Page 5 of Ski You Later (Alpine Glow #1)
Letting my eyes wander back up to his face, I freeze at his intense stare looking back at me.
Like a deer in the headlights, I don’t move a muscle as we keep our gazes locked together.
My face starts to flame immediately at being caught, and the embarrassment causes heat to flood my cheeks.
As if seeing this, his gaze snaps free of mine and he returns his attention to Rhys and his brothers.
Even though he dipped his head down with impressive speed, I still catch the upward tilt of his lips when he looked away.
As Landon and Xander see his attention on them, they immediately try to include him in whatever joke they’re currently laughing about. It doesn’t surprise me when Roman promptly ignores them and proceeds to remove the rest of his gear.
With his table across from ours, it’s easy to see the smattering of freckles that explode across his wind flushed face. Before I can get a better look, he turns his back to me, and barks out a laugh at whatever Rhys just told him.
“You’re staring. Like a lot.” I jolt at Aurora’s voice in my ear, and the fact that her entire body’s pressing up to the side of mine .
I quickly lean away from her, indignation, and denial at the tip of my tongue. “No, I’m not!”
“You were a second away from drooling,” she responds immediately.
My jaw drops at her words, and I push her out of my personal bubble. “Don’t be silly,” I deadpan.
Aurora promptly puts herself back into my space, pushing into me even more than before. “Are we crushing on him now? If we are, I’ll consider being nicer to him.”
Promptly ignoring her, I shove Aurora off me again and start to remove my ski boots. Although, her words do get the gears in my brain turning.
Even though she isn’t aware of my ridiculous problem yet, her words sparks something in my brain. This idea sits promptly at the front of my mind as I smash my frozen boot shell into the floor.
Unfortunately, I’ll need an actual plan when it comes to this whole issue, and step one is to get this frozen piece of evil off my foot.
I furrow my brow in concentration, and I can hear the rock-hard plastic on my feet laughing at my desire to remove it.
Without any hesitation, I pull the plastic boot lip open as far as possible, and smash my foot into the ground again .
An alpine ski racer boot is different from the comfy ones that most people get to wear. Normal ski boots allow you to slip your foot in with ease, and I heard some are even fuzzy on the inside.
In contrast, our boots are specially fitted to the exact size and form of our feet.
The inner fabric liner is vacuum sealed to our foot, and then a hard-plastic shell goes over that liner.
Similar to putting on a figure skate, the fabric liner needs to be tied up all the way.
The only difference is that our laced boot liner needs to be inserted in the plastic shell, and those two pieces combined make up our race boots.
These things make high heels feel like slippers, and after a couple minutes of smacking my frozen shell into the ground, my liner finally slips free.
Lifting my foot gently, I groan at all the ice covering the laces and the sole.
It takes me another couple of minutes to get the other foot free, and then I’m carefully untying both my liners and holding back tears.
Cold, frozen, broken little toes stare back at me as I remove my ski socks.
I’m cringing even thinking about moving them right now, since the defrosting of my toes is the worst part of every training session.
Pulling my fuzzy socks and my warm boots out of my ski bag, I brace myself as I carefully attend to my feet .
An embarrassing whimper leaves me as the shooting pain goes up my leg, wincing as the pins and needles mix with the frost bite. Closing my eyes, I try to breathe past the feeling that a million tiny monsters are all biting my feet at the same time.
Looking to my side, Aurora’s giving me the most unimpressed look I have ever seen on her face. “You are being ridiculous,” she states. Her eyebrow raising as an actual tear falls from my eye.
“Unlike you, I haven’t lost all the feeling in my feet,” I shoot back.
She grabs the metal stool under her for balance and raises both her feet. Wiggling her frozen monstrosities she calls toes in my direction, I swat her away and try not to vomit. “Aren’t they so pretty, I was made to wear open toed shoes,” she beams.
I can’t help but notice that she’s currently missing three toenails, and the cold has caused black skin to replace where they used to be.
“Rora, that’s vile,” I say with a grimace. Scooching two stools away from her, I go back to looking at my own feet.
As I lightly place them both on the ground, shooting pain goes up my leg, and I can’t stop the piercing noise that comes from my mouth .
Was this embarrassing? Of course. But the pain overpowers my pride and I shut my eyes to avoid the judging glances. Just because everyone else on this team has crazy nerve damage in their feet, doesn’t mean I do too.
Immediately looking up to see if Aurora’s giving me an exasperated look, I catch the gaze of someone else.
Roman’s looking right at me, with something akin to concern splayed out on his face.
In a weird moment where he isn’t wearing his signature scowl, it’s plain as day that his focus is on the way I’m cradling my feet.
His gaze goes up to meet my eyes, and I watch as he drops any expression from his face.
That mask of indifference is fully on display as he promptly turns his back to me.
More confused than anything, I tap Aurora to tell her what I just saw, but the coaches come into view at the same moment.
“Alright, settle down,” Liane shouts. Standing in front of the group, she clips off her radio, and gestures for Rachel to come close to her side.
They’re both already out of their gear, and have their short brown hair pushed back with matching headbands.
If my memory serves, they got those on their one-year anniversary, which we all celebrated as a team last season.
They’ve been coaching the Polar team for a couple years now, but their coaching quality really decreased this season.
I guess they realized that they get paid the same amount if just half the team gets in the top ten.
Thus, the winning athletes from last year are getting the most attention, and Roman’s getting blamed for all the other stuff.
“I’m going to inform everyone on the schedule for tomorrow. Roman should’ve told you everything already, but I’ll repeat it.”
Everyone immediately turns to Roman; expressions of confusion and anger being splayed across the faces of our teammates.
He’s now standing up, leaning against the table with his arms crossed over his body. Seeing the way his eyebrow slowly lifts as he absorbs what they said, I can tell this news came as a surprise to him as well.
Looking past him, Xander and Landon appear even angrier than the team, with Landon starting to stand before Roman clasps a hand on his shoulder. Giving him a firm but gentle shove, Landon plops back in his seat and Roman ignores all the eyes on him .
The boys start to furiously whisper with each other, and I watch as Xander and Landon argue with their brother. Roman eventually just turns his back on them, shutting down the conversation and listening to the coaches.
Liane doesn’t pay them any mind. She starts to talk about which run we have booked for tomorrow, what time the van will leave and other aspects of what everyone should have planned for their Sunday.
The only part of her speech that varies every training day is what run we’re training on, so I can’t help but tune out everything after that.
She keeps yammering while I attempt to wiggle my pinkie toe; white hot pain shooting up my leg as I move it.
Aurora nudges me a couple of times because I can only assume Rachel’s glaring at me, but I couldn’t care less.
I’ll start paying attention to the coaches when they start returning that courtesy to me.
Liane ends her talk with some lame joke and tells everyone to be at the van in five minutes so we can head back to the city.
The group starts throwing their gear in their bag, and the noise level in the lodge rapidly increases as they pack.
The only group that hasn’t moved a muscle yet sits across from me .
Rhys, Roman, Landon, and Xander all huddle over the lodge table. Passing furious whispers back and forth, the latter two boys are becoming more upset by the minute. Landon eventually gives up, grabs his gear, and storms out of the lodge. Xander marches out right after, hot on his brothers’ heels.
Dipping my head down so I don’t get caught staring again, I process this information in my head. This does nothing but enforce my suspicion that our team captain’s getting blamed for something that isn’t his fault.