Carry Your Heart (15 page)

You have to be selfish to be successful at this sport,
Mike once told me. I never really believed him, because I had already committed myself so completely to it. There was nothing left to give up.

But getting back into it, I see all of the things I had ignored and passed over. Friends outside of the circuit, school, family, even. I miss most of my dad’s calls. I always call him back late, when were both too tired to do much talking.

“You okay?” Lottie asks.

I nod. “Nervous.”

“About the flight?”

I smile, thinking of Hunter. I almost laugh remembering his rant from the night before. “No, just—the competition.”

Jackson is a tough course—and all of the best girls will be out for it. My expectations are lower than Lottie’s. She has so much more at stake and there are three events this competition, instead of just one.

She smiles. “You never used to worry like this.”

“That’s not true,” I hesitate. It used to be me reassuring her, now that I remember it. She used to get nervous. I used to tell her to relax. But I was nervous too. “Maybe I just didn’t tell you about it before.”

She looks annoyed. “Oh. Well. I wouldn’t worry. It’s only your second race. Nobody expects you to win or anything.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s the problem.”

I don’t know if she intends for me to see the eye roll, but it’s there. I bite my lip. It’s early, we both have a lot on our minds, and I just don’t want to fight with her.

I should have prepared myself for a horror show, not a mildly stressful event. From the moment we arrive at the hotel, everything that could go wrong does.

Lottie and I are sharing a room, for one. And then Laurel is across the hall. Mike gets caught up in a meeting and we miss our slot for training. My nerves are out of control the whole night, and I don’t get any sleep.

I text Hunter at midnight, to see if he’s awake, if he can say something that will put me even marginally at ease, but he doesn’t write back, which sets off a whole new spiral of insecurities that I know are stupid, irrational, and grounded in my own delusions, but they still feel like crises.

By the time the sun comes up, I’m equal parts wired and exhausted.
This is going to be awful.

I leave my phone in the room. The last thing I need on race day is distractions—more than being sleep-deprived and feeling unprepared, anyways.

“You okay?” Mike asks at breakfast.

“Tired.”

Lottie glances at me, unsympathetically.

He sighs. “Let me get you a coffee.”

He disappears to find coffee and I’m left with Lottie.

“Hey.” She says. “I’m not trying to freak you out or anything, but there are pictures of you and Hunter all over some blog.”

My heart drops into my stomach.

“Laurel’s sort of pissed.”

I don’t say anything. I try not to throw up.

Lottie watches me carefully. I wonder if she can see the quiet panic circulate my body.

“I just thought you should know.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, tensely. I want to get the fuck out of here. I try not to think about the downhill boys and Joey. Or what Laurel will say. Or whether Hunter gives a fuck about any of it.

She sniffed. “I’m just surprised you didn’t tell me. We’re supposed to be friends.”

“Lottie…”

“No, it’s fine. But, like, it didn’t feel good hearing about it from Laurel,” she runs her fingers through her hair.

“It wasn’t a date…”

“Okay,” she says.

“It
wasn’t
.” It’s so close to a lie, that I can’t even tell the difference. Yes, the benefit hadn’t been a real date. But we had been on one since.

“Fine,” Lottie exhales. “Whatever, Pippa. Honestly, I don’t know why I expected you to tell me about.”

I see Mike walking back, a coffee in hand.

“Can we talk about this
any
other time but today?”

“Sure. We’ll do it on your terms,” she says. “Like we do everything. It always has to be on your terms.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You disappear for a year, and you don’t say a goddamn thing. And then you come back, and act like everything’s exactly the same. Nothing is exactly the same,” she says. Her voice breaks. “They were my friends too. And I didn’t have the option of going home to live with my parents and pretending none of it ever happened…”

“How do you have any idea what I thought about the last year?” I ask her. “It wasn’t about you…”

“It’s never about me, Pippa,” she says. She swallows.

Mike returns and takes one look at her, on the verge of tears, and my scowl. “Jesus. Everything okay?”

“Fine,” we both say.

“Can we focus on the race?”

