Edge of the Past (12 page)

“I guess it sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it?” I said.

Her head bobbed, and she clutched the bear tighter. I looked at the empty space beside me in the double bed. Elena wouldn’t be happy with my idea, but I didn’t want to wake her and make a big production out of this.

“Do you want to sleep in here tonight?” I asked.

Liza shut the door and was in the bed before I had time to fold down the comforter for her. “I have lots of pillows,” I said, fluffing one of my extras for her.

She curled up under the covers and held her bear to her chest. Close up, I noticed his fur was pretty matted. He’d obviously been around a while.

“What’s your teddy’s name?” I asked.

“Peter.”

“That’s cool. I’ve heard of lots of rabbits named Peter but no bears.”

“It was my dad’s name. He gave him to me so I wouldn’t miss him as much when he was on a business trip.”

“Sounds like he’s a very special bear, then.”

Liza was quiet as she rubbed the brown fur with her thumb. I put my book on the nightstand and said, “I used to sleep with a teddy bear, too. His name was Ted. Not very original, I bet you’re thinking, but it was for Ted Williams, who played baseball for the Red Sox. My dad’s a big fan.”

Liza blinked a few times. “You’re really nice.”

My voice stuck in my throat, and I took a swallow. “So are you. I’m glad you’re here.”

Her face shined with a smile, and my heart turned all gooey.
No, no, no.
You can’t
get
too
attached
, I quickly reminded myself. No matter how adorable Liza was with her little Sergei replica eyes. She wasn’t staying, and even if she was, she was part of a package deal that included Elena – one person I would definitely never feel attached to.

Chapter Eleven

“Liza!”

My eyes flew open at the shriek of Elena’s voice. The light in my bedroom had been turned on, and Elena was flying toward the opposite side of the bed. Liza let go of her teddy bear and rubbed her eyes.

“I check on you and you are not there,” Elena cried. “I think you run away.”

I sat up and brushed my tangled hair away from my face. “She heard a noise and got scared, so I let her sleep here.”

“You should tell me.”

“It wasn’t a big deal, and I didn’t want to wake you. I didn’t think you were going to freak out about it.”

“How you feel if you wake up in strange place and cannot find your daughter?” Elena became more high-pitched with each word. “Liza, you come to me if you are scared.”

Liza’s face crumpled, and she jumped out of the bed with her bear and tore out of the room. I threw aside the comforter.

“Getting all worked up isn’t helping,” I said.

“You know because you are expert? You do not have child.”

“And you’ve been a mother all of what, five minutes? I don’t think that makes you an expert either.”

Elena’s dark eyes burned with simmering anger. “I take care of my daughter. She do not need you.”

Was I really arguing with Elena in the middle of the night? What time was it anyway? I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, and it read four thirty. My alarm was set to ring in an hour.

“I’m not going to apologize for helping Liza,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to sleep.”

Elena flashed one more glare before she swished out of the room in her silky pajamas. I shut off the light, but the darkness couldn’t lull me to sleep. No matter how hard I tried to drift away, Elena and Liza kept my mind buzzing.

I was still awake when the clock radio clicked on with a haunting piano tune. I lay still, listening to the piece, its melancholy notes speaking to me. As soon as it was over, I went to my laptop on the desk and pulled up the radio station’s website for the playlist. The song shown for five thirty a.m. was “The Crisis.”

No wonder I felt
emotionally
connected to it.

I noted the composer, Ennio Morricone, so I could download the piece later. In the meantime, I needed to get ready for the rink.

I didn’t know what I was going to find in the living room as I descended the stairs, but Liza’s blanket was neatly folded, and her pillow and bear sat on the edge of the sofa. I continued down to the kitchen, where Elena was looking in the refrigerator and Liza was perched on one of the tall stools next to the bar. Both were dressed, and Elena’s make-up was impeccably done as always.

“Good morning,” I said, zipping my fleece jacket.

“I look for juice for Liza,” Elena said.

