Chapter 15
Slovenian Ice
Kranjska Gora, Slovenia
FABIO
I’m halfway through hamstring stretches in the hotel gym when my phone starts buzzing across the mat. The screen flashes Vincent’s name. Of course. Nothing good ever starts with our PR manager calling mid-day instead of texting.
“Baier,” I say, clamping the phone between my shoulder and ear so I can keep my heel dug into the bench.
“Fabio,” he answers, too polite to be relaxed, too clipped to be casual. “Tell me you’ve seen it already.”
A small knot tightens in my gut. “Seen what?”
He blows out a breath. “Check the tabloids as soon as we hang up. Blick, Heute, all of them. ‘Mysterious girl with comeback king Baier in Reiteralm.’ Cute headlines. Cute photos. Some juniors got over-excited with their hashtags.”
I sit up, stretch forgotten. “Photos.” My mouth is suddenly dry. “Doing what?”
“Skiing. Talking. You standing next to a training lane looking at a woman like she just invented turns,” Vincent says. “Nothing explicit, thank God. But then Maria reposted one with a comment, and now it’s a thing.”
I close my eyes. Of course she did. “What did she write?”
He reads it out, flat: “‘Am I surprised Fabio moved on to a next object so soon? Not at all. But I wish him the best.’ And then she goes on some lifestyle show and hints about your ‘new affair the whole of Austria talks about.’”
“Fabio,” he sighs. “Everybody loves a rebel…”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’m not a rebel,” I snap. “I just don’t have the best luck with women. And this was nothing. She’s a friend. I was teaching her to ski. You won’t find a single photo of us doing anything other than skiing and talking.”
Or so I hope.
“Everybody loves a rebel,” he continues like he didn’t hear me. “As long as they can still count the scandals on one hand. When people can’t keep up with the number of girls attached to your name in one season, we have to think about how it reflects on the team. On sponsors.”
I bite back the first answer that comes to mind. Something about how nobody cared when I was crashing instead of winning: now that I’m useful again, every woman is suddenly a risk assessment.
“Tell them I’m not sleeping with anyone,” I say dryly. “That will calm them down.”
“I’m not your lawyer, I’m your PR guy,” he replies. “I don’t really care about what you do, as long as it makes you happy. But I do care about how it seems, cause it’s my job to make the sponsors happy.”
“And how am I supposed to disprove the rumors?”
“Listen,” Vinc says calmly. “You have scheduled an interview with Krone. Today, late afternoon, I hope you remember. But they may ask some personal questions.”
“I never answer them,” I snap, stubbornly.
“I know, but this might be the good time you did. I’ve emailed you the questions they’ll definitely ask and the ones they’ll sneak in. Read them. Prepare.”
He pauses. “And for once in your life, Fabio, try not to improvise.”
The line goes quiet. I stare at my reflection in the dark gym window—bare feet, training shorts, t-shirt damp with warm-up sweat.
I look like any other racer the day before a GS.
My life is supposed to be simple here: eat, stretch, sleep, ski.
Instead, there’s a knot of tabloid headlines, ex-girlfriends, and one woman who doesn’t want me at all sitting right in the middle of my ribcage.
Back in my room, I open my email. Vincent’s forwarded message is short, efficient, merciless.
Sample questions from Krone:
– “Alta Badia and Adelboden. We saw two different Fabio Baiers. What changed?”
– “How much does your mental training factor into this form?”
– “Does your miraculous resurrection have something to do with the mysterious girl we all talk about?”
I snort. Of course. Wrapped neatly between talk of recovery and mindset. One careless sentence and tomorrow’s headline writes itself.
I close the mail before I can start drafting some stupid, defensive joke. Instead, I open Instagram.
Her profile comes up from muscle memory.
New profile picture: not her face, but a close-up of a cat.
Oscar, I assume, looking vaguely offended at the world.
Her posts are now set to private, where there used to be photos and little windows into her life; there’s just a grey padlock.
No reels. No glimpses. No comments. Had it been set on private before, I wouldn’t have been able to track her down after the gondola encounter.
Now, it feels a safer choice. A wise choice.
“Clever girl,” I mutter. Either she did it to keep the tabloids from finding her, or she just doesn’t want me—or her ex—to see what she’s doing anymore. Maybe both.
What is she doing? And what was he doing in her apartment?
