Page 94 of Ice Dance

He pointed at the small semicolon with wings, made to look like a butterfly for anyone who didn’t know its meaning, then skipped his fingers down it. I consider lying, telling him I’d just liked it, but he already knew each one had a story.

I stood, pulled on my pants and loose joggers. His gaze still tracked the tattoo, so how was I supposed to resist him?

“You don’t know what a semicolon means?” I asked.

“I know what it means. It’s for a sentence that could have ended but continued.”

“Yeah . . . an interrupted story that was almost never finished.” I shrugged on my T-shirt and watched his face reveal his thoughts. He almost had it. “There was a time in my life when I had nothing, nobody . . . I mean, I had friends, family, but nothing touched me. Like I was separate from it all. It was a . . .” I cleared my throat. “A bad time.”

His dark eyes revealed the flash of recognition, the realization of what my vagueness meant. He shifted his legs off the edge of the bed, reached out, hooked me around the waist and pulled me close, his face pressed against my abs. I choked up, which was stupid. It had been years ago. But seeing the pain in his eyes made me realize, had I not continued my story back then, I never would have met Ren Hasegawa . . . I wouldn’t have found ice dance, and wouldn’t be so in love with life, like I was now. I wouldn’t be so in love . . .

I let go, and turned away, hoping he didn’t see me rub at my eyes. “You want to uh . . . you want to grab breakfast together?” When I turned back, he was already in the shower.

The water came on. “We’re late,” he called.

“Right.”

I cleared my throat again and blinked back the blur in my eyes.

THIRTY-THREE

REN

Dylan straightened Camden’s black bow tie. “I need you both to behave tonight.”

Clearly, she’d said both of us but didn’t mean me, since my behavior was always impeccable at social events.

The rain was coming down mixed with a pattering of sleet on the hotel entrance canopy. I pulled my coat tight and blew into my hands. November had taken a bite out of London tonight.

The hire car and driver pulled up, windshield wipers going hard.

“I won’t be there to hold your hands,” Dylan joked. “And the Olympic committee will be watching,” she added, not joking.

“We’ll be fine.” I jogged down the steps, opened the car’s back door, and ducked inside.

“Do not do anything that will raise my blood pressure,” she called.

“No ma’am,” Navarro said, joining me in the back of the car.

We settled in for the twenty-minute ride to the Hurlingham estate, forty-two acres of landscaped gardens and a Georgian house where the Winter Athlete’s Trust Gala was about to begin. Retired Olympians would be there, Team GB athletes, federation heads, sponsors from luxury brands. Anyone who was anyone in the sporting world would have been invited, all in aid of supporting young athletes from disadvantaged areas.

Navarro was my plus one, which he’d shrugged at when Dylan had presented the invite. His feelings around being in my shadow were well known, if not spoken about. He hated how the press had made him out to be my lesser partner, but whenever I’d tried to talk through it or convince him they were wrong, he’d shut me down. So we didn’t talk about it.

It probably wouldn’t come up at the gala. The people who came to these events weren’t prone to gossip, and the cause was good.

He fidgeted in the back seat next to me, scratching at his wrists where the stiff cuffs rubbed. Earlier, when I’d collected him at his apartment, he’d admitted he’d never been to a black-tie event before. He’d never worn a tuxedo. I’d assured him he’d looked just fine, then pushed him back into his apartment and shown him exactly what seeing him in a tuxedo had done to me, to the point where we’d almost missed the taxi to Dylan’s hotel for a last-minute debrief of the day’s training before heading off.

“This is so uncomfortable,” he muttered, watching London soften through the fogged windows. The tightly packed buildings gave way to big houses with open gardens. “Why do people wear tuxedos?”

“Strictly speaking, it isn’t a tuxedo, it’s a dinner jacket. Americans named it after Tuxedo Park.”

He stared, then his mouth twitched.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” His smile grew and he picked fluff from his pressed trousers. “Nothing at all.”

I turned my face toward the dark window and smiled. London had disappeared outside the car in stages. The lights and noise were long gone. Our car pulled off the main road, past a Victorian security lodge with gothic single-pane windows and through large wrought-iron gates.