Chapter Seven
The tunnel pulsed with an electric roar that crawled up Blaire’s spine.
Blaire stood in a sea of white parkas trimmed with navy and red piping.
The Team USA crest was embroidered over her heart in a metallic thread that caught the industrial lights overhead.
The jacket was heavier than it looked, insulated against mountain cold and designed to photograph well under stadium lights.
Around her neck hung her accreditation badge, the Olympic rings stamped in holographic foil that shifted colors when she moved.
Younger athletes bounced on their toes with their phones out despite staff warnings.
They took selfies and videos, capturing every moment of the opening ceremony.
Their energy buzzed through the crowd like static before a storm.
Blaire stood still with her hands loose at her sides, letting the noise wash over her without sticking to her skin.
This is my last time.
The thought sat in her chest like an Olympic medal she’d swallowed whole. No more tunnels. No more flags. No more walking into a stadium as an athlete with her name on a start list and her country on her back.
She forced her gaze forward, tracking the movement of the delegation ahead.
Music pounded through the speakers, muffled and enormous at once.
Someone laughed too loudly. A coach barked instructions about staying tight in formation.
Blaire absorbed it all, every detail, because soon this would only exist in memory.
The march began.
Stadium lights hit her face like a physical slap—brilliant, blinding, warm despite the cold air.
Roars rolled down from the stands in waves.
Cameras on cranes swooped overhead. Blaire kept her stride even and her expression composed, but inside she let herself have this: the absurd scale of it, the weight of the flag carried ahead of her, the knowledge that she had earned the right to be here four times and would never stand in this exact place again.
Across the field, other nations moved in their own rivers of color.
She caught flashes of red jackets with white crosses, the Swiss delegation weaving through the choreography of nations.
Isaline was somewhere in that cluster. Too far to see clearly, but close enough that Blaire’s body registered her presence like a tuning fork struck in the dark.
Her throat tightened. She swallowed it down.
The ceremony blurred into speeches and torches and music that made her ribs vibrate.
She stood with her team, listened to words about unity and excellence, and tried to feel present instead of already gone.
When the flame climbed the tower and the crowd erupted, she tipped her head back and let herself look at it without thinking about anything else—no splits, no wax temps, no medals, no retirement. Just fire against the night sky.
Enormous screens showed the teams marching into the arena. Fireworks cracked overhead with brilliant bursts of gold and silver, leaving smoke trails drifting through the cold. Blaire stood near the edge of the USA group, taking it all in.
She didn’t join in the loud conversations. She simply watched.
Across the way, near a cluster of Swiss jackets, Isaline stood with her face tipped toward the sky. The colored light from the fireworks caught her profile in flashes—red, then blue, then white—and for one unguarded moment, Blaire let herself look without pretending she wasn’t.
Two different countries of origin. One sky. The same bursts of light reflected in both their eyes.
Someone from Team USA asked if she wanted to move closer to the screen. Blaire shook her head, murmured something about having a perfect view, and stayed exactly where she was.
The fireworks continued. The noise swelled and faded in rhythm. Blaire’s fingers tightened around the warm cup, and she made herself a promise: this goodbye would mean nothing if she didn’t deliver when the clock started. She would race like she always had—focused, controlled, untouchable.
As the crowd began to thin, she followed her teammates back toward housing. The Swiss building sat across the plaza with lights glowing in its windows. She didn’t look directly at it, but she knew exactly where it was.
This was Blaire’s last Olympics. And somehow, against every rule she’d built to survive the end, Isaline Senn had become part of what made it unbearable to let go.
~~
The dining hall line at 7 a.m. already ran long.
Athletes from a dozen nations shuffled forward with trays and tired eyes after the late opening ceremony.
Blaire stood near the coffee station, mentally reviewing her split times from her previous training run, when a familiar accent cut through the white noise of clinking plates.
“Is that actual coffee or recycled snow?”
Isaline appeared at her elbow with her Swiss parka unzipped to show a base layer that fit like sponsorship money. Her accreditation badge swung from a lanyard printed with edelweiss flowers.
Blaire glanced at the coffee urn ahead of them. “Little of both.”
“Perfect. I will take two cups then.”