The thought of him in her flat needles under my skin. “It wasn’t nice,” she said last night, voice too even. Then there was the text that cut everything off like a rope: I’m falling for you, and that’s exactly why I need to stop. I need to figure myself out.
And here I am, in Kranjska Gora, stretching my hamstrings and reading questions about mystery women while my PR guy tries to pre-empt my next disaster.
Another scandal. Another “girl of the week.” Another story for people like Maria to tell. I used to think I was above caring—that as long as I skied fast, everything else was just noise.
Guys like Thomas Kern have it easy. Childhood sweetheart at home, a life that’s always been lined up.
He flies back, she’s there, dinner on the table, the same smile waiting at every finish.
He doesn’t spend nights wondering if he ruined the only good thing that wasn’t built around racing.
He doesn’t lie awake replaying a phone call with someone who actually saw him and chose to walk away.
And I’m supposed to be the grown-up here.
But I’m the one who falls for the most complicated women in any given radius. I thought if the girl was different this time—if she were strong in ways that had nothing to do with publicity and show business—it would be different for me too. Or did I even think before I fell for her?
Anyway, here I am. Name in the tabloids, ex stirring the pot, team PR furious, and a race ahead of me that actually matters because this year I can get the big Crystal globe, win the overall title. Everyone is asking if my personal mess is going to cost me the season.
I toss the phone onto the bench and drop to the floor for another stretch, folding myself over my leg until my hamstring protests. This, at least, makes sense. Load, pain, recovery, repeat.
I pull deeper into the stretch until something in my leg finally gives a little. If only the noise in my head worked the same way.
***
Podkoren slope: steep, bumpy, no mercy. Blind rolls, changing light, offset gates that will spit you out the second you start thinking about anything but the next turn. This hill doesn’t care who you slept with or what the tabloids say—it only cares if you commit.
I clip into my skis for the second run and replay the first run in my head like a bad video.
Too tight up top. I gave the pitch way too much respect, set every edge like I was in a demo instead of a race. The skis never really ran; I was holding them on a leash the whole way down. Clean line, sure, but there was no attack in it. No risk, no teeth.
I can feel it in my legs even now—no real burn, just that dull ache you get from braking all the way instead of letting it flow. That’s not how you win here. That’s how you hang on to a lead until someone braver takes it off you. The second run is when I set it right. I must set it right.
I skate to the start hut, let Max give my skis the last check, fist-punch the coaches, and get ready.
Three beeps. The start wand drops, and I launch, legs snapping into the first few turns like they’ve done a thousand times.
Out of the gate, it actually feels good—better than the first run.
I let the skis point a little more, trust the edge instead of babying it.
The top section comes at me in a tight rhythm: blue, red, blue, terrain rolling under my feet.
I’m finally attacking, finally letting the hill come to me instead of tiptoeing down it.
Then I hit the compression.
There’s a blind roll into a combination that sets harder than it looked in inspection.
I come over the lip a touch too straight, just a fraction late setting up for the next red.
The snow drops away under me, the gate arrives a beat earlier than my brain expects, and suddenly I’m chasing the line instead of leading it.
I try to fix it mid-air, tipping the skis, angling my hips, but I land with my weight a hair inside. The outside ski chatters, searching for grip. For one sick second, I’m balanced on nothing but wishful thinking and muscle memory.
“Stay in,” flashes through my head.
I fight. I jam the edge, throw my upper body back over the ski, and force the turn anyway. The gate slams my shoulder as I squeeze past it, rattling my whole frame. The line is gone now; I’m low and late, trying to salvage something out of a disaster.
The next blue comes at a bad angle. I’m still recovering when it hits. The ski hooks, then lets go. My inside hand clips the panel, my feet shoot out from under me, and the world flips into a blur of white and color and noise.
I slide on my hip, then my side, skis skittering, one pole ripped from my hand. The net comes at me fast; I dig my edges in, scrubbing speed, snow spraying my face in a cold slap. By the time I stop, I’m halfway tangled in fencing, lungs burning, but everything feels intact.
No sharp pain. No eerie quiet in a limb that should hurt and doesn’t. Just breath, pounding in my ears, and an instant, hot rush of anger.
I slam my fist into the snow once, hard enough to sting. Stupid. One mistake. One lazy setup on the roll and the whole run goes to hell. I know better. This hill punished me exactly the way it should.