"Good."
"And I'm keeping the Vektor job."
"You should."
"And I don't know what we are anymore. If we're together or broken up or something in between."
He smiles. Just a little. "Can we figure it out as we go?"
I squeeze his hand. "Yeah. We can do that."
“And perhaps,” I say, looking into his brown eyes. “Perhaps we can do the part we skipped, the dating, cinema, dinners and stolen kisses.”
“I am all in for the dating,” he says, one hand traveling to my waist. “As long as we don’t overdo the grown-up dating part.”
“That’s not what I thought, either,” I laugh and kiss him. There might be people taking photos of all of this, me and father, me and Nico, a tabloid article is perhaps already being written. But I don’t really care.
Whatever they write about, it is something I chose.
Epilogue
Playlist:
Keala Settle: This Is Me
Bryan Adams: This Is Where I Belong
Sölden, Austria, October 7
NICO
I see her before she says a word.
White coat. Hair down. Standing at the edge of the training slope like she just stepped out of the snow.
My chest tightens. Not panic. Recognition.
She looks almost exactly like she did that first day in Reiteralm. Same coat. Same way of standing—hands in her pockets, chin up, watching me like I’m a run she’s about to inspect.
Only now I know what she’s waiting for.
Me.
I plant my skis in the snow and stare back. Roland says something about my line; I don’t hear it. Thomas follows my gaze, spots her, and casually pushes off down the hill, giving us space.
She doesn’t wave. Just starts walking.
Her boots crunch in the snow, sure and unhurried. She stops a few feet away, close enough that I see the pink on her cheeks, the steady eyes, the little jump of her pulse in her throat.
"Hi," she says.
