Page 43 of Ice Dance

Once warmed up, he smiled more. And we were back to the same man I’d seen when I’d first arrived, not the man who prickled at my every word.

By the third hour, the studio had stopped feeling like a punishment. It was still too hot, and the mirrors were warped in places I hadn’t noticed before, but Navarro had stopped bracing for me to correct him. We worked through basic hold changes, then rhythm drills, then the opening phrase without skates and no speed to hide behind, obviously. It was unpleasant to begin with, honestly. Wooden. My frame was too rigid; his hips had a mind of their own. Then something eased. I waited instead of forcing, and he gave me the line without turning it into a dare. A turn, where my guide truly guided instead of contained, and his body followed, as though we were one and the same.

When the sequence was done, Navarro laughed, but not at me. Not this time.

I found myself smiling too.

By late afternoon, a few of the other dancers had stopped outside the room to watch. Including the young dark-haired woman who had given me directions to Navarro.

I caught a few murmurs, a few comments. “Damn, that’s clean.”

Navarro and I both stopped, coming apart gently. We’d drawn a small crowd, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the praise.

“Thank you.” I moved to the side of the room, grabbed my bottle of water, and drank.

Now that we’d stopped, the spectators ambled off.

“I’ll shut the door,” Cam said, heading toward it.

“No, it’s fine. Leave it open. Word will get out eventually.”

He tilted his head and returned to the middle of the floor. I followed, and we were dancing again. The dancing improved when I stopped trying to make him smaller. I still shaped the line, still led, but he needed a little freedom to feel. When I gave my control space to breathe, Navarro filled it with something I couldn’t replicate.

Heat. Instinct. Freedom.

By midafternoon, we were both sweat-soaked and aching. I dropped to the bench, loose and exhausted. Navarro’s hair had escaped most of its band. Locks of it clung to his forehead and face, eyes bright with spent effort.

“Look at that,” he said, grinning. “We didn’t kill each other.”

I huffed a soft laugh, and bent forward to rub my calf.

There was still a long way to go. But for the first time since Montreal selection week, I’d begun to look at Camden Navarro and not see a mistake I’d been forced to make. I saw possibility. I saw potential. And I saw a man who challenged my body, my dance, and my mind in ways I wasn’t sure I could wrangle under control. But if I could, then we would win the Meridian.

We just needed the routine to prove it.

EIGHTEEN

CAMDEN

Monday morning, Dylan sat Hasegawa and me down in her hotel bar to go through the logistics of the impossible thing we’d put together in the last two days without her.

She had her laptop out, and her phone, and went through it all. Yes, we could switch our entries so we both danced together in the Meridian gender open category. If we came top three in that, we’d dance in the finale. The organizers were fine with it, probably because they didn’t want to lose a dancer of Hasegawa’s caliber, and couple that with my flare, they’d have been insane to block us from entering.

But before all of that, there were a whole lot of details that needed work. Like where we were going to train. She couldn’t find anywhere, not yet. Nowhere that wouldn’t have industry press all over it. So we’d have to stick with the local rink to begin with, and Saga’s studio. Saga was out of town and didn’t know he had international competition winner Hasegawa training in his studio. I had no idea how he’d react. Probably loudly.

Accommodation was an issue for Hasegawa and Dylan. The city center was too far from the studio and local rink. They’d have to find somewhere smaller, closer to where we trained. There was a chance we’d move everything to the UK. She was looking into it.

Press . . . Dylan was going to hire a media training manager, because as soon as our pairing hit social media, it was going to explode. We each had our strengths and weaknesses in public, she said, which basically meant we were both terrible at projecting a professional image and needed someone to do it for us. She emphasized how crazy it was going to get. The Meridian wasn’t as highbrow and civilized as typical ice-skating competitions. It went glitzy, it went glamor, and it went hard. There were press events, sponsor rounds, even multiple dinners and balls to attend. Since we were social dynamite, we were both to be on our best behavior. I had no idea why she looked at me through most of that conversation.

When it came to the dance—and this was the hardest blow for Hasegawa—Dylan wanted his and Alisha’s dance rewritten from the ground up. All of it. Hasegawa and I told her about the battle, which she was open to, but she wanted to see us perform first, because it was a technical fucking nightmare that most skaters wouldn’t be able to pull off.

With Dylan in town and our slot in the competition confirmed, it finally began to feel real. As though dancing the gender open with Hasegawa was a thing that was actually going to happen, and not just a five-day affair that ended in heartbreak.

I left Hasegawa and Dylan at the hotel and grabbed a bus back to my place to pick up my skating gear. It felt good, felt like actual progress and like maybe I was a real skater for the first time, not just somebody’s charity case.

I called Casey while I was on the bus. “Hey man, so you need to hear it from me first⁠—”

“Oh fuck, what happened?”