Page 81 of Ice Dance

Fire blazed up my side, but we’d done it.

I knew we’d done it.

Nothing had gone wrong. Not a single step out of place. We’d performed the entire sequence as accurate as clockwork. Technically spectacular.

We stopped on the ice, side by side, chests and shoulders heaving, and bowed.

No applause.

There wasn’t an audience to deliver one.

Silence.

But I knew we’d just performed better than most if not all of the other contenders. We were through.

We came off the ice, briefly alone, and Hasegawa pulled me into his arms. His mouth at my ear. “Stunning,” he said. The word traveled through my buzzing body, dulling the new throb in my hip.

We separated as we approached the door, but I kept my grin. Our hands parted, fingers dragging then letting go, and we came out into the public area where the other dancers waited, still to perform.

Dylan swept in and gathered us both up, squishing us into her arms in a rare show of affection. “You did it,” she breathed. “I heard. They decided fast. You did it.”

“Yes!” Not a fucking gimmick. We were a winning partnership. The other dancers all heard and saw; those who weren’t watching us were listening. I wanted to leap off the bench and fling my arms around Hasegawa. I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him hard on the mouth.

He came up to me, then extended his hand, and we shook like two English gentleman meeting for tea.

“It’s a pleasure to dance with someone of your talent, Navarro, and I do not say that flippantly.”

He said it so everyone heard, said it for them more than me, but maybe a little bit for me too. I grinned, thanked him, and held his gaze, trying to convey exactly how I was going to take him apart later.

“Let’s celebrate,” Dylan announced. “Lunch, then training at two.”

And we didn’t even get a day off.

I dried my skates, put them away, and thanked the dancers who came up to congratulate us. It felt nice, felt good, not to be the joke for once. They hadn’t seen us skate, but they’d all know we got through with ease.

When I hitched up my bag, heat flushed down my leg and twinged through my spine. My hand locked. I dropped the bag and stumbled against the bench, hissing through gritted teeth.

Hasegawa and Dylan rushed in.

“You alright?” Dylan reached for my arm.

“No, yeah, it’s nothing.” I brushed her off with a light laugh but then caught Hasegawa’s concerned glare.

“Get some ice on it,” he said. He’d probably felt something twinge in me when we came out of the lift.

“Yeah, yeah.” I wasn’t too worried about my hip, or how it had given on the ice. It would be fine in a few days.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. Light lunch out, loose talk, nothing work related, and then we were back in the gym, working the resistance bands. My hip hated me. I downed a couple of painkillers and carried on around the pain.

The evening came around fast, but I wasn’t ready to let the buzz from the morning go, not yet. We had a few hours of free time.

I caught up with Hasegawa leaving the gym. The thrill from the morning was still bright in his eyes, even though the rest of his face said he was serious.

“Come out with me tonight,” I said, keeping a polite, professional distance between us as we pushed through the main entrance doors. The gym was busy. People talked. We’d only been back in Montreal a day. I definitely did not want to ignite a new scandal by throwing my arms around him in public.

“I can’t.” He smiled for real, so it wasn’t a completely terrible idea, just not one he particularly liked in that moment.

“C’mon, we’ve earned it.”