“Fine,” we both repeat. I guess there are some things we can still agree on.

Everybody knows about you and Hunter.

There’s nothing to know.

There’s almost nothing to know.

There’s almost nothing I want to tell you. That should be enough.

Chapter Sixteen

Before the avalanche, I felt the world move. Like a lurch. I thought it was my stomach. It was me and two fearless boys. I didn’t want to tell them about the earth that was lurching beneath my skis, so I didn’t say a word. And I went first. The light snow went deep.

They followed. Ryan whooped as he dropped down, a high piercing cry and I laughed and I forgot to be afraid. And then the earth started crumbling on and behind me. It was like skiing on railroad track, the vibrations pulsed like a train coming through. I could feel it coming. I could hear it—nothing but it. It rolled in. It rolled through.

***

I know before we began that this would go badly. I feel it coming this time. And I fight it, but it takes me anyway.

I crash out of the GS, and then botch a turn too badly to recover in the Super G.

“Just take it easy,” Mike tells me. Even Lottie’s sorry now. I can’t take the way she looks at me. I catch my breath and ignore Mike and ignore Lottie and try to win the downhill.

I go harder than I should out of the gates. But I keep my feet. I know if I win this, it will be enough. It will redeem me. The world moves in a blur as I ski and then I hear the crack.

The binding attaching my boot to the ski gives out, and snaps. The ski wobbles underneath my foot, catches an edge, and then spins out from underneath me. I lose the ski, my boot slams into the packed snow, I flip and slide. I tumble for a few yards and come to a hard stop.

Shaken up, unhurt, but who cares at that point? I kick off the other ski, angry—trying not to show it. Trying to salvage some dignity.

You never remember how hard it is to walk down the course with everyone watching you. The slope steep, the game over, the opportunity finished.

I don’t stop walking at the end to talk to Mike or to anyone else.
I fucking hate this. I should never have come back. I should never have put myself out there.

Something else for Laurel to laugh at.

Chapter Seventeen

Lottie takes her time coming back to the room. I don’t blame her. She’s through to the finals in all three events. She closes the door, softly, like she thinks I won’t notice she’s back.

She hesitates by her bed—the one opposite mine. I don’t know what she expects—does she think I’m going to freak out at her because she won?

She takes a deep breath. “Hey.”

“Congrats,” I say, not bothering to look up from my computer.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. She glances over at me. “Laurel and a bunch of the girls are going into town for dinner…if you want to join.”

I meet her eyes, not saying anything.

“Pippa?”

“Seriously,” I say. “You think I want to hang out with Laurel right now?”

She goes quiet.

“You called her a death eater. Two weeks ago,” I say, stunned. I shake my head.

“I said yes—I was mad at you so I said yes.”

“Well, have a good time,” I tell her.

“Pippa, you have to give me a little bit of credit here…”

“Seriously?” I repeat. “I just—Lottie.” I exhale and let go of my anger, because more than pissed off, I’m just spent. “I’m exhausted. I don’t want to fight. Have a good time.”

She hesitates and nods. She heads to the bathroom to shower and get dressed.

Hunter still hasn’t texted me back. I lay back on the bed, delirious with exhaustion but too furious with myself to fall asleep. I’m vividly aware of Lottie as she dresses to go meet up with a girl who openly hates me.

You’re supposed to be my friend
, I want to say. But I realize that when you disappear for a year, you lose the right to be indignant when your friends abandon you, too.

I swallow. I see Danny, golden-haired and lean, with a serious look on his face. I see him standing in a room not unlike this one. We were nineteen and impossibly in love. We had both lost races. We had both been furious. He had held me fiercely, saying
I hate this.
The sex had been mind-blowing that night—angry and important, just the way we felt.

We knew the world would keep spinning. We knew we had something else to live for in each other and that fact shone brighter than any medal. We lay in bed, making plans for better days and faster times. We told ourselves the story of our endless future together.

All that fucking snow,
I think.
All that fucking snow had to move and fall. That never should have happened. Danny never should have died. All that snow.

