Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Luka
I walked briskly through the Village, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes, following an invisible path that led to Dean’s door.
The Metro ride had been a mistake. Twenty minutes trapped with my own thoughts had given me far too much time to rehearse what I was going to say. I’d constructed entire conversations, logical explanations, careful warnings. Versions where Dean understood immediately. Versions where he argued.
Versions where I somehow made this hurt less.
Every single one fell apart the moment I imagined saying it aloud.
By the time I reached his building, my stomach felt hollow.
Dean’s corridor was quiet, but bursts of laughter filtered through the open window from the courtyard below. Somewhere a door slammed. Someone shouted a greeting in a language I didn’t recognize.
Meanwhile, my life seemed to be narrowing toward a single door.
When I reached it, I stopped. My hand refused to move. My pulse hammered.
I should leave. Wait until after competition, until there is less to lose.
Wait until I can think clearly again.
Except I already knew that was a lie. Tomorrow would not make this easier. Neither would next week, or next month.
My chest tightened and I closed my eyes for a second.
And suddenly there was nowhere left to run.
I knocked, and the door opened.
Dean’s hair was a mess, as if he’d been running his fingers through it repeatedly. He tugged me into the room and closed the door. Then his hands were on my face, my neck, and he was staring at me intently, as though assessing me for damage.
“You’ve had me so worried,” he murmured. “I met Mom at her hotel this morning, and your message kinda took the wind out of my sails.”
I couldn’t get my throat to work. I had spent the entire journey here trying not to think about what this would do to him.
Seeing the evidence written plainly across his face was worse.
Dean stroked my nape. “Hey, what is it?”
I couldn’t do this, not with his hands on me. Not while every instinct I possessed was still leaning toward him instead of away. He stood close enough that I could feel his warmth, smell his hair, his scent… I extricated myself from his embrace and went over to the window, my arms folded tightly.
The loss of contact was immediate.
I hated myself for noticing.
“We should slow this down.”
My voice came out steady, and that was the worst part. It sounded like I meant it.
I could see his reflection in the glass. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, watching me with an attentiveness that had become dangerous all on its own.
“Slow what down?” His voice was so quiet. The absence of anger hurt more than anger would have.
I swallowed. “This.” I made a vague, useless gesture, encompassing the room, the air between us, the unbearable awareness that still surged through me every time he looked at me.
Dean stayed very still. “You want space?” His voice held no hint of accusation or anger.
If he’d been angry, I could have hidden behind it.
If he’d been hurt, I could have blamed myself and moved forward.
He was giving me exactly what I’d asked for.
That made it infinitely harder.
“Maybe.”
The lie left my mouth effortlessly. My chest disagreed in an instant.
I kept my gaze fixed on the window because I could not bear to see his expression change. Because if I saw pain there, I would stop.
And if I stopped, I would never finish.
I forced myself to continue before my courage escaped me.
“When I say slow this down,” I began carefully, “I do not mean I want you less.”
Dean said nothing, but waited.
That was what he always did, made room for the truth and then stood there until I found the courage to reach for it.
I dragged a hand through my hair, exhausted by the sheer effort of holding myself upright.
“I’ve been thinking about what happens after the Games.”
“Okay.” Dean’s voice was steady.
“There are two versions.”
The words sounded absurd, as though I were discussing possible training schedules instead of dismantling my own future.
I turned at last and forced myself to meet Dean’s eyes.
“In one version, we stop now. Quietly.” The sentence almost failed halfway through.
I forced it out anyway.
I swallowed hard. “No scenes. No drama. I go home. You go home. Milan becomes…” My throat tightened. “Something intense that happened under pressure.”
The words tasted like acid. Even saying it felt obscene, as though I were trying to reduce an entire world to a footnote.
Dean’s jaw shifted, the only outward sign that the sentence had landed exactly where I feared it would, but he didn’t interrupt.
I had to go on. “In that version, the headlines fade. The federation stops paying attention. My father stops calling in that tone.”
Dean’s gaze sharpened at that. “And you?” he asked, his voice soft.
I expelled a slow, painful breath.
“I skate. I train. I keep winning.” They sounded like a mission statement I had memorized years ago. An empty one. “I let them imply whatever they want about Mila. I do not correct it.” I dragged air into my lungs. “I pretend this was… a phase.”
