Chapter Seven #2
“You’re a threat… in more ways than one,” Blaire said evenly. “That’s what makes this both interesting and dangerous.”
“Interesting.” Isaline tested the word on her tongue. Her voice dropped just enough to make it land differently. “Is that the English word we are using now?”
Blaire huffed a sigh. She walked away without answering, but her pulse was ticking faster than the training run could explain.
~~
The lounge smelled like cinnamon and fruit from the mocktails someone had arranged on a long table near the entrance.
Music thrummed through hidden speakers, something instrumental and vaguely Swiss that probably tested well with focus groups.
Athletes from half a dozen countries filled the sofas and tall tables.
Voices layered over each other in a dozen languages.
Blaire had arrived with two younger skiers who immediately spotted friends near the mocktail station and peeled off. She told herself she’d stay twenty minutes, show her face, and leave before anyone asked her to pose for a team photo.
Her timetable was quickly changed when she saw Isaline just outside the balcony doors next to a heat lamp.
The Swiss skier stood with Reto and another teammate, holding a glass with something pink and fizzy inside.
Her hair fell loose over one shoulder, and she’d traded her team jacket for a simple black sweater that made her look less like an Olympian and more like someone Blaire might have noticed in any crowded room.
Their eyes caught, and Isaline’s mouth curved, not quite a smile but close enough to feel like an invitation.
Blaire walked over before she could talk herself out of it.
“You lasted longer than I expected,” Isaline said, nodding toward the noise inside. “I thought you would run after thirty seconds.”
“Still might.”
“Then I will talk fast.”
Reto glanced between them, grinned knowingly, and excused himself with a comment in German that made Isaline roll her eyes. Her teammate followed without prompting. Blaire watched them go, then turned back to find Isaline studying her with open curiosity.
“Do you ever relax?” Isaline asked.
“I am relaxed.”
“You are standing like someone is about to interview you for a librarian job.”
Blaire shifted her weight and loosened her shoulders. “Better?”
“A little.” Isaline leaned against the doorframe. The balcony was empty behind her. “How many of these have you been to? Olympics, I mean.”
“Four, counting this one.”
“And you still hate the social parts?”
“I tolerate them. I actually enjoy them a little more once my race is over. Before the races, I find them a bit of a distraction.”
Isaline laughed, soft and genuine. “That is very honest and focused. I like that about you.”
Blaire didn’t know what to do with the compliment, so she deflected. “You seem quite comfortable.”
“It is my first time. I am trying to absorb it all.” Isaline paused, her voice dropping. “Also, I spent too many years watching from home. I am not wasting one second of this.”
The admission landed with more weight than the words themselves. Blaire recognized the shape of it—how close Isaline had come to never standing here at all.
“The injuries…,” Blaire said, not quite a question.
“Two Olympics I should have made. Two times my body decided no.” Isaline sipped her drink as her gaze looked off in the distance for a moment. “I thought maybe I was not meant to be here. That the universe was telling me to stop going after my dream.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” Isaline’s eyes refocused, sharp and clear. “I am too stubborn for the universe.”
Blaire smiled. “I’ve noticed.”
“And I couldn’t quite give up before I had the chance to race against the best for a gold,” Isaline added, her accent thickening around the word gold in a way that made it sound almost indecent.
“Then I guess I’m glad you didn’t quit,” Blaire said. “Chasing gold is more interesting with you in the field.”
A burst of laughter erupted from inside the lounge. Someone turned the music up. The bass pulsed faintly through the floor. Neither of them moved toward it.
“What about you?” Isaline asked. “This is your last one. That must feel…” She searched for the right English word. “Big.”
“If I’m honest, it does. I’ve tried to stay pretty even about it all, but it’s bigger than I imagined it would be.”
“Are you ready for it to be over?”
Blaire looked past Isaline toward the plaza below, where the Olympic rings glowed against the dark sky. The question sat heavier than it should have.
“I don’t know how to do this world without a pair of skis attached to my feet,” she said finally. The honesty surprised her.
Isaline tilted her head, waiting for more.
“I’ve been preparing for the end my whole career,” Blaire continued in a voice quiet enough that only Isaline could hear. “I’ve watched what happens when people hang on too long, and I don’t want that. I want to choose when I walk away.” She paused. “But choosing my end doesn’t make it easier.”
“You are afraid of what comes after?”
“I’m afraid of who I am without chasing a gold medal.”
The honest words hung between them, raw and unguarded. She didn’t open up to people like this—not to teammates, not to coaches, not to anyone.
Isaline’s expression softened. “I think you will be the same person. Just slower in the mornings.”
Blaire’s breath caught somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “That’s bold, considering you haven’t even seen the morning me,” Blaire said dryly. “Are you volunteering to monitor that?”
