Chapter 7 Nicole
By the second ski run, Nicole was utterly delighted to realize she was having fun. So. Much. Fun.
The conditions were great, the trails were groomed and, true to his word, her personal ski patrol had kept them on the easiest hills and greenest of trails.
“Homeward Bound,” Cameron said, tapping the trail sign with the end of his pole as they slid off the top of Bald Mountain—Baldy, as any self-respecting local would call it. “That run is cruisy, pretty, and easy to feel like a hero.”
He didn’t need a lightweight run to look like a hero. He could have leaned against a fence post and it would have been swoony, but she liked that he wasn’t trying to impress or intimidate her. He’d promised a low-key ski day, and so far he’d kept his word.
He was attentive, encouraging, and respectful, even gentle, in his way of handling the fact that she’d had an experience that had traumatized her.
After they pushed off, Nicole projected her focus outward, leaning into big turns and a gentle rhythm, just letting muscle memory return.
Hips to the fall line, hands forward, breathe.
Beside her, Cameron skated a few strokes and then, to her utter dismay and secret thrill, turned around and began to ski backward, facing her.
“You’re doing great,” he said, tugging down his mask so she could hear the warm steadiness in his voice. “See? I told you. Natural.”
She snorted. “If I’m a natural, why do my calves feel like they’re doing calculus?”
“Because they are,” he said solemnly. “Skier math. Very advanced.”
The mountain rolled out like a white ribbon. At every rise, Deer Valley unfurled another view of tree-clad hills, glades smoothed by wind, the curve of a ridge that broke and spilled toward town.
Cameron made a grand, exaggerated hockey stop that showered her with a dusting of snow. Then he executed a wobbly little spin that ended with him sprawled on the snow, limbs theatrically akimbo.
“Man down,” Nicole announced, laughing.
“Tragic,” he said into the snow. “Please send immediate assistance. Ideally in the form of a hug.”
She skied past his outstretched pole and gave it a playful tap. “Denied.”
He popped up with ridiculous ease, brushed off, and fell into pace beside her, forward this time. “Some first responder you’d make.”
“Not much of one. Also, falling on purpose negates your assist.”
Laughing together, they slid through a mellow S-turn where the run skirted the trees, which she steadfastly ignored. Not today, old memories.
“Looks like it might pick up later,” he said, tipping his chin at the thickening cloud band building from the west.
“Could be a snow globe and an avalanche,” she said.
“Yep.” He squinted through his goggles. “Skies are capricious up here.”
She smiled. “Big words for a ski bum.”
“Don’t make me race you, Nicky.”
She cracked up at the name, and kept going to where the world fell away at an overlook. Below them, Park City sprawled like a postcard.
She caught glimpses of tiny buildings, a line of cars inching along, Main Street’s lights blinking like a Christmas tree. It hit hard to realize how much she’d missed this extraordinary perspective of her world, the thrill of looking down from the top of a mountain.
They stood in quiet for a moment, poles planted, goggles up, puffing out breaths as they took it in.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said at last, which felt like saying a wave was wet. “It makes me feel…safe.” She gave a quick laugh. “Which is the last thing I expected to feel up here.”
He smiled down at her. “Then this was the biggest win.”
Nodding, she held his gaze. “It’s you,” she said softly. “You make me feel that way.”
He started to say something, a joke maybe, but closed his mouth. “I’m glad,” he said. “Means I’m doing my first responder job.”
She had a feeling it was more than that, but didn’t argue. Turning back, she looked out at contours of the resort. Tucked into the middle distance, off a shoulder of trees that guarded a little pocket of slope, she noticed a small wooden structure.
“What’s that cabin down there?” she asked, pointing with her pole.
Cameron turned, peered, and smiled. “That, my friend, is the Powder Keg.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an ancient DV shack the resort used to use to stash extra tools and old signage, and for patrols to rest or ride out storms,” he told her.
“They moved to a more modern outpost, and the patrol has adopted it as a, uh, social center. I don’t spend too much time there anymore, but the younger patrollers party there.
When I go, it’s to make sure no one’s started a fire or broken a law. ”
“The Powder Keg? Cute name.”
“Folklore has it that someone tapped a keg after a record snow dump in 2011 and the name stuck. It has a vibe, though.”
“Can I see it?”
He glanced at her, a sparkle in his blue eyes. “Only if you follow the wipeout and whiteout rules.”
“What are they?”
“First timers have to tell their biggest, baddest wipeout story.”
