Page 35 of Avalanche (Endless Winter #3)

Lily

“I can’t believe you’re finally letting me ride with you,” Liam remarks as we get off the lift. “Was Tessa busy or something?”

I tuck my face into the shoulder of my instructor’s uniform to hide my smile, my free foot kicking to propel me across the flat after Liam.

It was actually Tessa who suggested that I do a training session with Liam, since he’s an examiner for the New Zealand instructor’s exam. He can tell you where you’re at , she’d explained. Whether you’re in a good position to take the exam at the start of the southern hemisphere season.

But if I tell Liam that, I’ll never hear the end of it.

“How was your lesson?” I ask, in a paltry attempt to change the subject. “It was that woman from Arizona, right?”

“Unimportant.” Liam waves one gloved hand dismissively as he skates to the edge of the run, away from where groups of skiers and boarders tend to mingle as they work out where to go. “What has Tessa been working on with you? Teaching demos? Rider assessment?”

“Yeah, all of that,” I agree, skidding to a stop beside him, then bending to clip on my board. “Plus generally pushing me on my riding. You know, improving my switch riding, getting me to be more aggressive in my carving, that sort of thing.”

Liam nods, his lips pressed together in thought.

I can’t help but smile at him when he’s like this—serious and focused, his grey eyes bright.

I wonder what he’s seeing when he’s like that, if his brain is pulling clips of my snowboarding, remembering what my riding was like before, cataloging all the little faults, considering how to reshape me.

“Let’s do a run,” he suggests. “I want you to go through all the demos. I’m talking falling leaf to dynamic carve, the whole range. Talk me through all of them like you would a student. Then watch my riding, and tell me what I need to do to improve.”

“Okay.”

The thought of running through everything I’ve learned, of pretending to teach Liam, it has my stomach going suddenly tight with nerves. I let out a strained exhale, my breath clouding in front of my lips.

“You got it, love.” Liam gives me a teasing smile. “Just pretend I’m Tessa. Or one of your students. You do this stuff every day.”

I give him a tight nod. He’s right. I know he’s right. It’s just, I don’t normally do this in front of him.

Liam’s eyes track my movement from behind his goggles. I feel them on me, feel his attention like a brand on my skin, know he’s seeing each micro movement, breaking it apart in his head. I do my best to ignore it, to ride like it’s just me and Tessa.

I bend my knees, line my body up over the edge, let my weight pull me into the turn, then drive my front knee around and carve onto my heel edge.

I can feel the board arch beneath me, the minuscule popping of the camber in the core, the singing movement of the snow beneath me, the warmth burning through my quads, my hips, my calves.

“Nice.”

Liam’s praise whispers across the snow, barely audible over the sound of my board, over the sound of my heart. It feels good, his praise, but not as good as knowing I’m doing it right. Of locking into the turns. I move into the next turn, and the next, and the next, finding my rhythm.

The first time Tessa showed me how to carve like this, I was conscious of every part of my body, fighting against my own instinct to move in a way that seemed wholly unnatural. I was constantly terrified of falling too, of catching an edge and hurtling down the steep face of the mountain.

It was not an unfounded fear, it turned out, because I did fall. A lot.

And then I got it.

I hadn’t even been trying, not really. I’d been following Tessa through a a tree-run, laughing, drinking in fresh snow and sunshine.

We’d popped out of the trees and onto newly groomed cord, a miraculous patch of trail that hadn’t been skied out yet.

I’d sunk into my edge, my knees bending with laughter, my body floating.

And I did it. It felt so right, like a dance you remember in your very bones.

I pull up to a stop, panting and smiling at the base of the run, turning just in time to see Liam following my tracks down the mountain. The rabbiting of my pulse turns to a light-headed flutter at the sight of him, all fluid movement and easy lines. Effortless. That’s how I’d describe it.

Snow dusts the toes of my boots as he pulls to a stop uphill from me, a smile peeking through his parted lips.

“That looked good,” he says.

My smile presses windburned cheeks into the edges of my goggles.

“Now watch me on these next couple turns and tell me what I need to work on. Just like we did before.”

I nod eagerly, no longer anxious now that adrenaline is rushing through me.

