Page 62 of Ice Dance

I wanted to tell him that he knew nothing about dance, or edges, or timing and pressure, or what it took to make two bodies move as one without utterly destroying each other. I wanted to tell him that not every intimate moment belonged to the public, just because someone had uploaded it.

I saw Navarro tense to react. I was so tuned into him that I saw it before anyone else, and for a terrible second, I thought he might be about to swing for the reporter. Instead, he snatched the phone and tossed it across the street.

“Our partnership is professional,” Navarro snapped. Then followed it up with, “Go fuck yourself.”

Dylan steered me away from the reporters, and Navarro, toward the taxis. We climbed in, joined a few seconds later by Navarro.

Dylan gave the driver our hotel and we settled in for the ride in silence.

TWENTY-FOUR

CAMDEN

After the disaster outside the ice rink, Dylan called me into the hotel bar for a talk.

I waited in the mostly empty bar for her and Hasegawa to return from getting changed out of their gear, going over my less than professional reaction to having a phone shoved in my face and Hasegawa insulted. I thought I’d handled it pretty well. Maybe not public-friendly well. But that guy wasn’t going to be coming at us again anytime soon, if he didn’t want to be paying for a new phone every time.

“There’s been a development, and you’re not going to like it,” Dylan said, taking a seat at my table.

Hasegawa’s face already looked grim. He knew.

“The organizers have gotten wind of your drama, and they don’t like it. This is not the professional behavior they expect from their dancers.”

“I just threw the guy’s phone like fifteen minutes ago. How did they find out⁠—”

“Not that,” Dylan cut me off. “The dirty dancing video.”

“Oh.” I clamped my mouth shut. Damn.

Hasegawa’s dark eyes flicked to me. His cheek flickered.

“They want to see you both dance a routine together, to prove you’re not a gimmick.”

“A gimmick?” I coughed the word. “What the fu⁠—”

“Navarro.” Dylan’s tone stopped me dead. “Listen.”

I shut up again and listened.

“We have four weeks to perfect the argument section of the routine, and come up with a technically perfect addition, including a lift.”

So they wanted a mini competition-winning routine in four weeks. I blinked a lot, and slumped in the chair. “We can do that, right?”

“We don’t have a studio. Saga’s is not appropriate. Which brings me to the next part. We’re moving our operation to London.”

“London?”

“London and Nottingham, specifically. The facilities there are world class, and I need you both working at a level that goes far beyond a family skate rink and Saga’s garage. We need to start taking this seriously, that much is clear, and it was inevitable. The word is out, uncontrolled and messy, but it’s out there. The press is going to hound you more and more if we stay in Montreal. We have to take a step back, get our heads in the game, and clearly that’s not happening here.”

“But I teach,” I said, over my pounding heart.

“Camden. Seriously?” Dylan frowned. “Ten kids on a Saturday? Find a stand-in.”

London. I didn’t even know where Nottingham was. I’d never left Canada. I liked the teaching, it gave me a mental break, made dancing fun again. I needed that. Otherwise it was just training and aching and exhaustion, over and over and over.

“If you want to win,” Hasegawa said. “This is the cost.”

“No, I know, I just . . .” I didn’t have the money for all that, for one. Was I the right person for all of this? I was, I knew I was, I just . . . “Okay. Alright. When?”