Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
NATE
Park City, Utah
I lean up against her doorframe and cross my arms loosely over my chest. I want to appear casual, but I need to be prepared for the very real possibility that she’ll try to kill me.
I take the moment to observe her. She’s sitting behind her desk and the sun streaming in the window behind her is lighting her up like an angel, a trick of the eye that could throw me off my game if I let it.
She reaches to pick up the manila folder thick with my medical records.
Her full pale lips, the color of cotton candy, pull down at the corners into a frown.
A folder of medical records this big means a significant challenge for her, a challenge I imagine she’ll welcome . . . until she finds out it’s me.
She reaches behind her neck and sweeps her dark, wavy hair around to one side so it falls over her shoulder, hanging nearly to her elbow. It’s longer than the last time I saw her, and I wonder how many other things about her have changed in the years since she was mine.
I watch her flip the file folder open, wondering if I used to find every movement of hers so fascinating or if it’s because I haven’t seen her in person in so long.
“Oh. Hell. No.” Her voice is a whisper and a groan, then a hiss of anger escapes her lips as she scans the first page of my records.
She flips to the back of the file, to start at the beginning.
Everything contained in those early pages she already knows, intimately.
But then she flips the pages until she gets to the part she’s less familiar with—the last five years.
And suddenly, I can’t stand the wait for another second.
I need to see her face, to know how she’ll react to me being in her life again.
I clear my throat and her head snaps up. “I see you found my file.”
She narrows her eyes at me, those thick black lashes descending to cover half of her bright green irises. She’s always had an expressive face, and right now her look is murderous.
“This is not happening.” Her voice is icy as she rises to stand behind her desk. “Go away and stay there.”
“Sorry, Jackson.” I shrug so she won’t see how the guilt is eating away in the pit of my stomach, sending a burning pain up into my chest. I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have, but the pain of this reunion is inevitable. There is no reconciliation without it.
“What are you doing here?” Her hands are on her hips as she stands behind her desk, but it’s hard to feel threatened by her when she’s in fluorescent purple leggings and a navy workout tank that says I do it for the tacos in metallic purple script.
“I missed you too,” I say, taking a few steps into her office.
Her cheeks flush in anger as my words hit her and I know my tone was all wrong, but I take another step toward her desk anyway.
While anyone else would have the good sense to stay away from her when she’s this mad, her anger and I are old friends.
“Like hell you did,” she says, her eyes narrowing to let me know she doesn’t for a second believe me. If only she knew. “Get out of my office.”
I try to stay calm, act like this isn’t a reunion moment I’ve dreamed about for years. I was never delusional enough to believe that she’d make it easy on me, or that I deserved for her to. “Here’s the thing, I can’t really leave. Because now that you’re my physical therapist, we work together.”
“I will kill you, and this time neither your parents nor mine are here to stop me.”
The last time I surprised her like this was twelve years ago, before we started dating.
We were seventeen—so young and innocent, unaware of all the ways we could hurt each other.
I’d unintentionally turned her friends, and really our whole high school, against her.
At that moment, her father held her back when she wanted to claw my eyes out.
I deserved it then. I deserve it far more now.
I focus on not reacting to her mention of my “parents,” since now I only have one. I see that realization—and the regret—cross her face, briefly, before she shuts that emotion down. She’s a fortress now, she wants to think she’s impenetrable. I will find my way in.
“You can’t kill me either, Jackson.” I keep my voice calm, like it’s no big deal that I’ve made the National Ski Team and she’s expected to be my physical therapist after all this time. “You have to get me ready to compete.”
“You can’t be on the men’s team. I go away for one month, and . . . how could this happen?” She walks around her desk, which feels big and formal for a physical therapist’s office in an athletic training center.
“The usual way: by being an exceptional skier.”
She doesn’t appear to appreciate my sarcasm.
As she approaches me, her eyes are still narrowed.
This look of determined concentration is the same way she looks right before she orgasms, which has my mind going in the completely wrong direction.
Those memories are the reason I neither expect nor have time to block the right hook she delivers to my jaw.
“Ow,” we both groan at the same time, me clutching my face and her cradling her hand.
