Page 51 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

“Are you sure?” she asked, unable to keep the doubt out of her voice.

He nodded. Still, there was something he was not saying, and Alisa knew it, although she did not press him.

“If you stop getting distracted by your sexy blonde, maybe we really can get that quota. One per country, remember?”

He looked at her accusingly.

“You practically drool every time you look at her. Honestly, I’m convinced you slept together in Oslo.”

Alisa felt herself go bright red.

Damn it. Was it really that obvious?

“I don’t—”

“Oh, come on. I figured it out months ago. All the other girls are busy making out with hockey players after practice, practically throwing themselves at them when we switch ice time, and you? You never even look at them. Except Hermann, maybe, but nothing happened between the two of you, did it?”

“Lev, stop.”

“No, come on, tell me. We’re not strangers. What happened with the blonde?”

Alisa looked away.

“It’s complicated.”

“Well then,” Lev said, “tonight at the hotel I’m expecting a full presentation about your personal life.”

“Lev. What kind of nonsense is that? Why do you even need it?”

“I want to know you better so we can train better.”

“Yes, yes, I know you. You just want information so you can use it against me later.”

“Ouch. Rude.” He frowned dramatically and nudged Alisa with his elbow. She shoved him back with her hip in return, which sent Lev gliding backward across the ice so suddenly that he nearly crashed into an Italian skater passing behind him.

“Are you trying to kill me in advance?” he snapped, hurriedly screwing the cap back onto his bottle before he spilled water everywhere.

Alisa rolled her eyes.

“You started it, Lev. We are not dating or anything, if that is what you are so interested in. We just talk after competitions.”

“Yes, yes,” he said dismissively. “You sleep with her, so tell me.”

“Even if I did, so what? It happened a few times, we are not that close or something.”

“I didn’t think you valued yourself that low, Alisa.” Lev shook his head, and for a second there was something in his expression that looked almost like disapproval, perhaps even disgust.

And really, what had Alisa been expecting? What the hell had she been thinking?

They lived in different countries. Tora probably did not need a long-distance relationship, and certainly not with someone like Alisa, who still was not even entirely sure what she was, what she wanted, what she was allowed to want. They were rivals. Rivals on the ice, competing against each other in the same discipline, the same events, the same league, and even thinking about it felt like breaking every rule Alisa had ever carefully built inside her own head.

Well. Every rule except the last one.

And Tora had never once brought up that night between them, not in all the months since. Not that they talked all that often. They were both busy, both always training, always traveling, and most of the time they only managed a few messages sent late at night from hotel rooms or buses or airport lounges. Sometimes, when their schedules lined up, they watched films together over video calls and spent hours discussing the lesbian movies they both loved. Sometimes their conversations drifted somewhere south, so they masturbated together on video calls, but it was… damn… Alisa blushed.

And that was the problem.

Because whatever this was, it was more than friendship. It had been more than friendship for a long time, at least in Alisa’s head, and yet it was still somehow not enough to be called a relationship, because they had never spoken about it directly.