Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Luka
“Again from the entry,” Sokolov called.
We reset for another run-through, music echoing through the practice arena, the sound distorted in the mostly empty space. Morning sessions always felt strange compared to competition ice, quieter, more exposed somehow.
A few teams occupied distant corners of the rink. Coaches stood along the boards clutching coffee cups and clipboards while blades carved overlapping patterns into the ice beneath harsh fluorescent lights.
I caught sight of the Team USA jackets. Then a familiar figure skated into view, and my breathing hitched.
“Luka.”
I averted my gaze and snapped my attention back to my coach. I did not need to hand him more ammunition.
The headlines and social media had already done that.
I nodded, and Mila skated beside me as we circled back into position. Her hand slid into mine for the lift setup, warm even through the thin fabric of our gloves.
I never feared the lifts. They were physics and repetition and trust built so deeply into muscle memory that my body performed half the movement before conscious thought had a chance to catch up.
Backward outside edge, Mila’s toe assist, press through the shoulders, lock, extend… We had done it thousands of times, enough that sometimes it felt less like choreography and more like breathing.
The entry felt clean. I bent through my knee, loaded the weight into the lift position, and began the upward press—
—and something caught, a deep, hot tightening low in the front of my hip as I straightened through the movement. It wasn’t sharp enough to stop me, however, and the lift still went up because it had to.
Mila rose above me, her body extending into position while my arms locked automatically beneath her weight. My core tightened hard to compensate before conscious thought even formed.
Something felt wrong, a fraction of instability that no audience would ever see and most judges would not even notice.
Yet I knew Mila felt it instantly.
I saw the microscopic correction she made midair, the subtle adjustment through her center as she trusted me to recover the balance before the dismount.
I did, barely.
I lowered her carefully back to the ice, controlled through the exit edge, posture steady enough that from the outside the element probably still looked flawless.
Inside was a different matter.
We finished the pass without interruption, and Sokolov nodded from the boards. “Better.”
I did not answer.
Mila glanced sideways at me but said nothing as we circled back again.
The music restarted.
“Again,” Sokolov called.
This time the pain arrived earlier, threading through the setup for the throw jump while I pushed harder against it out of sheer irritation.
I knew all the explanations already. Fatigue. Overuse. Nothing unusual this deep into competition.
My hip disagreed.
The strain flared again immediately, only deeper this time, not pain exactly but a warning. I felt it through the drive of the edge and the rotation assist, even as I adjusted automatically to protect it without visibly changing technique.
Mila landed cleanly.
The quiet murmur of conversation from the far side of the rink continued uninterrupted. No one else had noticed. Only when we reached the boards again did I let my hand drift toward my hip.
Sokolov saw it in a heartbeat. “Pain?” he asked in a low voice.
“Just tight.”
“How tight?”
I shrugged instead of answering.
Beside me, Mila unlaced one glove slowly before speaking. “It wobbled.” Her voice stayed low enough that only I heard it.
I met her eyes.
Pain belonged to skating. Pain was background noise. You learned which injuries could be ignored, which ones needed tape, which ones required anti-inflammatories and silence.
Instability lived in a different category entirely.
Sokolov exhaled through his nose, his gaze sharpening as he studied my posture. “You rest this afternoon.”
“No.”
The refusal came too fast, too automatic.
Sokolov’s expression hardened. “You rest,” he repeated. “We need you stable, not heroic.”
Arguing further would only draw more attention, so I nodded, and we stepped off the ice.
Cold air tightened the joint almost immediately once the adrenaline faded. I tested my stride walking toward the tunnel, careful not to limp, careful not to glance toward the opposite side of the rink where Team USA trained.
Dean would notice.
That certainty sat under my skin now. Dean watched closely enough to spot flaws nobody else saw, and right then I could not survive being looked at that carefully.
I straightened my posture and kept walking.
By the time I reached the cafeteria an hour later, stiffness had settled deeper into the joint, not enough to stop me moving but enough to make every step feel overly deliberate.
I carried a tray toward the far corner, already planning how quickly I could eat and leave without anyone attempting conversation.
“How bad is it?”
I jerked so hard I nearly spilled my drink.
Dean stood beside the table holding a water bottle, still dressed in training gear, damp hair curling slightly at the temples.
My first instinct was denial.
“I do not know what you are talking about.” I lowered my voice automatically while my eyes flicked toward the surrounding tables. “And this is probably not wise. People are already talking.”
His jaw tightened. “Then come to my room in five minutes.”
I blinked at him.
“I mean it, Luka. I saw the lift.”
“It is manageable.”
“Yeah?” His gaze dropped briefly toward my hip before returning to my face. “Because you looked about half a second away from your leg giving out.”
The bluntness caught me off guard.
Dean leaned one hand against the back of the empty chair opposite me, lowering his voice. “Please. Just let me help.”
I could not ignore the concern in his voice. “Fine.”
Relief crossed his face quickly enough that he probably wished I had not seen it. “Five minutes,” he repeated, then disappeared back through the cafeteria before anybody could pay too much attention to us standing together.
I stared down at my untouched food.
Is this what the rest of it becomes?
Watching every glance. Measuring every conversation. Calculating who might be taking photos from the next table over.
The exhaustion hit harder than the injury.
When I finally reached Dean’s room, my pulse was hammering. He opened the door, stepped aside to let me in, then closed it fast behind me.
“Sit.”
I obeyed before thinking about it.
Dean stayed standing in front of me for a second, arms folded, studying me with an intensity that made lying impossible.
“How bad?”
I considered minimizing it anyway. Years of habit pushed the words halfway up my throat before I swallowed them again. Dean waited without rushing me.
