Kat doesn't flinch. "Of course you don't. You never want to talk about anything that matters."
"Stop," I warned.
"Just… don't punish yourself for wanting something good," she exhales. "You can lie to yourself, you can lie to everyone else… but you can’t lie to me. I know you better than anyone else. There are people out there who deserve a chance at loving you and receiving your love in return. I know because I’m one of the lucky few."
"You’re the only one.."
"What the hell?" Scottie yells back. "What about me?"
I stare at the ice. Wanting isn't the problem; trusting is.
Because trust is how you hand someone a knife. And I've seen enough knives to know what people do with them.
"I have to go," I say.
Kat's sigh is quiet. Sad.
"Call me later," she says. "And Luka?"
"What."
"I mean it," she says, and this time there's no humor. Just truth. "You're not him."
I swallow hard. "I know," I lie.
And then I hung up.
I sit on the bench for a long time after the call ends, staring at my skates, my gloves, the pucks scattered like evidence. Kat's words haunt me.
You're not Dad.
I don't know if that's true, but I do know that I’ve made different choices trying not to become him. I know I left. I know I didn't take his empire when he tried to hand it to me like a crown.
But I also know what I'm capable of. I know what lives under my skin when someone threatens what's mine. And last night—God!
Last night, for a second, Natalia felt like she could be mine.
Not in the possessive way my father used people.
Mine in the way that she’s mine to protect, mine to pick up when she falls…to carry her to safety, to ice her ankle, to hold her hands when she’s learning a new skill that she’s scared of, to rub her shoulders when they’re sore and tell her how beautiful she is.
I skate one last lap around the rink to shake off the conversation with my sister, and then I'm done.
I take my skates off and shove them into my bag.
I leave before I can sit down and start thinking again.
Chapter Twenty-One
NATALIA
I wake to the sound of knocking on the chalet’s front door.
I turn to find Luka already gone for the morning, but the scent of chlorine and his skin on my body reminds me of everything we did last night.
Last night, Luka was so much less like the calculating winger who terrifies opposing players on the ice, and more like the boy who once smuggled a one-eyed cat into boarding school.
The knocking comes again.
