Chapter Five
Three Months Later
The chartered plane smelled like recycled air, protein bars, and nervous energy.
Team USA’s alpine women sprawled across rows of seats, most of them wearing matching navy Nike joggers with the Olympic rings embroidered just above the left hip and white half-zip pullovers stamped with their names across the shoulders.
Blaire sat near the front in the same gear.
Her pullover sleeves were pushed to her elbows, and her compression socks were visible where her ankles crossed on the footrest she’d fashioned from her duffel.
Around her, voices rose and fell. Two younger racers debated which other events to watch live.
Someone else passed around a phone showing opening ceremony footage from four years ago.
The energy felt familiar and foreign at the same time.
She’d lived this exact moment three times before, but never knowing it was the last.
She pulled her headphones tighter and closed her eyes. The playlist was one she’d built years ago: instrumental, rhythmic, designed to keep her mind from wandering where it shouldn’t. It didn’t work. What had happened in St. Moritz continued to surface like a splinter she couldn’t dig out.
She’d watched the race replay once this morning on the seat-back screen.
Her line through the middle section had been textbook, and her final pitch had been nearly perfect.
Nearly. Isaline’s had been hungrier. The Swiss woman had committed to risk where Blaire had measured it, and the clock had rewarded the younger woman for it.
Second place. By hundredths.
Blaire’s jaw tightened. She could still see Isaline standing on the top step of the podium, grinning like she’d stolen the last cupcake with cream cheese frosting. The worst part was knowing exactly what the Swiss skier had stolen and from where. It had nothing to do with baked goods or race times.
The memory of Isaline’s breath against her throat, the arch of her back, the way she’d laughed at her own mangled English. Blaire shoved it all into the same mental locker where she kept old injuries and bad press. Fuel. Not feelings.
She stretched her calves during descent, methodical and silent while others took selfies. At the team’s private baggage claim hall, she grabbed her skis before anyone could offer to help. Outside, the transfer bus idled under grey skies, and their breath fogged in the Idaho cold.
For Blaire, this wasn’t just another host site; her parents’ house sat a short drive down the road, and she’d learned to ski on these slopes before she could even spell Sun Valley.
When the team bus rolled from the airport and through the alpine village security gate in Sun Valley, Blaire pressed her forehead to the window. Flags from every competing nation snapped in the wind. Temporary banners declared inspiration in multiple languages. Cameras tracked their arrival.
She quietly made herself simple promises: walk in, do the work, walk out with gold. Don’t live anyone else’s narrative. You’re not here for anyone else’s ending.
The bus door hissed open. Blaire stood, pulled her bag over her shoulder, and stepped into her final Olympics like she owned it.
The Team USA housing block sat across from the central plaza.
It was a narrow four-story structure wrapped in temporary cladding and red-white-blue bunting.
Inside, the hallways smelled of new carpet and industrial cleaner.
Voices echoed off bare walls—teammates claiming beds, someone blasting music two doors down, a physio unpacking rollers and resistance bands in the common area.
Blaire’s room was on the third floor, end of the hall.
She pushed the door open and took inventory in seconds: twin bed, thin mattress, single window overlooking the plaza, desk barely wide enough for a computer, closet that might fit half her gear if she stacked it right.
The walls were thin enough that she could hear footsteps in the hallway and laughter bleeding through from the neighboring room.
She dropped her duffel on the floor and her ski bag against the wall.
No wasted motion. She folded her compression gear into the top dresser drawer and hung her race suit in the closet with extra base layers beneath it.
Helmet, goggles, and gloves were lined up on the desk like surgical instruments.
Her phone was plugged in, set to airplane mode, screen blank.
The room was small, functional, and designed for sleep and nothing else. Perfect.
She stretched her hamstrings against the bedframe, rolling tension out of her calves.
Through the window, she watched athletes drift across the plaza in mismatched national kits—Germans in black and gold, Austrians in red, a cluster of Italians laughing near the big screen.
Cameras tracked the movement like wild-game cameras.
This was the part she’d forgotten between cycles: how the village forced proximity. There was no private hotel room to retreat to, no rental car to escape in. Just flags, faces, and the constant energy of performance anxiety dressed up as celebration.
She sat on the edge of the bed and laced her fingers behind her neck, letting her spine decompress. Tess had reiterated during the flight: Get settled, hydrate, sleep. We start fresh tomorrow. Past medals don’t matter.
Blaire pulled her phone off the charger and turned airplane mode off long enough to confirm the team schedule. Messages loaded in a flood: her parents, a sponsor check-in, three junior racers she’d helped fund asking for photos.
She toggled through her phone to her contacts.
Isaline Senn.
The contact sat there like a candy bar in front of a chocolate addict.
She’d added it in her phone as soon as Isaline had left her room in St. Moritz.
At the time, she’d told herself it was professional courtesy.
The lie was what she wanted to believe. Months had passed, and she’d never sent a word.
Blaire locked the screen and shoved the phone under her pillow.
Routine. Structure. Focus.
That was all she needed.
Later that evening, Tess gathered the women’s speed squad in the common room.
She stood near a whiteboard covered in marker scrawl—training blocks, shuttle times, media windows—while the team settled into folding chairs and a sagging sofa someone had dragged in from another room.
Jordy leaned against the wall near the back with her arms crossed and a team-issued hat pulled low.
Tess ran through the schedule with her usual efficiency. Super-G training started in three days, downhill a few days after that. No wasted training, no ego runs, no press ambushes without her approval. When she got to Blaire, her tone shifted just enough that everyone noticed.
