Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Olympic Village glittered under a pale Italian winter sun, glass and brick catching the light of the sun like a promise. The flags of the world’s nations snapped crisply in the air, every colour bright against the sweep of white mountains of Cortina rising behind them. Athletes streamed through security in branded jackets, dragging kit bags, laughing, filming, stretching. It was chaos. It was theatre. It was history waiting to happen for each and every one of them no matter what happened in their individual events.

Carla Connor walked straight into it like it had been built for her. This was her colosseum.

“Right then,” she announced to her phone, her thick Mancunian accent popping through the speakers as she flipped the camera around as the Olympic rings came into view behind her. “We’ve arrived. Team GB takeover pending.”

Her voice was warm and threaded with that sharp-edged confidence she’d honed long before snowboards entered her life. Even bundled in her official Adidas kit, the navy jacket with the Team GB crest stitched over her heart, there was something so unmistakably Carla about her. The way she held her chin slightly higher. The way her eyes scanned the crowd as if assessing her surroundings as she dragged her snowboard bag behind her, wheels bumping over the uneven paving stones, as she pointed the camera across the village.

“Look at this. It’s like Glastonbury but colder and with more pasta.”

A couple of her teammates laughed behind her, all full of nervous energy as they leaned into shot throwing up peace signs. Carla slung an arm around one of the girls without even breaking stride.

“Future gold medallist here,” Carla said. “But not before me”, as she winked at the camera.

The BBC crew were hovering near the entrance and clocked her immediately. Of course they did. Carla had that quality. Charisma that didn’t feel forced. She spotted the camera lens and didn’t shy away, one eyebrow arched with a grin across her features giving them a two-fingered salute before turning back to her phone as though she hadn’t just gifted them their opening montage shot ahead of the Opening Ceremony in a weeks time.

Inside, the Team GB welcome area buzzed. Volunteers handed out accreditation lanyards and welcome packs. Organisers had set up a photo both with her fellow athletes queuing to take pictures.

But Carla Connor didn’t queue.

She simply tossed her accreditation pass over her neck and stepped straight to the booth.

“Come on then,” she called to her teammates. “Let’s give ‘em something worth printing.”

Somewhere across the channel, the headlines were already live.

CONNOR AND SWAIN LEAD TEAM GB’S GOLD CHARGE

EQUAL TALENT. OPPOSITE TEMPERAMENTS.

Carla had read them all on the flight over to Italy. Pretended she hadn’t. Pretended it didn’t matter.

But they mattered.

She had grown up fighting for space. Had fought to be heard. Fought to be taken seriously. From factory floors to snow parks carved into Alpine cliffs, Carla had learned early that attention wasn’t given. You took it.

And here? At the biggest sporting event in the world?

She would take every inch.

⸻

The automatic doors at the entrance of the Team GB section of the Village slid open again.

No cameras turned this time. No raised voices. Just the quiet shuffle of boots on compacted snow as Lisa Swain stepped inside.

Her arrival was almost invisible. And yet, it wasn’t small at all. It was deliberate.

She had her AirPods in, the soft press of them sealing her off from the noise. Her breathing controlled.

In for four. Hold. Out for six.

Everything was measured.

Her skis were balanced amongst her gear. She handled them like something sacred and extension of her body. Years of discipline etched into her body. Her Team GB issued backpack sat square against her spine, the straps tightened with precision as the remainder of her equipment cases rolled smoothly behind her.

A volunteer approached with a bright smile.

“Welcome to the Village!”

Lisa paused, pressing the AirPods in to transparency with a click.

“Thank you,” she replied, her tone measured but warm. Manchester was still there in the edges of her accent despite the years spent based in the Italian Alps. Her accent was softer than Carla’s but unmistakable nevertheless.

She took the accreditation pass and welcome pack that was offered, checking the details before placing it around her neck.

LISA SWAIN. Alpine Skiing.

Her gaze lifted briefly to the Olympic rings towering above the mountains in the distance.

No phone. No filming. No grin for the cameras. Just a long, steady look.

This was not a spectacle to her. This was work.

“Hey Lisa! Good flight?”, one of the Team GB support staff uttered.

She nodded. “Yeah. Fine, thanks.”

A handshake and a small smile followed before she quickly moved on.

If Carla burned bright and loud, Lisa radiated something cooler. Years in uniform had taught her the economy of her movements. No wasted gestures. No unnecessary words. Every action was considered.

She saw another headline flash up on a volunteer’s phone as they scrolled.

BRITAIN’S BEST BETS FOR GOLD IN MILAN CORTINA

Side-by-side photographs.

Carla was mid-laugh, wind in her hair. Lisa had eyes focused down a mountain, jaw set, goggles reflecting snow.

Equal in talent. That was the line repeated over and over.

Equal in podium potential.

But everything else was a study in contrast.

