Page 76 of Two for Roughing

She had them warm up using nothing but stretches and the tempo of their skating, one of the less fun ways to warm up in hockey. Ever since he began playing, Kilian had practiced stickhandling religiously. His skating was shit, so he had to be good at something. He rarely set foot on the ice without holding a stick, and before long, its absence bothered him more than the missing layers.

Valeria noticed at once.

“You skate like you are expecting to fall on your face,” she chided. “Long motions, Kilian. Trust yourself.”

He grunted in frustration and tried again, but she was already shaking her head before he’d gone more than a few paces.

“Look, I’m a shitty skater. The faster we can all accept that, the better,” he told her.

“Bullshit.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Bullshit. You have tree-trunk thighs. Use them. Come on. Go long on your left leg and hold the right outstretched behind you.”

He did as she asked, wobbling precariously.

“Higher.”

He tried but overbalanced and fell. He should have worn pads for this.

Valeria skated to a stop beside him. She poked him with the tip of her skate. “Up.”

“Haven’t I proved I suck enough?”

The look she gave him made him want to sink below the ice and freeze there for a couple millennia. Kilian glanced to Damir. “You were right. She’s terrifying.”

“Up. Again.”

She drilled him on it over and over. First, she made him lift the outstretched leg higher each time he skated past till he could hold it up without falling. Then, she corrected the angle of his upper body until it formed a perfect line with his leg. After an hour, Kilian was drenched in sweat, and his quads burned with exertion. Then she had him add his arms.

“You know I’m not actually going to be figure skating, right?”

She shrugged. “You want to be confident when you skate? You need to feel like you look good. I want to know I’m pretty. You, too, yes?”

The notion struck Kilian in the pit of his belly. Valeria had made no indication she knew or cared who he was and what might have been in the news about him. She certainly wasn’t going easy on him, not the way Damir did by cooking for him, spanking him, and letting him sleep in his bed. She wasn’t pandering to him. She wasn’t patronizing him. Valeria had been hired to help him improve, and she thought he could look pretty while skating. She observed him—a big, tall, broad man, who played a full-contact sport for a living—and still thought he could look pretty.

He took a breath.

“Yeah. All right. Again.”

By the time she finished with him, Kilian could do the exercise with ease. Every part of his legs ached, from his thighs to his knees to the insteps of his feet, but he was well on his way to getting the hang of a crossover the way figure skaters did them.

Kilian trudged off to the locker room, exhausted in the best way. His brain was finally quiet, his body worn out, and he knew exactly who he wanted to be for the first time.

Damir sat on one of the benches in the locker room, hunched over and scrolling through his phone. He looked up when Kilian and Valeria entered.

“Lazy,” Valeria told him. “You pay me for skating lesson, and you quit after half.”

Damir shrugged. “I paid you for an hour. It’s been three.”

Kilian winced. He’d totally bogarted Damir’s lesson. “Shit, sorry. Um, I can—”

“Shut up,” they both told him simultaneously.

“When you come back?” Valeria asked. “Kilian needs work.”

Damir snorted. “Charming. Two weeks? We have a homestand then.”