Chapter 8
Not Waiting In the Line
ZLATA
I let him pick the restaurant. Something close to his team hotel but not in it, nothing with white tablecloths, nothing with TV screens showing race replays.
In the end, we settled on a small place just off the main street, all wood and low lamplight and too many candles.
It looks more like a family Sunday spot than a date, which helps. A little.
I get there five minutes early and immediately hate myself for it. Sitting alone at a table for two in my best black sweater, picking at the edge of the napkin, feels too much like the old days—waiting for Peter to finish talking to everyone else before he remembered he came with me.
This is different, I remind myself. I chose this. I could have asked for more sex and nothing else.
The door opens, and a gust of cold air sneaks in with him. No helmet, no race suit, no sponsor logos. Just jeans, a dark shirt, a jacket that looks like it cost more than my entire ski setup, and that same focused look he gets in inspection photos, only softer around the edges.
“Hi,” he says, shrugging out of the jacket. “Sorry, did you wait long?”
“Two minutes,” I say. “I’ll survive.”
He smiles, a real one this time, not the fan-line version. “Good.” He hangs his jacket on the back of his chair, and for a second, I just look at him. No goggles, no buff. He looks younger and older at once. Less like my phone screen, more like a person.
The waitress appears, drops menus, and rattles off the specials. We order quickly—soup, schnitzel, something involving potatoes and cheese, a glass of wine for me, mineral water for him. Race weekend rules.
Once she leaves, silence settles over the table, thick enough to cut. The last time we were this close, there was a storm trying to shake us off the mountain.
“So,” he says finally. “This is already an upgrade. No swinging.”
“True,” I say. “Floor seems stable so far.”
He huffs a laugh, then sobers. “Thank you for coming.”
“I wasn’t sure I would,” I admit. “I almost texted you that I preferred cable cars.”
“You still can,” he says, but there’s a flicker in his eyes that says he’s glad I didn’t.
The wine arrives; I wrap my hands around the glass, buying time. “You said you’re not built for almost,” I say. “So here we are. Not almost. Properly.”
“Properly,” he echoes. “With cutlery and everything.”
We circle each other a little at first. Safe topics.
He asks about my day; I tell him about the nice snow on the upper red, the ice patch by the third pylon, the group of Czech juniors I spotted in questionable race suits. He listens like it’s a course report that matters.
I ask about training; he rolls his eyes at himself. “Better,” he says. “Still not where I want it. My body knows what to do, my head is busy being dramatic.”
“Dramatic how?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I used to think I was very good at the mental game. Pressure makes me sharper, all that bullshit you say to cameras. Then you start missing podiums, and suddenly every kid in the field smells blood. You feel… hunted, not hungry.”
The soup arrives. We eat a few spoons in silence. I can feel him watching me between bites, like he’s waiting for the other boot to drop.
I set my spoon down. “Can I say something potentially rude?”
“Please,” he says. “Everyone else is polite to me. It’s exhausting.”
I trace a circle in a smear of condensation on my water glass. “I almost didn’t come because I didn’t want to feel like… just a fan at your table.”
He goes very still. “Just a fan,” he repeats.
“Yeah.” I shrug, trying to make it sound offhand.
“You know how it looks. People lining up with phones, waiting for their thirty seconds and a selfie. I spent seven years standing in a line like that for a man who barely remembered I was there half the time. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again. ”
His brows draw together. “You think that’s what this is? You, in a line?”
“Isn’t it?” The words tumble faster now, tripping over each other.
“I know what I am to you, on paper. A Czech girl who knows your split times stood in your fan line once and got lucky in a storm. I know to you I’m just another fan who wants to get in your pants.
And obviously I am a fan,” I add, dry. “A big fan. But that was the reason I did not want the dinner.”
The confession hangs between us, raw and too loud.
My heart tries to vacate my body through my throat.
I know I went too far. But I decided on honesty, because that’s how we started.
And there is a little part of me that does not give a damn about what he thinks, because we’re one night away from being over, anyway.
He doesn’t answer right away. He looks at me, really looks, like he’s inspecting a tricky offset. When he speaks, his voice is quieter.
“Why is it so important to you?” he asks. “Not being ‘just a fan’.”
