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The butterflies in my stomach flapped harder. But I said to Rafael, “Now or never.”
As he pulled the car into the parking lot outside the big, pastel yellow arena building, I swallowed hard at the sight of the rows and rows of cars already stretched across the space. But the time on the dashboard clock said it was still ten minutes before our assigned performance time.
I’d made it, if only barely.
I grabbed my equipment bag out of the back and hauled ass to the arena doors. I was still several steps away when Niko and Jasper burst out to meet me, Niko’s eyes shining with relief but Jasper in a furor.
“Where have you been?” he demanded before I could say anything, raking his hand through his tousled hair. “You missed our warm-up time. We’re supposed to be going on to perform, like,now.”
“Ten more minutes,” I said with a gulp of breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut it so close. I tried to take a shortcut and then we got delayed by an accident on the road.”
It was a reasonable enough story, and Niko nodded. “We’re just glad you made it.”
But Jasper’s eyes had narrowed as he looked at my ponytail. “Your hair…”
I frowned. “What?”
He reached over and fingered the strands, tugging a lock over where I could see it from the corner of my eye.
See the brittle, blackened tip where that bit had gotten singed.
Oh, shit.
I fumbled for a reasonable excuse and let out a laugh I hoped didn’t sound nervous. “Just a little accident with the straightener. Come on, we’ve got to get inside and into our skates, or we really will be late.”
That spurred my partner into action. A strange cosmetic detail was nothing compared to making it to the competition ahead.
As we all hustled inside, Niko waved to Rafael. “Come with me. You should sit up front for this performance—bring all that moral support.”
A hint of a smile touched Rafael’s lips. When the two of them split off from Jasper and me, a bloom of warmth filled my chest.
All three of the men who mattered most to me were here together, supporting me as a team. My two skaters had no idea about the trouble I’d gotten involved in, and now that was over. I could really put my past behind me and move forward.
I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
The inside of the arena was only a smidgen nicer than the one in Hobb Creek. Along with the other skaters and the judges, there were several dozen onlookers in the stands, but not anywhere near enough to bring news crews. Just a small portion of Dellville’s population curious to see the competition all the way through.
As we slipped into the rink area, the pair before us was gliding across the ice. Curiosity tugged at me to check out their routine, but I couldn’t afford to give them even a few seconds of my time.
Jasper rushed me onward to the prep area at the base of the stands. I dropped onto the bench and yanked on my skates at record speed.
With each cross of the laces, I breathed in and out, willing my pulse to steady and my mind to clear of everything but my love for the ice.
Images from beautiful routines I’d watched in awe in the past floated through my mind—some of them spectacles put on by the very men who’d helped me reach this moment. Jasper and Niko had taken my breath away so many times.
I could make art like that too. Even if it wasn’t a kind of art that could ever hang on a museum wall or be displayed at a gallery, it was art all the same.
But the fact that you had to be there in the moment to see it made it even more special. The beauty was so fleeting, so pure and so brief, that it had to be magic.
Determination wound through my limbs as I knotted the laces. I’d just defended the town I’d made my home and won, and now I was going to win this opportunity for myself and the men I was falling for too.
The song for the pair before us petered out. I looked up just in time to see them in their ending position before mild applause carried through the stands.
As they glided over to the boards, I quickly brushed my fingers over the pocket of my bag that held my childhood lace, for whatever luck it would offer me.
Jasper and I stood up in anticipation of our summons onto the ice. Jasper’s shoulders looked stiff, his forehead furrowed.
When a woman with a clipboard motioned for us to take our starting positions, my partner’s stance didn’t loosen. The tension wound through his body while we skated into the center of the rink, storm clouds gathering in his eyes.
