“Just don’t complain to me if you faceplant in the middle of the night trying to get around it all,” he said, turning on his heel and walking back out of the room.
I had tripped over the bags the next morning, but I’d bitten my tongue to avoid crying out. I didn’t want Brandon to know that he’d been right to be concerned about space. Instead, the next time he’d suggested I spend the night, I said that we should limit it to nights I didn’t have to get up early for skating. He’d agreed so quickly I’d had to force back the initial feeling of hurt. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how often I’d needed to get up early for practice, I told myself. After all, we hadn’t been dating during the last season. He had no idea what it took to compete at my level.
After a couple of weeks, I found that I actually preferred the nights to myself when I could starfish in my bed. Brandon hadn’t been happy once he’d realized he’d effectively kept himself from spending the night Sunday through Thursday. He was yet to voice that complaint out loud, though.
I flicked through the glowing command centre on the centre console of my car, trying to find a song I liked before I started the familiar drive to the rink. I’d made the trip between it and the gym so many times that I could probably do it in my sleep. The same went for my tiny apartment, my parents’ house out in the suburbs, and even Brandon’s apartment, although I’d only been doing the latter for the last few months.
Once I had settled on a radio station and pulled out of the parking lot, I flipped down my sunshade. Even with the longhours of daylight in the summer, there had only been the soft glow of early morning when I’d left my apartment that morning. By the time I’d left the gym, the sun was fully up, shining into the car with a heat that I was certain would raise the temperature to some ridiculous number by mid-afternoon.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Itwasstillearly,but the arena was already a flurry of activity. There were more than a dozen cars in the lot already, but I made a beeline to one near the far corner of the lot. The beat-up black car had seen better days. The dirt on the outside made it clear that Dominic had been to his parents’ cottage over the weekend. Otherwise, there was no way he would have driven in with it in that state. Dom was strangely obsessed with the car wash, something I frequently teased him about. I would joke that he was like a child who loved to see the rainbow coloured soaps running down the windshield. A quick peek in one window showed that the inside of the car was as spotless as ever, even though the outside didn’t match. The first time I’d let him in my car, I’d felt self-conscious about the mess in the back, even though it hadn’t been that bad. It was dumb and I knew it. We’d already been partners for five years at that point. He didn't need to look in my car to know he was the more organized of us.
I grabbed both of my bags from the trunk and slid them over my shoulder before I made my way inside. I recognized a few of the other cars that were in the lot. One of the ones closest to theentrance belonged to our choreographer, Olga Malinova. I also spotted the cars of the Russian pair that would pose our biggest threat in competition. Come to think of it, they were probably working together first thing.
As soon as I was in the arena, I made a beeline for the locker room. One of the American girls who also worked with my coach greeted me. "Is Dominic in already?" she asked as she pulled her brown hair into a bun.
The interest in her voice irritated me. We needed to focus on our skating, not on how attractive people around the rink may or may not be. “I’ve seen his car, but not him.” I glanced at myself in the mirror, making sure I didn’t look like a complete mess. “He’s probably looking for me, actually, so I should get going.” Since the weather was nice, I would bet that Dom had probably gone for an early morning run and had been waiting for me to finish up ever since.
I had barely left the locker room when I heard a booming voice call, “Hazel!” I turned on my heel to see Dom, both hands raised above his head, his right hand gripping a red coffee cup. His face had broken into a big grin, reaching all the way up to his dark eyes. “Are you ready to make this new routine our bitch?” He stopped walking, waiting for me to catch up to him.
I nodded and grinned back at him, the irritation I'd been fighting back all morning melting away. His enthusiasm was infectious. “I see the caffeine has already kicked in,” I said, pointing to his cup.
He laughed. “It’s the only way to survive,” he replied. He took a long swig, as if to emphasize his point. “I still don’t get how you don’t need it first thing.”
“And I don’t get how you’ve been drinking coffee for the last six years without it stunting your growth,” I retorted. He had a solid nine inches on me, forcing me to crane my neck if I wanted to look him in the eyes.
I could still remember the first time he had brought coffee to practice. Back then, he loaded it with tons of cream and sugar and insisted he liked the taste. He’d refused to admit otherwise, even after I’d caught him wrinkling his nose after some of his sips. I’d asked why he bothered to drink it if he didn’t like it, but Dom had insisted that he would learn to love coffee. It seemed stupid to fourteen-year-old me and it didn’t seem any smarter now at twenty. Dom had teased that when I was two years older, I would be much wiser.
We stepped into the practice room one after the other. I held the door open for a moment as I waited for Dom. He finished his coffee with one long sip and tossed his cup in the trash. “What happened to all of your reusable mugs?” I asked.
“I may or may not have left two of them at my parents’ cottage this weekend.” His eyes met mine. "What’s that smirk for?”
“Nothing,” I said as I made my way to the mats near the centre of the room. After all these years, there was no need to expand on it.
“Not nothing,” Dom said. He came to stand in front of me, looking at me intensely. “What’s so funny?” His head was cocked to the side, dark hair falling across his forehead.
“I just knew you’d been there this weekend. The outside of your car is filthy.”
He let out a low groan. “Don’t remind me. I meant to go to the car wash, but I hit construction on the way back and I got in late. I didn’t even unpack. I just left everything in the living room and went to bed.”
I smirked again, this time on purpose, because I knew it would bother him. “You are so predictable.”
“You should like that,” Dom said, putting his hands in the pockets of his fitted sweatpants. “If I wasn’t predictable, you’d fall on your face. Unless you want to break your nose, inwhich case I would gladly oblige and become much more unpredictable. Spice things up a bit.”
I gave him a playful shove. “You know that’s not what I meant. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Keep talking to me like that and I’m going to find another partner,” he said sternly. His dark eyes twinkled in sharp contrast to his words.
The empty threat made me hold back an eye roll. “If you think you can go to the Winter Games with a new partner, be my guest,” I said. I leaned forward, starting my stretching routine by grabbing my toes.
“It’s happened before.” Dom sat down on the floor in front of me and began stretching as he spoke. There was plenty of free space, but he liked us to stay close together while we got ready to skate. It made sense when we were at competitions and surrounded by people. In here our conversation didn’t need to be shouted, but the habit had stuck. With somebody else, the constant close proximity would be annoying. With him, I found it reassuring. We spent all of our time on the ice within reach of each other. We might as well start the day that way, too.
While I couldn’t argue with his point, I had to point out the terrible odds of it happening. Of all the gold medalists, I could only think of one pair who were new partners. With my right leg pulled up over my head, I asked, “Do you really want to take that risk?”
“Hey, I like risks. I trust you to spin around with a blade near my face,” Dom argued. The muscles in his arms flexed. I had heard some of the younger girl skaters gossiping about his arms before, but they weren’t novel for me. Not only had I seen them for years, I had been carried in them thousands of times. It had been enough to fluster me at first, but I was long past that. It sounded sensual to some people, but they weren’t thinking about how sweaty we could get after a long skate.
