The explanation was reasonable enough. Fewer skaters meant cleaner run-throughs, more room to work, fewer people driftinginto your path halfway through a sequence. Every serious athlete looked for quieter sessions once competition week settled into its rhythm.
Whether that was actually why I was there was a different question.
I stepped onto the ice before I could examine the answer too closely and pushed immediately into motion. For a while, skating did what it always did. My body settled into familiar patterns, thought narrowing around timing and edge quality and the thousand small adjustments that usually left no room for anything else.
Then I looked up and found Luka Davorin watching me from the opposite side of the rink.
Well, that didn’t help. My train of thought derailed on impact.
I made it through another sequence before looking again. He was still there.
Most people would have glanced away after being caught staring. Luka didn’t seem particularly interested in pretending he hadn’t been doing exactly that.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I changed direction and skated toward him.
“You came back.”
The words sounded more casual in my head than they did out loud.
A faint smile touched his mouth. “I prefer fewer variables.” His gaze drifted across the sparsely occupied rink. “And fewer collisions.” His lips twitched. “Collisions are not… optimal.”
“Not optimal,” I repeated. Then I laughed. “So your official review is that almost getting taken out was inconvenient?”
“It interrupted practice.”
He uttered the reply so seriously that I had to fight another smile.
“That might be the most Luka Davorin sentence I’ve heard all week.”
“You are translating incorrectly.”
“Give me time. I’m still learning the language.”
His expression warmed a little then. Not by much, but enough that I noticed.
The conversation should probably have ended there.
“No elements today?”
Luka blinked. “What?”
“Every time I’ve seen you on the ice, you’ve been drilling something with your partner.”
“Her name is Mila,” he corrected.
I nodded. “You changed the lift entry yesterday.”
That caught his attention. For the first time since we’d started talking, he looked genuinely surprised.
“You noticed?”
“You’re loading earlier through the shoulder now.”
He studied me for a moment. “It is faster.”
“We used to work on variations like that in Montreal.”
The name didn’t produce the reaction I’d expected. Encouraged, I kept talking.
