Chapter Twenty-Three
LUKA
We step into the village together.
Side by side, holding hands. We’re no longer five feet apart, and she’s no longer chasing me down a corridor with a PR strategy in her head and a death wish.
I don’t have to pretend that I don't like her closeness, or that the sound of her voice when she’s frustrated with me doesn’t make me want to kiss her.
The air is cold, but the sun is warm. The first blue sky since the storm finally blew past completely. One of the best days to be out on the slopes, but right now, this is where I want to be—with her.
Snow crunches under our boots. The village is alive with tourists spilling out of rental shops, ski gear clattering, couples walking the way people walk with no urgency to get anywhere.
"When was the last time you walked around in public with a woman?" she asks, a teasing glint in her eyes.
I glance down at her. She should have already guessed, but I’ll tell her.
"Never."
"Then why now?"
My thumb finds her knuckles, gently sliding over the top.
"Like I said last night, I’m trying something new, and you’re the only one I want to try it with."
I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her freezing hand.
She’s about to jump into a follow-up question when I hear my name. Someone recognizes me near the fountain and asks for an autograph. A teenage kid, which means I won’t ignore him. The paparazzi and journalists are the ones who get a cold shoulder. Not true fans.
I don't drop her hand and sign whatever he pushes towards me.
A receipt? A brochure from the resort?… something like that.
I do it quickly with my free hand, never dropping Natalia's hand. Then I nod and move on before anyone else can slide in with a request, pulling Natalia with me as if she’s an extension of my own body.
She doesn't comment on it. She just walks closer, her other arm wrapping around my arm as if using me to block the wind, but I know it’s more than that.
"Are you cold?"
"Not anymore," she says, looking up at me with a smile and a sparkle in her eyes.
A smile that I’m tempted to keep for myself. To hide her away in her hotel room, keeping all her smiles for me, wrapped up in her sheets together, but this is important.
I don’t know where all this is going, but I do know that I’ve come too far not to see where this all leads. I need her to see that I’m not running. That I'm not hiding her.
The café is tucked just off the main path. Wooden beams, warm amber light, a chalkboard menu in German that she tilts her head at, squinting.
We get seated by a window with views of tourists walking by us.
I order when the waitress comes by. Natalia’s still staring at me when the server walks away.
"What?"
"English, Russian, French…now German? How many languages do you speak?" she asks with a raised eyebrow, her arms folded one over the other on the table casually.
"Six. My father insisted that his protégé son knew how to manipulate whoever I needed to in more than one language. Three tutors, a handful of nannies, and boarding school. My father probably spent more on my education than they do on the future king of England’s."
I'm kidding obviously but she makes a sound that’s almost a laugh anyway.
The coffee and the bread come out first. I watch her more than I eat. She wraps both hands around her mug and looks out at the snow that just started up again, deep in thought.
She catches me watching.
"You're deep in thought," I say.
"I'm not."
"You are. Care to share?"
She sighs, setting down the mug.
"You're not what I expected."
I lean back, curious to know what that means, "And what did you expect?"
"A spoiled athlete with impulse control issues and an allergy to accountability."
My mouth twitches. "Well, you were right about the last one. I’m deathly allergic to it. I break out in hives, EpiPen to the thigh… the whole thing."
She rolls her eyes playfully. "Can you ever be serious?"
"That’s interesting since most people think that being serious is all I can be," I say, arching a brow. "So then, if I’m not all the things you thought I was… what am I? Before I give you free rein to take a swipe at me, let me remind you that I haven’t paid for breakfast yet."
She chuckles. "I was going to say you’re… guarded. Like you don’t make a move without thinking three steps ahead."
"That doesn’t sound flattering."
"It is," she insists. "You’re deliberate. You don’t move unless you mean to. You’re calculating every cost."
I study her.
"What about you? You don't seem like someone who makes random, rash decisions. You have a drive in you that I rarely see in other people."
"What do you mean? I flew to Switzerland to chase down a man who absolutely didn’t want my help. I wouldn’t call that a solid plan."
I nod. "Yes, but you don’t take no for an answer. You don’t like to fail."
