Chapter 11 #3
He's still wearing his team jacket when he arrives, race suit zipped up, hair damp from the shower.
Fourth place. He told me over text that he was happy with it, that the course was technical and brutal, and he skied clean.
But when he sees me standing by the window, arms wrapped around myself, his smile dies.
"What's wrong?"
I turn to face him. "We need to talk."
"Yeah, I figured that out when you asked me to meet you in a conference room." He closes the door behind him and leans against it. "You couldn't come to the finish? Or meet me at the hotel bar like a normal person?"
"I needed somewhere private."
"This is private?" He gestures at the soulless beige walls. "This is a place people go to get fired."
The comparison stings more than it should.
"My father knows," I say. "About us. All of it."
Nico goes very still. "How much is all of it?"
"Reiteralm. The gondola. Gardena. Everything." I watch his face shift from confusion to anger to something colder. "He had me followed."
"Jesus Christ, élise."
"He also saw the tabloids. The photos from Kitzbühel, Wengen, Adelboden. There are articles. Bad ones." I can't finish. The Instagram comment burns in my head. Bitches like her bite.
Nico's jaw tightens. "I know. Katharina showed me this morning. Right before the press conference, where half the questions were about you instead of my race."
Guilt twists sharply in my chest. "I'm sorry."
"Are you?" His voice is flat. "This was your plan. Go public, control the narrative, make it polished. How's that working out?"
"Nico—"
"What did your father say?"
I take a breath. "He wants to meet you. At the Tauernblick chalet. Wants us to behave like a grown-up couple. Let him manage us."
"Manage us."
"Like assets."
Silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating.
"So we do it," Nico says finally. "We meet him. We play nice."
I stare at him. "You think it's that simple?"
"Yeah." He pushes off the door. "You said he knows. Fine. Now we don't have to hide. We do the dinner, show him we're serious. Maybe he backs off."
"He won't."
"Or maybe this is just how it works." His voice rises. "You introduce the guy, you sit through the dinner, and then you get to live your life."
"That's not how it works with him."
"You don't know that."
"I do." My hands are shaking. "He'll smile, he'll congratulate us, and then he'll spend the rest of our lives reminding us we owe him. Your contract, your skis, your career, your woman. All of it tied to him."
"So what?" Nico's eyes flash. "You think I can't handle one dinner? You think I'm not good enough for your father?"
"That's not what I said."
"It's what you meant." He's right in front of me now, a flush creeping up his neck. "I survived Kitzbühel. I survived the cameras and the Race Club. I can survive this."
"It's not about surviving—"
"Then what is it?" His voice cracks. "Because it looks like you're ashamed of me. Like the second he wants to meet me properly, you panic."
"I'm not ashamed of you."
"Then why won't you let me try?" There's something raw in his voice now. "Maybe I'll use the wrong fork. Maybe I'll say something stupid. But maybe he'll see I'm serious. That I can be—" He stops, jaw tight.
"Be what?"
"Someone who belongs in your world," he finishes quietly.
The words sting sharp and immediate. I've always known this was part of it.
The way he tried so hard at the Race Club, eyes darting to the right people, laughing a beat too loud, like a kid pressing his face against a bakery window.
The way he fucks me sometimes, that edge in his voice when he calls me princess, when he makes me beg, like he's claiming something he won just by getting me under him.
Maybe that's all I've ever been. A trophy with a last name.
Then I remember. The way I use him, too. The rebellion I get from being ruined by him, dragged down from my pedestal into snow and sweat and something real. The thrill of watching my father's world crack every time Nico touches me.
He's not the only one being unfair.
The anger dies in my throat.
"You don't want my world, Nico," I say finally, voice quieter now. "You just think you do."
"You don't get to tell me what I want."
"And you don't get to drag me back into a cage because you're curious."
His face changes. "That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." My hands shake. "If you go to that dinner, it won't end there. He'll own you. Your contract, your career, every decision. All of it tied to being the perfect—" I can't finish.
"The perfect what?"
"Son-in-law. Brand ambassador. Moreau asset." The words taste bitter. "It's the same cage I've been in my whole life, and I can't watch you walk into it."