“Maybe.” Isaline’s gaze held steady. “Or maybe you have spent so long being excellent at one thing, you forgot you are allowed to be other things too.”
The statement settled in Blaire’s chest like a pebble dropped into still water. She wanted to argue, to deflect, to rebuild the wall Isaline kept slipping past without even trying.
Instead, she asked, “What about you? What happens if you medal? What’s next?”
“Then I prove I belong here. Not as Matthias Senn’s daughter. Just as me.”
“You already proved that in St. Moritz.”
Isaline’s smile turned bittersweet. “One race is not enough, Blaire. It never is.”
Inside, someone changed the song. The tempo shifted again, brighter and faster. A group near the windows started dancing, pulling others in with them.
Blaire and Isaline took that as their cue to head back to the dorms.
The cold night air bit at Blaire’s lungs as she fell into step beside Isaline. Their boots crunching over packed snow was the only noise breaking into her thoughts. The plaza lights faded behind them, replaced by the softer glow of pathway lamps and distant windows.
“Your building is that way,” Isaline said, nodding toward the far side of the village.
“I know.”
“So why are you walking toward mine?”
Blaire didn’t have a good answer that wouldn’t give too much away. “Making sure you don’t get lost.”
Isaline let out a laugh that sounded bright and contagious. “I have walked this path at least a dozen times already.”
“I heard Olympic virgins require supervision. I’m just doing my part,” Blaire said with a laugh.
Their hands swung at their sides, close enough that their knuckles brushed with every third step. Neither pulled away. The contact felt accidental and inevitable all at once.
Near a row of equipment sheds, where the path curved into a shadow, they slowed. Blaire wasn’t sure who stopped first. They turned toward each other, and gravity did the work their discipline couldn’t.
Isaline’s breath ghosted white in the frozen air. Blaire could feel the warmth radiating from her mouth and see the exact moment her pupils dilated in the dim light.
They leaned in.
The kiss crashed through Blaire like a gate she’d missed—sudden, consuming, inevitable.
Isaline’s mouth was soft and insistent, her hand fisting in Blaire’s jacket as if she’d been waiting a lifetime to pull her closer.
Blaire kissed her back with everything she’d been holding in since St. Moritz, since the podium, since the training run that morning when Isaline had grinned like she owned the mountain.
Heat flooded her body despite the cold. She wanted to find a dark corner and finish what they’d started months ago.
Instead, she broke away, chest heaving.
“I want to sneak into your room,” Blaire said, voice rough. “I want to do absolutely unholy things with you.”
Isaline’s eyes went dark. “Then why are you stopping?”
“Because you have a first gold on the line. And I have a last.” Blaire forced herself to step back. “We both know what happens if we don’t stay focused.”
“So we pretend this is not happening?”
“For now.”
Isaline nodded. A beat passed. Then her mouth curved, wry and sharp. “You are supposed to be the enemy, yes? We are…how you say…competing for same girlfriend. Only one of us gets to take her home with us.”
“Painfully accurate,” Blaire said, one brow lifting. “I’ve chased her for years. She’s very high-maintenance. Demands perfection and is unforgiving when you mess up.”
“So you have a type,” Isaline replied. “Demanding, cold, makes you bleed for a little bit of attention. You will do fine with Swiss women.”
They both took a deep breath in and continued walking until they had reached the Swiss building. Isaline’s hand hovered near the door handle, then dropped to her side. Their fingers brushed one more time, brief as a spark.
“Sweet dreams, enemy,” Isaline said softly. “Try not to have nightmares about losing your girlfriend to me. I want you very rested when I beat you.”
“I don’t have nightmares,” Blaire replied, eyes warm.
“But if my girlfriend does end up in your bed, just remember—she’s used to two women fighting over her.
If you beat me, I’m filing for shared custody.
I don’t give that girlfriend up easily. I’m still planning on taking her home with me one last time. ”
“Game on, Goldilocks!”
Blaire walked away alone, the cold biting less than it should. Months ago in St. Moritz, it had been easy to make rules about this—about her. One night. Ghost the rookie, bury the ache, focus on the only gold that was supposed to matter.
But rules made sense on a training calendar, not in a village where Isaline’s laugh bounced off concrete and her mouth tasted like every reckless choice Blaire had never let herself make.
Holding the line suddenly felt less like discipline and more like trying to ski straight past her own kind of medal. Maybe love was actually worth gold.
She continued walking with her mind racing as fast as any training run she had done. Isaline had a first Olympics to survive. Blaire had a last shot to finish making history. The right thing—for both of them—was distance. Containment. No more late-night texts. No more kisses outside Swiss housing.
It didn’t change the truth vibrating under her ribs: she’d lost that bet with herself the second she let Isaline walk out of her hotel room in November and still thought about her every damn day after.