Page 38 of The Favorites
“You too.” I smiled up at him. “See you on the podium?”
“See you on the podium.”
Garrett walked away, giving me a quick shoulder squeeze on his way past. The Japanese team’s music shifted into the slow, lyrical section signaling the halfway point of their free dance. I had to find Heath.
But he had already found me.
Before, he’d been freezing me out. Now he was blazing with fury. Even at a distance, I could sense the heat of it, like I was standing too close to an open flame.
“Sorry,” he said. Exactly what I wanted to hear, but not at all the way I wanted to hear it. “Did you two want to be alone?”
“Stop it.” I pulled him behind the bank of monitors, which showed the Japanese skaters whirling in an intricate combination spin. “Garrett was just—”
“He was touching you.”
“Hesqueezed my shoulder.”
“I see the way he looks at you. Not only on that fucking billboard either.”
“That ‘fucking billboard’ is the only reason we’re here.”
Heath furrowed his brow. “What?”
“Without the money I made with the photo shoot, we would’ve had to quit the Academy months ago.” It turned out “not much” to Garrett was more money than I’d ever seen at one time, enough to cover our costs for the rest of the season.
“What about your inheritance?” Heath asked.
“Lee spent it. All of it. And if it weren’t for Garrett getting me that job—”
“I don’t want to hear—”
“If it weren’t for Garrett,we would never have made it to Worlds in the first place. You should be thanking him.”
Heath was silent for a moment, and I expected the next words out of his mouth to be something likeWhy didn’t you tell me?Or evenI’m going to kill him—referring to Lee, or Garrett, or both.
Instead he said, “Are you attracted to him?”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on.”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
The space rumbled with applause as the Japanese team took their bows. We should’ve been out there already, prepared to step onto the ice as soon as they sat down in the kiss and cry.
“It was just a photo shoot,” I said. “Now let’s get going, we have to—”
“It’s a simple question, Katarina. Yes or no.”
An insulting question, and it deserved an insulting answer.
“Of course I’m attracted to Garrett. He’s attractive.”
Heath opened his mouth to retort, but I barreled ahead.
“If you trust me, it shouldn’t matter.”
“Trust you?” Heath scoffed. “How can I, when you’re lying to me? Keeping secrets, running around behind my back with—”
“Because I knew you’d react this way! I’m allowed to have other friends, Heath.”
