“The princess of cross-country skiing needs to win her gold medal,” Kirby said, a slyness in her voice that made Mara bristle inside. She hated that moniker, but it had unfortunately stuck. The press used it. Her teammates used it, normally behind her back and without much kindness.
“In the thirty-k mass start?” the reporter asked. He squinted down at a card in his hand as if he were fact-checking his own question. And he probably was. Some of the reporters only cared about winter sports once the Olympics came around.
“I’m racing in the thirty kilometer, yes,” Mara said. She felt too superstitious to admit that that wasthe race. That the race was hers. The gold was hers.
But it was.
Finally.
It was her third Olympics. She wasn’t going to lose.
She’d won gold at the World Championships. She was the top distance skier in the world. These Olympics were her coronation, and her future was golden.
Kirby was the only other American cross-country ski racer who would match the number of kilometers Mara would put on her skis at the Olympics. For most of her career, Kirby’s focus had been sprints, but in the past two years, she had started making a play for the distance races. She’d even, surprisingly, snagged the fourth start spot on the team for the thirty kilometer.
It would be good experience for Kirby to race the thirty-k. Not that Mara cared about Kirby’s development as a skier.
Gold was her one and only concern.
Her only desire.
She was going to bring that gold home to Alaska.
“How does it feel racing the relay without your objectively best skier?” that same reporter asked Kirby.
Kirby lit up like the question excited her. “Mara might be our ‘best skier.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “But she’s not our fastest.”
Mara didn’t react. Because that was false. And because she’d trained her whole adult life, and most of her teenage life too, to lock down, tune out, and turn on the speed. The queen of compartmentalization. Or perhaps, the princess.
If she could separate herself from the intensity and pressure surrounding elite cross-country skiing, she could do the same during an irrelevant press conference.
Gold. That was all that mattered. Kirby Bonham’s outrageousness did not.
“Is that so?” the reporter said.
“Fuck, yeah,” Kirby said. “Mara’s not our fastest skier.I am.”
Mara laughed. It was a small one, but it left her before she’d realized it.
All the eyes in the room landed on her, and heat rushed to her cheeks.
Kirby glanced at her and smiled. Something about that smile threw Mara’s stomach for a loop. It pissed her off. And made her feel funny. Suddenly, Mara was very aware of the triphammer of her heart. Of the blood whooshing in her ears.
Kirby’s smile wasn’t kind. It was nasty.
And Mara wanted to see it again.
“Mara May, what’s it like being rivals with your teammate?” another reporter asked. Mara recognized the reporter from the Olympics in Pyeongchang. “Is it hard to switch between being so close to your teammates, traveling together during the World Cup season, to the competitive nature of the Olympics?”
Mara wasn’t close with the other skiers on the US Cross-Country Ski Team. She kept to herself, a true introvert, even as they all spent every season together and some off-seasons training in the same locations. So no. It wasn’t hard.
“I don’t see them as rivals,” she said. “I don’t seeKirbyBonhamas a rival. I’m usually so far ahead of her, I don’t see her at all.”
CHAPTER
ONE
Kirby smackeda carefree smile on her face and barreled into the fancy Oberhof restaurant. She was an hour late. She had on day-old mascara. And the natural deodorant she’d been gifted to film an Instagram ad wasn’t quite cutting it.
