Chapter Fourteen

brYAN

MAY

THREE WEEKS LATER

B eing ‘better than them’ is not as easy as it sounds.

It’s no wonder Lee never hired her friend for my choreo before. That woman’s appearances are extremely deceiving—I’m convinced she’s secretly a sadist, because these are the hardest programs I’ve ever done.

Although Lian, thank god, has forced us to move on from jumps, shifting our focus to twist lifts and throws. “We’re wasting time,” as she declared last week when we laid out our game plan. She’s not wrong. We’re supposed to fly out for our first competition scarily soon, and we’re still not rock-solid on half our required elements.

And that’s not the only thing Lee told us last week. Apparently, her bosses brought in a journalist who wants to do a story on the two of us. So, not only are we practicing elements I hate, but this afternoon, there’s going to be a reporter watching our every move and every word we say to each other.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m jumping up and down with excitement.

And after a grueling twist lift practice—in which I toss Katya up in the air and she has to turn herself around three times before she comes back down, which is when I, somehow, have to catch her without keeping my arms up in wait—my bones seems to think I’ve aged eighty years.

I’m going to have to start taking ice baths again if we keep going at this rate. The only thing keeping me pushing through the pain—not to mention a particular redhead’s constant nagging—is that we might actually be ready in time.

If I don’t die before then, that is. I groan as my back cracks so loudly that Oliver stares.

“Are you good?”

“No,” I mutter, wincing as my spine lets out another loud complaint. “Do you think it’s possible to contract arthritis at twenty?”

“No clue. Try not to, ‘cause your broke-ass insurance won’t cover it. Hey, when’s that reporter lady’s supposed to come?”

“Now,” I say miserably.

“Yikes. You guys have a plan?”

I shrug helplessly. “Not get flamed? Try not to make it look like we can’t stand each other half the time?”

“You better hope she and the reporter don’t gang up on you.”

“I might have to go into hiding.”

“Good luck with that. Our Red Queen has the nose of a bloodhound.”

I drop my gaze, bending over to touch my toes. “You could be nicer to her, you know.”

“That’s no fun. And since when are you on her side, anyway? You were just saying how you wanted to stick her hand in an air fryer.”

Okay, I did say that. But we’d had a bad day, and I was liable to be pissed and a little melodramatic—fine, a lot melodramatic. “I can’t afford for there to be sides here. None of us can. If we screw up here, we’re screwed, period.” I sigh. “Look, she doesn’t have anyone here, either. She might be impossible, but she is all alone, you know? I guess I kind of…feel bad.”

When I glance back, pulling my leg up behind me to stretch out my quad muscles, Ollie’s looking at me with a weird grin.

“What?”

“You’re so whipped.”

“I—” I register the pointed look on my best friend’s face, then groan, planting my leg back down on the scuffed floor. “Oh, what the—”

“Hello? Were you not just mooning over her, like, a second ago?”

“Well, you’re wrong, ‘cause there is totally nothing there.” Like, nothing . Is he insane? It takes all my self-control not to kill her half the time. “Seriously. She’s a total pain in the ass.”

“Looks to me like you want that pain in your—”

I reach over into my bag and throw a towel at his face before he can even think about finishing that sentence.

He coughs and splutters. “Ugh! This is your armpit rag!”

“Serves you right.”

“Exactly. I’m always right. That’s my point.” Oliver sighs. “Listen. I know you’re being forced to skate with her right now, but I don’t have a good feeling about this. She’s gonna pull some bullshit, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m a big boy.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m gonna throw this one at you too,” I threaten, balling up my other towel, and he groans dramatically.

“Alright, alright! Fine. Just be careful, alright? She’s a total loose cannon. I don’t trust her.”

“Well, thanks for your input. But, like you said, I don’t really have a choice.” Honestly, why am I even standing here arguing about this?

“Katya!” I yell, and her head jerks up.

I tap the nonexistent watch on my wrist. “We gotta get to the meeting!”

“Do not rush me.”