"More like I’m terrified to fail," she looks down at her coffee cup as if our conversation is bringing something up to the surface.
I wait.
"I didn’t pick my college because I loved it." She shakes her head, mostly to herself. "God… I don’t think I’ve ever admitted that out loud to anyone."
She says it quietly, and I don’t interrupt because I can feel there’s more coming.
"It was his college. My father’s," she adds. "I chose the same degree, and I went for the big fancy PR firm—the same one my father worked for right out of college."
"Your father worked for Legacy PR?"
She nods, sucking in her lower lip as if it helps her focus. Then she lets out a hollow breath that isn’t quite a laugh. "The irony isn’t lost on me that I chased the same thing he left me for."
I stay very still, though an unfamiliar instinct to reach out and touch her has me clenching my fist to keep me from doing it.
It could send her off course, and I can sense that she needs to say this out loud.
And maybe I need to hear it too. To understand her better.
To know where her scars lie, just like mine.
"That kind of ambition usually starts as a way to prove you were worth staying for."
"Yeah, and it didn’t work."
"It rarely does in my experience. What happened?"
"He left when I was two," she continues.
"He took a career-advancing job in London, then divorced my mom.
He used to call on my birthday and Christmas morning, but after a couple of years, even those stopped.
I don't even remember his voice..." she turns her coffee cup slowly. "I told myself the career was a coincidence. That I just happened to be good at it. That it had nothing to do with him. But when I invited him to my college graduation, and he didn’t bother to show, I knew it then. The diploma didn’t feel like the victory I thought it would. "
"Because?"
"Because I built myself into the exact version of success I thought would make a man who never showed up finally see me," she says. "I thought he’d realize for the first time that I’m worthy of his time and attention.
I still don't know if I'm here because I'm good at this job or if I’m here to prove something to a man who hasn’t bothered to think about me since the day he left. "
She exhales.
The words hang between us. The ugly truth she just admitted in the middle of this café, hundreds of miles from home, to a man who’s been refusing her help since the day she got here.
I know I have to give her a part of me in return. The parts of me that I wish she’d never see. My ugly truth, and the one that I keep hidden from everyone, but now I see that our upbringings weren’t that far apart.
"When I was younger," I say slowly, "I thought if I was exceptional enough, he'd respect it. Three Olympic medals. Graduated at the top of my class. NHL contract." A pause. "I kept thinking, this will be the thing. This will be the one he's proud of."
She looks up. Recognition in her eyes, as if she knows this story like the back of her hand. That’s always the hardest part—hope.
Hope that one morning they’ll wake up and realize that you’re worth it. That all the blood, sweat, and tears used to get you there weren’t all wasted.
"And?"
I lean back against the backrest of my chair. "He just expected more."
I see the moment of recognition in her eyes.
Two high achievers–both abandoned children. Different architecture, but the same uneven foundation. The kind of damage that’s caused by growing up trying to earn something that was never on offer.
"People leave when they get what they want," I say.
She's quiet for a moment.
"Or when they don't know how to stay."
My eyes find hers, the silence opening something between us that wasn’t unlocked before. Neither of us moves as we stare back at each other, both of us now understanding so much more about each other than we did when we walked in.
We spent the next hour eating, discussing what’s waiting back in Arizona for her, and what the rest of the season looked like for me.
Then I pay, and we walk out the door.
"So… what’s next?" she asks.
"Move back to the chalet for the last two days we’re here," I say. "I think we still have a few things to talk about."
She turns to me, rising onto her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around my neck.
"If you kiss me, I’ll think about it."
I pull her in tight, lowering my mouth until it hovers just a breath from hers.
"All you had to do was ask."
My lips sealed against hers in a bruising kiss, slow at first, then deeper, feeling the heat that sparked between us every time we touched.
When I finally pull back, her eyes are darker, mouth slightly swollen.
"Come on," I say. "Let’s get your things. I have some new ideas for the hot tub."
Her brows lift. "Do you now? Why does that not surprise me?"
I laced my fingers through hers and tugged her toward the hotel.
She laughs behind me, and it hits me all at once.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this light.