Page 75 of Ice Dance

I pushed after him, trying to stay at his side.

“Then you admit dancing with Camden Navarro is a personal choice, not a professional one.”

“Speculation is not helpful,” he fired back.

“C’mon, people, give us space.” I tried to raise my hands and force some space, but the press had scented blood in the water around Hasegawa and moved in.

“Then why don’t you deny it?” someone said.

“Deny what?” he snapped.

“That you aren’t in a relationship with Camden Navarro?”

Holy shit, this was insane.

“There’s nothing to deny.”

“Move,” I snapped. If they didn’t get out of my way, I was going to explode, and we all knew how that went.

The questions kept coming, like gunfire. I shoved through fast, heading toward the taxi rank. They didn’t even let up when we escaped inside the back of the taxi. Hasegawa gave the driver the hotel’s address, and we both sat back, breathing like we’d just run a technical routine.

I watched the streetlights stroke across his blank face.

“That was a bloodbath.”

He didn’t reply, just turned his face away.

I reached out and laid my hand on his thigh. Tension bolted through him, as though he’d been shocked. I pulled my hand back and stared out my own window. We sat on opposite sides in the back of the taxi and didn’t say a word the whole way back to his hotel.

The press weren’t going to stop. We had six months of this left. I could survive it. Hell, my life was already a car wreck and plastered all over the internet. But Hasegawa was a private person. He wasn’t going to survive scrutiny and gossip like this, which meant we might not either.

We’d have to be careful. No more press scrums without a media manager present.

TWENTY-SEVEN

REN

The taxi pulled up outside the hotel. I climbed out, pulled my bag across the seat, and caught Navarro’s gaze staring after me, his eyes full of concern. He’d gotten into the taxi with me despite his home being across the city, in the opposite direction.

“Will you come up?” I wasn’t sure what I was asking of him, just that I didn’t want to be alone. Unfamiliar nerves set my teeth on edge. The press had rattled me more than I had words to admit to.

His mouth ticked. He climbed from the taxi, bag in hand, and entered the hotel alongside me.

The press scrum had been a disaster. All of it still rang in my ears, though the end of it was a blur in my head. It had all happened so fast, and had turned ugly just as quickly. Why my personal life had any bearing on the competition was beyond me, but the press wouldn’t let it go.

“Dylan is going to hear about that and give us an earful in the morning,” Navarro said, entering my room behind me.

“We didn’t have a choice in how that played out.”

He set his bag down by the table, then folded his arms and leaned back against it. “I should apologize.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “They’d leave you alone if I wasn’t involved.”

That was probably true. Nobody had cared about my private life until that clip, until the gender open category. I set my bag down and rubbed my face. It was late, approaching midnight, and the typical aches and pains had begun to burn through my body. I needed a hot shower, then sleep. But I’d invited Navarro in, and now I had no idea what to do with him here.

We stood awkwardly at opposite ends of the space. Me by the bed and the bathroom wall and him leaning against the table. The room felt smaller with the both of us in it.