Chapter 8 #4
“My stomach turned, and I could not breathe. I walked out of a hotel lounge full of ministers and sponsors. Met a journalist and paid her five hundred for her clothes and badge. Walked around Ortisei, watched the fans, and ended up in the Olympic village. I do not even know how.”
She finally looks up at me. Her eyes are bright and flat at the same time.
“He found me, of course,” she says. “He always does.”
“Did he…” I start, then stop. I do not actually want to picture Laurent Moreau with his hands on her.
She understands anyway and shakes her head.
“He does not yell,” she says. “He does not need to. He just removes things. Access. Money. People. Parts of your life go dark until all that is left is what he allows.”
My fingers curl around the stall door.
“He took my cards. My phone. My work. My friends. For two months, my world was the length of our house and whatever events he decided I was ‘presentable’ enough to attend. No shouting. Just nothing. A polite little prison.”
She laughs again, a shaky sound.
“So, when I say I am putting a lot at risk by being here,” she finishes, “I am not being dramatic.”
She says it like she is trying to scare me off, like this is the part where I remember who she belongs to, how dangerous her life is. Like, this is the warning supposed to make me back off.
I do not.
I frown, not at her, but at the story sitting crooked in my head.
“And yet,” I say slowly, “you are here.”
She blinks. “Yes, Nico. Very perceptive.”
“You ran,” I say, ignoring that. “He tried to shut you down. You are still here. That is not exactly a success story for him, is it?”
Her jaw tightens. “He got what he wanted. I came back.”
“On your feet,” I say. “Not in pieces.”
She rolls her eyes. “This is not a movie. There does not have to be blood for something to be destructive.”
“I know that,” I say. “But listen to yourself. You did the one thing he did not plan for. You left. You made him chase you. He punished you, yes, but you did not disappear. You did not break. You are still telling him no by standing in my friend’s barn right now instead of smiling at a gala.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“Feels to me like the scary part is not your father,” I say. “It is what you might do if he does not pull your strings.”
She goes very still.
“That is not it,” she says finally. “I am scared of scandal. Of blowing up your career. Of being the reason this whole thing ends with you on your ass.”
“That is not it either,” I say quietly. “You are not scared of him. What are you scared of?”
She sucks in a breath. The donkey snorts, shifting in his stall.
“élise, what are you scared of?”
“Nico, do not…”
“élise…”
“I am scared you will find out I am fake.” She answers before she can stop herself, raising her voice. The startled donkey actually snaps at her hand.
The stall goes quiet. The animals look up, then resume chewing, and in the silence, she goes on.
“You wanted me as a trophy, and that felt safe. Now you seem to think there is more to me than glitter and jewels. What happens if you find out the gilded surface is all there is?”
I do not have an answer for that. She looks at me, eyes intent, tears glistening.
“I love the way you look at me, like I am real. I could not stand your eyes when you realized I was just an empty trophy to be put on a shelf.”
“But élise,” I say, reaching out to her face, wiping the tear, “you are so much more than that.”
“I am not sure I am,” she says, shaking her head, squeezing my hand.
“I am scared too, you know,” I say with a shrug.
“I am the golden boy. The new hope of Austria. Walking poster for grit and talent and whatever other bullshit they put on the graphics. Half the time, I am terrified that I am one bad season away from everyone realizing I am just a kid from nowhere who got lucky on good snow. That I am a fraud.”
I shrug one shoulder and try to make it sound lighter than it feels.
“But Nico,” she says, shaking her head, “you are the bravest, wildest, most fascinating person I have ever met. Just being around you is intoxicating. And not because you have medals and trophies. Because of who you are.”
For a second, I forget how to breathe. No coach, no commentator has ever said anything that landed like that.
“See, princess?” I say. “I do not see fake when I look at you. I have seen you brave. I have seen you wild.”
Her throat works.
“You told me to just be free,” she adds. “I am learning. Slowly. But maybe you do not know how to do that either.”
For a second, she looks like she might cry. She does not. Of course, she does not. Her eyes just shine a little too bright in the stable light.
“What do you want from me, Nico?” she asks, finally, voice hoarse.
I exhale, long and slow, and lean back against the stall, feeling the rough wood at my spine.
“I want to not feel like I am going insane,” I say simply. “I can live with ‘just sex’ if that is all you can give me right now. I swear I can. But I cannot do this thing where you drag me into broom closets and then pretend you do not know me when there is an audience.”