“This is the Olympics where you cement it,” Tess said, meeting Blaire’s eyes. “Stack the final medals on top of the pile. Walk out of your career untouchable.”
One of the younger racers, Emma, who’d barely made the team, sat up straighter. “I mean, she’s already pretty untouchable.”
Jordy grunted. “Skis are running smooth. Snow here suits your style. You’ve raced Summit Ridge in person more than most of them have seen it on TV. It’s practically your own backyard.”
Blaire sat with a neutral face, and with her elbows on her knees.
The praise slid over her like water off wax.
Coronation. That was a word for other people to use—reporters, commentators, the federation suits who wanted their headline moment.
To her, this was still a job. Ski as close to perfect as her body allowed, manage pain, manage noise and distractions, get out with two gold medals.
Tess tilted her head. “How do you feel?”
Blaire straightened. “Ready to work. Ready to take what’s mine.”
“Good.” Tess capped the marker and tossed it on the table. “Because the Swiss are here to prove something, the Austrians are stacked, and everyone’s going to treat you like the target.”
Blaire’s mouth curved, just barely. “Let them. I can’t see anything behind me if I’m focused ahead.”
The meeting broke. Emma lingered near the door, clearly working up the nerve to ask something. Blaire stood, stretched her shoulders, and walked past her before the question could land.
Back in her room, she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her phone out again. The screen glowed in the dim light as she tapped on contacts.
Isaline Senn.
Tess’s pep talk joined the St. Moritz result in the same mental file labeled focus. She locked the screen and set the phone face down.
Take the gold.
That was all she needed to do.
That night, Blaire walked into the dining hall with Emma trailing behind her.
Her tray of food was in hand, even though her appetite was dulled by focus.
But forced calories were a necessity. The space was loud and bright, full of team jackets and accents layered over each other like competing soundtracks.
She scanned for an open spot and saw the Swiss contingent clustered around one table near the far wall.
Isaline sat among them, laughing at something Reto said. Her nearly white, blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, and it made her high cheekbones look chiseled. The light caught her profile just right, and for a second, the room went slightly out of focus around that one image.
Blaire forced herself to keep moving. She found the table where Tess and Jordy were already sitting, dropped into the chair, and stabbed a piece of broccoli. Her plate was loaded with grilled chicken, roasted vegetables, and brown rice—fuel measured in grams, not taste.
“You good?” Jordy asked without looking up from her phone.
“Perfect.”
From across the room, Isaline’s attention broke away from her team and her eyes met Blaire’s head-on.
There were no smiles between them. No little waves.
Just a look that lasted one beat too long before Isaline turned back to her food.
Any camera or teammate would read it as nothing more than athletes noticing each other.
But the history beneath the glance was well understood by both of them.
Blaire chewed methodically, tasting nothing.
Twenty minutes later, she stood to refill her water bottle. The drink station sat near the Swiss table. She told herself it was a coincidence, not a choice. As she reached for the carafe, Isaline appeared at the adjacent beverage station, filling a mug with tea.
“Hello, Blaire.” Isaline’s voice was light, friendly, perfectly calibrated for public consumption.
“Good to see you, Isaline.”
“Getting settled in?”
“Same as always. As best as possible.” Blaire poured her water with steady hands. “You?”
“Well, given it’s my first time in the Olympic Village, it is different from what I imagined in my mind. It’s much louder than I expected.”
“You get used to it. Use it to your advantage… it might force you to stay focused.”
Isaline’s mouth curved, just barely. “I’m good at taking advantage of situations.”
The words hung between them for half a breath before Blaire capped her bottle and stepped back. “Good luck in training, rookie.”
“Good luck holding on to your medals, Goldilocks,” she answered as her mouth curved into a smile. “I don’t plan on slowing down for anyone.”
Isaline walked away first, rejoining her team with that same easy warmth she seemed to radiate without effort. Blaire returned to her table, sat down, and pretended to focus on protein intake and hydration schedules.
Underneath the table, her knee bounced before she forced it still.
She was acutely aware of exactly when Isaline stood up, when she laughed at something Matthias said, and when she finally left the hall with Reto’s hand briefly on her shoulder.
Blaire finished her meal in silence.
In her room, Blaire went through her nightly ritual: stretching on the floor, checking schedule notifications, reviewing the training plan for the next day.
Through the walls she could hear laughter and muffled music from someone’s room.
It was the typical constant energy of an Olympic dorm that never fully slept.
The environment made it impossible to pretend she was alone in the world with her thoughts and routines.
Her phone sat on the small desk, face up now.
In her contacts list, Isaline’s name and number waited.
She opened the contact more than once, typed a line, erased it.
Anything honest felt dangerous; anything too casual felt like a lie.
She tried to convince herself there was no reason to reach out—every interaction they needed could happen on the hill.
The argument didn’t hold. In the end, she typed something short and bland on the surface.
It was just enough to justify the contact.
Don’t hold it against me… I’m finally using the number you left in November.
Team USA’s beds are pure cardboard. Did Switzerland do you any better, or are we all suffering together?
It read like harmless small talk between colleagues. But it felt like cracking a door she’d sworn to keep closed.
She hit send before she could stop herself.
Blaire flipped the phone face-down before she could see if Isaline was typing back. She lay on her back with her eyes closed while the village was busy around her and told herself this didn’t change anything about how she would ski.
The part of her that knew better stayed very, very quiet.