⸻

Carla was halfway through reorganising the common area seating, when it happened.

“No one wants beige cushions, it’s depressing. Where are the Union Jack throw pillows?”

She noticed the shift in atmosphere, it was subtle. It was the way one of the coaches straightened slightly, the way a couple of the younger athletes glanced toward the door.

Lisa had entered the main lounge.

She removed her headphones, placing each neatly into the case before sliding them into her pocket. Lisa’s gaze swept the room once, exits, the layout, the faces.

Carla watched her each step of the way.

Not obviously. Carla Connor was many things; subtle was not always one of them. But this time she managed it. A glance over her shoulder as she perched on the arm of a sofa in a recline before she hopped down and wandered over.

“Long trip?” she asked, casual, as though they’d bumped into each other outside Roy’s Rolls back in her home of Wetherfield rather than at the Winter Olympics.

Lisa looked up.

Up close, the differences sharpened. Carla’s energy hummed, she was kinetic, restless even. Lisa’s was contained, like a coiled spring ready to burst out from under snow.

“I had a bit of turbulence over the Alps,” Lisa replied. “But nothing dramatic.”

Carla smirked. “Disappointing. I like a bit of drama.”

“I’d gathered.”

There it was. Dry. Understated. Not unkind.

Carla laughed, genuinely. And for a moment they stood there, Britain’s great medal hopes, measuring each other without making it obvious.

They’d met before, of course. Equipment day down at the NEC in Birmingham. Sponsorship events in the lead up to Milan Cortina. Media days where they’d been posed back-to-back for effect.

Fire and Ice.

Working-class grit in two different forms.

Carla, the girl from the estate turned snowboard icon, who’d fought every inch of her life and never apologised for wanting more.

Lisa, the alpine specialist, discipline carved into her posture, used to carrying responsibility quietly.

Both from Manchester.

Both self-made.

Both used to proving people wrong.

A shout came from across the room as the Team GB social media co-ordinator hurried over.

“Carla, can we grab you for a quick behind-the-scenes piece?”

“Course you can,” Carla replied instantly.

The co-ordinator hesitated. “Lisa, if you’re free…”

“I’ve got a gym slot in ten,” Lisa said, polite but firm. “Maybe later.”

Carla tilted her head slightly, watching her.

Different relationships with the spotlight.

Carla thrived in it. It fed her. She understood that visibility meant sponsorship, meant funding, meant security. She had built an empire; she knew the currency of attention.

Lisa treated it like background noise. Necessary. Not central. The mountain didn’t care about interviews. The clock didn’t care about Instagram.

As Carla was led toward another camera setup, she glanced back.

Lisa was already walking toward the training facility, skis falling into line behind her, stride even and unhurried.

Two paths across the same snow.

Outside, reporters rehearsed their lines.

“Team GB arrives with high expectations…”

“Connor and Swain, they are both ranked top three in their disciplines…”

“Britain has never had two winter athletes so evenly matched for gold…”

Two women from the same city. Two entirely different relationships with noise, with class, with attention. The world would frame them as rivals. As opposites.

But no headline could capture the thread that connected them.

The stubbornness.

The refusal to be underestimated.

⸻

Dawn in Cortina did not creep in politely; it unfurled across the Dolomites. The jagged peaks beyond the Olympic Village blushed pink first, then amber, then a pale, luminous gold that made the snowfields below shimmer. Church bells from the town centre drifted upward, softened by altitude and distance. Somewhere down on Corso Italia, café shutters were being lifted, metal scraping stone, and the scent of fresh espresso rode the cold air even this high up the slope. Cortina had always known how to host spectacle. It did not need the Olympics to feel grand. The Games merely amplified what was already there.

Inside the Team GB accommodation block, the heating hummed steadily against the Alpine chill pressing at the windows before Lisa Swain’s eyes opened before her alarm had the chance to vibrate.

5:38 a.m.

She lay still for a moment, orientating herself. The faint outline of wooden beams above. The heavy Olympic-issue curtains edged with frost at the corners.

Across the room, her roommate Abi, one of the skeleton racers that Lisa had been familiar with before the Olympics, was dead to the world. Her headphones were still half-on from whatever late-night playlist had carried her to sleep. One arm hung over the side of the bed, fingers almost touching the floor.

Two beds. Two wardrobes. Two kit bags, One zipped with military neatness, the other of chaos and disorder. Shared but contained.

Lisa pushed herself upright quietly, careful not to disturb the other woman. Lisa’s side of the room was precise. Boots aligned beneath the chair. Training clothes folded. Accreditation pass resting flat on the desk.

And on her pillow, placed squarely in the centre as if standing guard, sat a plush Tina, the official Milan Cortina Olympic mascot. She was small, plush, and improbably cheerful. Cream fur stitched soft and neat. Bright, curious eyes. A tiny scarf in Olympic colours with a small Italian tricolour wrapped around her neck. The tag had been removed, but the stitching mark remained.

