Chapter 12 Nicole
For reasons that made absolutely zero sense, Nicole found herself once again standing in the shadows of the Snow Park Lodge at the base of Deer Valley, ski boots pinching and stomach churning.
Why did she keep agreeing to this?
She could have just stayed at Snowberry to help Mom and MJ decorate the tree, but she didn’t want to bail on Brianna, especially after Gracie had agreed to cover for them at the shed for a couple of hours so they could go afternoon skiing.
Knowing that today would be “the day,” Nicole had laid in bed that morning staring at the ceiling and asking herself if she was out of her mind.
And yet here she was…trying again. Terrified, sweating in the chilly weather despite the bright pink jacket she wore, vibrating from head to toe.
“I really think today is going to go better than with your dad.” Brianna bounced slightly in her ski boots. Her cheeks were rosy from the wind, but she hadn’t even zipped up her jacket—a blinding neon blue—as she took in the action on the snow-covered base of the mountain.
Nicole gave a weak smile, pulling on her face covering. “I appreciate your optimism, Bri. But optimism never got a chicken down the mountain.”
“You’re not a chicken!”
“Tell that to my stomach—the one that’s about to hurl.”
Bri laughed, tossing a thick blond ponytail behind her shoulder as she buckled her helmet. “No one is going to hurl.”
Nicole wasn’t so sure.
“Come on.” Brianna held out her gloved hand and pulled Nicole to her feet, jutting her chin toward the rack where the skis waited ominously for their death slide. “We’ll take Carpenter up, and I swear we can stick to Success. It’s a super mellow green run.”
“No bunny hill?” She swallowed a lump of nerves that rose in her throat. “The Snowflake lift looks awfully inviting.”
Brianna shot her a look and pulled a pair of goggles over her eyes. “I don’t do bunny hills, Nic, and neither should you.”
Nicole groaned audibly as they pulled their two sets of skis and poles off the rack and plopped them into the fluffy snow.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t skied in nineteen years—not counting one run down the bunny hill with Dad—Nicole knew every run, trail, and lift in Deer Valley. In all the surrounding resorts, too.
And she knew Success was a basic green run. A trainer for kids and beginners. Aside from throwing yourself off a cliff, it was nearly impossible to get legitimately hurt on a gentle slope like that.
But her trauma had teeth. It clawed up her spine every time she stood at the top of a ski run, no matter how mild, no matter how tame.
But this time she had Brianna, a great instructor and trusted friend. Without Dad, it felt like the emotional stakes were lower, and Nicole might actually get out of her fear-addled head and let her body glide and slide. Even fall—just not into a tree well.
Nicole didn’t care if she let Brianna down on the slopes. They’d laugh about it. But Dad was a champion skier, and he was her father, the man whose approval and praise Nicole craved deeply.
But with her bestie, there should—theoretically, at least—be far less pressure. She hoped.
Nicole swallowed hard and got into the line for Carpenter Express. Nearby, kids in pastel helmets and instructors in matching jackets darted around her like cartoon characters, fearless and fast.
Nicole tugged at her mittens, hating how rigid her body already felt.
Brianna glanced at her and gave her a gentle nudge with the tip of her pole. “Hey. You got this.”
No, actually, she didn’t have it.
She took a calming breath as they took their lift seats and started the move. No one who skied was immune to the beauty of a ride up the mountain. The Carpenter lift was slow and scenic, and as stunning as any of them.
All around, the sky was a bright winter blue, cloudless and peaceful. The sun lit the crystalline snow so the whole mountain sparkled like sugar. Swinging in a light breeze, they passed over tightly spaced aspens and winding trails peppered with powdery moguls.
Nicole looked down and watched skiers in the distance carving down the side of the mountain in perfect S-curves.
“You good?” Brianna grinned brightly, her excitement to get on the slopes palpable.
“No, but you’re a true friend for staying on Success with me.” Nicole nudged her. “I’m sure Empire is calling your name.”
“Oh, please.” She waved a dismissive gloved hand. “Empire will be there all season. I’d rather ski a hundred greens with you all day than rip the crazy double blacks by myself.”
Nicole rested her head on Brianna’s shoulder, grateful for such a dear friend. “I just want to be able to tell him I did it.”
“You will,” her friend said, knowing exactly who Nicole meant. “It’ll be fun, Nic.”