“It’s in the door.” I pointed to the carton on the bottom shelf. “We can go to the store later so you can buy whatever you need.” I might be providing lodging, but feeding a family wasn’t part of my budget.

Breakfast passed quietly with no mention of Elena’s hysterics in my bedroom. As we were heading out, Aubrey came down in her warm-up gear, lagging behind us since the ice dancers had a later session than the pairs and freestyle skaters.

When we arrived at the rink, I set Liza up with a locker and introduced her to a couple of girls around her age. As I went through my warm-up, she hung close to my side, doing her own running and stretching. Sergei had taken a seat on the bleachers next to Elena, who was talking with animated hands. She was probably telling him about the eventful night at my house.

Liza sat with me to put on her skates, and I watched her carefully tie the laces on her shiny white boots. Her pale pink practice dress was as nice as some competition costumes. Elena had been right when she said she’d given her daughter the best of everything.

Liza fidgeted with her matching pink gloves as she surveyed the other skaters around us chatting and preparing for the session. I slipped on my blue leg warmers and said, “We have a really good group here. There are a few drama queens, but everyone gets along for the most part.”

“My old rink was like that,” Liza said. “We used to have so much fun.”

“You must miss your friends in New York a lot.”

“Me and my best friend, Hope were gonna skate a duet at our club show, but then I had to move.” She looked down at her skates.

“And the rink in Moscow isn’t as much fun,” I guessed.

Liza shook her head.

I thought for a moment as I tugged my legwarmers over the heels of my boots. “We’re having a little show here in two weeks. It’s a sendoff for those of us going to Worlds, and a bunch of the kids are also skating in it. Maybe you could be part of it.”

“But I’m not a member here.”

“I think it would be okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to the people in charge.”

Liza gave me a big smile, and I motioned for her to follow me to the ice for the start of the session. Hopping on behind me, she joined the crowd of skaters warming up. I ramped up speed and glided around all of them. Beside the boards, someone flipped on the sound system, and “You Get What You Give” filled the quiet rink. The music got my legs pumping harder and itching to work.

Even though Chris couldn’t skate, I still had a lesson scheduled with Sergei. We could work on elements that didn’t require a partner such as jumps and footwork. When I met him near the boards, his attention was over my shoulder. Turning my head, I saw Liza picking herself up from the ice.

“She fell?” I asked, grabbing my water bottle from the boards and taking a long sip.

“Double Salchow,” he said.

Liza brushed off her hands and returned to doing easy crossovers. Her little legs generated more power than I’d seen in most kids her age. And her posture remained perfectly straight. I already admired the spark I saw in her movements.

“She has your speed,” I said.

“And Elena’s grace,” Sergei added.

The perfect combination of the two of them.
I shuddered and looked to the bleachers where Elena sat alone on the top row. I expected her to be watching her daughter, but her gaze was fixed on Sergei and me.

“Why don’t you start with the Lutz and toe, and then I can do the throws with you,” Sergei directed.

I deposited my bottle on the boards and weaved through skater traffic to set up for the triple Lutz. One after another, I popped off clean jumps. Moving on to the triple toe-double toe combination, I achieved the same results. I skated back to Sergei with Elena’s eyes following me again.

Sergei gripped my hand, and we made one pass around the rink to gain speed for the throw triple Lutz. With his hands tight on my hips, we glided backward until I stabbed my right toepick into the ice and Sergei vaulted me into the air. I rotated three times and landed on my right blade, smooth and easy. Sergei nodded.

“Throw loop,” he said, reaching for my hand.

I peeked at the stands. Elena’s arms were now crossed and her gaze stonier. Watching Sergei and me on the ice together had obviously pricked a nerve. I didn’t want to admit the small amount of satisfaction I felt.

Sergei and I practiced the two throws multiple times with success, and inspiration hit me upon my final clean landing. I circled around Sergei while I fixed my leotard’s twisted shoulder straps.

“Let’s run through the whole short program together,” I said. “And we can do sections of the long if you’re not up for doing the entire thing.”

Sergei rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d prefer we just work on the elements.”