It is a lie. I know it as I say it. There is a small, stubborn part of me that wants everything, the label, the hand holding, the right to say mine without worrying about a board meeting. And a voice whispers in my head that the real her wants it too.
But I will live in the lie if it keeps her here.
“No more disappearing,” I add. “No more games where I have to guess whether you are going to treat me like a person or a PR risk. If you want this to be just sex, fine. Say it. But say it without running every time it starts to feel like more.”
She stares at me, breathing shallow. The hay rustles softly under her shoes when she shifts.
“I do not know how to do anything else,” she admits. “Games. Masks. Performing. That is all I have ever done.”
“Then we try something else,” I say. “We start with honesty. Tiny doses. No more pretending you do not care if you do. No more pretending you do if you do not.”
Her mouth twists. “You make it sound very simple.”
I huff out a laugh. “It is not. It is terrifying. I am already regretting saying all this out loud.”
That earns a ghost of a smile.
“Okay,” she says at last. “No more games. Honesty.”
The word feels too big for the barn, too fragile. I nod anyway.
“Okay,” I echo.
***
On the walk back down, the village is lit up, fairy lights strung between balconies, snowbanks glowing blue in the twilight. Our breath hangs in front of us in small clouds. We reach a tree on a corner, branches heavy with snow and a string of crooked lights someone wrapped around it halfheartedly.
We stop without agreeing to.
We stand there, close but not touching, watching a group of kids drag a sled past us, laughing. A dog barks somewhere. A church bell rings the hour.
“Joyeux Noel,” she says quietly, eyes on the lights.
“Merry Christmas,” I answer.
She looks up at me. For once, there is no challenge, no mask. Just her.
I lean down. She meets me halfway.
The kiss is small. Careful. No teeth, no desperation, no trying to win. Just the soft press of her mouth against mine, the faint smell of hay caught in her hair, and maybe the beginning of something neither of us knows how to name yet.
I pull back first, because if I do not, I will not.
“Sleep,” I say. “I need you at least pretending to be rested when you come to watch me terrify you in January.”
Her lips curve. “Bossy.”
“Focused,” I correct.
She rolls her eyes, but it is affectionate now.
“See you, Nico,” she says.
“See you, élise.”
We step apart, each turning toward our own hotel, the tree and its crooked lights between us. My chest feels too tight and too light at the same time.
Whatever we just agreed to, it is not nothing anymore.
***
Bordeaux, France, December 27
éLISE
The snow here is wrong.
It is clean, soft, and photogenic, draped over the rows of dormant vines as if someone had arranged it for a postcard. The air smells of wood smoke and old stone and my grandfather’s good Bordeaux. Somewhere a church bell rings the hour; somewhere else, a dog barks once and goes quiet again.
I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee going cold between my hands and my phone face up in front of me, waiting for the FIS app to refresh.
Bormio. Men’s downhill. Result list.
Reiner, Nico–4.
Fourth.
I exhale slowly. No screaming commentators, no camera cuts, no slow-motion replay of a near crash for me to half-watch through my fingers.
Just a name, a flag, a number on a slate gray screen.
I did not want to watch the races with my father; I wanted a quiet place to panic, knowing he throws himself down the most brutal hill of them all.
Fourth is still terrifyingly fast. The little loading wheel is still spinning on the live timing. I thumb it away and open our messages instead.
For a moment, I just stare at the empty text box, thumb hovering. The élise I have always been, the polished one, the careful one, wants to craft something perfect and distant. Congratulations, Mr. Reiner, on a solid performance. Looking forward to your continued success.
The girl who fed a donkey in a barn in Val Gardena and said the word fake out loud wants something else.
My fingers move before I can overthink it.
élise: Good race. Fourth is still terrifyingly fast. Try not to break anything important before January. ???
I look at the little skis and flames emoji and almost delete them. They are ridiculous. Juvenile. Not the sort of thing a Moreau should ever put in writing.
I hit send anyway.
The message whooshes away. The screen goes quiet. The kitchen goes on being a kitchen, old wooden cabinets, a copper pot on the stove, my grandfather humming to himself as he reorganizes the wine rack in the next room.
Because that is what Moreaus do when they retire, tend vineyards and sheep, move to the country to oversee their families like some French Godfathers.