"You don't know—"
"I do." I turn away, stare at the ugly beige wall. "I can't do it. I won't."
"But you wanted this." He turns away, runs a hand through his hair. "You posted the photos, you dragged me to that party, you made us public. And now you're backing out?"
"I'm backing out because I don't want to watch him turn you into something you're not."
I walk to him, cup his face, force him to look at me. His eyes are angry, confused, and I don't understand why. I'm the one risking everything here. But I can't fight him and the rest of the world at the same time.
"You belong on the hill, Nico. With the cowbells and the fans and the wildness. Not in marble rooms with men who think of you as an asset. If I bring you there, you'll hate me for it. And I'll hate myself."
Silence.
The anger on his face shifts. Not gone, but something else sliding underneath. Something heavier.
"So what did you tell him?" His voice is quieter now, careful.
"That I'd do the dinner." I swallow. "But I'm not going back. I left. I have some money saved. Seven thousand euros. I'll find a flat, I′ll get by."
"For how long?"
"A month or two, maybe three if I'm careful."
He just looks at me. His jaw works like he's biting back words.
"And then what?"
"I don't know." The admission burns. "My Eiswerk job is done. I'll get more influencer contracts, maybe freelance PR. I just need time—"
"élise." He says my name like it hurts. "Do you have any idea what things cost?"
Heat crawls up my neck. "I'm not stupid."
"I didn't say you were." His hands drop. "But seven thousand doesn't last long. Rent, food, bills, gas. It goes fast."
"I know that."
"Do you?" There's no cruelty in it, just exhaustion. "You just lit your whole life on fire for me, and I don't think you've counted the cost."
I want to argue. But the way he's looking at me, like he's already doing math I don't know how to do, makes the words die.
"I'll figure it out," I say quieter.
"Yeah." He exhales hard. "We will. Move in with me."
I stop. "What?"
"I have a flat. In Reiteralm. It's small, but we'd be together."
"You have a flat?"
"I bought it last year. With my winnings and a loan." He's talking fast now. "My mother said it was stupid to cut eighteen hundred a month out of my earnings, but a flat is a good investment, right?"
"Every month?" The number feels impossible. "For how long?"
"Twenty years."
I stare at him. "You'll still be paying when you're almost forty?"
He huffs a breath, somewhere between a laugh and frustration. "That's how mortgages work, élise."
Heat crawls up my neck. I know what a mortgage is. I just never imagined what it might be like to pay for something for twenty years.
"Right," I say quietly. "I'm being stupid."
The silence stretches.
"Nico," I whisper. "I don't have a job. I don't have an income. I can't just move in and live off you like some—"
"Like some what? Like someone I love?"
The words stop me cold. He's said it before, in the heat of arguments or tangled in sheets, but never like this. Quiet. Steady. Like a fact he's decided to build his life around.
He leans his forehead against mine.
"You said you have influencer contracts. That's something. And I have my salary, prize money. We'll make it work."
"For how long? Until the season ends? Until you realize I'm dead weight?"
"You're not dead weight."
"I'm a liability."
"I don't know how to fix this." His voice cracks, raw and young and terrified. "But I can't just let you go."
I want to argue. I want to tell him this is a terrible idea, that we're two kids playing house with no plan. That he's offering me his only safe space because he thinks he has to save me, and I'm taking it because I don't know how else to survive.
But I'm so tired of being smart. So tired of calculating every move, every risk, every price.
"Okay," I whisper.
"Okay?"
"Okay. I'll move in. We'll figure it out."
He kisses me then, hard and desperate, like he's trying to seal the decision before either of us can take it back. I kiss him back, tasting salt and fear and something that might be hope if we're both stupid enough to believe it.
When we finally pull apart, we're both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, hands still tangled.
"This is insane," I say.
"Yeah," he agrees.
"We have no idea what we're doing."
"Not a clue."
"Your flat is probably the size of my closet."
"Probably smaller."
I laugh, and it comes out broken. "We're going to destroy each other."
"Maybe." His thumb traces my jaw. "Or maybe we'll grow old together.”