Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Luka
I woke to the sound of running water and Dean humming.
I toyed with the idea of joining him in the shower, but dismissed it.
Slippery tiles and sex, right before an event?
A disaster waiting to happen. Besides, I was warm, comfortable, and my hip was no longer trying to attract my attention.
Instead, I lay there listening to him, straining to hear the words, and when I finally caught them, my heart felt as though it would burst.
He was singing ‘All of Me’ and one line about loving all my curves and edges made me smile. Only Dean could find a love song that managed to work in skating terminology. Then I caught my breath when more of the lines registered.
He couldn’t have found a more perfect song, and I still couldn’t believe the path my life had taken.
I never believed I could have all of this.
Before Milan, wanting someone had always felt dangerous. That was the simplest way to explain it. Wanting led somewhere, eventually. Inevitably. And I had never believed I could afford the consequences.
So where does that leave me now?
“You’re awfully deep in thought over there.”
I jumped. Dean watched me from the bathroom door. I hadn’t even heard the shower stop.
He walked over to the bed, a towel around his hips.
A thin towel that did little to hide his arousal.
I smirked. “You are not subtle.”
To my surprise, he didn’t react as I expected.
Dean sat beside me on the bed with our hands linked between us, his thumb moving across my knuckles as though he could smooth tension out of me by touch alone.
“I’m curious,” he said after a while. “Where did you disappear to just then?”
I watched our joined hands instead of looking at him. “Would you say there have been many women you wanted?”
“Wanted how?”
“Sexually.”
He chuckled. “Okay, that’s a very different question.” He leaned back against the headboard, still holding onto me. “Then yeah. There’ve been a few.” He tilted his head. “What about you? Men?”
The room felt warmer suddenly. Or maybe that was only me.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But wanting was always where it ended.”
Dean stayed still, waiting.
“I think you believe I was frightened by attraction itself.” I shook my head.
“That was never the problem. I grew up around men like Sokolov and federation officials and coaches who treated discipline as religion. Every hour of my life revolved around restraint—what to say, how to behave, what parts of myself deserved air and which needed locking away before anybody noticed them.” My voice roughened, though I kept going before hesitation could close my throat.
“So when I wanted men, I ignored it. Not because desire horrified me, but because I understood my own capacity for it. I knew if I ever stopped denying myself entirely, I would not do it halfway.” I finally looked at him.
“I was afraid of becoming attached to someone in a manner I could not survive losing.”
He gazed at me, so quiet.
“And then there was you,” I said, my voice soft. “The only reason I dared to want you? That was because the Olympics had already loosened the lock.”
“So I opened the door?” he said with a smile.
I shook my head. “No, you were simply standing on the other side of it, waiting for me. And then you walked into my life and looked directly at me instead of the version I perform for everyone else.”
The confession left me raw in a way skating never had.
“I had a thought while you were in the shower.”
Dean arched his eyebrows. “That sentence could go in several directions.”
Under any other circumstances I would have smiled properly at that. Instead I stared down at our hands again.
“In ten days, perhaps less, I will board a plane back to Velkarya. The Games will end. You will return home celebrated and adored, and I…” I paused, searching for language that didn’t sound theatrical or self-pitying.
“I will return to a life where every step has already been mapped out for me. Interviews. Appearances. Federation dinners. Questions about medals and national pride and gratitude.” My fingers tightened around his.
“And through all of it, I will carry the knowledge of what waits outside that life. What I found here with you.”
Dean watched me carefully now in a way that told me he already understood where this was heading.
“Heavy thoughts,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
His jaw flexed before he spoke again. “You asked me once if I regretted this.”
My throat tightened because I remembered the exact look on his face when he’d asked it. “And you told me no.”
“I meant it.” Dean shifted closer, his knee pressing against mine. “Luka—”
“No, let me finish.” I sat up, dragging a hand through my hair before looking him in the eye.
“I think part of me believed that if I kept this unnamed, if I avoided saying certain things aloud, then eventually distance or fear or reality would solve the problem for me. That I would go home and survive it because surviving difficult things is what I have always done.”
Dean didn’t interrupt.
“But that stopped working somewhere along the way.” I swallowed hard.