“You already know mine,” she said without hesitation. “And the whiteout rule?”
“You have to carve your name in the whiteout wall if you get snowed in.”
She sucked in a breath. “Will we?”
He laughed and eyed the sky again. “If the snow picks up, we’ll haul out.
But…” He shifted his weight, considering the slopes.
“Not gonna lie, getting there is a touch tougher than Homeward Bound. Not black diamond tough, but not as easy as we’ve skied all day.
One short lift, then down a blue that gets steep in the middle.
I’ll be with you the whole way. Unless you’d rather not. ”
She didn’t let herself think too hard. “Let’s do it,” she said, the wind catching the words. “I want to see this famous Powder Keg.”
“More like infamous, but, yeah, let’s go.”
They slid off Homeward Bound where it widened and crossed a connector that fed into the lift maze for a short, steady chair. Next to each other on the lift, they shared a look through their goggles, their eyes crinkling in conspiratorial smiles.
As they rode, she felt a jitter or two, but let it pass. In a minute, they slid off the lift and headed right toward a drop-in marked as intermediate.
The first pitch looked steeper than she liked, but Cameron pulled up beside her and planted both poles.
“We’ll do it in little bits,” he said, his easy tone like a balm.
She took a breath and pointed her skis. “Let’s go.”
The first turn happened because she made it happen, not because panic twisted her legs in the right direction. The second came the same way, her whole body feeling like it was in charge.
By her third turn, she let the mountain do some of the work. When she checked to a stop by a towering pine tree that probably covered a deep well, she waited for low-key panic to kick in.
It didn’t.
“Okay?” Cameron asked, matching her stop with ridiculous grace.
“So okay,” she assured him.
The middle of the run was a little hairy, making her thighs sing with the effort, but then it all flattened as the cabin came into full view, nestled in a wind-carved notch like a secret place.
It was bigger than she’d expected, with a pitched roof and stone chimney, but made entirely from aged logs. Someone had hung about a thousand Christmas lights that she suspected never got taken down and tied gold ribbons around stairs up to the front door.
He popped his skis off and stuck them in the snow with a crunch. Nicole followed, grateful to release her bindings and march over the snow in boots.
Inside, the Powder Keg smelled like old wood and wet wool and maybe a little beer, which seemed appropriate for the name. A fieldstone fireplace filled one wall, with a stack of kindling and a note written in black Sharpie: Don’t be a jerk. Replace what you burn.
A slouchy sofa of faded green sprawled through a living room, sharing the space with some bean bag chairs. A mini-fridge hummed next to a sticker-covered Yeti cooler. An old percolator sat on a shelf with a jar of coffee, all under about seven avalanche beacons hanging in a festive row.
Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to decorate a small artificial Christmas tree with some cheap ornaments and clumps of old-school silver tinsel that hung like frozen tears.
“I know, I know,” Cameron said with an apologetic shrug. “This place is half frat house, half cozy cabin, all…mountain.”
“It’s perfect,” Nicole said, perching on a bench by the front door to take her boots off while Cameron toed out of his. “I mean, if you had to design a fort for brave kids, it would have looked like this.”
He laughed at that, crossing the space to open a door to a back room. He glanced in, then closed it.
“Some brave, some just reckless, but”—he jogged up a set of stairs, slowing at the top to look through a wooden railing at a loft—“no one is here. I’m not surprised, since it’s Christmas week.”
As she poked around, Cameron found a lighter and coaxed a fire to life, and soon heat crawled into the room and into Nicole’s bones. They slipped out of their jackets, tossed them on a bean bag, and settled on the green couch.
“Lots of chatter about a weather system on my radio,” he said, picking up a small device clipped to his jacket, frowning at the screen. “But this looks bigger than the models said. If gusts hit forty, lifts’ll shut down.”
“But we can ski to the base from here, right?” she asked, glancing toward the window to see snow swirling harder.
“With me, you can,” he assured her.
Relaxing a little, she turned to him. “So what’s your best wipeout story?” she asked. “I know you’re not a first-timer but I want to hear it.”
His smile faded, giving her the impression it was a doozy.
“Break anything?” she asked when he didn’t answer right away.
His mouth set and he looked right at the fire. “It’s not…pretty. Or funny.”
He sounded so serious. “I think that’s the whole point of a wipeout story. Mine certainly wasn’t pretty or funny.”
His brows flicked. “Let’s pick another topic.”
She inched back, more from the tone than the request, but she nodded.