Everything after that had been a crazy mess of changing, interviews, and rushing out to have a late dinner because we’d all been starving.

Ivan hadn’t even walked me back to my hotel room. He’d been too busy in the lobby talking to another pairs skater that he seemed to be friendly with from Canada. So….

“Darn it! Jessie is crying. I need to go. Good luck tomorrow, but I know you won’t need it! Love you!”

“Love you too,” I said into the phone.

“Bye! You were amazing!” my sister called out before hanging up on me without giving me a chance to say bye in return.

I’d barely dropped my phone on my bed when a knock came from my door.

“Who is it?” I called out, sitting up on the edge.

“Who else would it be?” Ivan’s voice answered on the other side of the door.

I rolled my eyes and got to my feet, heading to the door so I could undo the bolt and the lock. I took my time opening it, to find Ivan standing there, his eyebrows up, still dressed in the clothes we’d gone to eat dinner in. A charcoal gray button-up shirt, black dress pants that he’d confirmed were tailored just for him because his glutes and quads were too big in comparison to his narrow waist, and those black fancy lace-up boots I’d seen him wear a few times by that point.

“You want to let me in?” he asked.

I shook my head and got a smile as I stepped aside, watching him as he came in and immediately went to sit on the edge of my bed, bending over to mess around with the laces of his shoes. I locked the door again and went to take a seat beside him, taking him in as he toed off one boot and then the other with a sigh.

“I’m exhausted,” he admitted as he stretched his legs out.

“Me too,” I replied, taking in his black and purple striped socks. “I just got off the phone with Ruby, and I was deciding if I was tired enough to go to sleep or not. I can’t seem to wind down yet.”

Cocking his chin, he turned to give me a smile right before slipping an arm over my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “How’d that go?”

“Fine. She said that was the best she’s ever seen me skate. Then she gave me a lecture on my dad, but it was fine,” I told him, not in the mood to go over those details again.

Ivan nodded like he understood. “That was the best you’ve ever skated though. I’ve already had at least twenty people come up to me and tell me how good you were.” He blinked. “It didn’t make me jealous. Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, dryly.

He pulled me in even tighter to his side, his hand going to my upper arm and rubbing up and down there. “You were amazing, Meatball. You really were... but don’t expect me to admit that to you again anytime soon.”

I pressed my head into his shoulder and smiled, glad he couldn’t see it. “You were pretty fucking amazing too.”

“I know. But I’m old news. Everyone is used to it.”

I snorted. “You conceited shit.”

His response? “It’s the truth.”

How the hell could I have fallen in love with this arrogant ass? Of all the billions and billions of people on the planet, this was who I fell in love with? This guy?

“But now everyone wants a piece of the Jasmine Pie, and I’ve got to tell them all to turn around and walk away,” he let me know, reminding me again about the one topic we hadn’t talked about in months.

The one I had purposely ignored.

But...

“Ivan,” I started to say, knowing the last thing I wanted to do was ruin this moment, but also wanting an answer. Wanting to know just what the hell was going to happen so I could plan, even if everything hanging in the balance wasn’t for months away. But I didn’t want to run from this anymore. I wasn’t going to be a pussy.

“Hmm?” he asked, still rubbing my arm up and down.

I held my breath and got my words together before spilling them out. “Whenever you and Coach Lee get around to finding me another partner—”

His hand stopped moving, and I felt him turn his upper body to look down at me. “What?”

It made me a coward for sure, but I kept my head on his shoulder, even knowing he had his total attention on me. “When worlds are over and you try to find me someone else to—”

“Jasmine.”

Now that tone had me glancing up at him to give him a crazy look, and the expression I faced was another version of crazy. “What?”

He blinked. “You think I’m going to find you another partner?”

It was my turn to blink. “Well, yeah. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

One eyebrow went up.

So, I made mine go up too.

“I’m not going to find you another partner,” he said, his face and voice both telling me he was insulted. But I didn’t get why. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Umm, because that was the deal. Because you were the one that said like a hundred times that we were only pairing up for a year.” I almost added “dumbass,” but managed not to.

He blinked. Both of his eyebrows went up. Then he blinked some more. “You’re not dumb, so I know that’s not the problem,” he said, taking his time with his words as his eyes narrowed. “But let’s think about this, genius. Tell me if I’m wrong at any point.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“You’re the best partner I’ve ever had,” he started. “There’s no comparison. Am I right?”

I nodded because, yeah, I fucking was.

“You’re my best friend.”

He’d never called me that before, but I nodded at that too.

“You’re my sister’s friend.”

I lifted a shoulder because he was right.

“If I had to choose anyone to help me bury a body, eat dinner with, or watch television with, it would be you, every time for everything.”

My heart squeezed, squeezed, squeezed.

“I made up Mindy taking the season off when really our agreement had ended, and I hadn’t planned on going back to skate with her. Because even though you drove me crazy, I wanted to skate with you.”

What? Just… what?

“My family loves you.”

I didn’t know… anything.

I looked at him, watching as he tipped his head closer to mine and said, “And I love you.”

He’d said it again.

“I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going.

I stopped breathing.

“I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.”

Holy. Fuck.

“I love you so fucking much, Jasmine, that if I broke my ankle during a program, I would get up and finish it for you, to get you what you’ve always wanted.”

It was love. All I could feel was love.

I was going to cry. I was going to fucking cry. Right. Then.

“You mean so much to me that that’s why whatever happens doesn’t really matter to me. Not like it used to. Not like it ever will again,” he finished, pressing his forehead against mine, his eyes intense and heartbreaking. “You’re not ever going to be anyone else’s partner. Not while I’m alive, Meatball. I will drag your stubborn, beautiful ass kicking and screaming back to me because nobody else will ever be good enough for you.”

I blinked. I blinked so fast I knew I was about two point five seconds away from losing my shit.

And then Ivan ended me. He ended every worry I’d ever had about there being someone after him. He did it right there with the tip of his nose touching my own and his forehead against mine too.

“Because I’m okay with you having ten other people be your favorite. But you’re always going to be my favorite person,” he finished. “Always. No matter what.”

I blinked so fast, I couldn’t help but let my eyes fill up with tears. “I… I’m not good….”

His smile was so gentle, so sweet, it took half my soul with it. “I know,” he whispered before he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me, the bottom of his chin going to the top of my head.

And he hugged me, and then hugged me for even longer, even as tears slipped out of my eyes and wet his shirt.

And while I was leaning almost all of my weight against him, he lowered us onto our sides and kept on holding me, pulling me so I was halfway on top of him, my head on his chest, one of my hands gripping his ribs, a leg over his own. We stayed like that until the tears stopped leaking out of my eyes, and I could take deep breaths again.

He brushed his hand down my hair, almost absently.

I had thought earlier that night had been one of the best moments of my life, but this was. This was, and I loved Ivan so much, I didn’t think it was possible to love him any more. Everything he had said to me, I felt the exact same way about, except I would have skated with someone else if he’d truly wanted to go back to his old partner, but I would have done it as a tribute to him, for all the ways he had changed me and my life.

I wanted to give him all the shit and all the shit I couldn’t forever and always, because he’d given me everything.

Neither one of us said anything for a long, long time as we lay there.