Page 39 of Love Worth Gold
The beep sounded.
Blaire exploded forward, driving through the wand with her full weight. Her poles snapped back as she found her tuck. The first few gates blurred past in a familiar rhythm—pressure, release, balance. The snow felt fast beneath her, alive in a way that made her edges sing. She tucked tighter, letting gravity pull her into the death-defying speed she’d spent a lifetime learning to trust.
At the first steep pitch, she committed early, the way she always had. Her body remembered what her mind didn’t needto argue with anymore. The first turn loomed ahead. She saw the line, felt the exact moment to pressure, and drove through it without hesitation. No second-guessing.
The inner ski held.
Her breath punched out in a sharp exhale as she launched into the next section. The wind tore at her suit, and every muscle fired in perfect sequence. This was why she’d come back for one last race and why she’d fought through the ache and the fear and the weight of knowing it was ending.
Because nothing else in her life had ever felt this good.
The upper gliding section flew by in a familiar rush: tuck low, hands forward, weight perfectly balanced. She felt the skis come alive under her. They practically sang on the hard surface. Every small terrain ripple transmitted through her legs like an intricate language she’d been fluent in for decades.
She hit the first real technical section and trusted the line she and Tess had picked. No extra safety margin, no defiant overcommitment to prove she wasn’t scared—just the exact risk profile of a woman who knew this hill and her body inside out. The compression where she’d crashed in training loomed, the one that had eaten her and spit her out in training. For a split second, muscle memory flashed the wrong edge, the phantom sensation of the ski hooking sideways. She overrode it, rolled her ankles just so, and cut through clean.
The relief lasted half a breath before the next demand hit.
Mid-course, the Italian racer, who’d been strong all season, had set a sharp benchmark. Blaire knew she needed to be both precise and brave to claw out time. She carved the long, sweeping turns with flawless timing. By letting the skis run just a breath longer than comfort allowed before setting edges, she gained speed instead of fighting it. Every gate she cleared felt like one more door closing behind her, sealing off the past.
On the final pitch, legs screaming, she stayed low, resisting every instinct to rise even a centimeter. The burn turned to fire, and her quads threatened mutiny, but she held the tuck through sheer stubborn will. She rode the last gate transition like she was on a tightrope. Her heart was pounding so hard it drowned out the roar building in the stadium. She held her tuck all the way through the finish.
She crossed the line, shot through the beam, and looked up.
Her name flashed to the top of the board, green and first. The time gap over the field was small—hundredths—but enough. The stadium roared, creating a sound she felt as much in her bones as in her ears.
It felt like the purest version of why she’d ever done this: not for the cameras, not for the contracts, but for the simple, savage joy of nailing something that could have gone wrong in a hundred ways and didn’t.
She let out one sharp shout—part laugh, part release—and coasted to the stop area. Her lungs were burning, and she knew without a doubt she’d just skied the downhill she wanted to remember for the rest of her life.
Blaire climbed into the leader’s box and swapped her race helmet for a beanie as her heart still thundered in her chest. Reporters shouted questions she barely registered. The Italian racer—one of the clear medal threats—came down the hill a few numbers later. Blaire watched the big screen, tracking every line choice the way she used to do as a hungry twenty-year-old.
The Italian attacked the hill with beautiful aggression, taking similar lines in the key sections. At one split, the clock flashed red, then green, then red again. Blaire’s stomach tightened; she hadn’t expected to care so much about staying on top in this exact way. When the Italian crossed the line, the time slotted just behind Blaire’s—close enough to make the replayeditors happy, not enough to bump her. Italy slid into second, Germany held third, and the rest of the field still had something sharp to chase.
They shared a brief exchange in the corral—a nod, a few words of respect. It was the type of acknowledgment only people who’ve thrown themselves down the same wall of ice can give each other. Blaire meant it. This was the kind of race she respected. The Italian had earned it.
Seeing Italy lock provisionally into silver while Germany clung to bronze narrowed nothing in terms of risk; there were still fast women in the start house, Isaline among them, and any of them could redraw the entire podium. What it did sharpen was the shape of what Blaire wanted—her name on top, with Isaline somewhere in that top three, if the mountain allowed it.
She stepped back into the leader’s box and pulled her jacket tighter around her. Her focus remained on the board as bib numbers ticked closer to the one she knew too well. Around her, the stadium churned with noise—announcers building drama, other nations’ fans cheering their racers through sections. Tess appeared at the edge of the corral with Jordy. Both were watching the screen, and both were deliberately not looking at her face.
Blaire’s fingers curled around the railing. The rational part of her brain cataloged splits, the course deterioration, and wind reports. The rest of her was thinking about bronze slipping to fourth, about another Swiss racer climbing past Isaline before she even left the start, and about how badly she wanted to see that name—Senn—light up next to hers on the final results.
She exhaled slowly, letting the cold air bite her lungs, and kept her eyes locked on the screen.
Chapter Eighteen
Isaline’s skis vibrated against the start bar, creating that familiar buzz traveling up through her boots into legs that had been rebuilt twice. Around her, the start house was loud with voices she couldn’t separate anymore—officials counting down, coaches shouting last reminders into radios, the distant roar of a crowd that sounded like the ocean.
She stared down the mountain, seeing it in layers: the physical course with its gates and compressions, the ghost course where Blaire had just carved a near-perfect run, and underneath both, the terrain of every choice that had brought her here. Two surgeries. Two missed Olympic cycles. One father who’d won gold and never said it was required but lived like it was the only outcome worth having. One American legend she’d slept with, fallen for, and now had to beat if she wanted her own gold medal story.
The countdown hit ten seconds.
Her breath steadied into the same rhythm she’d used since she was small enough that her skis were longer than her body.
She thought about the Super-G podium and how she had been standing on flat ground while someone else’s anthem played. She thought about her father’s stern but loving voice in the team room. She thought about Blaire’s name sitting atop the leaderboard in line for the gold.
Four…
Reto was somewhere below, probably chewing his thumbnail down to nothing. Matthias would be stone-faced with his heart pounding where no camera could catch it.