Slowly, I stripped off my training jacket and hooked my fingers beneath the hem of my compression shirt, lifting the fabric high enough to expose the line of my hip.
Dean crouched in front of me at once.
The sudden change in height altered the air between us so abruptly my breath caught. His hands hovered near my skin without touching yet.
“Tell me where.”
I guided his hand toward the front flexor.
His fingertips pressed lightly along the muscle first, careful and methodical, checking tension before applying pressure.
Heat climbed my spine anyway. Dean’s concentration only made it worse; he treated my body with the same care he brought to skating, full attention narrowed to exactly what mattered.
I tensed when his thumb pressed deeper along the strain.
“There?”
“Yes.”
His eyes flicked up briefly. “Relax for me.”
Nobody should have been allowed to say words like that in a voice like his.
I forced the tension out slowly while he worked along the muscle, testing range and resistance. Nothing in his touch suggested pity. He handled me like an athlete first, which somehow made the gentleness underneath it harder to bear.
I found myself breathing normally again.
Dean reached for tape on the bedside table. “Lie back.”
The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he braced one knee beside my thigh, one hand sliding beneath the curve of my lower back to adjust my position. Entirely practical. Entirely necessary.
My body reacted anyway.
He anchored the first strip beneath my hip bone. “Keep breathing,” he said quietly.
I swallowed. “I had not realized I had stopped.”
He smoothed the tape downward with steady pressure. “You’re lucky,” he muttered, still concentrating on the placement. “If you’d pushed through another full session, this probably would have gotten uglier.”
“That sounds encouraging.”
“It’s supposed to sound terrifying. Most people know when to ease up. You declare war.”
I laughed despite myself, then regretted it when the movement pulled at the strain.
Dean glanced up immediately. “Easy.”
The concern in his face hit harder than the pain had.
He finished the second strip and pressed his palm briefly against the tape to warm the adhesive. His hand stayed there a moment longer than necessary.
“You’re stable,” he said eventually. “You’re not skating until Sunday, so you don’t have to push it tomorrow.” His eyes still focused on his work. “You realize stubbornness isn’t a recognized medical treatment, right?”
“That strategy has worked well so far.”
“Luka.”
The way he said my name unraveled me.
I swallowed once, my pulse quickening.
“I trust you.”
Dean went still. One hand remained spread against my hip while he looked at me with an expression I could not survive for very long.
“Good,” he said softly. He didn’t pull away, but stayed close enough that I could feel the warmth of him surrounding me.
Dean finally sat back on his heels. “Stand.”
I stood carefully and tested my weight. No instability. Relief loosened my shoulders so abruptly Dean noticed at once.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
I looked at him and realized, with terrifying clarity, that leaving this room again would hurt worse than the injury ever could.
Dean’s breathing caught. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
No. Don’t do this. You have spent your whole life learning how to remain silent at exactly the wrong moments.
Not tonight. Do kvrata.
I looked him in the eyes, unable to suppress the tremor that trickled through me.
“I tried.”
Dean stilled, his gaze locked on mine.
“I tried to do what they wanted.”
His face tightened, but still he didn’t speak, waiting me out.
“I told myself they were right,” I continued before I lost my nerve. “That distance would fix this. That eventually I would stop…” I broke off, frustrated by how inadequate language suddenly felt. “But every time I leave you, I feel like I am tearing myself in half.”
Dean shut his eyes for a second. When he looked at me again, relief and exhaustion and want sat so openly across his face that my chest ached.
“Luka…”
“I do not know what happens after Milan,” I admitted. “I do not know what the federation will do. Or my father.” My voice roughened despite my effort to steady it. “I am still afraid.”
Dean stepped closer, giving me time to retreat if I wanted.
I didn’t.
“But I cannot keep pretending losing you would feel acceptable.”
“You don’t have to promise me forever,” he said, his voice low and so gentle.
The same gentleness that almost destroyed me, because he was still leaving me room to breathe even now.
I shook my head. “That is not the problem.”
Dean frowned. “Then what is?”
I shifted close enough to him that our breaths mingled.
“The problem is that I think I would choose you anyway.”
His hand rose to my jaw, fingertips brushing my skin with unbearable care.
“You have any idea how long I’ve wanted to hear that?”
The rawness in his voice nearly destroyed me, and then elation speared through me so fast it hurt.
Dean kissed me before I could think any further. His mouth moved against mine with enough restraint to feel deliberate rather than hesitant, and I kissed him back with every ounce of hunger I had spent the last forty-eight hours trying unsuccessfully to suppress.
I had spent my entire life learning the shape of restraint, only to discover in Dean’s arms, with Dean’s lips on mine, that I no longer wanted it.
He drew back only far enough for our foreheads to rest together.
“Zostaň.”
Stay.
Kvrat.
I swallowed. “You should sleep. Tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow’s still tomorrow.” His mouth curved against mine. “And if you expect me to win gold, then I’m gonna need proper motivation.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
Dean kissed the corner of my mouth. “That’s my Luka.”
Warmth spread through me so fast it almost hurt.
Then practicality returned with brutal timing. “We should still be careful,” I muttered. “My hip. Your program. We cannot do anything reckless.”
“That is the least convincing invitation to take things slow anybody has ever delivered.” I stared at him, and he grinned. “We could always just sleep, you know.”
I stared at him. “You think that’s actually possible?”
Dean laughed. The sound settled somewhere deep inside me. For the first time in days, the future wasn’t the thing occupying all the space between us.
Tonight it was simply Dean. Dean’s hand in mine.
“Zostaň.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’m going to take care of you.”
And God help me, I believed him.