“Yes. I. Did.”

“No. I want you to tell me. What did I do over the last week to make you not want to do this anymore?”

He wasn’t going to let this go. I tried not to be a dick. But he wanted an explanation, so I gave it to him. “Ivan, do you think I want you to tease me about skipping puberty after you’ve seen my tits? Because I don’t. Not even a little bit, all right? Is that what you want to hear? That I don’t want you looking at me and judging me when I have to see your face all the time? I like myself just fine. I don’t want to listen to you make fun of me, of things I can’t change. I have little tits. Okay. We both know that. What if you think my nipples are too big, or you think they’re too small, or you’ll laugh at my stretch marks, or tell me you get where all my weight comes from! My thighs!”

“What?”

I shrugged at him again, my stomach giving this uncomfortable roll as I told him more of the tiny truth I was sharing. “I like my body, all right? I don’t want you to make me not. I know I’m not….” I shook my head, not finishing the sentence. “I’m good with who I am and what I look like, and I’ll trim down a little more before the season starts.”

I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t noticed it gradually happening, or if it happened in the blink of an eye, but at some point, his face had gone pale, and in the next blink, he was off the ice, going around the barrier and standing two feet away from me, looking totally and completely stricken, like I’d stabbed him. “Jasmine,” he said my name slowly and in almost a hiss, for one of the rare times he didn’t call me Meatball. “Come on.”

I just looked at him. “No come on, Ivan. I hate the fact that I care what you think, okay? You don’t need to rub it in. I’m trying… to be friends with you,” I tried to make a joke, but it didn’t work when nothing about him changed even a little bit.

If anything, Ivan looked surprised. “Jasmine,” he repeated my name, his voice low and almost hoarse.

“I’m not doing it,” it was my turn to repeat. “Sorry. Nothing you say or do will get me to change my mind, so get out there, tiger, and get your part over with, so I can do mine. I’m sure everything will look fine, and if it doesn’t… sorry not sorry.” If I could tell him the other half of the truth, he would understand. I knew it.

But I didn’t.

Ivan though, didn’t get over there. He didn’t move. Didn’t look away. Ivan just stared down at me, his breathing even, the smooth skin between his pecs clearly visible in the V-shape of the robe he had on. Those blue eyes bounced all over my face, and I hated it. I hated the fact that I’d admitted I wasn’t about to strip down because of him, because I didn’t want to hear teasing later on about the shape of my barely B-cups or the shape and size of my ass or the million other things he could nitpick. Because there were a lot of them. I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t my mom or Tali or Ruby.

“Meatball,” he said, still speaking slowly, still not moving. He struggled with a swallow. Struggled with his words, if the strange expression on his face said anything. “I’m just fucking with you when I make fun of you,” he claimed, watching me. “You know that, don’t you?”

I glanced away and nodded, barely suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, I know you’re fucking with me. I can handle it. Sometimes….” God, it pained me to tell him this, but fuck it. “Sometimes, you almost make me laugh. But I don’t want to do this with you naked. It feels too personal now. We’re too… close.”

I heard more than saw him exhale. But what I felt was him taking another step closer to me. “The only reason I give you so much shit is because you were a pain in the ass, and then you were the only one who dished it back to me. You know you’re beautiful.”

I snickered and rolled my eyes that time, because come the fuck on. Really? Now I knew he was trying too hard. Please. God. “If you think flattering me is going to convince me to do this, you don’t know me at all, Lukov.”

“Not Lukov. Ivan,” he replied easily, his tone so gentle, it made me uncomfortable, because that wasn’t what I wanted from him. Much less what I expected from him. “I’m sure you’re perfect under there.”

I snorted that time, because goddamn, he was laying the bullshit on thick to convince me. Jesus.

But he kept going. “I’m sure there’s nothing under your robe that wouldn’t give every man here a hard-on. Some of the women too, I bet.”

I side-eyed him using the h-word and shook myself out of it. He was full of shit. I knew that. He knew that. Even Coach Lee would have known that if she could hear him now. Who the hell did he think he was talking to? Someone who hadn’t known him for over a decade and been the focus of his petty, asshole comments that entire time? Now he was just pissing me off. “Would you shut up? I don’t need to hear you saying this, all right?” I snapped.

His hand touched my wrist, and by some miracle, I didn’t jerk it out of his reach. “I’m not just saying all this,” he said in a tone so quiet, so… I don’t know, tender or shit, that it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t think anyone had ever spoken to me like that before. Not even James, the nicest guy in the world. Ivan kept going. “I’m just giving you shit when I tell you that you haven’t gone through puberty. Come on,” he insisted, still using that voice that I didn’t know what to do with. What to think of. “I didn’t think you were that sensitive.”

I blinked. “I’m not that sensitive.”

“Jasmine,” he breathed out, wrapping his fingers around my wrist tightly but not painfully. That dark head of hair and that flawless face that might have had makeup but might have not, dipped closer to me as he asked, “What the hell is going on with you right now?”

“Nothing,” I insisted.

“You’re full of shit,” he claimed. “You know who you are and what you are. I’m not about to fucking tell you and blow up your ego even bigger than it already is, cut me some slack,” he almost barked out. “I want to do this shoot with you, not by myself. With you. As a team. It’ll be great for both of us coming into the season.”

“I know who I am and have a big ego, sure. Okay. Look, just go get it over with, and I’ll go after you. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t feel like arguing right now.”

The second the two hands landed on my shoulders, I jumped, unexpectedly. And when his mouth lowered to where his lips hovered just over mine, I definitely didn’t move either. We were close seven hours a day, six days a week. There were no physical boundaries between each other because there couldn’t be.

But this…

This I didn’t know what to do with. I couldn’t think of the last time anyone had been this close to me.

“I’m being fucking serious,” he whispered with all the strength and determination in the world.

I couldn’t help but peek up at him, that’s how strong and demanding his tone was.

He was looking down at me with that fucking face, looking more serious than I’d ever seen before, even right before competing. “I’d never make fun of you.”

I frowned.

He shook my wrist, gently, covering the spot where my bracelet usually was. I’d taken it off and left it in my locker. “I wouldn’t when you’re naked,” he said to me. “And who would make fun of you without clothes on? I bet none of those men out there have ever seen legs and an ass that launch a person in the air like yours do.”

I wasn’t going to pick at that comment with a stick. Instead, I blinked at him. “Why are you looking at my ass?”

The corners of his pink-pink mouth tilted up the tiniest bit. “Because it’s there, in my face all day.”

I guess he had a point. It wasn’t like I didn’t look at his ass from time to time. Because it was there. “Then, don’t. Friends don’t look at each other’s butts.”

The way he rolled his eyes did something uncomfortable to my stomach. “Jasmine, this body—these thighs you think I’m going to make fun of you over, and this ass you think the same thing of—are going to win us first place from now on. I wouldn’t make fun of it. I wouldn’t make fun of you. We’ll do it like we always do. When we step out on the ice, it’s work. It’s us focusing, not fucking around.”

I held my breath, watching his features as I did it. “I don’t believe you.”

“That I won’t make fun of you?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause and then, “Do you want to see me naked first?”

I burst out laughing. Instantly. Without meaning to. It was the last thing I would have wanted to do. “No!”

And from the smirk he gave me, he knew it too. “You sure? I have a mole on my thigh that looks like Florida. Maybe you’ll find something to make fun of me over, but I don’t think so.”