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I strode back to the rink, gathering all my resolve. I’d just keep demonstrating my intentions until she believed me. That was all there was to it.
I’d never met a woman who awed me half as much as Lou did. I’d proven a lot of people wrong about me and what I could do, and I could prove to her that her first impressions had been wrong too.
When I returned to the rink, Niko was standing by the boards watching Jasper complete a jump, neither of them showing any sign of concern about my whereabouts. I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or annoyed.
Well, they probably figured Lou could look after herself, which was fair enough.
I was just yanking my skate guards back off when my phone buzzed in my bag. In my distraction, I picked it up on autopilot and raised it to my ear before I’d glanced at the call display. “Hello?”
My mother’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Oh, good, you finally picked up. It’s about time.”
My shoulders stiffened. Shit. I’d been dodging her calls ever since we left Boston, just texting an excuse she obviously hadn’t bought for a second.
My conversation with Lou had left my emotions frayed. I spoke more tersely than I meant to—more than I’d usually have let myself, knowing how easy it was to set the woman off. “What do you want? I’m trying to practice—which is what youshouldwant me to be doing.”
Mom sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Quentin. Don’t make it sound like I’m the bad guy here. When were you planning on having a real discussion with me? You up and disappear without a word, ignoring my calls, and all that after you fucked yourself over at Finals with your stupid idea to skate pairs.”
My vision blurred with a toxic mix of emotion I couldn’t afford to let out. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy? Busy ruining the career I worked so hard to make sure you could build. You can’t even spare ten fucking minutes to talk to your mother? What did I do to deserve such a shitty excuse for a son? Where the hell are you?”
I’d gritted my teeth through the tirade, knowing there was little chance I’d get a word in even if she’d have cared about how I defended myself. At the final question, I rasped out, “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Of course I’m fucking worried! My lord. Who knows what other braindead decisions you’ll make without me watching over you? Now get your act together and start giving me the respect I’m owed—and I expect to see you skating your goddamn heart out at Nationals in singles, or you’d better believe—”
The tension inside me overflowed. “Don’t worry,” I interrupted. “I’m not going to throw a whole competition just to piss you off.”
Then I tapped the button to end the call, bracing myself as if she could slap me across the head all the way from home. The way she no doubt would have if she’d been in front of me.
The way she had more times than I could count when I was growing up. Even left me with a pretty little scar on my face to remind me why I shouldn’t cross her.
But I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was twenty-one—in the eyes of everyone else in this fucking country, I was an adult by every possible measure.
So why the hell could she still make me feel like a cringing elementary schooler with a few well-placed insults?
I turned off my phone before Mom could launch into a barrage of texts or calls and slid it back into the pocket on my bag, only registering then how clammy my hand had gotten. My gut had tied itself in at least a dozen knots.
Fuck. How was I going to focus on practice like this?
I looked up, and my stomach sank all the way to my feet. Niko and Jasper had drifted closer while I was talking to Mom. They were both studying me now, Niko looking concerned, Jasper mostly just awkward.
He was the one who spoke first though, after a rough clearing of his throat. “What was that about? We couldn’t help hearing—it sounded like a pretty intense conversation.”
My face burned. Like I hadn’t faced enough humiliation for one day. But telling Jasper off would only make it sound more like a big deal rather than less.
Instead, I shrugged, shoving all my uncomfortable emotions deeper inside. “It was nothing, really. My mom just doesn’t know when to shut up. She has a lot of shitty opinions about my career, but I’m used to that.”
A glimmer of startled recognition lit in my rival’s eyes, one that horrified me even more as I realized what it meant. When I’d first gotten into the professional circuit as a junior competitor, there’d been a couple of public incidents after disappointing competitions… One where Mom had berated me outside an arena loud enough that a news crew had noticed and recorded some of it, and then the time when she’d smacked me hard enough that I’d banged my face against a railing and cut open my lip and chin.
No one had really tried tohelp, not that I could think of much anyone could have offered that would have been useful. They’d just reveled in the drama of it all until some other news story took over.
That’d been a long time ago. I’d gotten better at managing her moods and expectations over the years.
Jasper wasn’t going to start pitying me now, was he? He’d probably assumed the tirades had stopped once I’d gotten older or forgotten about it entirely until now.
Something softened in the other guy’s face, but instead of nauseating platitudes, his lips quirked into a wry smile. He rubbed the back of his neck before saying in an equally wry tone, “Well, I think I’ve had enough of the ice for today anyway. Anyone else up for waffles for dinner? That always puts me in a better mood.”
I blinked at him. “Waffles?”
