Warmth runs through me like fire on dry tinder.My throat tightens.I don’t pull away.I can’t.
Her hand stays there, light, steady, as if she knows I’ll snap if she holds me any harder.
The silence stretches until it feels like it might break me.I hear myself say, low, half a joke, not really:
“I didn’t… I didn’t tell you I loved you, did I?I was drugged.Feels like I might have.”
“You also told the nurse she was Niki Lauda and should marry you,” she says, smiling.“So I guess that doesn’t count.”
It almost makes me laugh.Almost.The sound gets caught in my chest and slows into something softer, warmer.
The moment lingers, heavy with everything we don’t say.Our hands stay joined; neither of us lets go.
We don’t move.We don’t speak.
But the silence isn’t empty anymore.It hums with something alive, something fragile.Something that feels like hope.
Chapter 16
The Scratch That Stayed
Playlist:
Bryan Adams: Nothing I Have Ever Known
Take That: I´d Wait For Life
Kitzbühel, Austria, May 1
Thomas
The flat is too quiet.Rehab gear leans in a crooked stack by the wall: elastic bands, foam rollers, and a balance board I still hate.The table is cluttered with unopened mail, half-squashed nutrition bars, and one thing that doesn’t belong—her book on sports marketing, face-up.I am not a reader and couldn´t care less about sports marketing.And I sure as hell should not have fallen for a girl who writes books.
But just one look at the book and it makes me work harder.Perhaps so that I deserve her.
Though I kind of know now, winning is not the key, not to us, not to our fairy-tale ending.
I move through the room stiffly, each step reminding me I’m walking better, but not right.The limp lingers.It will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.
But that´s fine.I can limp while walking, as long as I can ski.That´s our life, ski racers´ life.Perverted but necessary.
The calendar on the fridge catches my eye.A red marker slashed across the Sölden weekend, when I should’ve been racing.I almost hear the gates rattling, the cowbells clanging.Instead, silence.
At least Lukas and I had a drink last night.Light, just enough to take the edge off.He’s hobbling too, and we laughed about it; two broken bodies clinking glasses.Better than sitting alone.But we couldn't have drunk too hard; we need to recover.
Recovery is recovery.
I chuckle under my breath, dry.My own line, parroted by physios and doctors.I remember the day I said it to Niko, referring to my supposed one-night stand.
To the moment when Kat was just a one-night stand without a name.