That last word almost wouldn’t leave my mouth, not because I was afraid Dean would challenge it, but because I already knew he wouldn’t have to.
Dean’s voice remained steady. “Would you believe that?”
“No.” My answer came instantly, because that was the horrifying truth underneath all of this.
I already knew there was no going back to the person I had been before Milan.
Even if I could, I wouldn’t choose it.
Silence stretched, and still Dean did not push.
“So what’s the other version?” he asked eventually.
My chest heaved.
“In the other version…” I croaked, then fought for control of my voice again. “I do not pretend.” Another sharp intake of breath. “I do not deny you. I do not step away because it becomes inconvenient for them.” My eyes locked onto his. “I stop letting other people decide the shape of my life.”
The words landed somewhere deep inside me.
I had spent years wanting that without ever allowing myself to name it.
Dean froze, his breathing harsh in the quietness. Seeing the effect on him almost broke my resolve.
I made an effort to breathe normally. “In that version, the federation reacts.” I had already told him a little about that. “They do not need to expel me. They only need to make things difficult.” I swallowed. “Fewer international assignments. Less funding. Technical reviews. Partner changes.”
Subtle punishment, the kind no one outside the system could ever prove.
“My father would call again,” I continued. “But it would not sound like this conversation.” The pressure in my chest was almost unbearable. “I might not be welcomed home the same way.”
The understatement felt absurd.
We both knew I wasn’t talking about awkward family dinners.
Dean stayed very still, not interrupting or rushing to reassure me. He simply listened. There were no arguments, no promises, no attempts to rescue me from my own words.
Somehow that hurt more.
Because now that I’d started speaking, I was saying things I had never admitted to myself.
Dean just happened to be the one listening.
I looked away from him, toward the window again. “When I was fifteen, there was an ice dancer at our training center. His name was Kristof.”
Dean said nothing.
“He was older. Twenty-one, maybe.” My mouth tightened.
“Everyone liked him, especially the younger skaters. He was funny. Kind.” I swallowed hard.
“He treated people like they mattered.” The memory was painful.
“He used to sharpen my blades for me after practice sometimes because he said I looked too exhausted to focus properly. He called everyone kid, even when they were nearly adults.” A breath caught unevenly in my throat.
“Once he told me I apologized too much.” Another hard swallow.
“For years afterward, I caught myself looking for him whenever I entered the rink.” I glanced back at Dean.
His gaze had never left me.
I sighed. “I thought he was brave. Not openly, nothing like that. But…” I struggled briefly for the words. “He wasn’t careful enough to make people comfortable.”
Dean’s lips parted. “Jesus, Luka…”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Exactly.” I folded my arms tighter across my chest. “One day photographs appeared online.” My voice sounded thinner now. “Nothing explicit, just Kristof leaving a café with another man.” I looked down at the floor. “They were laughing. The other man touched his arm.”
Silence filled the room.
“That was all,” I said.
And somehow those three words hurt the most, because that was the terrifying thing.
A hand on an arm. A laugh outside a café.
That was all it took.
“The articles started first, stories about morality and national image and Western influence.” I could hear my breathing starting to roughen despite every attempt to control it. “Nobody said gay directly. They never needed to.”
Dean’s jaw tightened.
“At the rink…” I stopped to take a breath. “People stopped talking to him. Coaches stopped using his name. Parents pulled younger skaters away from him in corridors.” My throat burned. “And then one morning his locker was empty.”
The memory slammed into me so vividly I could practically smell the cold, stale air of the changing room again. I still remembered the shock of it. The confusion. The certainty that someone would explain.
No one ever did.
“I remember standing there staring at the space where his things had been.” My voice shook a little. “And everyone acted as though they understood some rule I had only just learned.”
Dean inhaled slowly. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.” The answer came out harsher than I intended.
“Because nobody ever told us anything. He was just… gone.” I dragged a hand through my hair again, only this time, it shook.
“And the frightening part?” I gazed at Dean.
“It wasn’t dramatic. Nobody screamed at him.
Nobody got arrested. There was no scandal.
” A rock sat in the middle of my chest. “They simply erased him.”
I watched horror crawl across Dean’s face.