Because that was my whole job for seven years, I think. Stand there, smile, be chosen or not.
“Because I want to be… me,” I say instead.
“Not somebody’s plus-one. Not a prop. If I sit here with you as a fan, I’ll spend the whole night reading the room—checking who recognizes you, who thinks I’m ridiculous, who’s already writing the story in their head.
And I’m tired. I just want to eat potatoes and talk about racing with someone who understands what edge angles do to your thighs. ”
His mouth curves, slow. “I do have very strong opinions about edge angles,” he says.
“That’s not the point,” I say, but my own lips twitch.
He leans forward, forearms on the table.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I don’t see you as just a fan.
If this were about fans, I’d have answered one of the hundred DMs I get every weekend.
I didn’t. I answered you. Because you know what a good outside ski looks like.
Because you have your own races. Because in that cabin, you felt more like a colleague in miniature than someone from the crowd. ”
Colleague in miniature. It shouldn’t hit as hard as it does. My throat tightens.
“That’s a terrible compliment,” I say, to cover it. “Miniature colleague.”
He smiles. “I’m terrible at compliments,” he agrees. “But I’m not lying.”
The main course arrives, mercifully breaking the intensity.
Plates land between us in a burst of smells—fried crumbs, lemon, hot potatoes slick with butter and parsley.
We talk over schnitzel, technically, about my Masters training group and his younger teammates, about the mental whiplash of going from chasing Luca Costner to being chased by Thomas Kern.
I nod at the right moments, ask questions, but half my brain is busy cataloging the way his sleeves pull tight over his forearms when he cuts his meat, how his voice drops a fraction when he admits he hates skiing safely.
Under the table, something else is happening.
Our knees keep finding each other by accident at first, a brush here, a bump there.
Each time it sparks a little jolt low in my stomach, and each time it takes a beat longer for either of us to move away.
His gaze lingers a fraction too long when I lick a bit of salt off my lip; I feel the heat of it like a touch.
The air between us thickens, a slow, steady press.
By the time we’re halfway through the potatoes, I’m not entirely sure what I’m tasting anymore.
The food is good; my body doesn’t care. All my awareness has slid south, to where my thighs are pressed together, and my skin remembers far too clearly what his hand felt like between them.
Every shift in my chair sends a little echo through me.
He’s not much better. His jaw has that tight set I recognize from TV—the one he gets in the start gate when he’s trying very hard not to think about what’s at the bottom.
His hand wraps around his water glass a little too firmly; a tendon jumps in his wrist. Under the table, his foot taps, restless, nudging mine in a rhythm that has nothing to do with nerves before a race and everything to do with restraint.
The waitress comes by to ask about dessert. We both say “No” at the same time, too fast.
“Maybe later,” I add to her confused nod.
When she leaves, he exhales slowly. “This is… difficult,” he says.
“Conversation?” I ask, though we both know what he means.
He gives me a look that’s almost offended. “No. I like talking to you. That’s the problem.”
“That you like talking to me?”
“That I like talking to you, and I can’t stop imagining you on my lap again while you’re telling me about your boot fit,” he says bluntly. His ears flush. “It’s very distracting.”
Heat licks low in my stomach. I take a sip of wine I don’t need. “The feeling’s mutual,” I admit. “Every time you say ‘outside ski’, I have an inappropriate reaction.”
He chokes on his water. When he recovers, his eyes are darker.
“We could stay,” he says. “Have coffee. Talk about gear. Pretend we’re normal people on a normal date.”
“Could,” I say. My pulse is hammering in my ears.
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Or,” he says, through gritted teeth, “we could get the bill, and I can finally stop pretending I’m not hard for you under this table.”
A laugh bubbles out of me, half shock, half triumph. That’s it, I realize, the high I’ve been chasing without naming it: not just the sex, but this—watching a man like him, so composed in every interview, barely holding it together because of me.
“For once,” I say, voice low, “I really like the second option.”
The waiter brings the bill; Fabio pays without really looking at it. His leg is bouncing under the table now, a controlled little vibration like a ski chattering on ice.
“Come on,” he says, standing. “Before I change my mind and start lecturing you about edge angles again.”