Chapter 3
The Storm Arrives
Reiteralm, Austria
FABIO
I drop onto the narrow bench just as the gondola doors slam shut behind me, a hollow thud that cuts off the last echo of my name from the station.
Good.
I let my poles clatter to the floor and tip my head back against the scratched plastic. The cable hums, the cabin rocks in the wind, a slow sway that settles somewhere behind my breastbone.
One quiet ride. Ten minutes without a stopwatch or a phone in my face. That’s all I want.
The last run was crap. Not “bad for me,” not “conditions were tricky,” just crap. Line too straight into the delay, late on the exit, no feeling in my legs. Max’s split call is still ringing in my ears—four-tenths behind at the second interval in training is not “fine, we’ll find it on race day.”
“Schei?e,” I mutter, eyes closing for a second.
I can still see the course: blue and red marching down the hill, flat light, that stubborn little ridge before the rollers. I know exactly what I need to change. I’ve known it for three days. Somehow, my body still refuses to do it the way my head draws it.
Mental game, I used to brag, is where I kill the others. “I’m good in the head,” I’d tell journalists, a bit smug. “Pressure makes me sharper.”
Easy to say when I was a rookie chasing Luca Costner instead of having a whole World Cup field on my heels. I used to be the hungry one. Now I feel like the thing being hunted.
The cabin swings over a lift tower, a small jolt as the wheels pick it up. Snowflakes slap against the windows, fat and wet. Up ahead, the line of cabins snakes into low cloud; the ridge with the training course has disappeared into white.
Great. More fun.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. For a second, I hope it’s Max with a video, a line tweak, something useful. When I fish it out, I see the name and feel my jaw tighten.
My thumb hovers over the screen before I even register that I’ve opened the message.
Fabio, we really need to talk. I’d prefer to keep this civil, so please return my things as agreed—the bracelet, the jacket, and the paintings. My manager will send an address.
Paintings?
I blink at the blue bubbles. Scroll up. There’s a photo of the stupid leather bracelet I remember—she liked taking it off me for red carpets and then putting it back on in front of cameras, like it meant something. The jacket too, fine. But the paintings?
I don’t own any paintings. I don’t even own a flat.
Another message pops in while I’m still frowning.
Also, my team is not happy about your silence. Please don’t make this uglier than it has to be.
My silence. That’s good.
I type out: Did you maybe leave them with me in a different universe?
I stare at it, then delete. No point. Anything that isn’t a direct yes will end up in a group chat I never want to see, screen shotted.
Instead, I thumb back a short: Fine. I’ll check with my parents. They have all my boxes.
It’s not a lie. Most of my life is still in my old room at home and a storage cage in Finkenberg. If there really are paintings, that’s where they’ll be. Or she’s decided I stole something I barely remember looking at.
I hit send and shove the phone back into my pocket before she can start typing again.
The cabin creaks as a gust hits it side-on. For a second, it swings hard enough that the bases of my skis thump against the rack outside. The cable whines, then settles.
Great. Ex drama in my pocket, shit snow under my edges, and wind. Perfect reset conditions.
I blow out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and rub a hand over my face. This is exactly the kind of thing I used to brag about being able to block out. “Nothing gets in when I’m on the hill,” I told some magazine last season: big smile, easy quote.
Now a text can follow me right up onto the gondola and sit in my chest like an extra kilo in the start gate.
Below, the station is already a toy village under the falling snow.
A few cabins ahead, I catch flashes of bright jackets through the glass—tourists twisting around for selfies, kids bouncing on the seats.
One of the cabins coming down has faces pressed right up to the window, hands waving as it passes underneath.
I used to love that: the noise, the recognition. Being the guy people pointed at.
Lately, it feels more like being under a microscope. Every bad run, every neutral face, every night out, someone films, someone posts. The ghosts multiply.
I shake my head, as if that will clear it.
Pathetic. I’m twenty-four, not forty-four.
I get to ski for a living. I’ve got Max tuning my skis like a maniac, a service team that would probably die for me, and still I’m up here sulking because a woman I should never have let into my hotel room is demanding paintings I don’t remember.
“Get over yourself,” I tell the empty cabin.
The cabin gives a tired shudder, and the hum of the cable dies. We swing once, twice, then stop, hanging there in the white.
