Page 67 of Ice Dance

“We should uh . . .” He thumbed toward the door. “Dylan.”

“Yes.”

We didn’t move.

The whole corridor was between us now.

I didn’t want to go out there. I wanted to touch him again, to be closer in a way that was freeing, not restrained, that was private, not observed and recorded from every angle. I wanted to dance with him, like we had at the basketball court bar in Montreal. But god, it was dangerous.

“Your skating earlier was magnificent,” I told him.

For someone so quick to smile, this time that smile came slowly, and a touch of heat warmed his face. “From you, that actually means something.”

He stayed looking over, his gaze not skipping away, and mine locked on. There was nothing I could say, but he knew. He knew what I wanted, and why I hadn’t crossed to him again.

“C’mon,” he said, turning toward the door. He opened it for me and waited.

We ran the rest of the day with no time for privacy. But I let my glances linger just a fraction too long, let the final holds stay a beat longer than necessary, and let him feel me breathe when we were close on the ice.

I didn’t know what this was, or what it meant. But I knew it felt right. And that I wanted more.

We had a few days before returning to Montreal. London had been wet and miserable for our final week, but there was no letup in training.

Dylan had us both running on the edge of what we could endure, and had been doing so for days. The result was a routine that couldn’t fail.

Until it did.

The lift had been working in the studio. Just another element of a technically challenging argument, the middle section of our dramatic battle. But we needed to run it on ice, and time was not on our side.

We’d been on the ice for two hours. My thighs burned from drills.

“The lift, let’s go,” Dylan said sharply.

No warning. We were doing it.

I pushed away from the boards, lungs still sharp from the last run-through. Navarro rolled his shoulders once, twice, and shook out his hands, as though he could shake the fatigue from his fingers. His hair had come loose from its band, and licks of it stuck to his face. But he didn’t look tired. We’d been running the step sequence, the argument, up to the point of the lift for weeks. It should be routine.

“From the bridge, no music, I’ll count,” Dylan said.

We set it up, and she counted us in.

Our bodies didn’t argue over every inch of space now. Navarro knew exactly where my shoulder would be. I knew how far his hip would open on the turn, how much room he needed before he’d feel trapped. We’d become fluent in each other’s bodies.

The ice whispered beneath us.

Slow choctaw.

His hand changed at my back.

My hand slid to his shoulder.

Not too hard.

Do not grip.

Do not pull.

His palm settled at my hip, warm through my sports vest.