“You haven’t even taken your skates off!”

She fires me a middle finger, yanking off a boot and letting it drop to the floor with a thunk.

I laugh to myself, then turn around, clapping Ollie on the back. “See? No chance in hell.”

W e're sitting in one of the management offices, Katya and I seated next to each other across from our coach and the reporter.

Who, just as I expected, is extremely annoying, with a voice so grating you could powder parmesan cheese with it.

“Hi, guys, it’s so great to meet you,” she says, smiling with all her teeth. “I was so excited to hear all the rumors were true. I’ve been obsessing over every single thing I could find about the two of you from IceZone and Blade Gossips.”

Katya and I exchange looks. That’s probably the worst thing she could say to us to get us to trust her. Those two tabloids make it their mission to make pro skaters’ lives miserable.

“Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to introduce myself!” She laughs, widening her eyes. “I’m Giselle Thomas. I’m writing the story on the two of you, so get ready to spill all your deepest darkest secrets!”

“Is this a joke?” I say under my breath, and Lee shoots me a warning glance.

Giselle pulls out a folder from her laptop bag, laying it out on the table. “So, the plan is, I’ll ask you some questions now, and then later if we have time, maybe you guys could show me what you’ve been up to. Give the fans a little sneak peek, you know?”

“That sounds great,” Lian says, her fake PR voice in full swing. “Right?”

“Great,” I repeat dully, and Katya nods.

“Perfect!” Giselle says cheerily, opening her laptop. “Now, let’s get started, shall we?”

Lian just sits there supervising as she starts off with the basics. I’ve had to answer the same ones hundreds of times, and I assume Katya’s done the same—where we grew up, where we trained, how long we trained, who we trained with. I’m not giving Giselle much to work with, so she seems relieved when she can move onto my partner.

“So, Katya, you moved to Moscow when you were twelve, correct? Could you tell me a little bit about that transition?”

“Yes, that’s true.” Katya shifts in her seat, braid slipping off her shoulder. “There was an audition at the skating school and I managed to be accepted, so I moved there. I started training with Maxim Osipov originally, and Ksenia Savchenko, but within six months Tatyana Zhukova found me, and after that I was with her camp full-time.”

I love how she acts like it was a miracle. Even as a twelve-year-old, she was probably skating (literal) circles around all the other kids. For someone who’s not humble in the slightest, she sure seems to only have a vague understanding of how good she is.

Giselle scribbles some notes, nodding energetically. “Was it hard, moving away from your family at such a young age?”

“Of course,” Katya replies. “It was difficult. Very difficult at times. I was very young, but my mother and grandfather trusted me to handle it. And I could go home and see them once a week during the off-season, so it wasn’t so bad. But I knew that sacrifices had to be made in order to become a high-level skater. So whenever I missed my family, I reminded myself why I had left them, and that kept me going. I wanted to reach my goals, and make them proud, too.”

She’s been more talkative to the reporter in five minutes than she’s been to me in five months. Katya? Having actual human feelings? She must be pulling a Lian, which is even weirder considering she’s never had a problem ripping reporters a new one before, or anyone else for that matter. Guess our coaches must’ve put the fear of AFSC in her, too.

Unless…does she actually not mind this at all? Being grilled to a char about our personal lives, vomiting up a bunch of information that everybody knows already, having to fake that we get along all the time and haven’t tried to strangle each other more times than we can count?

Either way, Giselle seems to approve. “That’s a great mindset. And that wasn’t the only difficult move you’ve made in your life for skating, either. Do you mind telling me about the transition from Moscow to Lake Placid? We’ve all heard rumors, but what’s the truth?”

Shit.

Lian tenses up, too, meeting my eyes across the table—we didn’t plan a response for this question. It’s a pretty obvious one, so we should have. Damn it.

Katya’s silent, chewing on her lip. “It was—I mean, it was complicated. I don’t—I don’t…” Her cheeks have turned pink. She looks almost nauseous, actually, and before I know it, I’m jumping in.

