Page 84 of Ice Dance

“Does anything surprise you?” I twisted in the chair, bringing my knees up to my chest, propped my head on my hand, and peered at him. Damn, he was so pretty when he scowled. And when he was frowning, and angry, and when he went down on me.

“You surprise me,” he said softly. “All the time. It’s somehow both infuriating and charming.”

My eyebrows lifted. “You think I’m charming?” I yawned into my hand.

“I think, right now, you need sleep.”

I rubbed my face and flopped my head back again. “Okay, in a second.” It felt good, being with him. As though this was where I was supposed to be. I’d spent the night hanging out with friends, but I’d only really wanted to be right here. With him.

TWENTY-NINE

REN

Navarro was asleep within ten minutes of arriving at my hotel room. I let him settle on the couch until his breathing fully slowed, then gently adjusted him so he lay a little more comfortably than upright. He mumbled something, half waking, but was out cold again within seconds.

I took one of the hotel bed covers, laid it over him, and stayed leaning on the sofa’s arm, looking down at his relaxed face. He had a delicate, almost invisible smattering of freckles on the tops of his cheeks. I’d noticed them during our close holds, and then found it difficult to stop noticing them.

He had danced on the ice today as though he’d been born to it.

I was going to ask him to try for a quadruple axel spin during our next session. An axel jump was easy enough, but a quad meant four and a half rotations in the air. The skater must arrive fast, with power, establish an extremely brief forward outside edge on their blade without letting it collapse or skid, drive vertically, and snap into am extremely tight rotational position. Once airborne, the slightest of errors couldn’t be corrected. He could do it. He’d take a few knocks trying, but he just needed the confidence. The axel was a showstopper, always. Traditionally, it wasn’t allowed in ice dance. But the Meridian was made for Camden’s lax attitude to rules. We had to do it.

I let my fingers tease his unruly hair. Camden Navarro was chaotic and brilliant. Both of those things should not exist together on the ice, but in him, they did. He was an impossible contradiction, and it made him second to none, not even me.

I cared that he did well, and not for myself like I’d told him on the call. I cared for him. He had so much potential. People loved him. He’d win the judges over, and not just from his antics, but from genuine, talented skating. I wanted him to succeed more than I wanted it for myself, which was an entirely new state of mind for me. I had nobody. The closest person to me was Dylan, and she knew almost nothing about me outside of work. My life had always been about me, and only me—how far could I go, what would it cost, always better, aiming higher, winning.

I didn’t know how to care for someone else.

And how could I make the ice dancing and the caring for Navarro happen in the same space, without one of those things breaking? Could they even exist together?

Looking at his sleeping face, after having him call me from the club, trying to say things I doubted either of us knew how to say . . .

It was no longer about only me.

Somehow, I had to make this work for him. For his future.

He woke on the couch, embarrassed, aching, hungover and grouchy. I let him have the room to himself and went down to breakfast. He joined me fifteen minutes later, his face warmer, eyes awake, and his hair damp from the shower.

The restaurant was mostly empty. It was still early, as far as other guests considered early. Nobody paid us much attention.

“I’m going to drop by my old rink to see the kids before I disappear for four months,” he said, sitting in the other chair at our small table. “You wanna come?”

“Your class?”

“Yeah. They would love to meet a living legend.”

I doubted that. “Do they even know who I am?”

He laughed and fiddled with the condiments supplied on the table, taking the little sauce sachet out then replacing it, reorganizing because he couldn’t sit still. “No, they have no idea, but it’ll be fun.”

Children were not fun. They were impulsive, abrupt, and alarming.

“C’mon.” He frowned, but it was playful, not serious. “If anyone sees, we can frame it as a PR thing. It won’t look personal. And it’ll be good for you.”

“Good how?”

“Show your softer side.”

“I don’t have a softer side.”