Page 36 of Ice Dance

I had no need to be nervous. There was nothing to be nervous about. I didn’t get nerves.

The cold had my fingers shaking, that was all. I hadn’t been in any rink for a week, and Montreal’s skating rinks were always colder. Although this rink wasn’t in the city. The teams at the international rink had told me where to find Navarro on a Saturday morning. But I hadn’t expected the venue to be so small, and . . . hobbyist.

I hadn’t come to skate, thankfully. The pitted, stained ice would not do my skates any favors.

Navarro was on the ice, surrounded by children of various sizes. He wore a black puffer jacket and baggy trousers, and black skates that had seen better days. I almost hadn’t recognized him when I’d entered.

I found a spot on a spectator bench—they didn’t have raised stalls—and watched him corral a rowdy bunch of under tens into some kind of cohesive skating group. They were all clearly of different skill levels, but he set each of them up with tasks suitable to their abilities and paid closer attention to the smaller ones. One of the younger girls, a tiny thing, skated like she’d be challenging me in two years. No fear. Absolute focus. I liked her.

They called him Mr. Navarro, despite him looking just a few years older than the oldest one in his flock. He laughed with them, made them laugh. Watching him with them warmed my chest.

One of his little ones fell. He scooped them up, made them laugh before the tears could catch hold, and the child was back skating in seconds, bumps and grazes forgotten. He explained how ice skate blades had two sharp edges, an inside and an outside edge. The entire foundation of figure skating. The children listened in quiet awe.

The lesson was almost over when his gaze caught mine cross the ice. His smile fell right off his face, and that warm sensation in my chest snuffed out. I rarely had doubts about my actions. I chose a path and I committed. But beside that family rink, intruding on his space, I feared I shouldn’t have come. I almost left.

I might have, had he not skated over to the nearest gate.

“I have five minutes left,” he said, barely looking at me.

“I’ll wait.”

He hesitated, as though he had more to say, then returned to the class.

Five minutes turned into fifteen, as he helped them remove their skates and talked to the parents waiting eagerly behind the boards. Then, after the last of them had filed out, it was just him and me, and a few novice skaters finding their balance on the ice. He tugged off his beaten-up boots, yanking at the laces in a way that suggested he probably wasn’t angry at the laces as much as he was me.

I wasn’t sure how to begin. I’d run through a few scenarios in my head on the plane, but none of them had included watching him teach children to skate for almost an hour, and it had weirdly unbalanced me. The last time we’d spoken, really spoken, it had been before Alisha stepped back into her role. The “congratulations” after selection didn’t count. We’d had one of the best sessions in our four days of working together, and I’d slammed the door in his face the next day.

“If the next word out of your mouth isn’t sorry, you can get right back on that plane,” he said.

I clenched my teeth. “You would have done the same in my position.”

He laughed, yanked on his sneakers, stretched the blade guards over his skate blades, and shoved the skates into his bag. Then the bag went onto his shoulder, he stood, and shoved by me.

Was that it?

I’d flown three thousand miles for him to walk away?

“Hey?” I called.

He showed me his middle finger over his shoulder, like the vulgar, impulsive man he was.

I looked around, checking nobody had seen. How was I supposed to work with this? He was impossible. Why had I thought this could work? What had I been thinking? I must have temporarily lost my mind to fly out here, thinking he’d talk to me. He hadn’t even returned my calls. Clearly, this had been the worst idea of my entire career.

He turned on his heel, quickly, as though digging his blades into ice, and marched right up to me, fast and aggressive. I held my ground, didn’t step back, and then he was close, all blue eyes, flushed face from the lesson, hair a flyaway mess. “You think you can walk back into my life and what? Ask me to dance with you? Is that what this is, or are you just here because you’re bored again and you’ve got nothing better to do?”

I blinked. “I⁠—”

“You don’t get to come crawling back to me. I’m better than that, better than you, and you can’t stand it. That’s why you’re here.” He jabbed me in the chest. “Fuck. You. Hasegawa.”

I batted his hand away, my own anger rising. “Will you let me talk?”

“So you can lord it over me? No. I don’t need you. I didn’t need you then either. Go back to England.”

I hadn’t expected such vehemence. It wasn’t anger, it was fury. His whole face was flushed with it. Neck and shoulders too. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d hurt him enough to make him despise me like this. It should have.

He turned away again. I ducked, narrowly avoiding his skate bag meeting my face as he strode for the exit, every step perfect, hips swaying. I locked my jaw and looked away.

If he left, if I let him go, I’d never get him back. If he walked out that door, this—whatever this was, whatever it could be—would be gone. We’d had something together. I’d been slow to see it, admit it, but when we’d danced, I’d felt more with him in those few days than with any partner in the last few years. I’d let him go once. It had been a mistake. I could not let him go again. My heart beat fast against my ribs. My palms were damp, mouth dry. I breathed too fast.