“She thought it was time for a change,” I supply, giving her a tiny nod before looking back at Giselle. “We both had a rough season. Everyone thought it could be a good idea. A way to…well, to start over, I guess.” I fumble for Katya’s hand under the table before giving it a squeeze. “And it’s gone even better than we could’ve expected.”

I know how it feels to be put on the spot like this. I want to make sure she knows I have her back, even if she is the most annoying human being on the planet.

“Corny,” Katya says under her breath.

Giselle smiles. “You two seem to have a very close partnership, from what I can tell.” Before I can laugh, Katya cuts me off.

“Yes, very close. We get along wonderfully.” My partner shoots me a smile so sweet that even Lian is probably impressed. “Isn’t that right, Bry?”

Bry ? What kind of acid trip am I on? She’s never once called me that. “Yeah, of course. We’re besties, me and Kat here.” Yikes .

Giselle drops her gaze to tap away at her computer, and Katya wrinkles her nose at me.

Kat ? She mouths, obviously grossed out, and I stick my tongue at her before Giselle looks back up, and we both smile innocently.

“What do you guys do together, when you’re not in training?”

“Um.” I can practically see the gears in my partner’s head whizzing, trying to think of something normal friends do together. “We, um, get ice cream.”

Oh my god.

“Ice cream?” Giselle asks, smiling again. “That’s nice. Keeping the theme going. What are your favorite flavors?”

Does the ice queen even eat ice cream? She probably likes coffee, just like Lee. Or some equally depressing flavor. Like pistachio.

“Strawberry,” Katya mutters, and I can’t help it, I burst out laughing.

“What?” she protests, then gives me a meaningful look. “You’ve seen me eat it all the time, remember?”

Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. “Yes, of course,” I say, and it’s a struggle to keep my face in check, because I’m so close to going into hysterics that Katya has to grip my wrist with her nails in order to keep me serious. “I forgot. Makes sense, what with the strawberry shortcake protein bars.”

“He’s an airhead, ignore him,” my partner says, but in a way that can be perceived as almost affectionate by an outside viewer who has no idea what our actual relationship is like. It works. Giselle looks between us, amused.

“And what about Bryan? What’s his?”

I’m opening my mouth to answer when Katya does it for me. “Mint chocolate chip.”

What the hell?

Giselle wrinkles her nose. “Really? I’ve always thought it tastes like toothpaste.”

Okay, I’m back to not liking her. “It does not taste like toothpaste.”

“Oh, it absolutely does,” Katya remarks, and I elbow her before I can remember not to.

“Well, you clearly know each other pretty well. Do you think that your friendship off the ice translates just as well on it? Does being close help your skating?”

“Yes,” we both say, and Katya hides a laugh behind a hand.

Giselle smiles. “My, you two are just too much. It’s adorable.”

Uh oh. Katya’s smile drops, and we both sit up straight, inching away from each other. Lian’s words from months ago echo in my mind. What people really like is the will-they, won’t-they.

I sneak a glance at my partner, who’s messing with the end of her braid, and pretend like I don’t see Giselle watch me do it with a knowing smile on her face.

You don’t know anything! I want to yell. She hates my guts, and the feeling is very much mutual!

“Alright, well, I think we have what we need,” she says, shutting her laptop and standing up, dropping it into her case and looking back at us. “The camera crew should be done setting up by now, so you two can come with me.”

Kill me now.

T he second we step on the ice, Lian’s sugar-sweet facade drops like it never existed, activating Terminator Coach Mode.

“Hurry up!” she bellows. “One, two, three, four! Go! Go! Go!”

“I’m about to go throw myself off the roof,” I hiss under my breath as we skate away from them, and Katya sighs, glancing behind us to make sure we’re clear as we go into backwards crossovers.

“Let’s just get through this. It’s almost over.”

She’s annoyingly logical. Even when I want to strangle her, she usually has a point. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“I hate you all the time.”

I stifle a smile. “Lift?”