“But you did run-throughs with Court last year when Mark was hurt.”

“She was still learning the choreography then, so I thought it would be helpful.”

Why was he fighting me? We’d never skated a run-through together, but Chris had never been sidelined for an extended period of time. My request made total sense.

“I think it would be helpful to me, too,” I said. “Just doing elements isn’t as good for my timing as going through them with the program.”

Sergei’s mouth set in a line. Was he hesitating because he didn’t want to upset Elena? Whether she was feeling nostalgic over her failed career or jealous over Sergei and me skating together, neither was my problem. I had work to do on the ice.

“Please?” I asked.

He remained quiet but then unzipped his jacket. “Okay. Let me warm up a little more.”

He dropped his jacket behind the boards and shot off across the ice. While he loosened his legs, I launched into my flying camel spin. After practicing the spin and my spiral, I skated over to the stereo and popped in our short program CD with “Victoria’s Secret.”

Sergei rejoined me, and we leisurely glided around the rink, waiting for my friend Trevor and his partner Leigh’s music to end. Since they were also Sergei’s students, he kept an eye on them as they worked on the new program he’d just choreographed. Chris and I were Sergei’s only team going to the World Championships, so all his other pairs had new programs for next season already.

The popular Bach piece ended with a bang, and Sergei led me to center ice for our starting pose. I placed my hand on his chest and he covered it with his. The beat of his pulse throbbed against my palm, sending mine on a sprint.

We locked eyes, and a tiny shiver rolled down my spine. Skating a full program together was much different from just practicing throws and lifts.

You’d better
focus
and perform the elements perfectly or he’s never going to do this again.

The music started, and I mentally recited my key words for the opening element, the triple twist.
Quick and tight, quick and tight.
Sergei tossed me up, and I spun three times before falling into his waiting hands. His catch wasn’t as seamless as Chris’s, startling me and causing me to stumble. He held onto me to keep me steady and mumbled, “Sorry” as we continued forward.

I zoomed through the triple Lutz while Sergei skipped it, not having done the jump in years. We met up with side-by-side crossovers and skated into the throw Lutz. With a solid landing, I gave Sergei a smile, and his face relaxed. He drew me into his strong arms on the entrance into the pairs spin, and tingles covered my skin.
Pretend he’s Chris!

But that was impossible to do with our noses practically bumping as we curved into the spin. I counted the revolutions in my head, focusing on the numbers instead of Sergei’s breath mixing with mine and the pressure of his hands on my lower back.

Moving between the remaining elements, we became even more in sync with each other and with the music. Every look, every touch carried an emotion and played out the love story of Sergei’s choreography. The additional adrenaline that coursed through me threatened to erase my well-trained muscle memory.

Sergei pressed me up into the star lift, and I noticed some of the other skaters idling and watching us, Liza included. We sped past them, and Sergei set me down, preparing for the closing seconds of the program.

In time with the final piano notes, I edged away from Sergei, and he rushed toward me, trapping me in his arms for the ending pose. I gasped at the passion with which he grabbed me. His eyes held my gaze then slowly drifted down to my mouth, and my body hummed from the fiery energy between us. I leaned into Sergei and squeezed my fingers harder around his biceps.

A few of my training mates erupted with applause and whistles, and Sergei jerked backward. He didn’t say anything as he took off to cool down, leaving me alone in the middle of the ice with more than my muscles burning.

“Get a room, Em.” Trevor laughed as he skated past me.

A fast-moving blur of fur behind the boards caught my eye, and I turned to see Elena hurrying to the exit. I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths.

This is too much drama.

I pushed off and followed Sergei around the rink. The breeze cooled my flushed face and dried the sweat trickling down my breastbone. When Sergei slowed and stopped at the boards, I pulled up next to him and took a big gulp from my water bottle.

Sergei lifted his T-shirt to wipe his face, and I got a prime view of his toned stomach. I frowned to myself. I probably wouldn’t get my hands on those abs much while my houseguests were in town.

“We shouldn’t do any more of those,” Sergei said.