Still nothing. She left me on Read yesterday.
I open Instagram. I know I shouldn’t look, but I do it anyway. Her old story from some past night is still at the top, a blurry shot from some gala in Salzburg. She looks like a marble statue in a dress that probably cost more than my first car. Perfect. Untouchable.
And she’s not alone.
A tall man in a dark suit stands just a few feet behind her. The same jackass from Val d’Isère, from that night that feels a hundred years away. He’s polished and calm. He looks like he belongs in a world of crystal chandeliers and quiet conversations. Like he’s never had grease under his fingernails or a bruise on his ribs.
Jealousy punches through me, hot and sharp. I stare at the Suit, then look down at my own hands. My knuckles are raw from the cold. My shoulders ache where I clipped a gate yesterday.
She’s back in her kingdom of marble floors and refined men. Why would the Princess of Salzburg care about a guy who treats gravity like a suggestion? To her, I’m probably just a thrill—a temporary rebellion before she slides back into marble floors and refined men.
I want to throw the phone into the snowbank.
I’m king up here, at least. If she thinks she can just leave me on Read and go back to her suits, she has no idea who she’s dealing with. I don’t just want her to look at me. I want her to know I’m the only thing in her life that’s actually real—and I’m not done with her yet.
***
Jonas calls from the fence. “Leitner says enough for today, this was the last run.”
I nod.
My heart is still hammering a rhythm of ninety miles per hour. I am raw and vibrating. I pull my goggles up, and that is when I see her.
She is standing near the edge of the cordoned-off training lane. She looks like a million-dollar alien dropped into the middle of a construction site in her pristine white coat. She is perfectly polished, her hair tucked away, her face a mask of aristocratic boredom. She does not belong here. She belongs in a gallery or a high-rise office in Paris.
I do not move toward her.
I pull off my helmet and let the freezing air shock my sweaty scalp. My hair is matted and damp. I probably smell like a mix of burning rubber, expensive wax, and pure speed. I lean back against the wooden fence of the finish hut and just watch her. I make her walk to me. I want to see her negotiate the uneven, sun-rotted slush in her ski boots. I want to see the Princess of Salzburg struggle on my terrain.
As she gets closer, I see it. Her hands are buried in her coat pockets, but the fabric over her knuckles trembles, a small, jittery shake she can’t quite hide. Her eyes have that same wide, too-bright focus I remember from the Olympics, when she pretended she’d just wandered into that bar. She didn’t come all the way up here for scenery. Whatever dragged her up this mountain is buzzing in her veins the way speed buzzes in mine.
She stops a few feet away, her nose wrinkling just a fraction at the scent of my damp race suit.
“Tu es très belle aujourd’hui,” I say. My French is clumsy and thick with an Austrian accent. I am doing it on purpose just to see her reaction.
“Your French is terrible,” she says. Her German is perfect, sharp, clinical.
I grin. She’s working so hard to look bored that it’s almost adorable. “And your German is awkwardly flawless. Like you. Hoch.”
She tilts her head, her eyes scanning my face as if searching for a flaw. “Yeah, I have been taught Hochdeutsch. It took me months to get used to the weird German you speak in Salzburg. It is even worse than the mix of French and German in Rheinland.”
I go still. The teasing smile fades just a little. “You live in Salzburg?”
It occurs to me then that I know next to nothing about this woman. I know her sensitive spots. I know the way her breath catches when I touch the small of her back. I know every curve of her body. Yet I don’t know where she drinks her coffee or what street she lives on.
Still, I feel like I know her soul. She is running again. She is fleeing that gala and that man in the suit. I am her fix. I am the only thing fast enough to help her outrun herself.
“Since when…?” I start to ask, but I don’t wait for her to answer. I don’t actually care about the logistics or the timing.
The jealousy that was clawing at my throat on the chairlift—the image of that Suit in her Instagram story—it all burns off, replaced by a heat that is much more dangerous. I don’t know how she got here or how long it took her. All I know is that she is standing in the middle of my world, and she is vibrating on a frequency only I can hear.
I lean back against the finish hut, making the wood creak under my weight. I still haven’t moved to meet her. I watch her boots sink into the rotten, gray slush of the finish area.
“You did not come all this way to discuss the dialects of the Rheinland, Élise.”
I reach out, my hand still encased in a stiff, salt-stained racing glove, and hook my fingers under the lapel of her white coat. I pull her just an inch closer. I want her to smell the speed on me. I want her to feel the literal heat radiating off my skin through the Lycra.
She looks up at me, and her eyes aren’t bored anymore, wide and dark and hungry. Her hands stay buried in her pockets, but the fabric gives her away, trembling with the effort to keep still. That tiny, nervous shake is a confession all on its own.
