The forest swallows the road again, and I force my breathing even.Three days.That’s all.Three days to scrape myself together before the world comes calling again.
Behind me, someone coughs.She flips another page of her notes, pen scratching, already back to work.
And I sit frozen against the glass, pretending the tears never burned at all.
Chapter 14
Shadows At Home, Shadows On the Slope
Playlist:
Imagine Dragons: Demons
Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson: I Know Him So Well
Kitzbühel, Austria, March 10
Thomas
The living room feels too still, too big.Afternoon light cuts across the floorboards, throwing sharp rectangles onto the rug.The television hums like it’s the only pulse in the house.
Kranjska Gora.The course I owned last year, the course Luca Kostner owned five times in a row before that.The commentators keep repeating it—Luca, the legend, the standard.“And only Thomas Kern has matched that performance in the steep since.”
They don’t mean it as pressure.But it lands like pressure anyway.
I lean back on the couch, legs stretched, watching the replays.Some new kid from Austria nails the crisp, fluid, fearless second run.The crowd roars, the flags wave, and Austrian fans in the stadium and in the TV studio are happy.For a moment, I am too.
Then the camera cuts to Niko.My stomach clenches.
First run leader.Pure aggression, perfect split.Then, the second run, third gate.And he´s gone.Out of the course, out of the race.He sits in the snow, helmet in his hands, face hidden.Too much pressure, too soon.The commentator says it aloud, the way they always do:he didn’t stand up to it.
I know the sting.
The camera swings again, and there she is—Katharina—kneeling beside him, hand on his shoulder, voice low and steady.Not for the cameras.For him.She always knows how to thread words that soften a cut.
My chest tightens.Guilt digs in, sharp and merciless.I should have been there.Leader, mentor, golden boy… whatever they want to call me.Instead, I’m hiding in Kitzbühel, pretending a three-day break will fix me.
I kill the screen.Silence drops, heavy.
Rudi, my mental coach, in ten minutes.He’s known my head longer than most teammates.I tell myself I’ll be honest.I already know I won’t.
The laptop glows to life, camera on.My face looks pale in the box, hair sticking up, eyes still red from too little sleep.
The laptop wakes; the camera makes me look pale and puffy-eyed.
“Thomas!”Rudi booms.His lips move; my speakers don’t.I curse, toggle a setting; his voice comes back twice as loud.
“There you are.You look like hell.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
