Across the rink, Luka remained completely unaware of the crisis unfolding in my nervous system.
Maybe it wasn’t a crisis.
Maybe that was the problem.
For one brief, deeply unsettling moment, my reaction had nothing to do with skating. More than that, I wanted something I couldn’t quite name.
Then Mila and their coach appeared, and Luka shut himself down.
Whatever I’d just witnessed was gone.
Mila joined him on the ice, and moments later, they were running through their free skate program.
I remained at the boards, watching a version of Luka that suddenly felt incomplete.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Their coach prowled nearby with his arms folded across his chest, expression sour enough that even from a distance I could tell he was unhappy about something.
Sokolov. That was his name. The guy always looked one inconvenience away from starting an international incident.
Luka and Mila moved through the opening transitions flawlessly, blades carving deep synchronized curves across the ice while the music swelled around them. Anyone else watching probably saw exactly what commentators kept raving about online: chemistry, discipline, impossible consistency under pressure.
I saw Luka drive into the next lift entry too hard.
The element still rose cleanly overhead. Mila hit the line perfectly. Rotation stayed centered. Ninety-nine percent of people in the building would’ve called it excellent.
I knew in an instant the timing underneath it was wrong.
Luka overpowered the entry as if he was correcting for instability before instability even existed. His grip tightened during the transition instead of settling naturally, and the exit clipped sharper than intended before he reeled it back in.
Tiny error. Huge tell.
“Off the ice.”
Sokolov’s voice carried sharply enough across the rink that several nearby skaters glanced over before returning to their own training.
For a second Luka remained where he was.
Then Mila released the lift position and backed away, and he followed her toward the boards with the same smooth efficiency he brought to everything else. To anyone watching, it probably looked as though the mistake had already been forgotten.
I knew better.
The moment he reached the barrier, his hand closed around the top of it hard enough for the muscles in his forearm to tighten. A second later he loosened his grip and looked out across the ice as though nothing had happened.
It wasn’t convincing.
Leave it alone.
Whatever was going on between Luka and Sokolov wasn’t my business, and the last thing Luka needed was some American singles skater deciding he could fix problems nobody had asked him to fix.
That should have been enough.
But then I found myself remembering the look on Luka’s face after the lift went wrong. Not the mistake itself, but the split second afterward, before he’d managed to hide the reaction.
By the time I pushed away from the boards, I’d already made the decision.
Luka didn’t look up when I stopped beside him.
