He Switched Partners. I Switched Countries. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six A.M. on Foreign Ice

Theo sets three rules and catches every lift, but Lena overhears that she will do for a season; his hand stops her fall and holds her wrist while an email says she needs her ex's signature to be released.

At six in the morning, the Burnaby rink smelled of cold rubber and burned coffee.

I had slept three hours in a spare room above the pro shop, on a mattress his coach had dragged in at one a.m.

She had not asked me a single question.

She had handed me a towel, said "Bathroom's on the left," and gone to bed.

Now she stood at the boards in a parka that came to her knees and watched me lace my boots.

"Your mother says you're better than your partner," she said.

"My mother is biased."

"Your mother has been wrong about three people in thirty years. I'd count her."

Theo Garrick was already on the ice, skating slow laps with his hands behind his back.

He was taller than he had sounded on the phone.

He had a nose that had been broken once and set badly, and he did not look at me until I stepped on.

Then he skated over and stopped a careful arm's length away.

"Hargrove."

"Garrick."

"Three rules," he said. "I'm only saying them once."

"Go ahead."

"One. We don't touch off the ice. Not to be friendly, not to be kind. Anything on this ice is work, and anything off it is none of my business."

"That's one."

"Two. Your old partner doesn't come into this building. Not in person and not in conversation."

"He's not coming here," I said.

"He's coming," Theo said. "Men like that always come. Three. No sentiment."

"You said that last night."

"I'm making it a rule."

I looked at his face, which was tired and flat and gave me nothing.

"Fine," I said. "Where do you want me?"

"In the air."

He did not say it kindly, but he put his hands out low and I stepped into them.

Wyatt's hands had always been warm and a little damp.

Theo's were cold and dry and very still.

I set my weight and went up.

The ceiling lights spun once, and then I was above his shoulders with my arms out and the whole rink under me.

He held me there for eight full counts without a tremble.

When he set me down I had not even had to correct my balance.

"Again," he said.

We did it again, and then a different lift, and then a third.

He caught every one of them on the count.

Not once did he say it was good.

His coach, at the boards, had written something on her clipboard and closed it.

"No throws today," Theo said.

"You haven't asked if I can throw."

"I haven't asked."

"Nothing I do is going to change that?"

"Not today, Hargrove."

I skated off to get my water bottle with my jaw tight.

The office door by the rink entrance was open a few inches.

His coach's voice came out of it first.

"She is very good, Theo. She doesn't need a month to settle."

"She'll do for a season," Theo said.

I stopped with my hand on the bottle.

"You filed her at midnight with a wet face and a border line behind her," he said. "She'll skate this season for spite. In August she goes home to her fiancé, and I find another partner."

"He isn't her fiancé anymore."

"He's the man she was crying about."

The coach said something I couldn't hear.

"I'm not going to get used to her," Theo said.

I took the bottle off the boards and kept my face still.

At least he was honest.

Wyatt had said twenty good things to me every day for eighteen years, and not one of them had been true on the night it counted.

I put my skates back on the ice.

"Again," I said when Theo came out. "The first lift. Faster."

He gave me a look.

"It was clean."

"I know it was clean. I want it faster."

"Hargrove."

"If I'm only here for a season, I'd like it to be a good one."

He didn't answer that.

He put out his hands, and I went up again with a harder push than the lift needed.

I came off the top too fast, and my blade skidded on the landing, and my whole weight swung out sideways.

His hand caught my wrist.

It stopped me, and it held.

I was hanging from his grip on the ice, with my toe pick scraping and my heart going hard, and I looked up.

He was looking at his own hand.

"You can let go," I said.

"In a second."

His thumb was on my pulse.

He didn't move it.

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my warm-up jacket, once and then again.

Theo let go.

I pulled it out with fingers that were not quite steady.

U.S. Skating, the subject line said.

Release request received. Signature of your former partner is required before it can be filed.

Below it, the clock said I had twenty-nine days.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend