Chapter 27 #2
For the first time since entering the room, I thought he might actually understand. “My father told me afterward that this was why discipline mattered.” I pushed out a broken laugh. “I knew exactly what he meant.” I had never forgotten the lesson.
That was the problem.
The walls felt as if they were closing in on me, constricting my breathing.
“So when I say I’m afraid,” I whispered, my voice finally cracking, “I need you to understand this is not hypothetical for me. I have spent almost half my life watching people like me disappear.”
The admission left me shaking. I had never said it aloud before.
“Luka…”
I shook my head sharply.
“No, listen to me.” My breathing was uneven, my composure splintering faster by the second. “You go home after this and maybe people will speculate online for a while. Maybe reporters will annoy you. But your life stays yours.” My voice broke hard on the last words. “Mine might not.”
The words cracked apart on the way out.
This wasn’t really about medals, or the federation, or even my father.
I was standing in Dean’s room realizing I finally had something I couldn’t bear to lose.
Dean went absolutely still, and I saw something close to fear enter his eyes.
He stood, and the movement startled me, even though he approached me slowly, carefully, as though afraid sudden motion might break something already fragile.
“And what happens to you in that version?” he asked.
My composure finally fractured. “I stop lying.”
For the first time all evening, I wasn’t talking about federations or headlines or consequences.
I was talking about myself.
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum, grounding myself against the sharp ache building there.
“If I do this,” I whispered, “I do not go home the same.”
The sentence sounded calm. The fear behind it wasn’t.
Dean nodded. “I know.”
“And if I do not…” My breathing hitched. “Everything stays intact.”
Dean tilted his head. “Does it?”
I closed my eyes.
“If I do not,” I said quietly, “I go home and I lose you.”
Dean’s breathing caught, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and steady. “I just need to know something.”
I looked at him.
His expression remained controlled, but I heard it then, the strain underneath.
“If this ends…” He swallowed. “Am I something you regret?”
The question hit me so hard, pain radiated through my chest. “No.”
Relief and pain flickered together across his face so quickly I almost missed it.
“No,” I repeated. “Kvrat, Dean… no.”
That was the unbearable truth. Dean had become the one thing in this entire situation that I did not question. I regretted none of it. Not the first kiss, nor the nights in his room. Not the way he had slowly become the safest place I had ever known.
I regretted only the world waiting outside it.
Dean studied me, and I saw the exact moment he believed me.
I’d told him the truth, raw and terrible and irreversible as soon as the words left my lips.
“And the worst part?” My voice cracked. “I will know I had one chance in my life to be honest. And I stepped away from it.”
The realization hollowed me out, because I already knew exactly how that future looked.
I could already see the press conference.
I would stand beside Mila. Smile at the appropriate moments. Say the right things. Thank the federation. Thank the coaches.
Everyone would relax. The story would make sense again. The version of me they preferred would survive.
And the real one would disappear right in front of them.
Every time somebody called me disciplined, professional, dedicated, I would remember standing here with Dean and walking away.
“I do not think I could survive that.”
The frightening part was that I meant it.
Dean looked at me for a very long time before speaking. “I’m not asking you to burn your life down.”
“I know.”
“But if you think forgetting me is the safer option…” His voice quavered. “You’re wrong.”
Pain lanced through me.
“Because it won’t be forgetting,” he continued. “It’ll be erasing.”
Bo?e.
He understood too much. I had spent the entire evening trying to describe the cost.
Dean had found the one word I had been avoiding.
“I do not want Milan to become a secret I survived,” I whispered.
Dean’s eyes held mine. “Then don’t survive it.”
The sentence hit like a match dropped into dry air.
I exhaled shakily.
“I keep imagining arriving back in Velkarya,” I admitted. “Press waiting. Federation officials smiling. My father standing perfectly straight beside them.” My mouth tightened. “I know exactly what to say, how to behave.”
“And?”
“And I would feel…” I stopped, reaching for the words. “Like I had abandoned something essential here.”
The answer sat so close to the surface that saying it felt dangerous.
I wasn’t ready to hear it aloud.
Dean reached across, resting one hand against my waist, not in an attempt to pull me closer, but simply there, steady.
“You don’t have to decide everything tonight.”
Raw emotion surged so violently through me that I had to lock my knees to remain standing.
Because he wasn’t asking me for anything but honesty
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I turned away.
“Hey.” Dean’s voice softened further. “Look at me.”
I could not. If I did, I would stay. And if I stayed, I was no longer certain I would ever leave.
Dean’s hand slipped from my waist, and the loss of warmth hurt.
“I’m not gonna force this,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not gonna beg you to choose me over your whole life.”
The words nearly destroyed me, because some desperate, frightened part of me had wanted him to make this easier, to demand, insist.
To give me someone else to blame.
“You deserve better than an ultimatum.”
I closed my eyes.
“If you need space…” Dean’s voice was rough. “I’ll give it to you.”
The simple acceptance of it hurt more than resistance would have.
This was the beginning of losing him.
The thought hit so hard I physically recoiled from it.
I turned then. Dean stood only a few feet away, his hands loose at his sides, trying so hard to look steady for me that it made my chest ache.
And God—
Looking at him, I finally understood what had been happening to me all along.
I loved him. Not safely, but enough that the realization terrified me.
Dean’s own expression flickered in response, his heartbreak restrained so carefully it almost undid me more than if he had shouted.
“I should get some ice time,” he said quietly. “I’ve got the short program tomorrow.”
I nodded, unable to trust my voice.
Then Dean hesitated, as though he was arguing with himself. His gaze dropped to the floor before meeting mine.
“But…” He exhaled softly. “If I’m being honest…” His eyes locked onto mine. “Zostaň.”
Stay.
His pronunciation wasn’t perfect, not even close, but he had remembered.
The hope inside that word hit deep.
Suddenly I was back in this room nights earlier, teaching him the language between kisses and laughter and trust. Dean grinning every time he got something catastrophically wrong. Dean learning words because he assumed there would be a future in which he could use them.
Stay.
My throat closed.
Dean’s expression tightened. “I know,” he said quickly, as if he regretted saying it aloud. “I know that’s not fair.”
That was the problem. It was fair, because every part of me wanted to.
My chest constricted so violently it hurt to breathe.
“Luka—”
“No.”
The word broke out of me too fast, too sharp.
Dean stilled in a heartbeat.
I shook my head, already backing toward the door because if I stayed another minute, another second, I would fold completely.
“No,” I repeated, quieter now, my voice fraying at the edges. “Do not ask me that.”
Pain flashed across his face, quick and unguarded before he tried to hide it again. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize.” My breathing was uneven. “Bo?e…” I dragged a hand hard across my mouth, trying to regain control and failing.
Because the truth was unbearable now.
If Dean had demanded something, I could have fought it.
If he had given me an ultimatum, I could have called it unfair.
But he had only asked me to stay, as though I already belonged here with him, and some traitorous part of me believed I did.
Dean took half a step forward before stopping himself. That hurt too.
Everything hurt.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he managed to get out. The honesty in his voice nearly destroyed what remained of my composure.
“You may already have.” The moment the words left my mouth, I wanted them back.
Dean went still once more, and horror crashed through me, hot and instant, because I had not meant that, not truly, but now it hung between us anyway, cruel and irreversible.
I saw the exact moment he forced himself not to react, not to reach for me.
My hand closed around the door handle.
“Luka.” His voice cracked on my name now. “Please just—”
I could not survive hearing the rest.
I opened the door too quickly, and cold corridor air met my overheated face.
For one final second, I looked back at him.