile faded for a heartbeat before returning. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”
I pulled my phone into my lap beneath the table and typed.
Meet me at my room later? After practice?
My heart lurched the second I hit send.
Luka’s phone buzzed. He glanced down and flushed, the color rising sharply into his cheeks.
And of course, everyone noticed.
“Oh my God.” Noah’s eyes widened. “Was that Mila?”
Luka looked up so fast. “No.”
Ethan made a sound that suspiciously resembled a cough covering laughter, and Luka shot him an abrupt glance. Then he stood, collecting his tray with far too much dignity for someone whose ears were still red.
“I should leave now.”
“Coward,” Keisha called cheerfully after him.
Luka paused to look at me, not an obvious, lingering glance, but enough. Then he disappeared into the flow of athletes crossing the cafeteria.
Keisha watched him go before sighing. “He’s ridiculously pretty.”
“I know, right?” Sasha and Brooke intoned at the same time, before staring at each other and laughing.
“Join the queue,” Noah muttered. “Half the girls on the US team have been sighing over him.”
Ingrid stood too, looping her scarf around her neck. She glanced at Keisha. “Do you want to meet for a coffee later? Somewhere that isn’t here?”
Keisha brightened, and Noah pressed a hand to his chest. “You’re abandoning us? You wound me.”
Keisha rolled her eyes. “You’ll survive.” She gave Ingrid a beaming smile. “I’ll walk out with you.”
The teasing followed them halfway across the cafeteria, Ethan loudly demanding updates while Noah yelled something about Norwegian seduction techniques.
Then suddenly it was just the US skaters left at the table.
The second the others disappeared from earshot, Nathan looked at me. “Okay. Spill.”
I frowned. “About what?”
Nathan stared at me. “Dean.”
“What?”
“I’ve been doing the math.”
A horrible suspicion grew, and I glanced at Ethan, who shook his head vehemently.
Okay, whatever this was had nothing to do with him.
“And two plus two is refusing to equal four here,” Nathan continued. “First you turn down an actual Olympic skier who looked like she walked off a perfume commercial—”
“She was nice, but—” I protested weakly.
“—and then,” Nathan pressed on, relentless, “you were holding hands with Luka Davorin under the table.”
Every thought in my head came to a shuddering halt.
I gaped at him.
Nathan pointed triumphantly. “Yep, that look right there. That face confirms everything.”
“What?” I sputtered. “How did you even—”
“I dropped my phone.” He smirked.
Silence.
Then Ethan lost it completely, folding over laughing. “You got exposed… by gravity?”
I stared at all of them in horror.
Noah appeared delighted. “Wait. WAIT. You and Davorin?”
“Apparently.” Nathan sounded so fucking smug.
I rubbed both hands over my face. “Jesus Christ.”
The panic arrived a second later, and none of it was because they knew.
Luka. Velkarya. And if this gets out…
My expression must have changed, because Noah’s grin vanished immediately.
“Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Dean.”
I looked up. Every single one of them looked serious.
“We’re not gonna say anything,” Nathan said at once.
“Obviously.” Ethan rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Dean.”
“You really think we’d put him at risk?” Brooke sounded almost offended.
“What she said,” Sasha added, her face tight.
Breathing was suddenly a chore.
I looked between them. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, you did.” Ethan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “And it was a fair assumption.”
Nathan nodded. “We know enough about Velkarya to understand this isn’t simple.”
The lump in my throat thickened.
For a second nobody spoke.
I glanced at Ethan. “I’m sorry, but for a second there, I—”
“Thought I’d spilled the beans,” he interjected. “I absolutely did not. I didn’t have to. Your secret Olympic boyfriend energy was just catastrophically obvious.”
“Ethan,” I groaned.
He widened his eyes. “What? The guy skates past and your entire attention span packs a bag and leaves.”
That shut me up, because the worst part was he wasn’t wrong.
Brooke’s expression was kind. “How long has this been going on?”
I hesitated. “Not long,” I admitted. “Since we arrived here.”
Noah’s eyebrows shot upward. “Oh wow. So this is fresh fresh.”
“Extremely fresh,” Ethan agreed. “Like emotionally devastating baby deer levels of fresh.”
I stared at him. “So what you’re saying is that basically I’m a newborn woodland creature having a sexuality crisis.”
He shrugged. “If the cap fits…”
I laughed despite myself, the sound rough around the edges. A second or two later, my chest tightened again.
Everything felt too big all of a sudden, too much going on.
Noah’s hand was on my arm, gentle but firm. “Hey, we’ve got you.”
The simplicity of it nearly undid me.
Nathan nodded. “All of us.” Brooke echoed him, then Sasha.
“If anyone gets too curious,” Ethan added, “we redirect.”
“We intercept,” Sasha corrected.
“We’re Team USA,” Ethan said, his tone solemn. “Defensive strategies are important.”
I stared at this bunch of unbelievable, loud, ridiculous people, and suddenly I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Not one of them had hesitated or asked whether keeping quiet was worth the trouble.
Team USA, apparently, had simply decided Luka was theirs too.
Noah cocked his head. “Also, for the record?”
I huffed out a breath. “What now?”
“You deserve somebody who looks at you the way Davorin does.”
The knot that had been sitting in my stomach since Nathan spoke finally loosened.
I glanced at my phone.
Two o’clock, and the Village had gone strangely quiet. Doors still opened and closed along the corridor outside my room, distant voices drifted in occasionally, and elevators hummed somewhere farther down the hall, but compared to the chaos of the arena, it felt muted.
Luka lay beside me on top of the blankets, one arm draped across my stomach while I stared at the ceiling with my fingers threaded through his hair.
He’d arrived at my room after practice, looking exhausted in that tightly controlled Luka way, and I’d opened the door already knowing neither of us needed words right then.
We’d ended up on the bed, holding each other, doing nothing but breathe, resting in the tiny pocket of calm we’d somehow built inside the middle of the Olympics.
I could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing against my ribs, slow and even. Every so often his thumb moved against my side, tiny unconscious strokes that grounded me more effectively than any breathing exercise Mark had ever taught me.
Luka shifted, lifting his head enough to look at me. “You are thinking too loudly again.”
I managed a chuckle. “Sorry.”
“Americans seem to apologize for everything.”
I snorted. “That’s rich, coming from someone who apologizes every time he steals my pillows.”
“They migrate naturally.”
“Sure they do.”
His mouth twitched. Then his phone buzzed on the bedside table beside us, and the shift in him was immediate. It was as if a heavy blanket had dropped onto him, weighing him down.
And if a blanket could have a name, this one would be called Obligation & Structure.
Luka grabbed the phone, glanced at the screen, and let out a long, slow breath. The second he said Mila’s name, I knew the break was over.
He sat up, one hand lingering against my chest before slipping away. “They want us at the arena.”
“Yeah.”
Then Luka looked back at me, and the sight of him sitting on my bed, his hair messy from sleep, his expression softer than the world ever got to see, constricted my chest.