The second my blades touched the ice, I was off, skating so close to the walls, only millimeters separated me from them. I went faster and faster, needing to get this shit out. Out. Out, out, out. I needed to remember why this had been worth so much.

I don’t know how many times I circled my way around, taking on speed skater speed, and I wasn’t sure when I started going into jumps. Jumps I hadn’t warmed up for. Jumps that I had no business doing while my body had already gone through a tough practice and I hadn’t refueled since. I did a triple Salchow—what we called an edge jump because you didn’t have the assistance of your blade’s toe-pick, you took off from the back inside edge and landed on the opposite foot’s back outside edge—followed by another one. A quadruple toe loop that I stumbled out of, and then did over and over again until I landed it. And then I went for a triple Lutz I was too burned out and exhausted to do, busting my ass hard on each landing. Falling and falling, one time after another and then another, my ass cheek hurting somewhere in the back of my head, but I wasn’t focusing on it.

I had to land it.

I had to do it.

My hip ached. My wrist started hurting from trying to break my fall like a dumbass. The skin above my ankle began to chafe.

And I kept falling. Over and over again. I fell.

And the more I failed, the angrier I became with myself.

Fuck this. Fuck everything. Fuck me.

It was on another fall that went so bad, the back of my head grazed the ice that I finally lay there and closed my eyes, breathing hard, feeling like shit, anger burning through me so brightly I felt it everywhere. I made my hands into fists. And I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.

I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry.

I loved my family. I loved figure skating.

And I sucked at loving both.

“Get up, Meatball.”

I didn’t think I’d ever opened my eyes faster than I did right then.

And when I did, a familiar face was there, hovering, staring down at me with two black eyebrows arched upward. In the time it took me to blink, there were fingers there too, halfway between the face and me, fingers wiggling in my direction. The eyebrows went up even further when I didn’t say anything or move.

What was he doing here?

“Let’s go,” Ivan said as he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read on that face I had seen so much of already.

I didn’t get up.

Ivan blinked.

I did too, swallowing hard as I did it, fire filling my throat.

With a sigh, Ivan reached into his pocket and then extended his hand out again, holding a Hershey’s Kiss between his index and middle finger. He raised his eyebrows again as he gave the candy a shake between his fingers. Why the hell he was carrying around chocolate in his pocket was beyond me.

But I took it, keeping my eyes on him the entire time. I unwrapped it like a pro and popped it into my mouth. It only took about three seconds for the sweetness to soothe the pain in my throat, just a little, but it was something.

“You ready to get up now?” he asked after I’d had the chocolate in my mouth for a few seconds.

Shoving it to my cheek, I shook my head, not trusting my lips to form the right words and not really feeling like sacrificing the small bit of joy and comfort coating my tongue. At least not yet. My temples gave a throb that I hadn’t even noticed before.

Ivan blinked down at me twice.

I still said nothing as the chocolate kept on melting inside my mouth.

“I’m not dealing with you if you get sick,” he went on after another minute, crossing his arms over his chest as he did so, still watching me. Expecting something. I thought.

Still, I didn’t say a word. I just kept sucking on the chocolate, ignoring the cold at my back that was finally beginning to sting.

“Jasmine, get off the ice.”

I licked my lips as I stared up at him.

He sighed and tipped his head back to look at the rafters, probably taking in the banners with his name hanging from them and wondering where his life had gone wrong to the point where he was here at night, with me.

God. Did everyone think I was a piece of self-centered crap? Even him?

The throbbing at my head got worse when he sighed again.

“You have three seconds to get up or I’m dragging you out of here,” he got out, still facing the ceiling and more than likely closing his eyes as he did it, if I knew him correctly.

It was my turn to blink. “I’d like to see you try.”

But in the back of my head, I knew that if he said he’d drag me off the ice, he probably would.

Those blue-gray eyes narrowed on me, and he said, still speaking carefully, “All right. I won’t drag you.” Something about the expression on that classic face that had grown only the slightest brush of a shadow of facial hair on his cheeks, put me on edge, like I couldn’t trust it. Like a reminder of what we had been like before. “But you have two seconds from now to get up.”

The or else hung in the air.

The stinging on my back was getting sharper, genuinely hurting my back and ass, and honestly, I wanted to get up. I would have gotten up if I’d been by myself. Chances were, I would have been on my way to the changing room if I’d been alone.

But now I was going to have to get frostbite because I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it since he’d asked.

And Ivan seemed to sense that because those glacier-colored eyes narrowed into slits.

Then he began counting.

“Two,” Ivan started, not even giving me a warning.

I didn’t move.

“One.”

I still didn’t move. Fuck it. I didn’t give a shit.

His sigh was deep, deep, deep, and he even shook his head as he said, “Last chance.”

I stared at him.

He stared back at me and finally shrugged. “You asked for it. Remember that.”

This bastard was going to drag me off the ice? What the—

Ivan bent at the waist, his eyes intent on me, and just as he reached toward my head with one arm—and I tilted my mouth to the side to bite whatever I could reach if he decided to try and pull my hair—his palm shoved itself beneath my shoulders and the ice. His other arm went under my knees, and in a move that was so fast, I forgot this man had built up his life and accomplishments lifting women for a living, I went over his shoulder, ass in the air, head and arms dangling along his back.

This bitch.

Be better. Be better. Be better. Don’t punch him in his giant balls. At least not yet.

“Ivan,” I told him, sounding calmer than I felt, barely realizing he had put on his skates before coming out to hunt me down. He was skating toward the boards, and I didn’t know where we were going. “Ivan, put me down right now, or I’m going to kick you in the face and not feel bad about it.”

“Meatball,” he said, just as calmly and quietly as I had been talking. “I’d like to see you try,” the asshole claimed, mirroring my words right back at me just as what had to be his forearm locked down over my calves, holding them against his chest before I did what he figured I was capable of.

And he would be right.

“Ivan,” I said again, still calm, part of me kind of hoping I was the kind of person who would yell and try to bite his ass so he’d put me down. But I’d promised. I’d promised to behave in public. So my voice was still nice and quiet as I said, “I swear to God, put me down this second.”

His response? A soft “No.”

“Ivan.”

“No,” he repeated, stepped off the ice, grabbing something out of my vision, and continuing walking… somewhere. I couldn’t see. What I could see was that he didn’t have his skate guards on either.

“I’m not playing with you right now,” I let him know, beginning to get really mad.

“I’m not either,” he replied, giving my calves a squeeze closer into him. “I gave you a chance. I gave you several chances, and you didn’t want to listen or let this go the easy way, so don’t get pissed off at me because you’re stubborn.”

My hands clenched from where they dangled, and I seriously considered biting his ass if I could reach it. Fuck it. He’d brought this on himself. I was more of a wedgie person than a biting-on-the-ass person, but I wasn’t about to stick my hand in the back of his pants.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you right now, but I drove all the way over here, so you’re not going to act like a spoiled brat with me,” he let me know before shifting me on his shoulder and huffing. “Jesus Christ, you’re heavy.”

“Fuck you,” I spat, seriously talking myself out of biting him.

“Fuck you too,” he replied, not missing a beat, not sounding at all angry or frustrated, which annoyed me even more.

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“I will kick you in the face.”

“You make me bleed, and we’ll have to take time off from practicing, and we both know you don’t want to do that.”

He had a point, damn it.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of you the first chance I get when the season is over,” I hissed, arching my back for a moment when the blood rushing into my head started to make my nose sting.

“You can try,” he replied.

“You’re so lucky I don’t want to make a scene,” I pretty much growled.

His “I know” only annoyed me more as he took a turn down a hall.