Chapter 12
Their Line to Carve
Salzburg, Austria
FABIO
Salzburg Hauptbahnhof always feels too big for me: high arched roof, steel and glass, announcements bouncing around in three languages.
Nobody here cares about start lists or split times; they’re hauling rolling suitcases and shopping bags, arguing with kids about ice cream.
I weave through them with a small duffel over my shoulder, cap low, and for once, nobody looks twice.
No team jacket, no ski bag, no giveaway.
Just another tall guy trying not to get run over by a woman with a stroller.
I stop under the arrivals board, tilt my head back. Her train from Linz blinks on the screen, five minutes late, platform twelve. Right. Enough time to do the thing I’ve been doing too often since she texted that she booked tickets. I pull my phone out, thumb over the last messages.
ZLA: Changing in Linz / almost in Salzburg.
A photo of a paper coffee cup and her skis leaned against a bench in a black ski bag. No cancellation, no, I can’t make it. A small, stupid part of me has been bracing for that since she wrote, she bought the ticket.
Platform twelve is colder, breath hanging in the air, smell of brakes and burnt dust. There’s a kiosk doing bad coffee and pretzels, a couple of kids stamping their feet, and an old man reading a paper.
I take up a position where the bike/ski section usually stops, lean my shoulder against a pillar, and pretend to scroll news. My body doesn’t buy it.
Weight shifts from foot to foot, fingers tap a nervous rhythm against the phone. It’s ridiculous; I’ve stood in Olympic start gates with less static in my head. This isn’t a race. It just feels more tense than any race gate I’ve ever nearly vomited in.
The regional train rattles in with a squeal, a gust of warm air puffing out when the doors hiss open.
People spill onto the platform in that familiar wave—students with backpacks, families dragging kids and plastic bags, two guys wrestling a pair of skis out of the doorway. I scan for a race bag. There.
She steps down from the carriage with skis in one hand, race bag pulling at the other shoulder, a smaller backpack wedged somehow in between.
Overloaded, of course. Her hood is down; her hair’s in a messy braid that probably looked neat when she left Prague.
Travel is written all over her—creased jeans, tired under her eyes—but her posture is still that efficient athletic stance.
She moves a couple of meters away from the door and slows.
Thumb brushes over her phone screen, like she’s about to type something.
Half a second, maybe less, but I see the micro-stall, the little inward curl of her shoulders.
That’s the moment. The one where she could still send I can’t.
Turn around. Go back to the safe, known world of language schools and Masters, where nobody is watching.
She doesn’t. The phone goes back into her pocket. She lifts her head and scans the platform. Our eyes catch across the crowd. The noise in my ears drops a notch.
I push off the pillar, suddenly much too aware of my own clothes—jeans, jacket, cap.
No bib, no armor. Naked in a way a race suit never makes me feel.
My heart rate ticks up like I’m standing in the start wand.
My brain offers the usual easy scripts—smile, flirt, play the media-trained charmer—but they feel wrong in my mouth before I even get to her.
“Hi,” I manage, brilliantly, stopping in front of her. One hand comes up halfway, like I’m about to offer a handshake, and then I catch the look in her eyes—wide, bright, a little wild—and scrap the idea.
I open my arms instead. Not lunging, just a slow, clear offer. She can step into it or not.
For a heartbeat, she doesn’t move. Her jaw tightens.
Then something in her lets go, and she steps forward.
Her body presses along mine—front to chest, hip to hip—the way it did in that cabin in the storm.
My arms close around her back on pure muscle memory.
I can feel every place we touch, like someone’s tracing it with a pen.
Her hands land on my ribs, fingers tense for a second, then soften and curl in the fabric of my jacket.
“You really came,” I say into her hair before my filter can kick in.
She huffs a small laugh against my chest. “I said I would.”
Underneath, there’s a tremor I’ve learned to hear— that almost. It hits the same place as seeing my name in green after a bad run. Relief with a bruise under it.
I make myself pull back before I stay there too long like an idiot. Her face up close is a little flushed from the train. Brave, anyway.
“Give me that,” I say, nodding at the ski bag. She does the automatic protest, but her grip loosens at the same time. I take the bag like it’s nothing, because next to a World Cup quiver, it is nothing, and swing it up onto my shoulder.
