Page 38 of Love Worth Gold
Blaire allowed herself one quiet exhale that might have been a laugh, might have been more along the lines of a moan. She put her outer layers on with a deliberate focus on every movement she made. She laced her boots with the same ritual she’d used since she was a kid in Sun Valley and stepped into the corridor.
The village at dawn was different from the daylight energy. It was quiet, almost reverent. A few early risers moved through the halls like shadows, their footsteps muffled on the industrial carpet. Blaire took the stairs instead of the elevator, letting her legs wake up naturally, before she pushed through the doors into the cold mountain air.
At breakfast, the room hummed with the nervous energy of race day. Her own table threw out the standard banter, but Tess and Jordy kept their conversations with Blaire lean: logistics, weather, bus times. The medal from the Super-G sat back in the room, not around her neck. She didn’t need areminder. Her body remembered every race, every podium, and the way the anthem had sounded.
Across the hall, she caught a glimpse of the Swiss table. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. There was no wave, no exaggerated smile, just a small acknowledgment that they both knew what today was. Blaire looked away first, not out of rejection, but because if she kept looking, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to swallow around the lump in her throat.
The day landed on her with the weight of finality and possibility at once. She wanted to walk out of these Games as the woman who had chosen her own ending, not the one the dangerous sport had chosen for her.
On her way out of the dining hall, she touched the USA flag patch on her jacket once, a quiet grounding gesture, and headed for the shuttle without waiting for anyone to call her name.
~~
On the hill for inspection, Blaire side-slipped down a steep section with Tess just ahead. Her skis chattered softly against the hard-packed snow. The course stretched below them in the crisp morning light. Every gate placement was visible, making the fall line almost too inviting. She paused at the compression that had eaten her in training. She planted her poles as she looked at the blind roll beyond.
Tess glided back up beside her. “Good snow today. Fast but forgiving if you don’t fight it.”
Blaire nodded as she remained laser focused. The spot didn’t look dangerous now. It just looked like terrain. She let herself feel the residual ache in her ribs from where she’d hit the fence.
“That crash scared me,” she said quietly.
Tess didn’t flinch. “That’s good. Means you’re paying attention.”
“Not the fall. The reason.” Blaire shifted her weight, testing her edges. “I skied like I was trying to outrun something instead of toward something.”
Tess studied her for a long beat. “And how are you feeling about it today?”
“Today I’m one hundred percent here.” The words came out simpler than she had expected. “Not letting anything get in my way. Not proving anything. Just skiing because I still can.”
They finished the inspection in silence. Blaire memorized transitions more through her body than her mind. At the start area, she clicked out and stood with her skis planted in the snow, staring down the course one more time. Other athletes moved around her—nervous chatter, last-minute wax checks, coaches shouting reminders.
She tuned it all out.
In her head, she laid out the contract with herself: she would not ski to erase Isaline from her thoughts. She would not ski to bury the crash or to crown herself untouchable one last time. She would ski because this was what she loved—the terrifying, exhilarating act of standing at the top of a mountain and choosing her own path down it.
Whatever came after—gold, nothing, everything in between—would be hers. No apologies and no regrets.
The fear didn’t vanish. It settled into the landscape of her focus, just another feature to manage alongside wind and gradient and the ticking clock. She took one slow breath and felt her ribs expand against the bruises. Then she made her way back toward the warmup area.
Tess fell into step beside her. “You good?”
Blaire glanced sideways, and the ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth. “I’m golden!”
Blaire slid into position at the starting gate of her final Olympic race. With her ski tips hovering over the wand, thecountdown clock ticked in her peripheral vision. Around her, the noise of the start house compressed into white static—radio chatter, wind buffeting the gate tower, someone calling splits from below. None of it reached her. Her tunnel narrowed to snow and gradient and the clean thump of her own heartbeat.
She flexed her fingers around her poles, feeling the familiar weight. The gate official’s voice cut through: “Racer ready.”
She dropped her chin once.
“Ten seconds!”
Her breath slowed. In. Hold. Out. It was the same rhythm she’d used since she was seventeen.
“Five!”
For a fraction of a second, an image flickered unbidden… Isaline in the start house somewhere behind her on the list, waiting her turn. Blaire didn’t push the thought away. She let it settle beside everything else—the years, the crashes, the medals, the nights she’d spent alone because she had a singular goal. All of it poured into the same reservoir that had always powered her best runs.
This wasn’t just about outrunning fear anymore. It was about proving she could still choose her race when it mattered, even with the end of her career on the table.