Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5) (4 page)

We had a great time, both of us laughing and
cracking jokes, giving each other shit and fooling around just as much as we
practiced. Jaxon grabbed me as I finished a run, lifting me up into his arms
and kissing me; we tried going down at the same time, doing a tandem routine.
It was so much fun we tried it a few more times, one of us taking the low while
the other did outrageous aerials and then switching it up on the next run.
“You’re doing great,” Jaxon told me while we ate our lunch and rested up. “It’s
like you improved 100% overnight!” I blushed and grinned, only too happy to be
doing so much better with the tweaks he had given me.

Jaxon and I kept going until the rest of the team got
there; we took a break while everyone was catching up, while the coaches and
trainers were discussing strategy for the upcoming tournament. It would be a
bigger one, with a lot more publicity; but ultimately, they explained, the
points themselves were the same.

We fell into practicing with our groups and, for
once, I didn’t have to watch Jaxon surreptitiously—I could watch him outright,
shout out a compliment when he landed a particularly sick aerial, or laugh when
he botched a landing and ended up in the foam pit. We both kept most of our
focus on our own activities; I did cross-training and went down the slope, and
everyone in my division on the team complimented my sudden improvement.
“Getting laid was good for her,” someone joked.

“No, getting private lessons from the best boarder
on the team was,” I shot back, grinning.

“Not the best for long—someone’s grabbing your place
with an inside job,
Jax
.”

We got through the practice and talked about the
plans for the meet while everyone was chilling and resting afterward. I told
myself that I would hit the gym between practice and the tournament, but not so
close that my muscles would still be torn down when we went out. Of course, the
coaches told all of us to rest up, to make sure we were getting good carbs in
our systems and lots of protein to have staying power and to have strong
muscles once it came to tournament day. Someone on the team offered to make
snacks, and others were put on coffee duty for when we got onto the bus to head
out to the competition.

Jaxon and I left together, heading back to the
campus to hit up the dining hall. I invited him to spend the night in my
dorm—after all, I did have to be there at least a few nights out of the
week—and we spent the night studying, watching the game, and just hanging out.
It was such a relief to finally have him how I wanted him, to not have to worry
and to really get the full benefits of being close to Jaxon, that I didn’t even
think about the inevitable downside of what would happen when the general knowledge
of us being together got out—when it wasn’t just our classmates and teammates
who knew that we were an established item but everyone who knew us, including
our parents. That was an issue for another day, and I certainly wasn’t in the
mood to worry about it when I could just enjoy my time with Jaxon. I was going
to have as much sex as I wanted with him, and spend as much time as I wanted
with him and with my friends in Phi Kappa, and when it eventually came up, we’d
both deal with it the best way that we could. Life was too short to worry about
it.

Chapter
Six

In spite of being mentally prepared for the fact
that I’d have to wake up early Friday morning for the tournament, when Jaxon’s
phone blasted Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” to wake us up before it was even
dawn, so we could make it to the bus in time, my whole body felt like lead. I
was normally an early riser, but something about an alarm always made it hard
to get up—and the night before we’d been up later than we should have been,
cuddling and fooling around in bed. I’d packed my gear before coming over for
the night, since we had both decided that it would be easier if we were in the
same place in the morning.

We grabbed a quick breakfast—protein shakes and a
peanut butter banana wrap—and grabbed our gear from Jaxon’s room. It was cold
as hell outside but we made it across campus just in time to get some coffee
from one of our teammates before we loaded our stuff onto the bus and climbed
in. Everyone was excited, in spite of the dark gray skies and the cutting cold.
I snuggled close to Jaxon and we both got into joking with everyone else,
making bets about who would get injured that day—there was always someone at
these tournaments—and who would be the standout in each division. There were rumors
about some of the bigger names in the extreme sports community who might be
coming out for the tournament—obviously none of the pros would be there, since
they had bigger fish to fry, but there were some up-and-comers who would
probably be right up against us.

The coaches lectured us as we got closer to the
mountain where the tournament was going to be happening. “All right, you guys
have all been doing really well in practices since the last meet, and you all
did pretty well at that tournament, but it bears repeating: no tricks you don’t
already know you can do. I know it’s a temptation—I totally get it. But landing
a trick cleanly is better than wowing the judges and breaking a leg.” We all
laughed and I knew that Jaxon for one was going to more or less completely
ignore the advice.

I was feeling more confident than ever. The tweaks
and the tricks that Jaxon had given me were already starting to show promise;
even if I’d felt defensive when he’d started critiquing my style and my action
on the slopes, it was easy to see that he was right. And I had to admit that
being defensive when someone who’d been on a board longer than me, who was
better than me objectively, was silly. I was just glad that I hadn’t let my
cockiness and defensiveness get between me and what Jaxon wanted to teach me.

The bus ride was long; the site for the meet was
farther away from the campus than the first one had been, and we’d even
discussed heading up the night before just so we wouldn’t have to make the trek
early in the morning; but we couldn’t pool together enough money to get
everyone into a hotel, and we damn sure weren’t going to all sleep on the bus.

Everyone was buzzing with caffeine and adrenaline by
the time we got to the tournament. I was practically ready to jump out of my
seat, full of sugar and coffee and chocolate from the ride. One thing for sure:
between the snacks one of the members of the team had made and the food and
drinks available at the tournament no one had any real excuse to go hungry.