Chapter Eighteen

There are flowers in my room when I return, with a note that has a frowny face on it.
Sorry it didn’t go as planned. I still think you’re awesome. –HD

I laugh at the note, written in a childish scrawl, turning it over in my hand and call him.

“Thanks for the flowers.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he grouses, like he’s embarrassed.

I laugh and hear his voice change. “Do you want to come up?”

I nod. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

Hunter swings open the door and I get a good look at a shiner over his right eye.

“Jesus.”

“I tried to break a fall with my forehead,” he says simply. “It was mind-blowing. Literally. I think I killed half my brain.”

I wince looking at it. He grabs me from the doorway, kisses me and shuts the door with his foot.

“Smooth.”

“I practiced that,” he says, half lifting me off the ground, pushing me against the wall to kiss me. He closes his eyes and slides an able hand down my ribs, sending a shiver down my spine and a smile to my face.

He leans me into the wall, at a slant, pushing our foreheads together. “How bad was it?” he whispers.

“A
horror
show,” I whisper back. I run my fingers over the broken skin over his eyes and he recoils slightly. “Did you see a doctor?”

“You worried about me?” he smiles. “It was only one race.”

“Three races.”

“Whatever,” he whispers. He bends his knees and lifts me off my feet, carrying me to the bed.

I feel him lower me down on the quilt. I breathe shallowly, closing my eyes, our clothing rustling together.

I tug at the hem of his shirt, pull it over his head, and let him press down against me. His hands are all over me—he’s all I want right now.

“Are you okay with this?” he whispers.

I laugh into his hair and ear. “Seriously?”

“I just,” he smiles at me, kisses me again. “You sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

He grins and grabs me. We tear off each other’s clothing, we map each other’s bodies against our hands, we roll each other over. When he moves into me, it’s like fire.

His skin hot on mine, his breath hot on mine, our bodies move together, until he comes, and I cry out and then we’re both just lying there, in the quiet, our breath rising and falling and rising.

“Jesus,” he whispers. “I could get used to that.”

I smile. He rolls me so I’m on top of him. We’re naked and it’s daylight. His eyes are the clearest green I’ve ever seen. He arches his neck to kiss me softly. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

He smiles and blinks those gorgeous eyes. He slides the covers down and the pulls them over us. He crushes me tight to his chest. “Second date is going to be a nap.”

“That’s a funny definition for a nap.”

“Shut up,” he whispers into my ear. “Everything about me is funny.”

***

I wake up in an empty bed. I hear his voice, distantly, in the adjoining room—on his cell phone again. I get to my feet and pull on my clothes. I peak my head through the doorway and he turns and smiles.

“Hey, Paul—I gotta run,” he says. He looks at me. “Send me the paperwork, okay?” He grins and hangs up the phone. “Hey.”

“How long did I sleep for?”

“Couple hours,” he smiles, glancing at the clock. “Why? You have somewhere to be.”

“No, I’ve got the day off.”

He grins. “I knew I should have hid your clothes.”

I laugh.

“You want to do something?”

“Yeah, what did you have in mind?”

He cocks his head. “You’d look pretty cute on a snowboard.”

“Oh please.”

“Come on, I can teach you.”

“Why don’t I teach you how to ski?”

“Because I know how to ski and it’s stupid,” he grumbles.

“You sound like you’re four.”

“Because I’m dying to teach you how to snowboard.”

There’s no reason not to. “What the hell,” I say. “Fine.”

He grins like the cat that ate the canary. “Really?”

“I said fine.”

“You’re going to go snowboarding with me?”

“Yes,” I say.

“It’s really hard.”

“It can’t be that hard,” I say. I roll my eyes. “One ski sideways. Sounds peachy.”

***

“I hate you,” I say, as he holds his hands out to me to pull me off my ass for the fifth time in as many
seconds
. “This is too much exertion for one day.”

He laughs at me. “You’re rocking it. Come on.”

I make it to the ski lift sure of two things: I hate Hunter Dawson as much as I hate snowboards.