Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Kirby showed up early at the training facility to practice for the team sprint. When she came into the weight room, she shouldn’t have been surprised to see Mara geared up and stretching, but she was.
Their interview with Lindsey had been such a mess. A funny mess. A frustrating one.
Kirby felt burned by Mara’s whiplash. She had read comments online about the interview.
Clips had been posted all over social media.
She’d reposted them. There was speculation about dissention among the ski team and speculation about them playing up their animosity for clicks.
Rumors fed headlines and headlines fed her.
So she was perfectly happy with a bit of gossip.
But if she thought about the care Mara had shown her, about how Mara had acted so out of the ordinary for Kirby, she would start to think and wish and hope for things that were definitely off the table.
“Weaseled your way into the team sprint after all?” Kirby said.
Mara had offered during that interview, but Kirby hadn’t taken her seriously.
What she’d said about skiers needing different things was true.
Mara did ski better if she had time to prepare.
If she stuck with a schedule and routine of race, recovery, rest, repeat.
“Yeah,” Mara said with a shrug. She changed stretching positions, so self-possessed and fluidly elegant.
“You didn’t have to do that. If you felt some obligation because…” They weren’t alone. The coaches were milling around. She couldn’t say why Mara might have felt obligated, but the flash in Mara’s eyes showed she’d caught Kirby’s meaning.
“I don’t feel obligated. I was the best option. I just made sure the coaches understood that.” She spoke with such unbelievable arrogance.
“I don’t want you to risk your legs for the fifty.”
“You don’t need to worry about my legs, Bonham,” Mara said pointedly. “Worry about yourself.”
“That’s enough, Mara,” the head coach, Coach Redman, said, not looking up from his notebook. Coach Wu winked at Kirby from behind his back. “We have to practice the exchange. Kirby you’ll anchor.”
And that was what they did. Kirby didn’t have much choice.
No, that wasn’t true.
She could have argued it. She could have claimed that she deserved to race with someone she had chemistry with, who she felt comfortable with. The team sprint was a team effort between just two skiers. They needed to be in sync, to trust each other.
But after practicing their exchange a few times, no one would have believed they didn’t have racing chemistry.
They’d never raced the team sprint together. By the time Kirby had come up and earned her spot in the team sprint, Mara had dropped the event.
Mara loved the sufferfest of endurance and distance. She excelled there. But as she zipped around the track at about seventy-five percent effort, Kirby couldn’t deny that she still had it. She still had that sprint instinct and muscle memory locked in.
And their exchanges were seamless. Smooth. No friction or issues at all. It was honestly frustrating. They could have been dominating in the event for years.
After practice they found themselves alone in the locker room once again. Mara didn’t look up as she changed.
Kirby finished dressing first and watched Mara meticulously fold and put every piece of training gear and clothing away in her bag. She was so particular.
She had her sunglasses up on her head. A new pair that were pastel blue. They fell off her head and bounced across the room when she bent down to take off her socks.
Mara flinched and froze.
Kirby picked them up and examined them, déjà vu hitting her hard. She remembered silver sunglasses falling to the floor in her Oberhof apartment. She remembered carefully placing those glasses on top of Mara’s head. “They’re fine.”
“Okay.”
Kirby tried to hand the blue sunglasses back, but Mara just stared at them in Kirby’s palm.
Kirby didn’t know how to fix their relationship. Or if she should even try.
She set the glasses on the bench, and Mara grabbed them.
“Thank you,” Kirby said.
“For what?”
“For racing with me.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I could choke.”
Kirby considered her for a long moment. “You might.”
“Thanks.”
“Or I could break a pole. Or one of us could fall. Or get a terrible case of shingles tonight. Or break an ankle getting off the shuttle. Or a sink hole could swallow us up right before the finish line.”
Mara glanced up, her eyes wide. She was so superstitious, and it was too fun to needle her.
“If you choke, you choke,” Kirby said. “It would be okay.” They won as a team, they choked as a team. And sometimes, truly, the most important thing wasn’t winning.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
Kirby huffed a laugh at Mara’s cheerlessness. “It was fun. Practice today was fun.” They had both been grim-faced and way too serious, but every time Kirby tapped Mara’s shoulder, it felt right.
Mara nodded, as solemn and earnest as always. “Yes.”
Kirby was locked in. She’d slept well. Eaten well. There was that calm in her body that was rare, the calm she craved. She was usually jittery. Full of energy or anger. Full of some emotion that made her edgy and wound up and itching to go.
Mara hadn’t smiled once, her race face on. A mask. Armor.
She had on her silver sunglasses. The ones from that day. The ones Jordan had borrowed, and Mara had retrieved. The ones Kirby had placed back on Mara’s head after they’d had sex.
Kirby didn’t mention it.
In fact, she didn’t say anything. They hadn’t said a word to each other.
Kirby knew what most of her teammates needed before a relay or team sprint, but she didn’t know what Mara needed besides quiet. They pulled on their lucky relay socks, a symbol of unity.
As they got ready to enter the stadium, Mara looked over at her and frowned. “Do I need to insult you or something?”
“What?” Kirby asked, unable to hold in her smile.
“Should I make you mad? You race better mad, right?”
“Just being near you makes me mad. You’re good.”
Mara’s lips nearly curled at the edges. “Cool.”
Kirby couldn’t even hear the crowd as she and Mara came into the stadium. She could only hear the smile in Mara’s voice reverberating in her ears.
The team sprint opened with a qualification round with an interval start, each lead-off skier leaving in thirty-second increments.
They would each do one lap in the qualification round, and the fastest fifteen teams would move on to a final heat consisting of six laps, three for each skier on a team.
For the qualification round, Mara took off at her signal with such power. It was beautiful to watch. Much like the sprint, they needed to qualify but also leave gas in the tank for the final heat.
Kirby moved into the relay exchange zone. In less than three minutes, Mara came back into view on the straightaway. She was flying. She tapped Kirby, a smooth exchange, just like practice.
And Kirby flew too.