Page 23 of Love Worth Gold
“At tomorrow’s Super-G, show me you’re here to race, not to chase,” he said.
~~
Isaline lay in her bed and replayed the day in sharp, unwelcome fragments: Blaire’s cool nod at breakfast, Reto’s blunt love, Matthias’s impossible nearly standards. Her phone rested by her pillow. Blaire’s name sat near the top of her thread, with their last messages hovering on the screen—equal parts teasing and tactical.
She hovered over the keyboard, thumb itching to type something raw: to ask if Blaire’s distance at breakfast had been intentional, to admit that the idea of skiing against her and wanting her at the same time felt like standing on a knife edge.
Instead, she erased every draft that was only inviting rejection.
Her chest tightened. She could still feel the brush of Blaire’s hand from the night before and still taste the kiss they’d pulled back from. The memory warmed her skin and made her furious at the same time.
In the end, she sent something so practical it almost hurt.Weather says crosswind on the midsection tomorrow. Watch the light near the blind roll; it flattened in inspection. Sleep well.
It read like a colleague-to-colleague note, nothing more. But hitting send was her way of proving to herself that she could care about Blaire’s safety and still put the race first.
Blaire didn’t respond.
Isaline exhaled slowly and set the phone face down on the nightstand. Through the thin walls, she heard muffled laughter from teammates, the faint thud of footsteps overhead. The village never went silent.
Her chest ached with the feeling of choosing the hill over the girl, even if only for one night. The want didn’t dim; it just got pressed into the same tight space where she kept every other sacrifice she’d made for this dream.
She reached into the bedside drawer and let her fingers brush the worn edge of a photo before shutting it again. In it, she was five years old on a small hill above St. Moritz. Her skis were too big, and her cheeks were bright red from the cold. Her mom was grinning as she held her hand, like there wasn’t a mountain on earth her daughter couldn’t conquer. The picture reminded her she’d always had someone who believed she belonged here; tomorrow’s race would prove she still did.
Tomorrow was the Super-G. Whatever happened with Blaire, she decided, would not be the reason she skied well or badly.
The last thought before sleep took her was simple and fierce.I earned this Olympic bid. I’m going to ski like the gold is mine.
Chapter Nine
Blaire woke before her alarm because her body was already buzzing with race-day adrenaline. This was the first medal event for her at these Games, and in her internal math, it set the tone for everything else. She moved through her routine on autopilot—stretch, hydration, light snack—while her mind cataloged the stakes. The Super-G wasn’t her purest love the way downhill was, but it was still a chance to step onto that podium one more time and remind everyone why she’d dominated the field for a decade.
At breakfast, she kept conversation with teammates minimal, listening more than speaking as younger racers chatted about nerves. Her eyes skimmed the room and inevitably found Isaline at the Swiss table. They didn’t exchange more than a distant nod. Blaire pulled her attention back to her tray, telling herself that today was about carving the line she’d trained for, not about who happened to be standing under the same flags.
The knowledge that this was her last Olympic Super-G sat in her chest like a metal implant. She refused to name the feeling as fear, but every small movement felt more dramatic than usual. The way her spoon scraped the bottom of her oatmeal bowl. The weight of her accreditation badge against her chest. The taste of coffee she barely registered drinking.
On the shuttle up to the venue, she stared out at the mountain. It was the same scene she’d seen a hundred times in training, but suddenly it looked different, decorated with Olympic blue banners. Other athletes talked around her with their voices rising and falling in nervous patterns. She heard none of it.
Blaire had left her phone in her gear bag. Isaline’s practical text from the night before had gone unanswered, not out of cruelty but because Blaire had no words that wouldn’t betray how much space the Swiss woman occupied in her head. The crosswind warning had been thoughtful. Professional. Exactly the type of thing rivals who respected each other shared.
It had also kept Blaire awake an extra hour, staring at those words and wondering what Isaline had really wanted to say instead.
The shuttle pulled into the venue staging area. Athletes filed out into the cold, breath clouding, boots crunching on packed snow. Blaire grabbed her race bag and followed the familiar path toward the wax cabin. She let muscle memory carry her while her mind stayed locked on one thing she couldn’t shake: anything less than gold today would feel like failure.
After a quick check-in with her parents, who had arrived for race day, Blaire finished the activation set and grabbed a towel and used it to roll tension out of her shoulders. Meanwhile, the TV in the corner cycled through early Super-G racers. Tess appeared with coffee and set it on the bench beside Blaire like an offering of a speed drug.
“Clear your head before you ask the question. I can see your mind brewing,” Blaire said as she glanced up.
Tess ignored that. She sat, elbows on her knees, watching the screen for a beat before turning sideways. “You’re carrying more than usual. I can see it in your eyes.”
“It’s my last Olympics, Tess. I’m carrying a lot.”
“It’s not just that.”
Blaire tightened the resistance band around her wrists and exhaled through her nose. Around them, other athletes moved through their own routines. Voices surrounding them were muffled under music and announcer chatter. Tess waited, patient as a brick.
Finally, Blaire spoke. “What… I’m good, Tess.”
“You’re distracted,” Tess corrected. “Calm and clinical, but I can see something beneath that shield. I’ve seen you manage pressure since you were twenty. This isn’t pressure. This energy you’ve been giving off is something else.”