Page 127 of Wilder

“I agreed to the Olympics,” Lexi told him. “You’re just lucky that I also decided to go to Nationals and Worlds. But that’s it. Once Worlds is done, we’re finished.”

It seemed no matter how many times she told him that, he just wasn’t hearing her. Well, he probablydidhear her. He was just choosing to ignore what she was saying because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear from her.

Mik crossed his arms and returned her glare. “You owe me.”

“I what?” She mirrored his position, crossing her arms as they faced off. “You dropped me. How can you say I owe you anything?”

“If it weren’t for your father stealing all of our money, we wouldn’t have lost so much.”

Lexi’s stomach twisted at his words. She knew in her mind that she didn’t bear the responsibility for what her father had done, and yet… the guilt was still there.

For a moment, she considered giving in to his demands. Maybe shedidowe him. But how much did she owe him? Wouldhe use this manipulation to gain control over her and her life for as long as it served his purposes?

She couldn’t allow herself to be caught in that situation. Over the past few weeks, she’d come to understand what she did and didn’t want in her life, and Mik and competitive skating were landing firmly in the “didn’t” column.

“I don’t owe you anything, Mikhail,” she told him, keeping her voice as calm as possible. “I am not responsible for my father’s actions. He—and he alone—bears that.”

“If it weren’t for your father, my family would be in a much better position.”

“You benefited from what he did as much as I did,” Lexi reminded him. “You didn’t have to pay for ice time, the coaches, or the costumes. If you hadn’t been partnered with me, you would have had to lay out money for all of that stuff. You were happy enough to take all those freebies along the way.”

Mik spat a curse in her direction. “I probably would have been better off without you as a partner.”

That statement was laughable, but Lexi knew that if she laughed, it would make the situation worse. There was no way he could have found a better partner. They had been a perfect pair, and they had the gold medals to prove it.

“I should have found someone else and paid for all those things. At least my family would have something.”

Lexi didn’t believe that they were quite as destitute as Mik was making them out to be. His parents were highly sought after research scientists who—according to Mik—the US government had helped escape from Russia in order for them to work for the States.

Had they lost money to her dad? Undoubtedly, but from what Mik had said over the years, they’d been well compensated for the information and skills they brought to the government lab where they both worked. They’d had a gorgeous home, several cars, a big boat, and always took expensive vacations.

“So your family had to move?” she asked. “Did they sell the boat and the cars?”

Mik’s expression hardened, and when he didn’t answer her questions, she figured none of that had happened. Meanwhile, she and her mom had lost their home in Maine and their vacation home in Colorado.

And Mik had still had his reputation. Meanwhile, Lexi had been blackballed, and she was done with it all. She’d shown the world that she still had the ability to skate and win, so she had nothing left to prove.

“I’m done skating competitively,” Lexi reiterated. “It was always the plan for us to retire after this Olympics anyway, even before everything happened with my dad.”

“But we were supposed to have started up a skating school. That’s not going to happen now that we don’t have the rink.”

Even if they still had the rink, there was no way Lexi would work alongside Mik. They’d managed to keep the cracks from showing while they’d competed, but it wasn’t sustainable long-term.

Mik clearly disliked her, and Lexi couldn’t say that she held any fondness for the man she’d once planned to marry. If they continued to work together, it would be far from an ideal arrangement.

“You wanted one more Olympic medal so you could end your career on a high note instead of the low note it would have beenwith Amberlyn,” Lexi reminded him. “You got what you wanted, so just let it go. If you keep pushing, we can just go ahead and pull out of Worlds, because I can’t see skating together with so much tension and anger between us.”

“We arenotcanceling Worlds,” Mik said with a shake of his finger in her face.

“Enough,” Irina exclaimed with a clap of her hands. “Get to work.”

The fact that the woman had stood silent until the moment Lexi threatened to pull out of Worlds told her that Irina was hoping that Mik might succeed in convincing her to reconsider her retirement. All of it irked Lexi and made her not want to set one blade on the ice.

But still, she jerked off her guards and stepped onto the ice, moving away from the boards with long smooth strokes. She took off, heading for the far end of the ice, eager to work out some of her tension.

It was no surprise when the practice was an abysmal failure. Her individual jumps were wobbly, with her even falling on a couple of them. The pairs elements were outright disastrous.

Lexi wasn’t on board for doing throw jumps, but she also knew better than to voice that objection to Irina. But as Mik flung her into the air, Lexi realized she was in for a rough landing and tried to not tense up too much. Still, after falling on the landing, she slid backward into the boards, knocking the wind out of her.

---