Katya nods, and flips to backwards. I ready myself before reaching for her, securing my grip on her wrists before sweeping her off the ice and up over my head. I pivot, keeping steady, holding her up with one hand and balancing on that ever-elusive sweet spot on my blades.

“You good up there?” I say, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead so I don’t throw our balance off.

“Almost done,” she says, not entirely answering the question, but it still makes me feel better.

We do a throw triple loop, a death spiral, side-by-side sit spins, and then a triple twist. We’re not even bothering with quads yet, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

“You guys look great out there!” Giselle gushes when we head back to the boards sweaty and flushed. “Do you mind showing me some more tricks?”

Me and Katya give each other a disturbed look. Tricks?

Lian looks at us pointedly, a reminder to keep our poker faces on. “Of course. Run the short program through, guys.”

“Weren’t we not supposed to do run-throughs toda—" The look on Lee’s face is enough for me to immediately turn around and do what she asked.

Katya’s already beat me to center ice, and I join her, skidding into a hockey stop.

She makes a face, raising her arms so I can take her hands. “I hate it when you do that.”

I smirk at her, taking them and moving behind her so we’re in the right opening position. “You hate it when I do lots of things.”

“No judge wants to see a sloppy skater who can’t stop without ripping up the ice.”

“You’re boring, we know.” Guess she still hasn’t figured out that I only do hockey stops to get a rise out of her. Her back is to me, so all I can see is her neat-as-a-pin French braid, with not a single damn hair out of place. “You ready?”

“Are you?”

I smother a laugh.

Lian starts the music, and the intro to “Danger Zone” starts playing.

Back when we were fighting over music selection, I only picked Top Gun because it was the craziest idea that popped into my mind. But, apparently, my spur-of-the-moment choice was a good one. This way, not only do we set ourselves apart from the other teams, but we immediately connect with the audience—and hopefully the judges—with a recognizable program.

Even Katya’s come around. Kicking and screaming, of course, but now she’s not hating it so much. Probably because I’ve stopped complaining about our free skate music every five minutes, too. Anne somehow managed to make Swan Lake interesting.

I still like our short better, though. It’s so ridiculous that it works.

When the synth starts building, right before the lyrics start, we take off into crossovers, slowing into dramatic movements as Kenny Loggins’ opening vocals play. I take her hand so she can step up onto my leg and stand there as I go down into a squat, making our first “lift” an element that we won’t get technical points for, but helps us with artistic points.

The chorus starts, Katya dismounts, and we start turning into complicated steps that build up into the guitar break—her cue to turn her back to me, and mine to get ready to throw her for the quad twist.

I position my hands on her waist, checking she’s ready before propelling her into what’s essentially a horizontal jump. I’m a half-second off on the catch, but Katya lands fine. Another step sequence, and then I’m flinging her out across the ice in a massive arc. She completes all three revolutions before coming down. Clean . We take off into crossovers again, waiting for the music to change.

“How’d you know my favorite flavor?” I ask finally, and she rolls her eyes.

“You do realize I listen when you talk, right?”

Kenny’s belting out the high note, which fades into the next part of the music arrangement; “Top Gun Anthem,” the movie’s theme.

“I can’t believe your favorite is strawberry.”

“What’s wrong with strawberry?”

“It’s so…pink.”

“Mudak.”

Pair spin, then choreo into the death spiral. I’m in what’s essentially a chair position, holding one hand up in the air while the other holds onto Katya’s, swinging her around as she keeps her body taut in one straight line.

Crossovers, then I swing Katya up and over my head into a lasso lift, and put her down exactly on beat as it transitions back into “Danger Zone,” which, unfortunately, means it’s time for the hardest part of the program.

Lian had already told us we’d have to back-load our programs a tad in order to maximize our scores—you get a point increase if you do difficult elements closer to the end of your skate, because by then you’re tired and worn out—but still. The whole reason we’re doing the side-by-side jumps at the end is exactly what makes it extremely hard to do.

Christ . I’m dizzy as hell, and it doesn’t help that going back into a more upbeat music segment means you have to up the energy.

