Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Stop,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “If you make me cry, I have to do all this makeup over again.”
“Hold still,” she admonishes me. “There. Now look.”
I peek in the mirror once again and see the kind of ice princess that people are paying a grand to watch. “This is going to be a damned spectacle.”
“You know it. Now you get some stretching in, and I’ll text you when they’re down to the last ten-minute hockey game.”
I’m alone upstairs just long enough to get nervous, so when Darcy texts me, it’s a relief. I carry my figure skates down the back stairs and enter the tunnel. It’s cluttered with Legends players who are trying to watch the final hockey act—a three-on-three game played in bubble suits. And it must be funny, because the audience is howling with laughter.
“There she is!” Darcy shouts over the chaos. “Over here, babe! I brought you a chair.”
The players part like the sea for me, several of them turning around to take me in.
“Hot damn,” DeLuca says with a wink. “You look like a million bucks for charity.”
“Where’s Chase?” someone else asks. “How’s he gonna top that? I want to see some leg.”
Everybody laughs.
I take my seat and quickly lace up my figure skates. Then I stand up and bounce my knees, trying to stay warm.
“Where’s Chase?” I ask. “Aren’t we on soon?”
“He just went to change his— Oh, there he is!”
I see a flash of sparkly blue, and then a smiling Chase maneuvers through the tunnel in our direction. Or he tries to. His teammates keep stopping him.
“Holy shit, you sexy beast!” O’Connell says with a laugh. “Selfie?”
“Can I borrow that shirt when you’re done with it?” someone else asks. “I’ll only need it for two minutes. That’s how long it would take me to score in a nightclub if I’m wearing that.”
“Nah, four minutes at least,” someone else chirps. “Unless you borrow his face, too.”
Luckily there’s a howl of laughter in the tunnel, because it covers the groan Chase lets out when he arrives at my side. “God, you look amazing,” he says under his breath. “Fuck, that dress.”
“You can do that later,” Darcy says. “First you have to earn it.”
Then time sort of speeds up, as it always does right before a big performance. Maybe there’s no gold medal on the line tonight, but I still want to do my best.
“You okay?” Chase whispers as the announcer introduces our act and the vocalist. “You’ve been quiet today.”
“Just concentrating,” I say. And I am. Except I’m also thinking the same thoughts I had ten years ago—after tonight, there won’t be any reason to figure skate with Chase again. And if the Legends don’t suddenly make him an offer, the offer he deserves, I might not see him at all.
“OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALIST ZOE CARSON AND OUR OWN CHASE MERRITT!” the announcer calls.
The rink goes dark, and the crowd hushes in that whispery way it always does, with the heady silence of anticipation. Chase puts a hand on my lower back, and together we step forward and then glide out onto a rink lit only by the EXIT signs.
At center ice, Chase offers his hand, palm up, and I take it. Then his thumb massages the back of my hand, as if we were merely standing around waiting for the walk light on Eighth Avenue.
I love him so much that it almost hurts to breathe.
The lights come up on the bandstand first, and I see our vocalist, guitar braced in her hands. She’s beaming as she puts her hands to her instrument. And when the first notes of the song emerge from her strings, I get the kind of goose bumps that come only from live music.
“Here we go,” Chase whispers as the lights come up on us, our costumes shimmering. The crowd shouts its approval. And on the next chord, it’s time to move. Before I’m even aware that I’m doing it, my legs are pushing back in our first crossovers, my stride in sync with Chase’s.
As the lyrics wash over us, our bodies remember what to do. When we hit the first arabesque together, our arms swinging with the rhythm, it feels like flying. And the crowd screams again, as if we’re all reliving the same happy dream together.
We hit the next glide, and the next, and it’s magic. Chase is on fire, hitting all his marks and finding my hand unerringly every time we link up. As our bodies intertwine for the angsty octopus spin, I catch a glimpse of his face—focused but joyful, exactly like I remember it from our first performance.
More spins. And then we’re flying again, carving gracious lines into the ice, holding nothing back. I squeeze his hand to cue my jump. But when I launch, so does he! That rascal does a single toe loop in sync with my double. But we both land cleanly, and the crowd goes wild.