“Maybe the moment you asked me to stay. Maybe earlier.” I forced myself to keep speaking instead of retreating into silence the way I usually would.
“I love you. And I think I have for longer than I wanted to admit, because nothing else explains why losing you already feels unbearable.”
Dean closed his eyes.
I kept talking before fear could reclaim the words.
“I don’t know what happens after Milan. I don’t know whether I am brave enough for the life you deserve from me.
But I need you to understand this much at least.” My voice unsteadied despite every attempt to hold it firm.
“Loving you will never become the thing I regret. Hiding it, perhaps. Being frightened of it. Leaving you behind. Those things may haunt me for the rest of my life.” I reached up then, touching his face carefully. “But not this.”
“Luka.” He reached for me slowly, his hand settling against my face. “I love you too.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “We’ll figure the rest out later. Velkarya. Distance. All of it.” His thumb brushed across my cheek. “But you’re not carrying it by yourself anymore.”
I closed my eyes.
My future remained uncertain, but I did not feel entirely afraid of it.
I wasn’t facing it alone.
Dean
It felt as though both of us didn’t want to leave my room, to put off the separation that had to come.
The Olympics were still happening. Velkarya was still waiting for him on the other side of them. We still had no idea what came next. And yet the room felt different somehow.
Maybe because there were no more unsaid things sitting between us.
“I guess you’ll be spending most of today on the ice,” I said, giving my reflection one last glance before I ventured out. Ethan had already sent two increasingly dramatic messages asking whether I’d died somewhere in the Village overnight.
Luka sighed. “This morning, yes, but not more than that. I do not want to aggravate my hip. Mila is meeting me at the arena and we will go through the program a few times.”
“Are you worried about tomorrow?”
“That is the strange thing,” he admitted. “I should be. Usually by now I would have convinced myself disaster was inevitable.” He grinned. “Instead, I keep thinking about the fact that you snore.”
“I do not snore. That is slander.”
“Would you like me to record you?”
I laughed, reaching for my phone as another notification buzzed. The date flashed across the screen and I paused. “Oh, hey.”
Luka raised an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous.”
“You know what today is?”
“The day before the pairs short program,” he answered immediately, dead serious. “Why?”
I stared at him. “Wow. You really have gone full Olympic monk.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
I waved my phone. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”
That got a blink out of him. “That had not… how do you put it?… made it onto my radar.”
I laughed. “Wow. You’re sounding more and more like an American.”
He snorted.
I dropped onto the chair beside the bed and started scrolling. “Apparently Italy takes this stuff ridiculously seriously too. Listen to this.” I cleared my throat dramatically. “‘Couples often celebrate with intimate dinners, romantic weekends in Verona, Venice, or Florence—’”
Luka groaned and pulled a pillow over his face.
“Oh, it gets worse,” I continued. “‘Luxury desserts, candlelit wine tastings—’”
“I hate this article already.”
I grinned. “No, you don’t. You hate that you secretly want all of it.”
The pillow shifted enough for one blue eye to appear. “And what exactly are we supposed to do? Share stale pizza in your room while Noah Bennett inevitably interrupts us looking for condoms?”
“First of all, rude. Second, leave this afternoon free.”
That made him lower the pillow completely. “Why?”
“Because I have a plan.”
I did not have a plan. I had desperation, optimism, and approximately four hours to turn those into romance.
Luka studied me long enough to know I was improvising in real time, but whatever he saw must have satisfied him because his expression softened.
“You are trying very hard to make me happy.”
“Well,” I said, grabbing my jacket before the moment could become emotionally fatal before breakfast, “I somehow managed to win Olympic gold and fall in love in the same week. Feels like that deserves decent date planning.”
His face changed instantly at the word love, still catching on it every time like he couldn’t quite believe it belonged to him now.
And every time it happened, I found myself wanting to say it again.
“That spin sequence needs to be bigger emotionally,” Ethan announced from the boards.
I glared at him. “Please stop talking.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help here. If you’re doing a gala performance after winning Olympic gold, you need drama. Romance. Longing. You’re giving me ‘mildly emotional accountant,’ not ‘Olympic champion consumed by passion.’”
I snorted. “You’ve watched too much ice dance.”
“There is no such thing.”