Chapter Six #2
The Olympic rings hung above the finish stadium, daring her to race to them. Cameras lined every angle. Her accreditation badge carried the weight of two denied attempts and a decade of waiting.
When her number was called, she slid into position. The countdown timer beeped. The gate opened.
She exploded forward.
The first pitch felt clean. Her skis bit perfectly through the glide section as the wind sliced past her helmet. At the first split, her time flashed green. Her dad’s voice echoed in her head: Manage the compression, don’t chase it.
But the snow changed halfway down the hill. It went from hard packed snow to ice to a thin layer of soft granular that grabbed unpredictably. The light went flat exactly where he’d warned her, shadows erased by cloud cover that turned the entire slope into one undifferentiated blur.
She hit the turn at full speed, trusting memory more than vision.
Her weight shifted a fraction too far forward.
The ski edge caught wrong—not a massive mistake, just a microsecond of imbalance that turned into a skid, then a violent sideways jerk. Her body torqued. She fought to pull it back, but momentum had already made its choice.
She went down hard.
The world became a spinning carousel of sky, snow, fence netting, and pain. Her shoulder slammed into something solid. Her helmet cracked against her own knee. The noise of her body tumbling through safety barriers sounded like thunder inside her skull.
Then she stopped.
Silence pressed down. There was no crowd noise and no radio chatter. Just the high-pitched whine in her ears and the taste of blood where she’d bitten her tongue.
Move. You have to move.
She forced her fingers to flex. Toes next. Arms. Legs. Everything answered. Slowly, she pushed herself upright as snow fell from her suit in clumps. Her ribs screamed. Her shoulder throbbed. But nothing felt broken.
Still seated, she raised one arm to signal to the officials that she was okay.
The ski patrol reached her within seconds. They crouched beside her with steady hands and calm voices. They checked her pupils, her neck, her range of motion. She answered their questions on autopilot while her brain replayed the crash frame by frame, searching for the exact moment she’d lost it.
“Can you stand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want the sled?”
“No.”
She stood, collected the ski that had released, and clamped it back in. She skied the rest of the course at a crawl while the entire mountain held its breath.
By the time she reached the finish, Matthias and Reto were already there. Matthias’s face was carved from stone. Reto’s jaw worked like he was chewing through steel.
“I’m fine,” she said before either of them could ask.
“Medical tent,” Matthias said. It was not a question.
“I’m fine.”
Reto stepped closer, and his voice dropped. “You just sprawled through three panels of B-net at one hundred kilometers an hour. You’re going to medical, or I’m carrying you there myself.”
She wanted to argue, but the words died in her throat when she saw the fear buried beneath his sarcasm.
In the medical tent, the team doctor poked, prodded, and declared her miraculously intact. Bruised ribs. Strained shoulder. Nothing that required imaging or pulling her from competition. The relief should have been total.
Instead, all she felt was the cold weight of how close she’d come to losing everything again.
When she stepped back outside with her helmet tucked under her arm, the crowd noise had returned. Other racers were finishing their training runs. Coaches huddled near monitors. Life moved forward like her crash had been a momentary interruption instead of what was nearly the end of her world.
Then she saw Blaire.
The American stood near the mixed zone fence, still in her team jacket, eyes locked on Isaline with an intensity that had nothing to do with start lists or rivalry.
For one unguarded second, Blaire’s face showed exactly what she’d been trying to bury since St. Moritz: care and worry.
Real, unfiltered worry that stripped every careful boundary down to emotional nakedness.
Their eyes held, and Isaline’s chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with bruised ribs.
Then Blaire’s expression shuttered. She turned away and disappeared into the coaches’ cluster like she’d never been watching at all.
~~
Isaline’s afternoon looked normal on paper: twenty minutes on a treadmill in the recovery center, stretching on a foam mat while Swiss teammates cycled through their own routines, a long shower that loosened the tight muscles in her body.
But Reto shadowed her as if she might vanish if he blinked, and Matthias kept circling back with questions that had nothing to do with split times.
“How does the shoulder feel when you rotate?”
“Any headache?”
“Sharp pain or dull ache in the ribs?”
She answered truthfully because lying to Matthias had never worked. The truth was manageable: sore, stiff, bruised, but functional. There was nothing that would keep her off the hill tomorrow.
What she didn’t say was that her hands still trembled slightly when she held them flat, or that replaying the crash made her stomach twist into a pretzel.
She left the recovery center as the sun dropped behind the peaks, casting the village into that sharp blue twilight unique to high altitude.
The paths between housing blocks were quieter now.
Most athletes were either eating or hiding in their rooms. She turned a corner near the gym entrance and nearly walked straight into Blaire.
The American stepped back half a pace as her eyes scanned Isaline’s face with an intensity that felt like much more than polite concern.
“You’re walking!”
“I am,” Isaline said, keeping her voice light. “Turns out I’m harder to break than the safety netting.”
Blaire didn’t smile. “That was an ugly crash.”
“Training runs bite sometimes.”
“They do.” Blaire’s jaw worked for a second before she continued. “Doesn’t mean you had to ski the rest of the course like you were proving something.”
Isaline bristled. “I was proving I could finish.”
“You were proving you’re stubborn.” Blaire’s voice stayed controlled, but the edge underneath it was sharp. “Medical cleared you. That doesn’t mean you need to pretend your ribs don’t hurt or that your shoulder isn’t screaming every time you move it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you saying that to convince yourself?”
“I’m saying it because it’s true.”
Blaire exhaled through her nose, a sound that was half frustration, half compassion. “There’s a difference between being cleared and being smart about what comes next. You have one body. It has to last you through training runs and two races that actually count.”
Isaline tilted her head, studying the American’s face. “Are you worried about me, or worried I’ll take myself out before you get a chance to beat me?”
“Both,” Blaire said without hesitation.
The honesty landed harder than the crash had. Isaline felt the ground shift slightly beneath her boots.
“I’ll be ready when it matters,” she said quietly.
Blaire held her gaze for another beat, then nodded and walked past her toward the gym entrance. No goodbye. No softening. Just the faint brush of her shoulder against Isaline’s as she moved.
Isaline stood there with her pulse kicking until the cold finally drove her inside.
Later, alone in her narrow Olympic room with ice strapped to her ribs and her phone glowing on the desk, another text arrived. Don’t try to win gold on a training run. Save the heroics for when the clock actually matters.
Isaline typed back with her thumbs, wincing when the movement pulled at her shoulder. Worried I’ll steal all your podium spots before you get a chance to retire gracefully?
More worried you’ll do something reckless and I’ll have to watch.
Underneath the banter, the message was clear that Blaire had watched the crash. Blaire had cared. Blaire was trying very hard to pretend she didn’t.
Isaline’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She could let it drop. Keep it light. Protect them both from whatever this was turning into.
Instead, she typed: Then stop watching. Or admit you want me in one piece for reasons that have nothing to do with competition.
The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. And then her response appeared. Get some sleep, Isa. Your body is going to need it for what lies ahead.
Isaline chuckled. Her ribs ached, and her heart was doing something complicated and dangerous in her chest. She set the phone down and closed her eyes.
Blaire hadn’t denied anything.
That felt like progress.