Chapter 13
His to Train
Reiteralm, Austria
ZLATA
He gave me my own drawer in the ski depot for my boots and a stupid little hook for my jacket, and somehow that feels more intimate than everything we did on that workbench last night.
I wake up in his bed with wax still faintly in my hair and muscles that ache in very specific, very satisfying ways.
For once, my brain doesn’t rush straight to worst-case scenarios.
It just notes the sunlight on the ceiling, his warm weight behind me, the quiet of an off-day morning.
I let myself stay there. I’m allowed to be happy for a time, right?
On snow, he’s different. Sharper, more precise, but calmer too—as if everything in his head finally lines up when there are gates in his peripheral vision and edges under his feet.
I follow him down the first warm-up run, legs still heavy, but my turns are less panicked with every run. My body remembers faster than I expect.
He stops halfway down, plants his poles, and waits for me. When I slide up beside him, breathing a little hard, he lifts his chin toward the slope.
“Again,” he says. “This time, think about where your shin presses.”
No flirting, no wink. Coach mode.
Something in me straightens in response.
I nod, push off, and try it. It’s such a small adjustment—angling my shins into the tongues of my boots a fraction earlier, letting the ski roll instead of forcing it—but suddenly the turn comes to me instead of me fighting for it.
The edges bite, the ski arcs, and for a few glorious seconds I feel… competent. Maybe even good.
When I pull up at the bottom, I’m grinning like an idiot. He skis in behind me, stops close enough that our tips almost cross.
“You felt that?” he asks.
I just nod, still high on it.
He doesn’t gush, doesn’t make a big deal of it. “Again,” he repeats. “Lock that feeling in.”
So we do. Run after run. Sometimes he skis just ahead of me, sometimes behind.
Every few lifts, he gives me one precise cue—weight here, hands there, eyes up, trust the edge—and I latch onto each one like a lifeline.
It’s weirdly easy not to push back. When he’s like this, I don’t want to spar with him, or poke at his ego, or test where his limits are.
I just want to learn. Skiing advice from his mouth is as precious to me as time in his bed.
On the chairlift, the air bites at my cheeks, but my thighs are pleasantly burning, and the world is white and clean. Our boots knock together every time the chair sways.
“You’re bossy,” I tell him, but there’s no spice in it, just a smile.
He shrugs, looking at the line of the piste below us. “You said you wanted to ski, not just slide.”
Touché.
We go quiet for a minute. The mountain opens under us—valleys, lifts, tiny colored jackets tracing lines in the snow. I shift on the chair, push it away. I’m allowed to be happy for a time. The expiry date can stay blurry for now.
At the top, he pulls his phone out. “One more from behind,” he says. “I’ll film it.”
I roll my eyes. “Fan content?”
“For you,” he says simply. “So you can see how good you look when you’re not terrified.”
My stomach does a small, unhelpful flip at that.
I ski the run with his lens on me—hands steady, turns rounder than they’ve been in years.
At the bottom, he skis up, pulls out his phone, and we stand hip to hip while he replays it.
My head position is tragic, my technique still a mess in places, but there’s something in my face I don’t recognize at first: joy.
“See?” he says quietly. “You belong here.”
For a second, that thought slams into the other, darker one: the image of us in the depot, my hands on the bench, the sheer recklessness of it.
What happens when this stops being fun? When someone sees us?
When the season moves on, and I’m just another story he tells about that one-off-season girl who thought she could keep up?
I feel the panic start to rise and shove it back down, hard. Not now. Later. On the train, when I have distance and no wax in my hair and no view of his shoulders moving under his jacket.
“Reiteralm Masters at the end of the season,” he says suddenly, as if he’s just remembered it. “There’s an amateur giant slalom. You could do it.”
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just casually race in front of your whole little ski world.”
He looks at me, completely serious. “You could,” he says. “If you keep working like this.”
The worst part is—I believe him. A tiny, traitorous part of me immediately starts mapping training days and imagining a bib with a number that’s mine. Another version of myself, sharper and braver, standing in a start gate.
I let myself hold the image for a second before they evaporate. For now, I ski. I listen when he talks. I let myself love the way his voice sharpens on my name when I get something right, and the way his hand steadies my elbow when I nearly trip getting off the lift.
“You keep it up,” he says, planting his poles firmly. “I have my own training to go to.”
