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ONCE AGAIN, Ileaned forward on those damned figure skates Bergy had bought for me—the ones he insisted I wear for these lessons—and once again, I caught the fucking toe pick on the ice and fell flat on my face.
“Ow!” I shouted, barely stopping myself from shouting a bunch of less acceptable things in front of Sophie.
She giggled, and Cadence skated over to offer me a hand.
“So, what does Levi need to do, Sophie?” Cadence asked. “What’s he doing wrong?”
Sophie put her hands on her hips, taking up a posture I’d seen her mother use countless times. “Don’t just bend the knees. Bend the ankles.”
“Hockey skates don’t allow you to bend the ankles,” I grumbled.
“But figure skates do,” Cadence said. “Which is why you’re wearing them and not those stiff old hockey skates.”
“I like my stiff old hockey skates.”
Cadence shrugged. “You can learn to like these, too.”
With that, Sophie skated away from us, trying to perform a spiral move she’d been working on with Cadence for a while. The way her eyes lit up when she finished it, I couldn’t help but nod. “Yeah. I suppose I can.” For Sophie’s sake, at least.
The twinkle in Cadence’s eyes told me she understood exactly where I was coming from. She took off to follow her true student, and I had to try to catch up to her without falling on my ass. “You’re as messed up over Sophie as I am over you, aren’t you?” I asked her once I reached her side.
She grinned. “Sophie is far and away my favorite student. And it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s your best girlfriend.”
“Mm hmm.”
“Hey, Sophie,” she said, ignoring me. “You’re doing great with that spiral on your right leg. What about trying it while leading with your left. Think you can do that?”
“I can do it,” Sophie insisted. And no one who had ever watched her try would ever doubt it. This little girl could do anything she set her mind to.
Her first several efforts weren’t successful. Sophie ended up on her butt even more often than I did, but she never stayed down, and she never cried. She simply got back onto her skates and tried again.
“Why don’t you try it, too, Levi?” Cadence suggested after helping Sophie to her feet. She winked at me, ignoring the evil eye I was sending her direction.
I picked up some speed and then pushed off, and almost instantly tipped forward. I probably came close to breaking the fall with my nose.
“Try it again, Levi,” Sophie shouted at me.
“Yeah, try it again, 501.”
I whipped my head around when I recognized Koz’s voice. “What are you doing here?” Fucking hell, none of the guys knew I was doing this. Bergy did, of course, since I was doing it for Sophie’s sake. We had an understanding, though. He wasn’t going to spill my secrets. I supposed Jonny might be aware, if Cadence had told him. But that was it. I hadn’t even told my brother about these lessons. The last thing I needed was for any of the guys to find out I was taking figure skating lessons. I especially didn’t need them to find out I was falling on my face constantly because of these stupid skates or my inability to use them properly.
But now that Koz had seen me in these skates… I would never hear the end of it.
“Bergy wanted me to meet some speed skating instructor here,” Koz said. “I wasn’t too happy about it. Not until I saw this.”
The son of a bitch had a grin on his face that likely wouldn’t go away for months. This had just made his fucking day. Hell, maybe his whole year.
I glanced at my watch. Our ice time should’ve been over about twenty minutes ago, but the guys up front hadn’t kicked us off yet. Old Gord had a thing for Cadence. I couldn’t blame the guy, since I definitely had a thing for her, too, but that didn’t mean he needed to let her go long with these sessions. Either Bergy or Paige would be here any minute to pick up Sophie, and she wasn’t anywhere near ready to go home.
“Come on, Sophie Bug. Need to get you out of those skates so you can go home.”
“Time’s already up?” she said, pouting.
“Time’s up,” I replied.
She skated over to the door I held open for her, and Cadence and I helped her get her skates off.
“Are you coming to my next lesson?” she demanded. “You need to practice. You fall down too much.”
