Goddammit.

Later, I’d tell myself I had tried. I had tried to play dumb and give him an out, even though I hated playing that game. I hated having to give him a chance.

“After the season?” I got myself to ask, hoping, hoping he wouldn’t embarrass me or insult Ivan by not giving a shit he was figure skating in a body.

But like every other time, he either didn’t give a shit or ignored the signals I could feel everyone giving him to shut the fuck up. “No, after you retire,” he answered, a pleasant expression still on his seventy-year-old face. “Your mother told me you’re still working at a diner. It’s wonderful you’re making your own money after all those years you used to say you couldn’t because you had to practice,” he chuckled.

Like I hadn’t said that shit when I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, when I’d been struggling with school and trying to squeeze figure skating into every other minute of my life because I’d been killing it then. I had dominated the juniors scene then. I sure as fuck hadn’t wanted to work because a part-time job would have meant the end of my dream.

My mom had always known that and understood.

But he hadn’t.

And I had fucked up at eighteen and asked him for money, even though I knew better.

You’re a little old for these skating things, Jasmine, no? Focus on school. Focus on something you will always be good at. These dreams, they waste a lot of time.

I wasn’t a superstitious person. Not at all. But the season after that one had been the worst I ever had. And each one after that hadn’t gotten much better.

Practices were good. Everything leading up to every event was great. But the moment it really mattered… I choked. I fucked up. I lost my confidence. Every time. Sometimes more than others, but always.

And I had never told anyone that I blamed it on my dad. Focus on something you will always be good at. Because according to him, I wouldn’t always be good at the one thing in the world I was actually great at.

And his words then, at the restaurant surrounded by my family, were a fucking punch to the solar plexus I had no way of avoiding or handling.

And he’d kept right on going.

“But you can’t work there, waitressing forever, and you can’t skate for the rest of your life, you know,” my dad said, still smiling like every one of his words weren’t sending a hundred needles straight into my skin, each one going deeper and deeper by the second, so deep I wasn’t sure how the fuck I would ever get them out.

I clenched my teeth together and looked down, forcing myself to keep my mouth shut.

To not tell my dad to fuck off.

To not blame him for all the damage his words and actions had done to me.

To not tell my dad that I had no idea what I would do after figure skating and somehow not admit that the lack of an answer—of even an idea—caused me to panic. I didn’t even know what I would do a year from now when this was all over with Ivan, but I wasn’t going to bring that shit up. Even Ivan hadn’t brought it up in months. The last thing my dad needed to know was that Ivan didn’t want me for longer than a year, even if he was my best friend and a person I enjoyed spending my time with.

My pride could only handle so much.

“I think, maybe, you should have gone to college like Ruby. She went to school and still did what she wanted to do,” my dad kept talking, oblivious to the fact he was killing me inside and that my mom, who was sitting beside me, was gripping her knife for dear life. “It’s never too late to go back and make something out of yourself. I’ve thought about going back to get my MBA, see?”

Make something out of myself. Make something out of myself.

I swallowed and fisted my fork tighter, stabbing my ravioli with a vengeance, and shoving it into my mouth before I could say something that I might regret.

But probably not.

Something touched me beneath the table, sliding over my knee and cupping it. I hadn’t realized I was shaking my leg until he stopped it. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ivan’s arm partially hidden under the table. But what I could definitely see was the fact that he was side-eyeing me, his cheeks flushed.

Why were they pink?

“You have to focus on what will make you money when you’re older and can’t get on the ice anymore,” my dad kept going, oblivious.

I held my fork so hard, my fingers were going white around it. The hand on my knee cupped it even tighter before moving slightly above it, just on top of the knee cap, lining it. Did he have to say this stuff in front of someone who had dedicated his entire life to figure skating? It was one thing to insult me, but it was another thing to undermine all the hard work that Ivan had put in.

“You weren’t so good in school, but I know you can do it,” my dad kept talking, sounding so enthusiastic at the idea of me going back to school, it was that, that set me right off.

Jasmine doesn’t have a learning disability, he had argued with my mom one day in the kitchen when I’d been maybe eight years old and I was supposed to be in bed but had snuck downstairs instead. All she needs is to focus.

Looking up at him, up at this man who I had loved and wanted to love me just as much for so long, all I felt was an anger that I hadn’t come to grips with in the twenty-plus years since he’d divorced my mom and left. Left me. Left us. Just left. And I swallowed carefully, accepting that he didn’t know me at all, and he never had. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it was his.

But that didn’t mean I was going to shut the hell up like I had promised everyone I would.

“No, I didn’t do so great in school. I hated it,” I told him slowly, watching every word out of my mouth. “I hated myself for hating it.”

My dad’s dark eyes flashed toward me in surprise. “Oh—”

“I have a learning disability, Dad. It was hard for me, and I didn’t like it,” I kept saying, keeping my eyes on him and ignoring the looks that I was sure my brothers and sisters were giving each other. “I didn’t like having to go to… what did you call it? ‘Get special treatment’ to learn my ABCs while everyone else was already reading. I didn’t like having to figure out different ways to learn how to spell because my brain had a hard time keeping track of letter sequences. I didn’t like that I could never remember my locker combinations, so I’d have to write them on my hand every single day. I hated that people thought I was stupid.”

Even from across the table, I could see his gulp. But he’d done this shit to himself. He had brought up something that everyone else except for Ivan and probably Aaron knew about. “But there are classes you can take, things you can do to help.”

I kept my sigh inside of me, but I took it out on the fork I was still gripping the shit out of. “I know how to read and write. That’s not it. I learned how. I don’t like school, and I never will. I don’t like people telling me what to do and what to learn. I’m not going to graduate with a college degree. Not tomorrow, not five years from now, not in fifty years.”

Dad’s expression faltered for a moment, his gaze going around the table like he was searching for something, and I didn’t know what he thought he saw or why he decided to say the words that fell out of him a moment later, but he sealed his own deal in a voice that was too light. Too joking for a moment that to me, wasn’t humorous at all. “Jasmine, those are the words of a quitter.”

I heard my brother Jojo suck in a breath and heard Ivan’s fork clink against the side of his plate. Mostly though, I heard the anger in me churning to his words. To his bullshit-ass assumptions. “You think I’m a quitter?” I asked him, fully aware I was giving him the same look I gave other people when I was three seconds away from losing my shit.

“Jas, we all know you aren’t a quitter,” Jojo chimed in quickly, finally.

We both ignored him.

“You don’t want to finish school because it’s hard for you. Those are the words of a quitter,” my father claimed, slashing my heart in half at the same time.

Had he not heard a single fucking thing I’d just said?

Beside me, Ivan cleared his throat, his fingers sliding up even higher on my thigh and squeezing me, not in anger but… in something else I couldn’t place. And before I could open my mouth to defend myself, to yell at my dad that that wasn’t the point at all, he beat me to it. “I know I’m not a member of this family, but I need to say something,” my partner said calmly.