On the screen, his face is perfect: the same media-trained smile I’ve scrolled past on a thousand tags, eyes on the lens, sponsor logos crisp on his jacket. I might as well have copy-pasted him from someone else’s feed.
I, on the other hand, look like I’ve been dropped in from another story entirely. My cheeks are too red, my smile a notch too wide, my eyes shiny with nerves. I look younger, somehow. Smaller. Like a fan.
Which, of course, I am.
He wasn’t rude. He wasn’t anything, really. Just tired and somewhere else in his head, moving through a script he’s had to follow since he was old enough to ski a second run in front of cameras.
This is his job. He owes me nothing.
The shame that creeps up my throat isn’t about him. It’s about standing in that line with my heart in my gums, hoping a man like that would look at me and see anything more than “fan number 5,206.”
It’s about hearing myself hours ago in the hut, loud and wild and so sure of my own audacity—I’m definitely going to ask a world champ for his dick—and then collapsing inward at the first flat smile.
My “unhinged, main character” self feels suddenly like karaoke bravado in a bad bar. This is the hangover.
I tip the cup and take a sip of the cold coffee anyway. It tastes exactly like what it is: bitter and lukewarm and not worth the wait.
Cold coffee and a sense of defeat. That’s what standing in line for a man buys you.
A gust of wind ruffles my hair; the sun has slipped away, leaving the terrace suddenly cold and sharp. I knock back the lukewarm coffee and push to my feet: mountain, snow, burning quads—the best way to wash down the shame. And I’d better start now, because the weather’s turning.
Chapter 3
The Storm Arrives
Reiteralm, Austria
FABIO
I drop onto the narrow bench just as the gondola doors slam shut behind me, a hollow thud that cuts off the last echo of my name from the station.
Good.
I let my poles clatter to the floor and tip my head back against the scratched plastic. The cable hums, the cabin rocks in the wind, a slow sway that settles somewhere behind mybreastbone.
One quiet ride. Ten minutes without a stopwatch or a phone in my face. That’s all I want.
The last run was crap. Not “bad for me,” not “conditions were tricky,” just crap. Line too straight into the delay, late on the exit, no feeling in my legs. Max’s split call is still ringing in my ears—four-tenths behind at the second interval in training is not “fine, we’ll find it on race day.”
“Scheiße,” I mutter, eyes closing for a second.
I can still see the course: blue and red marching down the hill, flat light, that stubborn little ridge before the rollers. I know exactly what I need to change. I’ve known it for three days. Somehow, my body still refuses to do it the way my head draws it.
Mental game, I used to brag, is where I kill the others. “I’m good in the head,” I’d tell journalists, a bit smug. “Pressure makes me sharper.”
Easy to say when I was a rookie chasing Luca Costner instead of having a whole World Cup field on my heels. I used to be the hungry one. Now I feel like the thing being hunted.
The cabin swings over a lift tower, a small jolt as the wheels pick it up. Snowflakes slap against the windows, fat and wet. Up ahead, the line of cabins snakes into low cloud; the ridge with the training course has disappeared into white.
Great. More fun.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. For a second, I hope it’s Max with a video, a line tweak, something useful. When I fish it out, I see the name and feel my jaw tighten.
My thumb hovers over the screen before I even register that I’ve opened the message.
Fabio, we really need to talk. I’d prefer to keep this civil, so please return my things as agreed—the bracelet, the jacket, and the paintings. My manager will send an address.
Paintings?
