Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Luka
Mila adjusted the scarf looped around her neck as we crossed the street toward the café.
“Tell me again why we are doing this.” She hadn’t sounded convinced when I told her of the plan.
“Because we were invited.”
“Yes, by Americans.” She glanced at me. “And since when are you close enough to Ethan Miller that he casually invites you sightseeing?”
I shrugged. “He saw me last night when I was in the cafeteria. He was with the others.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Oh, so now they’re ‘the others.’” She lifted both hands in exaggerated quotation marks. “Forgive me. I did not realize you had developed an international social circle.”
I managed a laugh. That only encouraged her.
“You have spent years acting as though casual human interaction was a dangerous distraction from training, and now suddenly you are collecting extroverted Americans.”
“I had breakfast with them earlier this week,” I reminded her.
“They were funny. Kind.” I hesitated before adding, “And Ethan thought it would be good for us to leave the Village for an afternoon. We are not competing again until Sunday. Even Sokolov would struggle to object to coffee and sightseeing.”
Mila made a thoughtful sound. “Ah. So this is emotional avoidance.”
“No.”
“Yes, it is, but I understand it.” Her eyes were kind. “You are trying not to think about Dean Foster for several consecutive hours.”
Despite the cold, my cheeks burned. “That is not what this is.”
“Of course not. Which explains why you chose to spend your afternoon with people guaranteed to mention him every five minutes.” She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. “An excellent strategy. Very disciplined.”
I scowled. “You are enjoying this.”
She smirked. “A little.”
The café came into view at the corner ahead, crowded with Olympic spectators wrapped in scarves and accreditation badges. Through the windows I could already see flashes of familiar team jackets and animated movement.
Warmth rolled over us the moment we stepped inside, thick with coffee and sugar and damp wool drying near radiators. Somebody laughed loudly near the counter. Cups clattered against saucers, conversations overlapping in half a dozen accents.
Then I saw Dean, and the world narrowed with terrifying speed.
He had his back to me, and he was laughing at something Noah said, his head tilted back. He was seated near the center of the long pushed-together tables, surrounded by teammates and skaters from other countries.
And then Keisha said something to him, and he turned his head.
Everything inside me tightened at once.
The café noise continued uninterrupted around us, but his expression changed so completely when he saw me that the rest of the room blurred at the edges anyway.
Shock crossed his face first, sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs, before it softened into relief so visible it hurt to look at directly.
God, that look nearly destroyed me.
Beside me, Mila exhaled. “Well, that answers that question.”
I barely heard her.
Dean stood so abruptly his chair scraped loudly against the floor, and what unsettled me almost as much as his reaction was the complete lack of confusion from everybody around him.
Ethan looked unbearably smug. Noah stared between us with open fascination.
Nathan wore the resigned expression of somebody whose suspicions had just become fact.
They know.
Not everything, perhaps. Enough.
Dean took one step toward me before stopping himself, and I knew he was respecting what I had asked for, showing the same restraint he’d demonstrated on the ice the evening before.
Neither of us spoke.
Then Dean gave a slight, uncertain smile.
“Hey.”
That was all it took for every miserable hour since I left his room to collapse inward under the simple relief of hearing his voice again.
Dean
Luka walked into the café, and I forgot how to function as a human being.
Unfortunately, everyone at the table realized it.
Noah looked between us once before muttering, “Oh my God,” under his breath.
Nathan kicked him under the table, and Noah glared at him.
“What did you do that for?” He gestured to me and Luka.
“Don’t act like you’re not seeing this too.
They look like the final scene of a melodrama my mom binge-watches at three in the morning.
I’m two seconds away from hearing violins, then everything’ll go into slow-mo. ”
“Noah, I swear…” Keisha rolled her eyes. “I’m gonna get you a zipper for that mouth.”
Meanwhile I remained rooted to the floor like a complete idiot because Luka stood near the entrance looking exactly the same as he had two nights ago, and somehow not the same at all.
His coat still hung open because he never zipped it properly. His posture carried that familiar caution I’d started recognizing before he even spoke. None of that had changed.
What changed was me. Seeing him in front of me after spending two miserable days trying not to imagine where he was or what he was thinking hit hard enough that I briefly forgot how breathing worked.
