Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Kirby zoned out in the athlete spectator area of the grandstand as music played and skiers made their way into the stadium for the skiathlon. The skiathlon was ten kilometers of classic style and ten of freestyle, with a transition to different gear halfway through.
Kirby hated racing the skiathlon, so she was happy to sit it out, but she felt anxious about it anyway.
She wanted Mara to do well. She shouldn’t have cared. In past competitions, she hadn’t rooted for Mara. She’d done the opposite.
But today, her body was vibrating with pre-race adrenaline, even though she was just standing around with a bunch of teammates.
She pulled out her phone and replayed a video she’d had cued up for a day.
Kirby had watched the clip of Mara’s interview at the Opening Ceremony in Milan a hundred times. She looked gorgeous. Color high in her cheeks, her hair slightly frizzy for the first time in her life. She seemed almost intoxicated in the interview, riding high on the start of the Games.
Kirby wanted to fuck her. She wanted to kiss away the shade that had clearly been there.
Ross McFadden had clocked it. Mara had insinuated that Kirby’s win was due to a snowball of conditions and not Kirby’s own grit and determination.
It made Kirby angry and horny and fired up. And excited to race.
Mara had also called her fearless.
Even after seeing Kirby fight through a panic attack. Even after seeing the literal physical manifestation of fears and anxiety on Kirby’s body, Mara had called her fearless.
It made Kirby feel fearless.
They would compete against each other only once. In their past Olympics together, they’d shared many starting lines, but for the Milan Cortina Olympics, Kirby had dropped the skiathlon and ten kilometer, and Mara had dropped all the sprints and team events.
So Kirby’s only chances to shut Mara’s beautiful mouth were in the press, in bed, or at the fifty-kilometer finish line.
And she wasn’t going to wait the fifteen days for the fifty-k.
Apollo grabbed Kirby’s hand as the skiers sidled up to the starting line, and Kirby put her phone away. She needed to stop obsessing over Mara saying, “My record speaks for itself. And so does Kirby Bonham’s,” in a way that made Kirby want to pin her to a wall and make her take it back.
Apollo had a sign that said Go Lindsey in huge block letters. He seemed nervous. The skiathlon was Lindsey’s best event.
No one had a Go Mara sign, which wasn’t a shock, but still made Kirby feel bad.
Mara looked good, though. Focused. She had on new purple sunglasses. Not the silver ones she always wore at practice and that Kirby had placed on her head after the first time they’d had sex.
The race opened with a bang and the skiers shot off the starting line. It was a decent start for Mara. For Lindsey too. Before Kirby had fully taken it all in, Mara was out of sight, but there were huge screens broadcasting the racers as they made their way along the course.
Mara was a beautiful skier. The push and power in her body was effortless, every movement practiced and optimized to propel her forward.
She’d never really watched Mara ski. She had spent most of her adult life skiing with Mara, against her.
Usually chasing her. But she had never taken herself out of the equation.
Mara was incredible. She was so in control of every movement in her body. So aware of the field of skiers.
It was the opposite of their hookups where she gave up all that control to Kirby.
“When did you get back from Milan?” Apollo asked Jordan, leaning around Kirby to see her. Jordan had traveled to Milan with Mara. Kirby had to shake herself out of her thoughts.
“This morning. Mara came back late last night. Can you believe she announced her retirement? She’s been living on the podium lately. Why retire now?”
“She wants to go out on a high note,” Kirby said. She couldn’t look away from the screen as a huge cluster of skiers rounded a bend. Mara was in the front pack with Lindsey hanging in the middle.
“But what if it’s like last time?” Jordan said. “She choked.”
Kirby glanced at Jordan sharply. “She won a silver medal. That’s hardly a choke.”
“Oh. I just mean. I don’t know. Everyone said she was going to win the thirty kilometer. They’d practically chiseled her name on the gold before the race even started.”
