“No, Satan. I don’t do that anymore,” I told him dryly.

“Push over elderly people using walkers?”

“Ha ha,” I replied, gritting out the words as I glanced at the door for like the tenth time.

“So? What are you doing after?”

I glanced at him. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” he replied easily, and something in my chest felt tight. I shoved it away.

“Good, you shouldn’t.”

“I still want to know.”

I glanced at him again, feeling a sneer come over my mouth and nose. “I have to get to work, nosey ass. Is that okay with you?”

His blank expression was confusing. “You have a job?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I blinked. “Because things cost money and money doesn’t grow on trees?” I offered, still blinking.

“Ha ha,” was his dry response as he crossed his arms over his chest and gave me another one of those lazy looks that drove me crazy. “Where do you work at?”

Now that genuinely made me laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

A hint of what might have been a smile or a smirk crossed his features. “You’re not going to tell me?”

“Why? So you can show up at my job and make fun of me?” I asked.

He didn’t even try and deny he would do something like that. He just stared at me. I’d swear some muscle in his jaw twitched too.

I raised my eyebrows like see? Obviously he did, because he didn’t bother arguing over it at all. Instead, his jaw shifted to the side and then back in place before he glanced down at the table, then again at me. “What’s your deal anyway?” he asked, shifting even more so that the entire length of his side—thigh, arm, and my shoulder—were lined up alongside his. “It’s only an interview.”

It was only an interview, like he said.

But it still made me feel almost sick.

“I’ll only laugh at you a little if you tell me why they freak you out so much,” he offered, like that was some sort of consolation. He’d laugh at my fears, but just a little. Oh, okay. “So?” he egged on.

I stared right into those soul-sucking eyes and didn’t reply. He blinked, then I blinked right back. That stupid smile-smirk didn’t go anywhere, and it was that, that had me hunching over to the side to lightly dig the boniest part of my elbow to the middle of his thigh in a warning.

He didn’t flinch or move as I applied pressure. Instead, he lifted his leg to purposely press it against my bone, trying to get a reaction. “It’ll be harder to hold you later if I have a bruise on my leg,” he tried to threaten me.

“So much harder.” I rolled my eyes. “Fuck off. You could do it with bruises all over your thighs.”

He laughed, and it caught me off guard again. “Tell me what your deal is before they get here.”

“I don’t have a deal.”

“You have a problem.”

“I don’t have a problem. I’m fine.”

“I’ve never seen you so squirmy before, and I don’t know if it’s annoying or kind of cute.”

I stared up at him for using the c-word, but nothing on his face confirmed he’d said anything like that to begin with. I didn’t think he’d use the c-word on me, at least not that c-word. Cunt, maybe. Cute, no way.

“We’ll go with annoying,” he went on, still leaving that word in the open. “I’m going to keep asking you until you give me an answer.”

God. What was with all these people in my life who couldn’t and wouldn’t take no for an answer? This was the same game my mom played when she wanted something. Actually it was the same game everyone in my family played when they wanted something that I didn’t want to give them.

“Meatball.”

“You’re the annoying one. I hope you know that.” I glanced toward the doorframe again. “And don’t call me Meatball in front of the reporter person. I don’t need anyone else calling me that.”

“I won’t, if you tell me what’s wrong with you.”

“You’re an idiot.”

He let out a little puff of breath from his nose. “I won’t. Tell me.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes, not feeling like hearing about this the rest of the day—or days—if I refused to. “Look, I don’t like the media is all. I don’t like most people period. They’re always twisting and turning words around to make them controversial. And people eat that shit up. They want the drama. They want to believe all the bad things they hear.”

“So?”

Did this bastard just say “so” like it wasn’t a bad thing? “So, one time I said that I thought the judging system was still not correct, and they turned it around to make it seem like I thought the person that won another event didn’t deserve it. I got hate mail for months after that. Another time, I said someone had a beautiful Y-spin, and suddenly they weren’t any good at anything other than that,” I told him, remembering those two things because they had bothered me for months. And that was just a small fraction of the things that had been twisted and turned until they weren’t at all what I thought or said. I hated people for doing that kind of stuff. I really fucking did. God. “And don’t get me started on videos.”

Ivan didn’t say anything for so long, I had to glance at him. His thigh was still against mine, but he was frowning. I thought about shifting my leg away, but fuck it. He was in my space. I wasn’t going to give him anymore. His question came so unexpectedly, it surprised me. “So, you never said you thought the WHK Cup was rigged?”

Shit.

Tipping my head to the side, I glanced up at him and shrugged. “No, I said that.”

He looked down at me and made a face. “Nothing has been rigged since they changed the scoring system.”

I did know that. The scoring system had been changed when I was a kid after things had been rigged. What had once been a subjective point-system based on a “perfect” 6.0 score, had been ripped apart and reformed based on a stricter point system where each element was worth a certain amount of points; points that would be deducted if the element wasn’t performed well. It wasn’t a flawless system, but it was better.

But I’d been mad at the WHK Cup back then, and who the hell could be responsible for what came out when they were pissed as hell? “Your partner landed double-footed and you almost dropped her doing a triple twist. It was rigged.” The second sentence was a lie, but the rest of it wasn’t. I remembered the incident perfectly.

He snorted, and that time it was him who twisted his entire body to face mine. “It wasn’t rigged. Our base score was a lot higher than yours was, and she completed all of her rotations.”

I knew that, but I was going to be damned if I admitted that his program had much harder elements in it that equaled a much higher score than what my ex and I had. Plus… we hadn’t been perfect. Almost, but not. I probably remembered every single mistake I had ever done in every program ever. Some nights, it kept me up going over everything, even programs from back when I was a teenager. If I hadn’t been so cocky or if I had done just a little better.... How different could my life be if I had just lived up to my potential and not fucked up almost every single thing in my life?

“Okay, it wasn’t rigged,” I agreed, just because I would be more of an idiot if I kept trying to say that it was. By some miracle, I kept myself from smiling. “One of your people just paid off the judges. Whatever you want to call it is fine with me.”

Ivan blinked, and I blinked back at him.

The tip of his tongue touched the inside of his cheek, and his face was smooth when he said, “I won that fair and square.”

“I won third place that night, and I landed everything fine.”

He blinked again. “You landed everything fine, but your choreography was atrocious and you pulled back on your jump sequences after what’s-his-face bailed on the 3S in the event before that one. You also looked like a robot, and your partner looked like he was on the verge of throwing up the entire time.”

He had a point but….

Ivan shrugged so casually I wanted to backhand him. “Your music sucked too.”

The only sucking going on in that moment revolved around me sucking in a breath. “Excuse me. What are you? A musical genius?” I snapped.

He lifted a shoulder. “I have a better ear than you do. Don’t get mad. You’re either born with it or you aren’t.”

I would have gaped, but I didn’t want him to know that he could get that reaction out of me.

Then he kept going. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m letting you choose the music for any of our programs.”

Now that had me turning my whole body on that bench seat to give him this “the fuck did you say” look. My knee was pretty much on top of his thigh as I leaned toward him. It wasn’t like I didn’t touch him a hundred or three hundred times a day and had for weeks by that point. I could pick him out in a crowd by smell alone, I bet. “What?”

That light pink mouth twitched for the second time that day. “You heard me. Nancy, the choreographers, and I will pick it. It’ll be perfect.” Then his mouth twitched again. “Trust me.”