Beside me, Ethan leaned back in his chair wearing the satisfied expression of a man who believed himself responsible for successful diplomatic relations between hostile nations.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You did this.”
Ethan blinked. “Who, me?”
Brooke let out a snort. “Aw, sweetie, whoever told you that you could do innocent? They lied their ass off.”
I wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “You invited them.”
“What a cynical worldview.” Ethan shook his head sadly. “Sometimes people simply gather organically in the spirit of international friendship.”
“Ethan,” I ground out.
“Dean.” He teased the syllable out.
I would’ve kept glaring at him if Luka hadn’t been standing across the café looking at me as though he wasn’t entirely sure this had been a good idea after all.
That knocked every other thought right out of my head.
I crossed the space between us, careful not to make this harder after everything else that had happened between us.
“Hey,” I said again.
Luka’s Adam’s apple bobbed before he answered. “Hello.”
Even hearing his voice again felt like relief.
I wanted to touch him so badly, even if it was just my fingers on his wrist, to feel the pulse of his heart. My hand twitched at my side, but memory intervened fast enough to stop me: Luka standing near my door trying to convince himself walking away counted as survival.
Beside him, Mila folded her arms and looked directly at Ethan. “You planned this.”
Ethan pointed at himself. “Me? I’m just fostering international relations.”
Nathan barked out a laugh.
Ethan pointed at himself with exaggerated innocence. “Why does everybody keep accusing me of crimes?”
“Because you have the face of a man planning several at once,” Nathan replied.
Mila narrowed her eyes suspiciously before muttering something in Velkaran that definitely sounded like an insult.
Ethan grinned. “I don’t speak the language, but I feel judged.”
To my right, Luka let out the smallest laugh, low and reluctant, and the sound went through me so fast I had to look away for a second before I embarrassed myself publicly.
God. I missed hearing that.
Sasha coughed. “Okay, let’s all agree that Ethan is a sneaky little fu—” Noah nudged her with his elbow, and she frowned. “All I was going to say was, time’s a-wasting.” She pushed back from the table and clapped. “Okay, that’s enough emotional eye contact. Some of us came here to see Milan.”
“You say that like you aren’t enjoying this,” Brooke said.
“Oh, I’m enjoying it tremendously.” Then she glanced at me, her eyes twinkling. “Hey, do you guys need a chaperone?”
“They already have one.” Mila grinned.
Less than a minute later we spilled back onto the street in a noisy cluster of athletes, winter sunlight bouncing off shop windows while Olympic volunteers shouted directions at confused tourists near the barricades.
Olympic Boulevard buzzed around us with constant movement and color, tourists flooding between outdoor screens and merchandise stalls while volunteers directed crowds toward Piazza Duomo.
Noah bought roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and burned his fingers trying to eat them too fast.
“This is how I die,” he announced to all of us.
“Not fast enough,” Nathan replied with a smirk. “And can you do it quieter?”
Luka walked beside me as we moved through the crowds, close enough that I remained painfully conscious of him without either of us risking accidental contact.
Every few seconds I caught him looking around at the city itself: people packed shoulder to shoulder beneath flags and banners, athletes laughing openly in the streets, couples holding hands without glancing over their shoulders first.
I watched him notice all of it.
At one point we passed two men kissing outside a bookstore beneath a faded Pride flag hanging crookedly over the doorway. Luka’s stride faltered before he kept walking, and that tiny reaction hit harder than any dramatic confession could have.
Nobody here even looked twice.
For him, though, I could practically see old instincts colliding against the reality in front of him. After what he’d told me about that guy, Kristof—and what Mark had shared—I could only imagine what was going through his head.
By the time we reached Piazza del Duomo, the square had filled with tourists taking photographs beneath the cathedral’s massive white facade while street musicians butchered an Italian pop song somewhere near the metro entrance.
Brooke stopped dead. “This cannot be a real building.” Her tone held awe.
Beside me, Luka tilted his head back toward the cathedral spires disappearing into the pale winter sky. The tension that had followed him into the café eased from his face while he stared upward.
“No,” he murmured. “It really cannot.”
Then a familiar voice cut through the noise behind us.
“Well. That explains why Ethan refused to tell me who else was coming.”
Mila froze.