Page 24 of On the Brink of Passion

“Okay,” he mutters, and the color is slowly fading from his cheeks. He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck and mutters something under his breath I can’t hear. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

That one’s easy-peasy. “Apology accepted. We should start heading over to the dining hall so we won’t be late to meet Daphne.”

I have to resist the temptation to throw in a load of wash on our way out of the building.

Chapter Eleven

Beckett

The ice always feels crowded to me during competition warm-ups. Yes, I realize that with four pairs of us out here it’s not, compared to say a hockey game, or even singles warm-ups. But when you’re slinging your partner around the ice, and therefore have the momentum of two people instead of one, it seems crazy. Like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, but . . . without the hippos. Never mind. The point is that the warm-up always freaks me out.

Lucky for me, Jubilee knows it, and unlike some of the other pairs who warm up entirely separately during this time—some don’t even look at each other—we always skate together. A point of contact between us unless we’re practicing our twist lift or one of our throw jumps. You’d think it would be the other way around, what with her being strung taut like a bow and me super chill, but I’m actually the one who gets worse jitters before we compete. She’s never teased me about it, though, just found a way to make it better. And that way is apparently me having a hand on her at all times while frigging demolition derby on skates is going on around us.

At least I have my hands on her, and my feet are gliding on the ice like they’re supposed to be. I imagine most people would feel more stable on grass or concrete, but like a sailor who only feels wobbly when he gets off his ship, I’m on a more even keel on the ice. I know what I’m doing here, unlike in the rest of my life, and I’m one of the best in the world. Plus, I’ve got this sexy-as-hell, tough-as-nails, and completely kick-ass woman who believes in me enough to have her name next to mine on the board. That’s got to be good enough, even as one of the German skaters goes whizzing past us. Seriously, why do warm-ups have to be so treacherous? I feel like we’ve got a better shot at getting injured now than we do when we’re actually skating our program.

In the last segment of the warm-up, our program music comes on and I try to let everything else go—all the other people on the ice, because we’ve got the right of way until the warm-up is over; all this stuff with Jubilee, because it can wait until we’re off the ice. All the worry, it’s all gone. Daphne’s always telling us to leave that shit off the ice, so I imagine tossing it out into the crowd, the reverse of what’ll happen when we’re done: stuffed animals, flowers, and god knows what else littering the rink.

For now, it’s me, Jubilee, our music and the ice. Nothing else matters.

We go through a couple of the stickier bits in our program, but I’m feeling good. My feet are moving the way I’m telling them to, Jubilee’s hands and her body feel right under my fingertips, and she’s got on her fancy skating dress that she’s worn so many times I could recognize it with my eyes closed. Our movements feel pinned together, or maybe Velcroed. We’re not coming apart.

Over the speaker comes the announcement that the warm-up is over. I shake out my hands, my legs, my head. Perfect amount of tension in my body, and it’s go time. I love the way Jubilee smiles at me as we skate off the ice hand in hand. This is our time. This is our chance.

Jubilee

Last team in the second-to-last flight. Beck must be losing his mind, but he seems to be hanging in there. A little out in la-la land like he always is during warm-ups, but he’ll come back to me and be laser-focused when we get on the ice to skate our program. He always is. It doesn’t matter so much to me when we skate, but he likes to be either last of the last or first in whatever flight we end up in. Oh well.

We don’t watch the other skaters go but stay off in the staging area where we both slip on noise-cancelling headphones that are connected wirelessly to a player in Daphne’s pocket. She has our program playing on loop. Stephen had liked to chat right before our skates, but this is easier on me. All Beckett requires is my physical presence, not my mental one, so we help each other keep limber while we wait for Daphne to let us know we’re on.

Time warps while we’re waiting—more so than it even usually does inside the SIG snow globe. It’s as though the effect is somehow ramped up in here and I wonder if other athletes feel the same way about their venues. Regardless, it feels like we’ve only been back here for a few seconds, but also like it’s been forever, when a hand alights on my shoulder. I turn, knowing it’s Daphne, and there she is.

One hand on my shoulder, and one giving the thumbs up. It’s our turn.

We keep our headphones on until the last possible moment, and then we’re handing them off to Daphne along with our skate guards just outside the boards. I’ve often wished there would be a more elegant way to enter the ice, but this is all we get. Stepping on from rubber mats. At least once my skates hit the ice, I feel like grace incarnate.

After heading to center ice, we get into position, striking a pose as though we’re about to launch into a ballroom dance, and we breathe. It might be—okay, yes, it is—a freakish thing to notice, but with my hand on Beckett’s shoulder, I can feel him breathing. Can tell that, yes, we are together. When I look up into his eyes, they tell me the same thing. Baby blue but somehow still intense, they’re familiar, and I can feel the connection—the one that is so wonderful and precious, but that’s also a step away from shredding my heart back into pieces when I’d only begun to stitch it up again.

Don’t go there.

As the music starts, I correct the hitch in my breath, and we’re in sync as we skate off. The first of our elements, as it is for almost everyone, is our triple twist lift. There’s some artistry of course, making it look easy to dance on this slick surface with knives on our feet, changing grips as we pick up speed, all the while with smiles on our faces.

We get into position for Beckett to toss me into the air, him gliding behind me with his hands tight around my waist. I lay my own hands on his wrists to support the insane thing we’re about to do. I’m not nervous. We’ve done this lift a hundred thousand times, and Beckett’s hands are sure. He’s never let me down, not even in the very beginning when we were new to each other.

At the cue in the music, I dig in my toe pick to help me launch into the air, but a lot of the momentum comes from Beckett pressing me skyward, launching me with all the faith in the world that I in fact know how to fly. I do. Not like a bird. More of a projectile than that, I tuck my arms into anXover my chest, cross my legs to create an extended line through the air, and when I’ve completed my rotations and am coming back to earth from where he’s flung me into the atmosphere, he’s there.

Beckett’s hands grasp my waist and he eases me down to the ice. It takes a ridiculous amount of trust, but I’ve always believed in him here. Which is why I don’t cling to him for dear life, but extend my limbs into lines that will look lovely to the judges. One foot on the ice, both arms in the air as we come so close face-to-face we could almost kiss. The crowd erupts as soon as it’s clear we’ve made it. It’s clean.

There are only a few seconds before we’re setting up for our next element, and it’s another big one. Our side-by-side double axels. Beckett can reliably land a triple, but this isn’t singles skating. There was one day at practice when we’d been working and working on our axels. Daphne was satisfied with the double, but I fucking wanted that triple. There are women who can do that, and I wanted to be one of them. I tried, and I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I got so frustrated, I had to excuse myself. And by excuse myself I mean step off the rink, turn a corner, and rage cry.

Beckett had found me, offered me a tissue, and when I’d dabbed sufficiently at my eyes, he said something I’ll never forget. “Hey. I know you’re frustrated, and I know you’re angry, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t need a side-by-side triple axel to win anything.”

I had opened my mouth to tell him it would make us more competitive, put us at the top of the heap for sure, and he’d put a finger over my mouth. One of the only times he’d touched me outside of purely professional reasons. “Are there things you can do that I can’t?”

I’d rolled my eyes at that. Of course there had been. Still are.

“When I can’t do something, do you feel like I’m holding you back?”

His blue eyes had implored me, and I shook my head, which had been the truth. I get frustrated with him sometimes, but not as frustrated as he gets with himself, and I know we’re well-matched. If our skills didn’t align, who the fuck cares what we could do by ourselves?

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