“Okay,” I feel relieved and disappointed at the same time.
“We’ll meet at the ski depot, you’ll leave your skis there, and we’ll have dinner,” he says, skating toward me and planting a light kiss on my cheek.
“And don’t slack it,” he grins. “I’ll know tomorrow if you did.”
“On it, coach,” I say, and before I can think better of it, I lean in and kiss him properly—mouth to mouth, just a brush of tongue, enough to taste salt and cold air and him. Something I can carry with me for the rest of the day, tucked away under all the layers.
When he pushes off toward his lane, I watch him go, a bright slash of speed against the white. Then I turn back to my own run, heart too full and too loud, telling myself one more time that I’m allowed this. I’m allowed to be happy—for a time.
***
Our little Eden lasts for two more days.
We ski together in the morning or the afternoon, depending on his training schedule.
We meet, and I tune my skis at the ski depot using their professional tools, sometimes having Max stop by to comment and help me improve them.
Then we have dinner and glorious sex in Fabio’s apartment.
During our skiing time together, he drills me, then I practice alone and watch as I turn better with every hour. And on Sunday morning, paradise comes with a stomach full of nerves.
“It’s just GS training,” Fabio says, as if that means anything to the butterflies currently doing their own slalom course in my gut.
“On Reiteralm. With actual racers.” I pull my gloves tighter. “And children.”
“Juniors,” he corrects, amused. “They won’t bite.”
We glide into the training area, and there they are: a group of girls in race suits, braids tucked into helmets, stickers on their skis, that easy teenage looseness in their bodies that says they’ve been doing this since they could walk.
I suddenly feel every year of my age and every hour of my desk job back home.
They notice Fabio first. Of course they do.
“Baier!” one of them whispers, stage-loud, nudging her friend. A couple of heads swivel. Then their gazes hop to me, to my very non-race outfit, my weird ski brand, the way I hover too close to him like a satellite unsure of its orbit.
He ignores the looks, all business. “You’ll run with their group,” he tells me. “I talked to their coach. I’ll give you feedback between runs.”
“Is that… allowed?” I murmur, watching two of the girls push off into the course, carving clean, aggressive turns through the blue and red.
He gives me a sideways look. “Everything’s allowed if you ask nicely in the end.” His smile is quick, reassuring. “You’ll be fine.”
Easy for him to say. His name is on the results lists here. Mine is on utility bills in Prague.
When it’s my turn to slide into the start, one of the girls gives me a polite smile. “Good luck,” she says. Her eyes flick past me to Fabio waiting below, hands on his hips, watching the set. And I’m pretty sure she’s not talking about the training lane.
I breathe out slowly, lean into my poles, and try to remember everything he’s drilled into me the past two days. Shins forward, hands quiet, look ahead, not at the gate you’re about to hit.
The course drops away beneath me. The first few turns are pure survival—late, defensive—but somewhere after the third red, I catch the rhythm. The gates come in a beat I can almost dance to. When I cross the finish line, I’m out of breath but still upright, which is more than I expected.
Fabio skis up to me, eyes bright. “Good. Late in the middle, but good.” He taps his own shin. “Commit earlier. Trust that the ski will come around if you let it.”
I nod, still panting, trying to imprint every word.
While we talk, I can feel the girls’ eyes on us. Not hostile, not even really jealous—just curious. Their coach glances over too, then away again, giving us space like he’s used to World Cup guys dropping in with their mysterious projects.
Between runs, I find myself standing a little apart, watching them load the T-bar. They chatter in rapid German about line choice, school, and someone’s crush. Now and then one of them sneaks another look at me and Fabio.
On my second run, I’m braver—and pay for it with a near miss, late, and scraping around a blue.
I hear Fabio’s sharp “Yes!” from the side, a sound that’s half warning, half approval.
By the third and fourth, I start to feel something new: not just fear and effort, but fun.
Real fun. The kind that fills your lungs and pushes everything else out for a few seconds.
In the break, we stand off to the side while the juniors cycle through again. My legs are shaking; my cheeks hurt from smiling.
“See?” he says. “You’re getting earlier every time.”
I follow his gaze up the course. Two girls in matching helmets are gesturing animatedly at their phones, then casting quick glances down toward us. One of them holds the phone up, lens glinting in the sun.