I watch him carefully as he makes his way down the steep incline, his earlier effortless grace replaced by clunkier movements—a shoulder opening up on the turns when it should be moving in line with the rest of his body, a second’s hesitation in bending his knee that results in him fighting to turn. A series of purposeful mistakes.

I ride after him, running through the tips I would give my students to remedy these little errors. Remembering tricks I’ve used in the past to correct a rider’s form.

“Okay.”

He pulls to a stop downhill from me, dropping to his knees in the snow. Knowing that means we’ll be here for a while, I slide my board out in front of me, sinking to a seated position in the snow.

“Let’s hear your assessment,” he demands.

I tell him, rambling out all the things I noticed in his form, explaining how I’d work with a student to fix them, the different exercises I could do with them.

He nods along, listening, only the slightest of smiles curving his lips.

“And what about a kinetic learner?” he asks. “What about someone who just wasn’t getting it, no matter how many times you showed them, no matter how many exercises you had them do?”

I bite the inside of my lip, thinking of one of my first training sessions with Liam, back when Matty had been struggling with his turns. I’d taken Matty’s booted foot in my hands, guided his knee. Made him feel the movement Liam had been trying to describe.

But that had been on a more gentle incline. And the main problem here isn’t the knee going down, but that shoulder opening up.

“Want me to show you what I would do?” Liam asks, pushing to his feet, holding his gloved hands out to me.

I let him pull me to my feet, then stare at him in silent question when he doesn’t release his hold on my gloves.

“I’ll be the teacher.” The corner of his lips quirk as he says this, those grey eyes flashing behind his goggles. “And you be the student.”

His board slips on the snow and his hold on my hands tightens, pulling the pair of us downhill.

“Now, you’ve probably done this with your beginner students,” he explains, squeezing my fingertips beneath my gloves.

“Held their hands to get them over the fear of turning. But you can do this when you’re working with students on their advanced turns, too.

It’s harder, of course, because you’ll end up riding switch, but I think you’re probably fine with that, at least on a pitch like this. ”

I swallow, glancing down at the mountain behind him, at the steep incline snaking down to the treeline below us. A few months ago, the thought of riding switch down a run like this would have been terrifying. But he’s right. I could do it.

“Let’s swap places,” he says, no doubt seeing my worry.

“I’ll be the teacher and you be the student.

I want you to open up your shoulder.” He releases my left hand to push lightly on my shoulder, guiding me out of alignment.

“When you do the toe-side turn. Like I was doing.” He releases my hands.

“Then I’ll ride a few turns with you like this and show you how I’d get a student’s shoulder moving over the board. Ready?”

I nod, then do what he says, dropping into my toe-side turn, keeping my shoulder open to the downhill of the mountain.

A few months ago, it would have felt natural to me to ride like this.

Now, I can feel how much longer it takes my edge to engage, how out of control I am in the transition, with the nose of my board pointing down the steep slope as I fight to get on my toe-edge.

Liam rides alongside me, an arm’s length away, watching my face the entire time.

“Feels weird, doesn’t it?” He asks.

“Yeah,” I chuckle.

“Now take my hand again.” He holds out his right hand, gloved palm up, and I place my left into it.

“This time, I’m going to gently guide you through the turn, pull your left arm and get your left shoulder coming in.

” He pauses, lifting one brow in challenge.

“But I want you to still try and open up your shoulder. You’re the student, remember.

You’re fighting the turn, scared of the feeling of going downhill on the steep, carrying years of bad habits in your posture. ”

“I don’t need to pretend that,” I tell him with a laugh. “You’ve literally just described my riding.”

He grins, but shakes his head. “Not anymore.” His voice is low, a gentle rasp that skates over my skin. “You ride like an instructor now.”

Something warm blooms behind my ribs at that praise, at the simple, matter-of-fact way he says it. Like he really does see me as an instructor now, as an equal to him. Not just some girl from Hawaii playing at teaching snowboarding, but the real deal.

“Now turn,” he orders, and the heat behind my ribs coils lower, settling in my belly, behind my naval. I draw in a sharp breath, the air cold, and do as he says.

The first turn, I’m so caught up in watching this face, in feeling the nearness of him and the pressure of his fingertips around mine that I nearly forget to open my shoulder like he’s told me, nearly forget to play the student.

He gives me a sharp look, and I move my shoulder at the last moment, giving just enough resistance when he tries to guide my arm back in.