We keep going, grinding it out, getting ready for the quad toe-triple toe combination, which has been going well. No problem.

Except there is, in fact, a problem.

I feel slow, clumsy, I’m lagging behind. I swallow roughly, trying to keep my breathing steady, blinking away the dizziness and pushing harder to keep up.

What is with me today? Between the annoying reporter lady, the camera crew following us around, and the feeling like I’m about to fall asleep mid-element…I need to focus. I need to pull myself together. Still, I turn to Katya, embarrassed even before I ask it. “Can we triple?”

Katya shakes her head. “Not now. We need to impress them.”

“I—” No. she’s right. We have to pull out all the stops right now. “Okay.”

She glances back at me. “Ready?”

No, not at all . I nod. “Ready.”

I let go of her hand, and we space apart. I can just barely see her in my peripheral vision, and for a moment it feels like I’m back in singles, alone on the ice.

Quad toe. You got this. It’s fine. I’ve been landing this jump lately like I’ve been landing it all my life. I can do this. Who cares about Giselle? It’s fine. Focus .

I straighten out my arms, forcing my toe pick down into the ice, sending me flying up with what should be more than enough momentum to get me into all four rotations and back down.

Except there’s a split second between where I’m in the air and I’m not that I realize that this isn’t going to end well. All I can think is, oh, shit.

Everything’s wrong, my arm position is fucking crazy, my feet have somehow kicked up diagonally, and I slam down into the ice—and usually I’d shift my weight so I fall on my side and not anywhere more damaging, because that’s one of the first things you learn how to do as a little kid in lessons.

But I don’t.

I don’t feel it for a second. I can’t, I’m totally numb, but then I glance down and see my right foot not pointing in the direction it should be, and then it’s like I’ve been electrocuted. Blinding pain tears through me, and I think I start yelling.

“Bryan!” I can barely register the shouting, barely register Katya’s hands on me. I roll onto my side, curling into a fetal position as I clutch my leg right above my ankle, because I think I might die if I actually touch it; I’m groaning, making horrible noises.

Oh god, oh god, oh god—

There’s cameras. The realization hits me like a bucket of ice water, washing away the pain and replacing it with terror. There are reporters getting this all on film. I can’t have another bad story. I can’t ruin this again. I have to move; I have to get up.

“Stay still, you idiot!”

I gasp for air, but nothing comes out, my mouth stuck open like a fish. I shake my head, still trying to scramble to my feet even as said foot is currently screaming in pain. “No, we—again, the quad—”

“Your ankle’s twisted around, you can’t do a fucking quad!” Katya pushes her hands on my chest to keep me down, voice high enough to shatter glass, and I tilt my head back, trying to suck in the tears. I deserve to be yelled at right now. I don’t know how I could be so careless. So stupid .

I have a horrible urge to look back down, and as soon as I do, I instantly regret it. My ankle must’ve rolled to the side when I landed on it, and now my foot is hanging completely parallel to the ice, the weight of my boot dragging it down even more—and even though it’s covering my foot, I don’t need to see it to know that it’s swelling up like a balloon.

“Don’t look at it,” Katya urges, after releasing a string of what I assume are curses, clutching my hand back tighter even as I’m practically cutting off her circulation.

I squeeze my eyes shut. This isn’t happening. Not here, not now, not with reporters watching and us competing in just a few weeks, no , no , no—

“Bryan, if you pass out, you let the pain win.”

What? That makes me open my eyes to stare at her. “That’s so stupid,” I choke out.

“See, he’s fine, they’re still arguing,” I hear Lian say soothingly to Giselle, who’s hyperventilating in the corner.

“He doesn’t look fine,” Katya interrupts hotly, and I try to laugh, but it comes out more like a whimper.

“I always look perfect, sunshine, what are you talking about,” I say, voice coming out all wonky. The longer I’m on the ground, the farther I can feel everything slipping out of reach.

Forget Helsinki. I think I may have just ruined our chances of even entering the season.