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thousands of spectators and fourteen judges tonight and de-
pending on how she did tonight and tomorrow night, she
could end up becoming the Canadian Champion. She
wouldn t let anything ruin this for her, so she didn t even
flinch when she saw Jason s van parked in the driveway when
she emerged from her apartment.
She opened the passenger door and climbed in, careful
not to look at him.
Jason started the van right away and pulled out of the dri-
veway without a word. The silence in the van was oppressive
and after ten minutes, he finally broke the silence between
them.
 Christy, we have to talk.
 Who decided that? You? Well Jason, I decided that today
is one of the most important days of my whole life, and I
won t let anything ruin it. That means I m not going to discuss
anything with you except skating, she said, still not looking at
him.
 Fine. I promised you a long time ago I would be there
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for you as a coach no matter what happened. And I ll keep
that promise, but after tomorrow I don t ever want to see you
again. I realized this morning that if you don t trust me, then
our relationship was doomed from the start no matter how
much I love you.
 Thank you for sticking by me as my coach. I ll start look-
ing for a new coach as soon as we re done this weekend.
The rest of the trip was made in silence. Christy kept
hearing his words running over and over in her mind, no mat-
ter how hard she tried to block them out. How dare he talk to
her about trust? He was the one who had been all over his ex-
girlfriend in a secluded room, after all. Was she supposed to
turn a blind eye to his indiscretion and go on like nothing had
ever happened?
Once they arrived at the rink, they parted ways, agreeing
to meet up in the holding area at seven-fifteen pm, which was
thirty minutes before her flight was scheduled to take the ice
for warm-up.
Christy was in her dressing room finishing pulling her
hair back into a tight ponytail when the door opened and Tina
walked in. She knew there was no way to escape this meeting,
so she decided to get it over with as quickly as possible.
 Christy, my name s Tina Forester. We ve never been
formally introduced, but I ve heard wonderful things about
you from Jason. Please don t stop getting ready, I know I have
horrible timing, but I really wanted to talk to you.
 It s nice to meet you too, but if Jason sent you here to
explain what happened, you re wasting your breath, Chris-
ty said as she finished putting the last clip in her hair and
turned to face her.
 I don t know what you mean. I came to thank you for
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helping Jason get back on the ice. I ve known him since I was
six years old, and he s always loved skating so much. After his
surgery, I didn t think there was any hope that he would ever
have anything to do with the sport again. That s why I was so
happy when I saw him here. He just glows when he talks
about you. I told my husband that night that when our daugh-
ter is old enough to take lessons, I want Jason to coach her.
Christy knew Tina was still speaking to her, but all she
could hear was a loud hum. This woman was married? She had
a husband and a daughter? How could she have been so stupid?
Why hadn t she listened to Jason when he told her there was
nothing between them?
She managed to mumble her way through the rest of her
part of the conversation. After Tina left, Christy started pac-
ing back and forth, trying to figure out how on earth she could
get Jason to forgive her. He was right when he said she should
have trusted him. Why hadn t she believed him? Was she that
insecure that she couldn t believe he loved her as much as he
said he did?
She glimpsed at the clock above the door and saw it was
time to go. She had to forget all this right now. Mentally shak-
ing herself, she flew through the doors and made her way to
the holding area.
Jason was waiting for her there, and she resolutely shut
her mind off from everything except skating. She methodically
went through each step of her off-ice warm up, ignoring eve-
rything around her and losing herself in the music playing on
the MP3 player that Jason had bought her the previous week, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]