I breathe through the pain—it’s not even close to the worst I’ve felt—and right myself. “Jackson, c’mon,” I say through my clenched jaw. I already know my face is going to hurt like hell later on.
She’s still bent over, cradling her hand, and as I step toward her to help she looks up at me with the wild eyes of a cornered animal. “Get. Out.”
“Suit yourself,” I say with a bravado I don’t feel as I head out to the hallway. It takes everything I have not to look back over my shoulder.
Well, that didn’t go how I thought it’d go. Or maybe it did. I don’t know what I expected, really. I figured she’d want to kill me. But I guess I didn’t expect her to actually hit me. Not that I didn’t have it coming. After five years of radio silence, I deserve that and more from her.
The Center is busy this morning, but I’m still new here so I’m able to make my way to the locker room with nothing more than a head nod to the few people I pass.
Once I’m there, I stand in front of a mirror and rub my jaw.
It’s still pretty clenched up and even as I try to stretch it out, the muscle resists.
I need to get an ice pack on it or it’s going to be swollen soon.
Jeff Beltzer, who’s made quite a name for himself in his nine years on the team, enters the locker room a few feet from where I’m standing. “Hey,” I say as he glances over at me, “I’m Nate. I’m new here.”
“I know who you are, man,” he says in a faint Boston accent. He reaches out to shake my hand and his eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Glad you’re joining us.”
I guess I’ve made a name for myself too, which is ironic since I’ve barely stepped up to the start gate on a race course since I was a nationally ranked skier in high school. “Thanks, I’m pretty happy to be here.”
“Long time coming,” he says, but his eyes narrow. “What happened to your face?”
“Uh, unpacking injury this morning,” I say, running my knuckles along my jaw which, if the tenderness is any indication, is probably already bruising a bit. “Living out of boxes right now.” At least half of what I’ve told him is true.
“Of course,” he says with a nod. “You need an ice pack?”
“Probably a good idea,” I say, grateful he suggested it and I didn’t have to ask.
I let him lead me to one of the trainers who of course wants more details.
I make up a story about unpacking and carelessly knocking a marble bookend off a shelf and right into the side of my face.
It sounds believable enough since I just moved to Park City a few days ago.
No one needs to know that I’ve been staying in a hotel suite and the movers are delivering my stuff to my new condo later this afternoon.
If anyone knew how I really got hurt, Jackson might lose her job, or they’d keep her away from me, and neither of those options will do me any good.
Jeff takes it upon himself to be my tour guide, taking me to our first team meeting where Coach introduces me and explains that with Josh retiring they’ve moved Taylor Lang up from the B team to the A team, and given me his spot on the B team.
Everyone knows that my selection to the team fell under a Coaches Discretion—that a small committee of coaches decided I deserved a spot on the team even though I hadn’t technically qualified for it.
That they put me on the B team and not the C team is sure to ruffle some feathers among my teammates, but I’ll deal with that as it comes.
For now, I’m here and so is Jackson, and that’s all that matters.
Coach verbally reviews the training schedule for the week—details that were spelled out in an email we received before arriving here for the first official week of training. My mind wanders, as it often does, to Jackson. Is her hand okay? Will it be a problem if anyone finds out she hit me?
Everyone already knows about our history.
Jackson’s crash at Val d’Isère in the Super-G that should have clenched her first place spot for the season in that discipline five years ago was highly publicized.
As was the fact that I didn’t show up for that race, even though I was her speed coach.
The guilt is a tight knot in my stomach because her career-ending crash and our breakup have overshadowed her other milestones that came before it—the surprise Olympic gold in Giant Slalom during her second season, where the media began comparing her to ski racing icon Mikaela Shiffrin, her seventeen podium finishes her third season on the World Cup alpine circuit, and how close she came to securing an overall World Cup victory her fourth and final season, just over five years ago.
“Dude.” Jeff elbows me, and I look around to see that everyone is getting up, milling around the room, and I’ve just been sitting here lost in my own thoughts. Man, I need to get a grip. Being this close to Jackson for the first time in years is throwing me.