“We might have believed you if you hadn’t said ‘nothing.’ Now we know you’re lying,” our mom egged him on. “You not telling us when something is bothering you?” She pretty much snorted, her attention down on the chicken she was cutting into pieces. “Ha! Since when have you done that?”

This was what I got for making them my best friends over the years. Other than Karina, who I spoke to less and less over the last few years, and a couple of other people I didn’t mind, my family was it for me. My mom said I had serious trust issues, but honestly, the more people I met, the more I didn’t want to meet more.

“You okay, Jas?” James, my brother’s much better half for the last ten-ish years, give or take, asked, his tone worried.

Moving my fork tines in the noodles some more, I looked over at the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life and nodded my head. With dark hair, the clearest hazel eyes, and his skin color a shade of honey brown that didn’t give anyone a single clue about his heritage, he could have dated anyone. Anyone. Literally. I’d seen straight men check him out countless times. If he had decided to be a model, it would have been over for every other male model in the world. Even my sister, who was all about women 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, had said before she’d marry him if he asked. I would marry him even if he didn’t ask. He was the nicest man, good looking, successful, and down-to-earth. We all loved him.

He loved us back, but not the same way he loved my brother Jojo.

People liked to say love was blind, but there was no way love could be that blind. I’d stopped trying to figure out my brother Jonathan and James’s relationship a long time ago. How he’d ended up with the biggest idiot in the family, I didn’t get. My brother had giant Dumbo ears and a gap between his two front teeth that my mom had claimed was so adorable his whole life, he’d never bothered getting braces. I’d had a little bit of an overbite and ended up with braces for three years.

Not that I was hung up over it or anything.

“I’m good. Don’t listen to them,” I said to James, sounding distracted enough that I knew I was messing up again. So I tried to change the subject and chose the most obvious one: my mom’s husband, who should have been at the table with us… but wasn’t. “Where’s Ben at, Mom?”

“He’s out with his friends,” the redheaded woman who had given birth to me, explained quickly before raising her gaze and aiming her fork in my direction. “Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong with you?”

Of course that didn’t work.

I just barely held back a groan as I shoveled a piece of chicken into my mouth and chewed slowly before answering, “I’m fine. I’m just… thinking about stuff, and it’s putting me in a bad mood.”

My brother snickered beside me. “You? In a bad mood? No.”

I reached over before he knew what was happening and pinched him on the puny thing he called a biceps.

“Oww,” he cried, yanking his arm away and cradling it.

I tried to do it again, but he flailed his elbow to keep me from being able to.

“Mom! Look at her!” my brother whined, gesturing toward me like there was someone else attacking him. “James, help me!”

“Snitch,” I whispered, still trying to pinch him. “Bitch.”

His husband laughed but didn’t choose sides. No wonder I liked him so much.

“Quit hurting your brother,” Mom said for probably the thousandth time in my entire life.

When he moved his hands to block me around the area of his waist, I reached up, quick, quick, quick and flicked him on the neck before he turned his mouth to try and bite me. “Momma’s boy,” I whispered, snatching my hand back.

He tipped his head from side to side with a smirk, mocking me like he always had when Mom took his side. She always did. The suck-up was her favorite, even though she’d never admit it, but the rest of us knew the truth. I loved both my brothers, but I got why my mom loved him the most. If you ignored the similarities between him and Pluto, he always put a smile on someone’s face. Those giant ears had that effect on people.

“Baby girl, even I know something’s up with you just from the way you’re talking. What’s wrong?” my brother’s husband asked, leaning forward over the table with an expression so full of concern, it made me feel guiltier than anything my mom or Jojo could have said.

I wanted to tell them.

But…

I could, and probably always would, clearly remember how my brother had cried angry tears when we first found out I’d been left without a partner. My mom would never admit she’d been devastated, but I knew her too well to not see the signs. I’d seen the same signs after every marriage before her current one had failed, when she knew her life was changed forever and there was no going back to the way things were before.

Right after I’d quit training to compete—because you couldn’t exactly practice a lot of elements in pairs skating by yourself, and I’d been totally aware of how slim my hopes were in women’s singles—I had emotionally turned into myself majorly. The right term might have been depression, but I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened; I was a sore loser.

It hadn’t been a secret how heartsick seeing my dream slipping away had made me… how angry and hurt and upset I’d been. How angry and hurt and upset I still was. Honestly, part of me worried I would never get over it. I held grudges like a motherfucker. But my family had all ridden this ride with me, year after year, one up and five downs, over and over again.

Most importantly, they had all been there for me in the aftermath of me slowly trying to build up this new life I had outside of the rink, from forcing me to do little things like eating dinner with my family while all I wanted was to hole up in my room alone, to threatening me into going out with them, and guilt-tripping me into doing things I hadn’t made time for before. They had done that over and over again until it had begun to feel like second nature. All those things I hadn’t done enough of in the past, but could once I told my mom she wasn’t going to have to keep paying the astronomical fees that came with coaching because I didn’t have one anymore. He had ditched me too.

It was one thing for me to be sad and heartbroken, but I didn’t want them to feel that way too. Never again. Not if I could prevent it.

And I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

The selfish part of me wanted to do it. Duh.

But the other part of me, that tiny part that didn’t want to be a selfish shit, didn’t want to let these people down by turning into the person I’d been before. The one who was never around. The one who everyone thought didn’t care… probably because I hadn’t cared enough to.

Then there was the whole part of me not being sure I could handle things not working out… as much as that made me a pussy.

And the whole it-being-Ivan this deal was with.

Ivan. Ugh. I wanted it that bad that I wasn’t immediately saying no to the possibility of spending most of my days with him of all people. This was what my life had come to. Possibly spending time with that arrogant dipshit.

I really had no idea what to do, damn it.

So, for that moment… I lied. “I think it’s just my period on the way.”

“Ahh,” was Jonathan’s response, because girls being on their periods was old news after sharing a bathroom with three sisters for the first eighteen years of his life.

My mom, on the other hand, squinted a little, watching me for two moments too long. So long that I thought she was going to call me out on my shit, but right as I assumed that, she shrugged and then dropped another bomb. “So, is it true Lukov and his partner split up?”

I blinked, not sure why I was surprised.

She always knew everyone’s business. Someway, somehow.

It was James, my brother’s husband, who sucked in a loud breath first. That’s how long he’d been with Jonathan, that the name meant something. I could remember a time, many, many years ago when James hadn’t known a single thing about figure skating. But now he’d been a member of the family long enough that he knew more about the sport than I’d bet he’d ever imagined he would.

“He got rid of his partner?” Jonathan perked up, shoving his glasses up his nose, like this was the best gossip he’d heard in a while.

Mom raised her eyebrows and nodded. “From what I heard, it happened a few days ago.”

I made sure to shove a big piece of chicken into my mouth so that I wouldn’t make a face that said that’s not what happened.

Luckily, my nosey-ass brother gasped. “Hadn’t they just paired up a few years ago?” Jojo asked, aiming the question at our mom because he knew she had all the gossip.

“Uh-huh. The partner before her fell twice at the Major Prix final. They won a bronze, but with this girl he won a national title and worlds with.”