“Yeah? Define fun.”
“That.” Brianna pointed to the rugged ridges and hundreds of trees.
Nothing about any of that was fun anymore. It had been once—to a little girl who felt fearless and fast. A six-, seven-, eight-year-old who had the most supportive father cheering her on down every run.
Mom had skied back then, too, and they frequently went as a family. But it wasn’t Cindy’s voice she heard in her head. And it wasn’t Cindy who’d been with her the day she nearly died.
They reached the top and skied off the lift. Nicole wobbled slightly but managed to stay upright. The snow was groomed, even after a full morning of December skiing, soft but packed.
The Success trail waited just off to the right, wide and easy.
She could do this, she told herself. Anyone who’d taken one lesson could do this. A girl who’d once imagined that she would be the championship skier her father was? She certainly could do this.
“And we’re off,” Bri called, giving herself a push toward the trail. “Success on Success!”
This run started out like most greens—wide, open, and relatively shallow. Nicole ignored the fact that she was surrounded by kids and beginners and focused on keeping her skis somewhat parallel as she made tiny S’s in the snow and used her poles to push forward.
The run took her through some scattered trees, which Nicole tried to ignore, and then shifted into a short, steeper section before leveling out.
She skidded to a stop at the top of the hill, gulping hard.
“You got this, girl!” Bri shouted as she flew past and headed down the hill like a pro, gliding and swerving with a freakish amount of confidence and grace. “Woohoo!”
Nicole remembered when she could ski like that. As a child! She remembered the feeling of the edges of her skis slicing beautifully through the snow, the S-curves winding in her wake like something out of a YouTube tutorial.
A person didn’t completely lose that skill, did they? Only if fear erased all muscle memory.
Today, fear made her knees feel like Jell-O in lead containers, and she struggled to get a deep breath of cold, crisp air.
“Just do it, Nic,” she ground out the words to herself before pushing forward down the slope.
Ten turns into the steep part, her legs locked up. The slope felt more abrupt than it looked from the top. The trees clustered tighter. Her breath quickened.
Bri was ahead, glancing back, encouraging her. “Just edge into the hill a little more, Nic! Let the skis do the work!”
But Nicole couldn’t think. She could only feel—her heart thudding, her breath hitching. Her poles trembled in her gloves. Her knees wanted to bend but her thighs screamed. One ski slid faster than the other. They crossed, and her weight shifted the wrong way.
And down she went. Hard.
Right into a snowbank on the side of the run.
Not a terrible fall, but it didn’t matter. Both her stupid beginner-level skis had popped off her feet, and her poles were splayed across the run ten feet away.
Humiliation flushed through her in a hot wave.
Brianna skidded to a stop next to her, effortlessly grabbing Nicole’s poles on the way. “You okay, Nic?”
Nicole nodded quickly, still sitting in the snow, breathing hard. “Fine. Totally fine. This is hard. Are you sure it’s a green? It seems so steep.”
“It’s just that one part.” She held out a hand. “Here, let me help you up. You’re good.”
But her throat was tight and her eyes were burning and she was not good.
Nicole shook her head. She didn’t want help. She didn’t want anything except for this very, very bad idea to be over.
She got herself up slowly, brushing off snow. “Let’s just get down,” she muttered.
It took them twenty minutes to get back to Snow Park Lodge. Nicole skidded down the rest of Success like a terrified beginner, every turn a negotiation. She barely heard Brianna’s encouraging words.
By the time they popped off their skis and clomped inside, she was shaking with frustration.
The inside of the lodge was warm and golden, with antler chandeliers hung above cozy wooden tables and Christmas lights everywhere.
A roaring fire crackled in the stone hearth at the far end of the room, flanked by snow-sprayed artificial trees covered in tinsel.
Skiers ended their days sharing stories and snacks and bourbon maple cider.
Nicole let the warmth envelop her as she made her way to a table by the window and dropped into the seat with a grunt of bone-deep frustration.
Brianna peeled off her gloves. “Okay. That was…a good start.”
Nicole rested her forehead in her hands. “I can’t do this.”
“You can. You took a fall. You didn’t die. You’ll try again.”
Nicole sighed. “Maybe I’m just not meant to ski.”
Bri leaned in. “Do you want to ski again?”
