Walk on Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

replied, as always.
    “She was drinking too. Do you really think if Mom was here she would blame the whole thing on him? He blames himself already.”
    “He should. I wish I’d never introduced them.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “What? Oh, kitten, you know I don’t mean you.”
    “You never think things would have turned out better if Mom hadn’t gotten knocked up?”
    “I could never regret you, Lexa. Not for a second. Because of you, I can’t even regret your father. I have regrets—too many—but you aren’t one of them.”
    “Do you ever wish Mom had skated singles? I mean, if we’re talking about changing the past, singles would have been safer.”
    “I’ve been over that ground a hundred times too. But pairs is all Kaitlin ever wanted to do, from seeing her very first ice show at five years old. Flying overhead, being thrown through the air . . .” Beth’s sadness gave way to a smile. “Your mom was a little daredevil right down to her soul.”
    “You never tried to talk her out of it?”
    “I couldn’t have talked her out of it. Kaitlin believed that skating with Blake was what she was born to do. And for a while, at least, it was hard to argue with the results.”
    “No kidding.” Lexa gazed down at the lunch she had lost her appetite for. Beth reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
    “She believed you were born to skate too. Naming you axel spelled backward, that was Kaitlin’s idea. The hardest jump, forward takeoff, one and a half revolutions to all of the other jumps’ one . . . She saw great things for you.”
    “Yeah? What did Blake see?”
    “The same. Although he wanted to name you Sky.”
    “Sky?” How had she never heard that before? “Sky is pretty! Sky Walker . . . Oh.”
    “Exactly.” Beth shook her head. “Be glad Kaitlin held her ground. They were so young, Lexa. Barely older than you are now.”
    And so much farther ahead, Lexa thought . Whatever promise her parents had seen in her obviously hadn’t been realized.
    “It would be easier if no one knew who I was. I show up at competitions and the judges’ expectations skyrocket the second they hear ‘Walker.’ Half the audience has been around for my whole life story, and nobody hasn’t seen the tapes. To be just Lexa out there, without my parents’ weight on my shoulders . . . I can’t even imagine what that would feel like.”
    Her grandmother nodded sympathetically. “Be glad that you’re not skating pairs.”
    “I’m not glad, that’s the problem! I wish I was skating pairs.”
    Beth looked genuinely shocked. “Have you said that to Blake?”
    “Not lately. You know how he gets.”
    “But, Lexa. Are you serious? To start in pairs now, so late . . . You’d lose everything.”
    “Like what? My red-hot fifth-place career? I just want a chance—a chance —to do something I might be great at. If skating’s really in my blood, if that’s my legacy, it’s got to be skating pairs. Right?”
    Beth studied the large diamond on her right hand, twisting the stone back and forth, letting it catch the light. The gem had been part of a wedding ring once, before Beth’s obsession with advancing Kaitlin’s career had turned Kaitlin’s father into a skating widow, before he’d filed for divorce, moved to Florida, and started over with a new wife and kids. Lexa had only seen him a couple of times, so she didn’t miss him, but she read the pain in her grandmother’s eyes and looked away. Why had she even raised the subject?
    “I wasn’t opposed to it,” Beth said at last.
    “Excuse me?”
    “It wasn’t my idea to keep you out of pairs. That was all Blake.”
    “But—”
    “Obviously you had to learn to skate first. And little boys don’t lift—that’s not safe for anyone. But by the time you were ten or twelve, with a partner a year or two older . . .” Beth trailed off, still staring at her diamond. When she finally looked up, her expression had cleared. “To see you up