It was obvious from the moment we all stepped off of
the bus that this was a much bigger tournament. There were journalists from all
the major magazines and channels that covered snowboarding, there were tons
more people, and we found out within a few minutes that we’d be up against a
lot more competitors. Just like in the first tournament, there was a
slopestyle
section, a big air section, and a half-pipe
competition, and we were all signed up for all three—except for one or two of
us who were specializing. We all wanted as many points as we could possibly get
for the team, so that we would have a chance later on in the season of getting
to the big final tournaments, where there would be serious competition and even
some pros on the docket.

We wandered around, gearing up and checking out the
different
merch
stalls, getting our nerves under
control. We would all get a few practice runs on the slopes, on the half pipe
and the big air courses before the competition got underway. I watched Jaxon do
his practice run and cheered him on, getting more and more excited about the
day.

When I went down on my practice runs, I got a feel
for the conditions; it was a little firmer than I was used to, but it would be
easy to get my rhythm. I was more confident than ever—I tried some of the
tricks that Jaxon taught me on my practice go-
throughs
,
and the tweaks to my tricks and aerials were starting to settle into habits.

Even better than the fact that I was a stronger
boarder than ever, I was excited by the fact that I at least wouldn’t be driven
to distraction by Jaxon’s presence. I could cheer him on, I could enjoy
watching him, and I could go about my performances without obsessing about him.
It was going to be a great day—and I knew I was going to rock it out.

Like before, Jaxon went up first; his division was
scheduled for the slope course, and then he would move to the half-pipe. I was
going to be on the big air course shortly after he completed his first run. I
cheered him on from the sidelines, screaming my head off for him. Jaxon met my
gaze and grinned at me, and I knew he was going to hit it as hard as he could.

We’d spent the whole ride up to the mountain
planning our strategies. There were a couple of tricks that I’d only really
started nailing when I’d been in practice earlier in the week; I was fully
planning to use the tweaks that Jaxon had taught me on the mountain and in the
practice space to make them worth the risk. I wasn’t going to go hard the way
that
Jax
was, but I was more than a little bit
optimistic about my chances. I would be taking home the gold that day, I told
myself firmly over and over again.

Jaxon’s run on the slope made everyone gasp and
cheer—me even among the rest. Even knowing how good he was, the air he got, the
tricks he pulled off, were exciting. Unless he really messed up during the day,
I knew he was going to end up first in his division again.

Before long, I was up; I hurried over to the big air
track, and I focused down. It was so much easier to concentrate on what I
wanted to do when I didn’t have Jaxon on my mind, when I knew that he was
there, that I could spend time with him whenever I wanted. I hit the course
hard, using the tricks that Jaxon had taught me, and I heard him screaming for
me on the sidelines; it was less distracting than I would have thought. I hit
the ramp and brought my knees up as high and fast as I possibly could. I landed
cleaner, more steadily than I ever have before in competition in my life.

The day became kind of a blur; I got to spend a
little time with Jaxon but between the two of us and the rest of the members of
our team, we were constantly either going to watch someone on their run,
getting ready to queue up for our own events, or grabbing something to eat or
drink in between. Jaxon managed to steal a quick kiss before his first
half-pipe run, and I hugged him tightly before I went to do my second
go-through on the slope.

I kept
loose
track of how
I was doing through the day, even though like before I wasn’t paying so much
attention to my specific scores. The important thing to me was that I did
better than I had the first time; I’d managed a second-place finish in my
division at the first tournament and I wanted more than anything to close out
the day in first. Not being distracted, having a better feel for the tricks and
the way I was going to land them, I could feel it in my bones that I was going
to be very close to the top, if I didn’t manage to take the gold.

I told myself that if I didn’t land squarely in
first place, I wasn’t going to sweat it too much—second place was still
respectable, especially early in the season, and I would still have a good
chance of making it to the late regional competitions. The important thing was
to score enough points to keep the team in the top ten rankings. I watched the
other members of the team competing and had to admit to myself that even if one
of the other girls in my division managed to squeak out a lead on me, it
wouldn’t be a shame—we had all gotten better.

By the end of the day I was exhausted, and we were
all milling around the competitor areas in the sidelines, waiting while the
judges tallied up the different events’ points. Each of the people competing
had three separate runs in each event, and the final score would be an average
of the three; other competitions scored differently, with cumulative points
instead of averages, or best single run score being the one that determined
placement. Even if most of us just got into the top ten, it would be enough
points overall for the tournament for us to have a fighting chance at later,
more prestigious meets—but I have never been a “team player” kind of girl; I’ve
always been more of a “rising tide lifts all boats” type. I wanted to be the
very best, and I wasn’t just going to sit back and gain points for my team when
I could place in the top three.

We all listened as they announced the individual
event winners, grabbing our spots on the podium and taking our trophies and
medals; Jaxon, of course, scored in the top for all three of his events, taking
the podium four times total and ending up with a neck full of medals and a huge
trophy. When they started calling my division, I snagged first place in the
Slope and Half-pipe events, and second in the Big Air; it wasn’t quite as good
as Jaxon, but it was still enough to leave me in contention for the first or
second place for my entire division. No one from the team placed outside of the
top ten in their divisions, and we were all delirious as they called out the
overall winners. Jaxon took his spot at the top, with the gold, and I screamed
my head off for him, louder and prouder than anyone else on the team.

I was not quite surprised but still thrilled when
they came to my division’s overall; if one of the girls had eked out sufficient
points overall, even with my two first-place wins, I might have ended up in
second again—but instead I took the overall gold. In the crowd of our
teammates, I heard Jaxon screaming for me just like I had screamed for him,
chanting my name with everyone else.