The truth was, she wasn’t sure. Part of her wanted to conquer this. She wanted to feel that rush again, the speed, the freedom, the sheer power of beating the mountain.
But there was also a part of her that wanted to be a non-skier who hid in the lodge with a mug of cider and watched everyone else have a blast.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Rough day out there?”
Nicole lifted her head at the male voice, blinking at a man who stood a few feet away, ski jacket on, goggles around his neck, gorgeous blue eyes trained on her.
“I heard the conditions off the Snowflake lift are brutal,” he added with a tease in his voice.
The ski patrol guy! The one who’d helped her up last week when she was here with her dad. “Cameron?” she asked, suddenly remembering his name.
“Yep. So you can’t be that rattled by the mountain,” he said, taking a step forward and adding a smile that was somewhere between crooked and adorable. “Your memory still works.”
He was in uniform—navy ski pants, a red jacket with a white cross on the shoulder. It all only made him even better-looking. “Nicole, right?”
“Right,” she said, sitting up straighter. “You seem to show up at my low points in life.”
“I better do something about my timing.” He grinned at her and glanced at Brianna. “You’re an instructor, right? I’ve seen you giving lessons.”
She nodded. “Sometimes. I’m Brianna, and I’m here as best friend, not instructor.”
“Nice to meet you, Brianna.” He instantly returned his gaze to Nicole, looking concerned. “I thought you were calling it for good last time. I’m glad to see you’re not a quitter.”
Oh, but she was such a quitter. A capital Q Quitter. The quittiest of all the quitters. She never wanted to put those planks on her feet again and she never wanted to lose control or fall in snow or…or…
Wait. Was she a quitter? Really?
“Yeah, I’m trying,” she said, sounding so weak but at least she didn’t disagree.
“That’s all you can do,” he said. “Otherwise, the mountain wins that battle.”
She shrugged. “I fell on Success, which pretty much means the mountain won the whole war.”
“That hill halfway down?” He shrugged. “It’s not really a green. I mean, it’s part of a green, but I’ve fallen there before.”
Probably when he was four, but she smiled at him, appreciating the kind words.
“Nicole’s working on getting back into it after a long hiatus,” Brianna said, putting a hand on her arm. “She’s killing it.”
Or it was killing her, but she rooted for a smile. “Thanks for the pep talk, you two. This might be my last attempt, though.”
“No!” Bri exclaimed. “We’re going back out there in ten minutes.”
Oh, no, they were not.
“Listen, I gotta go,” Cameron said, glancing outside. “I just popped in for a second and saw you. I like to check on my frequent…fallers.”
Nicole laughed. “Guess I’m in that club.”
He leaned on the back of the chair across from her, holding her gaze with those insanely blue eyes. “I’d be happy to give you a lesson, if you wanted. No charge. And I promise I know every mellow run at DV. Secret ones that no one else can find.”
She ignored the rush of butterflies that fluttered through her. “That’s nice, Cameron, but…I’m sure you have much more important things to do.”
He cocked his head, looking like he didn’t agree with that. “Well, the offer stands. Gotta run.” With a nod, he turned and managed to walk gracefully away in his boots, leaving both of them looking a little…dazed.
“Umm. What just happened?” Brianna stared at her. “Did you actually turn down that gorgeous hunk of ski patrol?”
Nicole took a breath, a little unable to believe it herself. “He was just being nice.”
“Very nice. And very cute, friendly, kind, and obviously available. What is wrong with you, Nicole Kessler?”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “He wants a girl who can ski or—oh, I know.” The realization hit. “He wants access to my dad. He practically asked for an autograph when we ran into him here last week.”
“Sorry, but no. He’s completely into you.”
Nicole gave her a look.
Bri grinned, eyeing the slopes outside. “All I’m saying is, if you need more reasons to keep skiing? He might be one.”
“I don’t need reasons to keep skiing,” she said glumly.
“I need a reason to not be so afraid of falling in the snow.” She closed her eyes, disappointed that her fear of skiing might have cost her a ski date with a totally great guy.
“So, I probably should see a shrink after all these years, not a ski instructor.”
“That I’m not, but I can get you a drink.” Brianna pushed up. “You just sit here and…”
Nicole turned and looked out the window, catching sight of Cameron’s ski patrol jacket as he zoomed over to the base.
“And watch the wildlife,” she finished.