It was fine. Totally fine.

And maybe that was part of the reason why I didn’t want him to start teasing me. At least while I didn’t have clothes on. I didn’t give a shit what the photographer or her staff thought… but Ivan was the only one who had the power to genuinely piss me off.

So there I was, after a full night of stressing out about the shoot. Galina would have said I was antsy, but I wasn’t antsy. Just… stressed. About the consequences. Long term and short term. With Ivan and without.

It wasn’t like I’d been stoked about doing it in the first place, and if my gut said this was a shitty idea… there was a reason for it. Every time I had ignored my gut feeling before, I’d paid for it.

So…

Coach Lee turned to face me from where we were standing off to the side of the ice at the nearly empty LC. Her face instantly shuttered, and her mouth twisted to the side, but it was the fingers she immediately started wiggling that gave her away. That and the tight smile she forced onto her lips as she nearly croaked, “Is there something I should know?”

Was there something she should know?

Nerves, real nerves, bad nerves that made my insides twist up and my stomach almost ache, pretty much took over my entire body, but all I could do was shrug. “I don’t know if I want to do this with Ivan after all,” I told her. “It’s one thing for us to do all our lifts fully clothed, but the more I think about having to do this naked… I don’t know,” I partially lied.

Because I did know. I knew what might have been the biggest reason. I was hesitating again.

Three days ago, I’d had to start deleting comments and messages from random guys on my Picturegram page. It had only been two comments, but two was too many. They said they would “wreck me” and “tear (my) ass up.” Then there had been the private messages, which had been two dick pics and another asking me to post a video of my bare feet. Which then got me thinking about what my brother had said during dinner days before about strangers jerking off to my pictures.

I wasn’t a prude, but I also wasn’t a fan of living my life, posting pictures of one of my ballet lessons with Ivan that Coach Lee had e-mailed me—for that specific purpose—and then dealing with those kinds of comments and messages. I was no stranger to dicks. But I wanted it to be my choice when I saw them. I definitely wasn’t a fucking fan of remembering when other people had sent me pictures and videos so much worse. Pictures and videos that had made me lose sleep because of how helpless they had made me feel. How dirty.

And that’s what had started to happen unless I was exhausted. I had started to lose sleep. More and more sleep.

Until I was here, at this point, stressing over stuff like that happening more and more. I didn’t want to see that kind of shit. All I wanted was figure skating. I didn’t care about the rest.

But that’s not how stuff worked nowadays.

A funny expression came over Coach Lee’s face as she took me and my words in. “Did Ivan say something?”

Shit. I hadn’t thought this through well enough, had I? The only thing I could do was be vague. Just a little. Just enough. “He always says something, but that’s not it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You know what I mean. Did he say anything about doing the shoot with you? Because I’m going to be honest, that doesn’t seem like it would bother you.”

Was I that obvious? Because she was right, Ivan’s comments didn’t usually bother me. Aggravate me, yeah. Make me want to kill him, yeah. But bother? Not so much. But being naked in front of someone, especially someone like Ivan who was constantly judging with those clear blue eyes, felt like a power exchange that left me with nothing. He would know something about me so many people didn’t. And this person teased me over everything.

“I don’t know if I want to stand in front of him naked. That’s all. If I did it by myself, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Even total strangers, sure, but to do it in front of him when I have to see him all the time, I don’t know.”

Her hand went up to her eyes, and she pinched the bridge of her nose, clearly exasperated before finally nodding slowly. “Okay. All right. Let me go talk to him and talk to the photographer and see what we can come up with.”

For a moment, I thought about apologizing for changing my mind, but fuck that. I didn’t want to show Ivan of all people my naked body. I’d bet nobody else here would want to either. It was my choice. My decision. My body.

I wasn’t about to say I was sorry for being an inconvenience, because I wasn’t.

But I did feel just a little bad as Coach Lee turned on her heel, rubbing at her neck, and headed where the photographer was standing with Ivan and an assistant, deep in conversation. They had come in early to make a couple of sets on the ice, one with a gray background and another with a white one, surrounded by lights. It was fancy.

I made myself watch as Coach Lee’s mouth moved and then watched as Ivan’s chin slid forward a moment before his eyes sliced to my direction before focusing back on Lee to listen to whatever else she was saying.

And I couldn’t say I was totally surprised when maybe a minute or two later, Ivan began shaking his head, clearly ignoring whatever Lee was saying, and started skating toward me, the knot at his robe the only thing keeping me from seeing more than just a slice of his thighs, calves, and chest as he did it.

“I’m not doing it,” I said before he got a word out. “If you want to do it by yourself, go for it. I’ll do it by myself too. But I don’t want to do it together.”

Something tight snapped across his shoulders the second the last sentence was out of my mouth. But it was the way his face went serious, his rectangular jaw tight, mouth pursed and eyebrows heavy, that really became visible.

“I don’t want to do it, Ivan, and you’re not going to guilt trip me into it, all right? I know it’s a big issue, but I don’t want to do it with you.”

Those pale gray-blue eyes hadn’t moved off of me as he slid to a stop at the boards and paused there at the entrance, staring at me like he didn’t even know who I was. He was watching me closely as he asked, slowly, drawing out each letter, “Why?”

I didn’t even think about it. “Because I don’t want to have my tits and vagina in your face.” There. Done.

The breath he took was so ragged I could see it in his chest. “You were bragging about not being self-conscious a few days ago, and now you’re backing out?” he asked, watching me a little too closely. “You’ll do it alone but not with me?”

When he said it like that…

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.

“Because of me?”

“Yes, because of you.” Friends were honest with each other. He couldn’t fault me for that. Maybe I wasn’t being completely honest but it was something.

He blinked, still taking me in. “They want us to do it together, not separate.”

I shrugged both my shoulders, totally unapologetic. “Well, there’s this thing called Photoshop; they can probably blend us in so it looks like we’re together,” I suggested.

He blinked again, his jaw grinding from side to side.

I just looked at him.

Ivan blinked at me, and I blinked right back.

One of those big, strong hands that could hold my hundred-plus pound ass all by itself over his head drifted to the back of his neck. His jaw twitched again. His breathing slowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “What did I do that you don’t want to do it with me?” he asked slowly. “You talk shit right back. I thought we agreed to be friends.” Those eyes drifted across my face, which was covered in makeup that had taken the artist almost an hour to apply. “We had dinner together,” he reminded me, as if I’d forgotten he’d spent three hours in my mom’s kitchen, playing Jenga with my family, eating lasagna, gobbling down the smallest sliver of chocolate cake while I’d eaten three times the amount because why the hell not.

He’d gotten me a paper towel—maybe because he genuinely thought I couldn’t reach across the table, maybe not. He’d driven me home. He’d asked me to be his friend, even though the more I thought about it, the more I figured he wasn’t so familiar with what the hell that meant.

Gentle. Be better.

So, I tried. “Ivan, I have to look at you every day. Isn’t that reason enough to not want to be naked in front of you?” I asked, keeping my voice as far away from aggressive as possible as I tried to be an adult.

He didn’t hesitate. “I don’t care if you see me naked.”

Shit.

Okay. I was going to have to go at this more directly. “Well, I don’t care if the whole world sees me naked either, but I don’t want you to see it, all right? Can you respect that?”

“But why?” he asked, honestly sounding confused.

Exasperation, or maybe frustration, hit me hard. Real hard. The last thing I’d expected was for him to want an explanation. “Because. I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

I blinked. “Yes, I did.”

“No. You. Didn’t.”