Page 6 of Ice Dance

Casey chose that moment to side-eye me, scoop up his beer bottle, and leave. He sat with the team, and a few of them glanced my way. They bent their heads, muttering. This was going to make for some interesting gossip in the changing room tomorrow.

“You skate well,” Hasegawa said. “But you lack discipline.”

Wow, that was a conversation opener. He’d sounded condescending, but almost everything out of his mouth during TV interviews sounded condescending, so it probably wasn’t personal.

“You watched?” I sipped my beer, trying not to pay too much interest to his face and what it was doing. His eyes were beautiful, which I hated. Long lashed and elegant. His jaw was too sharp, face a little narrow, thin lips. All of that should have made him ugly, but when you put it all together on him, it made him striking, and handsome. The kind of face you couldn’t stop looking at.

He waved over the barman and ordered something elite and expensive sounding with ice.

After his beer in its tall glass arrived, he gave me a tight nod. “You’ve got real talent.”

Again with the condescending tone. Maybe it was personal. Maybe he’d taken one look at me, my dancing, and thought he knew me, thought he was better than me. Most everyone did.

“I don’t need you to tell me I’ve got talent.” I smiled, but the words were sharp. Skaters like him had been looking down on me since I started sharing the rink with them.

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel uncomfortable.” He sipped his fancy beer with ice.

“No? So, what was that by the stairs earlier?”

He frowned, like he had no idea he’d snubbed me in front of twenty fellow skaters.

He’d forgotten, that was how little he cared.

I huffed a laugh through my nose and loosely gestured at Team Canada around their table. “You here looking for a new partner?”

Hasegawa glanced over, but in less than half a second, he’d dismissed them. “No. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

His long fingers stroked the condensation on the outside of the glass, gathering it up, making it run in streaks. He peered into his drink, becoming somber for a few seconds. Okay, so he was an icy prick who nobody liked, but it still had to hurt, being dumped on selection week. He was still human. He had to have a heart in there somewhere.

“For what it’s worth,” I began. “When I heard you were here, I was sure you’d have a shot at winning. Getting through? Didn’t even consider you wouldn’t.”

“Agreed. It should have been routine for us. My partner was the weak link.”

He’d said it coldly, no hesitation. He clearly believed the fact that she’d left had nothing to do with him. She’d just thrown away the chance of a lifetime, for reasons? Did he not see it? Didn’t he know his demeanor put people off? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was part of the reason why she’d left. I doubted Ren Hasegawa could ever be fucking wrong. “Maybe you should loosen up?”

His gaze cut to me, fast. “What?”

I should have heard the warning in his tone, but as his voice always sounded stern, so I’d missed it. “Relax a little? Ease up, you know? You’ll skate better for it.”

“Are you telling me how to skate?”

There it was, the alarm bells were ringing now. I’d put my foot in it, but I wasn’t about to back down. Sometimes people needed to hear the truth to grow. Everyone around him was probably too scared to give it to him straight. I didn’t have that problem.

“You can’t scare a partner into clicking with you,” I told him. It came out sounding confident. Maybe too confident. I wasn’t wrong, though. You can’t dance with someone you’re terrified of. If you’re spending energy on being worried about putting a foot wrong, the dancing will never come together.

He recoiled. “What are you accusing me of?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. It just seems like you should be less of a dick, and more people might be willing to work with you.”

He blinked, lips parted.

I ran the words over again in my head, and I probably could have reeled them back in with an apology, but he’d started it, back by the stairs. Then by peering down his nose as though he was somehow better than me. All this “you’ve got talent but lack discipline” BS, like I was a fan he smiled at and played nice with because he was temporarily stuck with them.

I didn’t see the beer coming. He was fast. A scoop, a jerk, and the entire contents of his glass, ice and all, splashed into my face. The cold hit like a slap, stole my breath and all rational thought. I reacted before thinking, and lunged on reflex. He almost ducked away, but I caught his shirt, and we pivoted, the pair of us dancing in a way that wasn’t going to end well. My leg got tangled in the stool, or his legs. It happened fast. We both collided, then reeled, and the floor rushed up. We hit hard, air rushing out of me. I still had my hands on him. Saw his sneer, the fury in his warm eyes. His careful hair had fallen out of line.

Casey’s hands grabbed me from behind, hauling me off, leaving Hasegawa to climb to his feet alone.

He brushed himself down, ran a hand through his dislodged hairstyle and sneered. “I could have the ISU ban you for misconduct.”