“Na super,” I sigh, and lean my head back again.
The cables start humming again before I can decide whether to be annoyed or grateful for the extra time. The cabin lurches, swings, and then we’re moving, crawling through the white. Trees slide past in vague dark smudges, the piste below nothing but a strip of white.
By the time we reach the mid-station, my ten quiet minutes are down to maybe one. Because there are figures waiting.
The doors thump open, cold air knifing in. I brace for a rush of noise, a kid with their skis half across the threshold, somebody shouting my name.
Nothing.
For a second, it looks like I’ve got the cabin to myself after all. Then a small shape steps in, careful and quick, dragging a pair of long skis behind her.
Helmet, goggles, jacket that’s seen more than one season.
She swings the skis into the outside rack with practiced efficiency, then drops onto the bench opposite me and starts unbuckling her boots without looking up.
I raise my eyebrows; either she’s oversensitive about the boots, or they’re tighter than normal tourist boots.
I shoot a quick look at the long skis in the rack and decide on the latter.
A proper skier, then. I sigh, because that means she’ll definitely recognize me.
I feel my whole body do that automatic little flinch, the one I’ve picked up this season whenever someone shares an enclosed space with me. Half a second of bracing: the polite smile, the “Hi,” the “Sure, of course,” the phone angled just so.
She doesn’t move.
No phone. No sideways glances. No “Excuse me, are you…?”
She just stares at a scuff on the floor between us, breath puffing faintly inside her goggles. Then she turns her head, scanning the fog behind the window, like she has her own demons to chase.
Outside, the lift clamps bite, and we roll out of the station, back into the wind. The cabin sways, and I realize I’m still holding my shoulders up by my ears.
Okay. Relax. Not every stranger wants a piece of you.
I let my back hit the plastic again and follow her gaze to the skis on the rack. White top sheet, a brand I don’t recognize, race plate, proper bindings. Long skis, unbuckled boots, race bindings.
So. Not just a regular tourist. Interesting.
The wind picks up, a low howl around the cabin that makes the cables sing. For a moment, we glide cleanly, pylons ticking past somewhere in the fog.
Then the hum cuts.
The cabin shudders, swings once, twice, then hangs. The sudden quiet has weight to it—no cable vibration, no passing cabins, just the creak of metal and the wind trying to jostle us loose.
She jerks, head snapping up. Her gaze slams into mine, and her eyes go wide, really seeing me for the first time.
There it is. The tiny hitch in her breath, the flicker of recognition. I can almost count the beats: helmet, goggles, face, oh.
I brace for the rest. The phone, the smile, the “Sorry, but could we…”
Instead, she swallows, blinks once, and looks away. Down at her boots, at the scuff on the floor, anywhere but at me. As if embarrassed to even look at me. Weird reaction, but I get it.
The cabin rocks again, a slow, lazy sway.
“Na super,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
She huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh, then shakes her head and looks away again.
Okay. That’s… new.
Her pocket starts ringing then, sharp in the cramped space.
She fumbles out her phone and answers on the first buzz in a language that’s all soft consonants and slippery vowels—Polish or Czech, if I had to bet.
Her voice is low and smooth, the kind that would sit nicely in my ear even if she were reading a weather report.
I don’t understand the words, but I understand the tone.
Tight, controlled. Friends or family, maybe a boyfriend, checking to see if she’s freaking out in a stopped gondola.
She keeps her eyes firmly off me while she talks, lashes lowered, mouth quirking once like she’s trying to reassure whoever’s on the other end and herself at the same time.
The more I look, the more pieces slot into place—sleek cheekbones, a mouth that looks like it laughs easily, if she ever lets it. And would probably feel good under mine if I ever lost my mind enough to try.
I shake my head at the thought.
As if my wayward dick has not brought me enough trouble already.
When she finally hangs up, the silence rushes back in and settles between us, thick and a little awkward.
“Everything alright?” I ask in English to test it. Seeing if she wants to keep pretending I’m just another guy in a helmet.
She startles, just a little, then nods.
“Yeah. My friends.” She answers in German instead, clean and careful. “They don’t like me stuck in here.”
She talks in German. So, she knows exactly who she’s stuck here with…and still isn’t reaching for her phone. For some reason, that’s starting to itch under my skin almost as much as the opposite.