“Yeah, pretty asinine, huh?” Kirby said wryly. She had always been salty about it, but less so now. Mara deserved to race without the weight of the world’s expectations on her.
The skiers were making the transition from classic to freestyle. Lindsey made a strategic push and jumped into third while Mara fell back slightly. She would probably be able to gain it back, but it was not an insignificant delay.
Suddenly, Kirby’s breath caught, and she took an involuntary step toward the screen. Her body moved before her brain caught up.
A skier from the Netherlands lost control behind Mara. It caused a chain reaction. The skier flailed before regaining control, but in the unsteadiness, her ski clipped Mara’s, causing her to spin out.
The whole stadium jumped to their feet and gasped—a full two seconds after Kirby had done so.
Time seemed to slow as Mara went down.
Careers had been ended by crashes.
Kirby felt a wave of nausea as a skier from Japan had to swerve to avoid her. Then one from Canada. Both were able to keep their feet and continue racing.
It happened so fast, and before Kirby could freak out about Mara being hurt, Mara had popped up. Her momentum was lost, starting from zero with diminished energy. But she surged forward, digging deep.
Everything in Kirby’s body ached for what had happened. Every skier had faced something similar at some point in their career, but for it to happen at the Olympics was terrible.
She watched Mara push and push to catch back up with the middle of the pack, but it was too big a setback.
A hand slipped into hers and tugged. It was Apollo. She looked around wildly and realized she was the only one still staring at the big screen with her heart in her throat.
She knew the cameras were on them. The networks loved to show Team USA cheering in the stands.
So had they caught that? Had they seen Kirby heartbroken for Mara as everyone else moved on to cheering for Lindsey and other skiers?
Kirby’s stomach hurt as the leaders came back into the stadium. A roar went up in the crowd. A young skier from Italy was in the front, and Kirby had never heard such a celebration from a cross-country skiing stadium.
Lindsey was in fifth, but she had momentum on the skiers in front of her. Apollo screamed his head off and lifted his sign. Kirby was shocked he had hidden his feelings for Lindsey for five years. They seemed very, very on display at the moment.
Even more than hers had.
Lindsey gained and passed the skier in front of her, moving into fourth. Then in a burst, she pushed into third.
Kirby started screaming then too. Lindsey was a veteran. This was her second Olympics, but she hadn’t come close to medaling four years ago.
Right before the finish line, Lindsey leveled up with the second-place skier.
In a blur of motion, both skiers lunged across the finish line, a skill they all practiced over and over again to get their boot over the line first. But Kirby had no idea who had placed second and who had placed third just from watching the screen.
Lindsey and the skier from Finland both collapsed in the snow after crossing the finish line. As the results popped up on the board, Lindsey covered her face with her hands in shock.
“Oh my God,” Apollo whispered. “I think I’m in love with a silver medalist.”
Kirby laughed, charmed by her best friend.
Soon, Mara crossed the finish line too. She didn’t collapse like so many other racers.
She rarely did. The stoic, breathe-through-the-pain princess.
Never show vulnerability. Never show anything.
She was gasping, though, a small grimace with every inhale and exhale, her chest heaving.
Kirby felt for her so viscerally. To have to build back momentum from a dead stop took a massive physiological toll.
After Mara recovered, she and the skier from the Netherlands chatted.
There were lots of cameras pointed in their direction, and Kirby hated that for her.
Mara didn’t revel in the limelight. Kirby wanted to take that attention away from her but not for the usual reasons.
Not because Kirby naturally wanted attention.
No, she just sought to shield Mara from the eyes of the world.
But then Mara smiled—it was the real smile that Kirby coveted but rarely received—and hugged the other woman.
It was a shocking reaction. Kirby hadn’t expected Mara to punch anyone, but she also hadn’t expected warmth. And there was no doubt that interaction had been warm.
From there, Mara found Lindsey and saw she’d won silver. Then they were hugging too.
“Think she’ll hug you when you beat her in the fifty kilometer?” Apollo asked.
“No. Definitely not.”