The line moved. They moved with it. To anyone watching, they were just two racers from different countries caught in the breakfast shuffle. Underneath, Blaire’s awareness sharpened like a blade against a stone.
“Sleep well?” Isaline asked, tone light.
“Good enough.”
“Liar.”
Blaire’s mouth almost curved. “Are you counting my hours now?”
“Someone should. You look like you are preparing for battle, not skiing.”
“Same thing at this level.”
Isaline tilted her head, considering. “Maybe for you. I like to enjoy myself a little.”
Blaire poured coffee with steady hands and said nothing. Across the room, Tess waved from the USA table. Matthias sat with the Swiss group, his gaze briefly landing on his daughter talking with Blaire Hollis before returning to a tablet.
They separated without ceremony. Blaire turned toward her team. Isaline headed toward hers. The space between them felt measured in heartbeats instead of inches.
Later, in the gym, Blaire claimed a stationary bike near the windows. The village sprawled below, with flags snapping in the wind. She set her resistance, clipped in, and started the warmup cadence Tess had drilled into her years ago.
Ten minutes in, a treadmill whirred to life two machines over.
Blaire didn’t have to look to know who it was.
She kept her eyes forward with her legs turning steady circles, but her peripheral vision tracked Isaline’s reflection in the glass: long strides, controlled breathing, the type of effortless rhythm that came from a decade of disciplined mornings.
Their efforts synced without planning. When Blaire increased resistance, Isaline’s pace climbed. When Isaline hit an interval sprint, Blaire’s cadence ticked higher. Neither acknowledged it. Both felt it.
Twenty minutes later, Blaire dismounted first. Her legs were warm, and her lungs were clear. As she wiped down the bike, Isaline slowed to a cool-down pace, face flushed, chest rising and falling in a way that made Blaire’s insides tighten.
“Good session,” Isaline said, breath still coming fast.
“It was.”
Their eyes held, and for a moment it was painfully obvious that “just competitors” had stopped being true three months ago after one heated night in a tiny hotel bed in St. Moritz.
~~
Blaire’s skis sliced clean through the final pitch of the training run.
The edges of her skis held a line so precise it felt like carving glass with a hot blade.
She crossed the timing beam and let herself coast into the corral.
Her thighs burned in that good, familiar way that meant she’d pushed without breaking.
The board flashed green. First place in the training session by three-hundredths.
Tess’s voice crackled through the radio clipped to a nearby tech’s vest. “That’s the exact line you need to ski for the race. Lock it in.”
Blaire listened without responding as she clicked out of her bindings. Around her, coaches scribbled notes. Cameras tracked her every movement. She ignored all of it, focusing instead on the rhythm of her breath and the feel of snow beneath her boots.
Then Isaline’s bib number echoed across the start announcement.
Blaire didn’t plan to watch. She had her own debrief to get through, her own splits to review. But her feet carried her toward the fence line anyway, close enough to see the big screen and the course monitor feeding live splits.
Isaline snapped out of the gate so fast Blaire felt the start in her own knees.
First split: green. Second split: green.
At the compression where she’d crashed the day before, she committed hard, absorbing the terrain with legs that remembered how to trust themselves.
Blaire’s chest tightened. The technical middle section blurred past in a streak of red and white.
Isaline’s line was aggressive but controlled.
In the final pitch, her tuck held. The edges of her skis were biting just enough.
The clock stopped. First Place. Two-hundredths ahead of Blaire.
A ripple of approval moved through the coaches and staff clustered near the finish. Swiss voices called out congratulations. Isaline skidded to a clean stop, pulled off her helmet, and shook her bright blonde hair loose with a grin that could have powered the village lights.
Blaire turned away before their eyes could meet.
Later, near the ski racks where techs swarmed with tools and clipboards, they ended up side by side. It was inevitable in a space this small.
“Good run, Goldilocks,” Isaline said, unlacing her boots.
“Yours wasn’t bad either.”
“Not bad.” Isaline’s mouth curved. “I’ll take that high praise from a gold legend.”
Blaire straightened and balanced her skis on her shoulder. “You want me to lie and say you weren’t fast?”
“I want you to admit you’re a bit scared of me.”
Their gazes locked. Around them, the noise of the finish area blurred into background static.