“How was the trip?” I ask as we start walking down the platform. My feet know the way; I’ve done this transfer a dozen times for camps. Today it feels new.
“Long,” she says. “But I didn’t crash the train, so that’s a win.” The joke is dry, but the edge in it tells me enough.
We dodge a family with a stroller, a suitcase left right in the middle of the flow, and an old woman who stops dead to check her ticket.
I shift my pace half a step slower than normal, matching hers without thinking.
The air in the main hall is warmer, full of food smells and noise.
I see her eyes flick to the high ceiling, to the arrival board, then back to the exit sign like she’s reassuring herself she can still get out if she wants.
The car park is a grey expanse of concrete and exhaust. My wagon looks smaller than usual against the line of SUVs. I put her skis inside, snap the rubber straps over them, and catch the way she watches my hands, half appreciative, half assessing.
I open the passenger door for her. She raises an eyebrow at the chivalry but slides in without a comment. I walk around to the driver’s side, get in, and for a moment we just sit in the small bubble of silence the car offers: no announcements, just our breathing and the tick of cooling metal.
“Ready?” I ask, key in the ignition.
She nods, hands already worrying at the seat belt. “If you don’t crash this one either, we’ll call it a perfect day.”
I snort, start the engine, and pull us out of the space.
Traffic around the station is the usual Salzburg mess—buses, taxis cutting across lanes, tourists stepping out where they shouldn’t.
Normally, I’d curse a little, slip through the gaps on autopilot.
Now I’m stupidly aware of the way her thigh is a few centimeters away from mine, of the way her perfume is nothing more than clean hair and travel, and still somehow enough to make my skin hum.
She’s quiet at first. Hands folded in her lap, eyes following the road.
The tension between us is a real, physical thing, crowding the car more than her bags do.
We’ve stripped each other in a cabin and in a hotel room, I remind myself.
Somehow this—jeans, daylight, no excuse of storms or adrenaline—feels more naked.
Once we hit the autobahn ramp and the traffic evens out, she exhales slowly, like she’s been holding her breath since the platform. One of her hands leaves her lap, drifts up, and lands lightly on my shoulder: just her fingers, a careful touch on the jacket fabric.
“You look weird without ski gear on,” she says. “Like you might actually be human.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” I answer, but my voice comes out a shade rougher than I’d like. Her hand stays where it is, warm and distracting. Every time I check the mirror, I’m aware of its weight.
A few kilometers later, she lets her fingers slide down, casual as if she’s just stretching. From shoulder to upper arm, biceps, then further, over my forearm to where my hand is on the gear lever, her skin brushes my knuckles; electricity shoots up my arm like I’ve grabbed a live wire.
“Zlata,” I say, warning in it.
“Mhm?” she answers, innocent, eyes on the road. Her fingers trace one slow line over the back of my hand, then lift, then do it again.
My jaw tightens. I downshift for a truck, more abruptly than I need to. The car surges, settles. My pulse does not.
“You keep that up,” I say, “and I’m pulling over at the next lay-by.”
She finally looks at me, mouth curling. “And then what, slalom tourist?”
“Then,” I say, eyes back on the lane because if I look at her too long, I will miss an exit, “we don’t make it to Reiteralm, and my physio kills me because my legs are useless tomorrow.”
Her hand drifts off my fingers and lands on my thigh instead. Not high, not low, just a warm weight on the muscle over my quad. Her thumb makes one idle, circling over denim. She knows exactly what she’s doing; I can see it in the smug edge of her profile.
“Maybe I want your legs useless,” she says lightly. “Level the playing field.”
I blow out a breath through my nose. The road ahead is straight, clear, and boring. My imagination is not. Every nerve under her palm is awake; the rest of my body follows.
“Zlata.” My voice drops without permission. “Stop, or I really will pull over and fuck you raw on some trucker lay-by, and then this whole ‘off-season training block’ becomes a very different kind of camp.”
She laughs, low and delighted, and pulls her hand back just enough to be technically decent, fingers still resting on the inside of my knee. It does nothing to cool the blood already rushing south.
“That supposed to be a threat or a promise?” she asks.
“Both,” I say. My grip tightens on the wheel; I can feel the calluses in the leather. “And I’d rather do it in a bed that doesn’t smell like diesel.”