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in a lift, flying like your mother . . . How could I not want that?”
    “You just said it was too late.”
    Beth shook her head. “I said late . There’s a difference.”

 
—9—
     
    Lexa skated her spiral sequence with a knot riding high in her throat. She was on the third full run-through of her long program, Blake’s sadistic idea of a normal morning practice. Her thigh muscles were jelly, making it hard to hold the long swooping edges without wobbling, but she was almost to the end. Stepping out of the left-outside spiral, she began her straight-line footwork.
    “Arms! Arms!” Blake shouted from near the rail. “You’re flailing like someone should throw you a life ring!”
    Clenching her teeth, Lexa reined in her arm movements. Her body ached as if it were coming apart, the anxious knot in her throat the only tight muscle left. She pushed into her final element—combination spin—and traveled sloppily before finding her center and reaching for the layback. The rafters spun around her. She let them blur, tracking only enough to know when to catch her free blade and pull it up into the Biellmann. Four more revolutions and she dropped her foot with relief, finishing out with an easy scratch spin into her final position.
    “Hold that finish!” Blake admonished as she bent over her ribcage, gasping. “Every run-through like it’s for real!”
    As if I’d ever skate three back-to-back programs in competition, she thought, but she kept the sarcasm to herself. Despite his usual yelling, Blake was in a good mood that morning and she didn’t want to waste it. Skating past him, she grabbed a towel off the rail and wiped her face.
    “Better today,” he said. “Keep it up and we might actually get somewhere.”
    “Yeah.” Lexa took a shaky breath and plunged in. “I had lunch with Grandmom the other day.”
    Blake was already shuffling off the ice. “Alert the media.”
    “Ha ha.” Snagging her blade guards, she trailed him across the wet mats, speaking to his back. “The thing is, we were talking, and the, uh, the subject of me skating pairs came up.”
    “It came up.” Blake stopped without turning around. Every line of his body warned her to drop the subject right there.
    “It just. . . . Yeah.”
    He turned to face her slowly, his eyes colder than the ice. The conversation was clearly headed somewhere bad, but she couldn’t back down. Not now.
    Not again.
    “Pairs is an obvious thing to consider,” she said, holding her ground somehow. “I’m doing all right in singles, but—”
    “I’m not having this discussion,” he said angrily. “You and Beth can float whatever stupid fantasies you like, but I’m your coach, and you’re a singles skater.”
    “Because you say so.”
    “Damn right I say so!” he shouted. “That’s exactly what I say! And unless you’ve got a whole pile of money I don’t know about, that’s how it’s going to stay. My skater. My rink. My rules.”
    “My life !” she shot back, barely caring that the early-morning regulars were hearing every word. “You know I can’t pay a pairs coach, and why should I when—”
    He was already walking away.
    “It’s not fair!” she flung at his back. “Why can’t I skate both?”
    Blake reached the office and slammed the door, its bang his final word.

 
—10—
     
    “I’ve got a date to the prom!” Jenni announced, walking in late for afternoon session.
    Lexa and Bry stopped lacing their skates.
    “Who?” Lexa demanded.
    “It turns out Jacob Larimore was free.”
    Some of the pink drained from Bry’s rosy cheeks. “Everly’s Jacob? Do you want the cheerleaders to kill you?”
    Jenni laughed gleefully. “What can they do? I mean, really? That breakup was Everly’s fault and everybody knows it.”
    “But you said he was boring!” Lexa protested.
    “I said they made a boring couple, and they do. Totally predictable. Nobody’s going to say they predicted me with Jacob.”
    “I’m not,”