“I am scared too, you know,” I say with a shrug. “I am the golden boy. The new hope of Austria. Walking poster for grit and talent and whatever other bullshit they put on the graphics. Half the time, I am terrified that I am one bad season away from everyone realizing I am just a kid from nowhere who got lucky on good snow. That I am a fraud.”
I shrug one shoulder and try to make it sound lighter than it feels.
“But Nico,” she says, shaking her head, “you are the bravest, wildest, most fascinating person I have ever met. Just being around you is intoxicating. And not because you have medals and trophies. Because of who you are.”
For a second, I forget how to breathe. No coach, no commentator has ever said anything that landed like that.
“See, princess?” I say. “I do not see fake when I look at you. I have seen you brave. I have seen you wild.”
Her throat works.
“You told me to just be free,” she adds. “I am learning. Slowly. But maybe you do not know how to do that either.”
For a second, she looks like she might cry. She does not. Of course, she does not. Her eyes just shine a little too bright in the stable light.
“What do you want from me, Nico?” she asks, finally, voice hoarse.
I exhale, long and slow, and lean back against the stall, feeling the rough wood at my spine.
“I want to not feel like I am going insane,” I say simply. “I can live with ‘just sex’ if that is all you can give me right now. I swear I can. But I cannot do this thing where you drag me into broom closets and then pretend you do not know me when there is an audience.”
It is a lie. I know it as I say it. There is a small, stubborn part of me that wants everything, the label, the hand holding, the right to sayminewithout worrying about a board meeting. And a voice whispers in my head that the real her wants it too.
But I will live in the lie if it keeps her here.
“No more disappearing,” I add. “No more games where I have to guess whether you are going to treat me like a person or a PR risk. If you want this to be just sex, fine. Say it. But say it without running every time it starts to feel like more.”
She stares at me, breathing shallow. The hay rustles softly under her shoes when she shifts.
“I do not know how to do anything else,” she admits. “Games. Masks. Performing. That is all I have ever done.”
“Then we try something else,” I say. “We start with honesty. Tiny doses. No more pretending you do not care if you do. No more pretending you do if you do not.”
Her mouth twists. “You make it sound very simple.”
I huff out a laugh. “It is not. It is terrifying. I am already regretting saying all this out loud.”
That earns a ghost of a smile.
“Okay,” she says at last. “No more games. Honesty.”
The word feels too big for the barn, too fragile. I nod anyway.
“Okay,” I echo.
***
On the walk back down, the village is lit up, fairy lights strung between balconies, snowbanks glowing blue in the twilight. Our breath hangs in front of us in small clouds. We reach a tree on a corner, branches heavy with snow and a string of crooked lights someone wrapped around it halfheartedly.
We stop without agreeing to.
We stand there, close but not touching, watching a group of kids drag a sled past us, laughing. A dog barks somewhere. A church bell rings the hour.
“Joyeux Noël,” she says quietly, eyes on the lights.
“Merry Christmas,” I answer.
She looks up at me. For once, there is no challenge, no mask. Just her.