It looked faintly ridiculous in a room built around elite performance, a small stoat amongst the carbon ski poles, recovery boots and protein sachets lined in rows.

Lisa reached out and straightened the stoat slightly, smoothing a thumb over the stitched scarf.

The mascot had been handed out during Team GB orientation. Most athletes had tossed theirs into bags or left them in communal areas. Lisa had brought hers upstairs without comment. It wasn’t sentimental exactly. It was…steady. Something small and unthreatening during a time designed to overwhelm.

Ground yourself.

Remember home.

She dressed in silence, layering thermals and navy Team GB training gear with practised efficiency. No kitchenette here for her to execute her normal morning routine of a single shot espresso, Olympic accommodation didn’t allow for cosy independence. Her coffee would have to come from the communal dining hall downstairs along with the noise of a hundred nations waking at once. For now, she needed air. Space. Something that belonged solely to her.

She eased the balcony door open.

The cold met her instantly, sharp and clarifying, slicing through the residual warmth of the room. The balcony overlooked the Village courtyard, flags lining the perimeter in a bright, improbable ring of colour against endless white. Beyond the rooftops, the Tofana peaks dominated the horizon.

Lisa inhaled deeply, the air so clean it almost hurt. This was why she woke early. Before expectation. Before cameras.

In for four. Hold. Out for six.

She rested her hands lightly on the railing before she saw it.

A pink GBR beanie slumped against the thin metal divider between balconies. One glove tangled in its rim. The other sitting boldly, unmistakably on her side of the divide.

Lisa closed her eyes briefly.

Her balcony was exact, her Yoga mat was rolled tight in the corner, her trainers were placed toe-to-wall, nothing out of alignment. The divider between hers and the neighbouring balcony was waist-high and laughably symbolic, a strip of wood pretending to enforce boundaries between two elite athletes with identical media status and wildly different internal wiring.

She nudged the stray glove with the side of her shoe as music drifted through from next door.

It was low at first, the bass carrying through glass and cold air as it clashed gently with the distant church bells still ringing from town before the sliding door beside hers opened and Carla Connor stepped out into the Cortina morning.

She wore fitted navy GB leggings and its matching sports bra, skin flushed faintly from the room’s warmth meeting Alpine chill. Her hair was scraped into a loose knot that looked careless but wasn’t. Headphones sat half-on, one ear covered, the other slightly off so the music bled into the open air. She rolled her shoulders back, stretching her arms overhead in a long, deliberate reach that caught the sunrise along the curve of her collarbone.

She didn’t see Lisa.

Not at first.

There was no performance in the movement, not consciously. Carla’s physicality was instinctive, confident as she shifted into a hamstring stretch, folding forward with easy balance, then rose slowly as her breath became visible in the cold. She tipped her head side to side, loosening her neck, completely unbothered by the possibility of being observed.

Lisa found herself watching.

Not with desire.

Not even with admiration.

Just awareness.

Aware of the strength in Carla’s shoulders. Of the ease with which she inhabited her own body. Of the unfiltered visibility. Carla did not brace herself against being seen. She assumed the world could cope.

Carla pivoted to switch legs as her gaze lifted and collided with Lisa’s as a pause settled between them, delicate and as thin as frost.

Carla’s music continued for half a beat before she reached up and slid the headphones down around her neck, cutting it off mid-lyric. Silence expanded, filled only by wind curling between the buildings and the faint hum of Cortina waking below.

“Morning, neighbour.”

Her voice was warm, edged with amusement, entirely too awake for the hour.

Lisa straightened, composure sliding into place automatically. “Morning.”

Carla’s eyes dropped to the beanie and gloves scattered along the divider. She followed the line of the stray glove clearly resting on Lisa’s side.

Lisa gestured lightly toward it. “This your system?”

Carla tilted her head, studying the arrangement as if assessing modern art.

“Organised chaos.”

“It’s not organised.”

Carla huffed a quiet laugh and stepped closer to the divider, forearms resting against it without hesitation. The space between them narrowed significantly, close enough for Lisa to see the faint scars that littered Carla’s shoulders, to see the subtle pulse at her throat.

“You always this tense?” Carla asked lightly.

The question was casual. Almost teasing.

But it landed.

Lisa felt it register somewhere beneath her ribs. “I’m not tense.”

Carla’s gaze dropped briefly to Lisa’s hands, which were wrapped a little too firmly around the balcony rail, causing Lisa to release it immediately, irritated by the implication of the glare. “It’s cold.”

“Milan Cortina,” Carla replied with a shrug. “You kind of signed up for that Swain.”

Below them, a group of Italian volunteers crossed the courtyard laughing loudly, their accents bright and musical. The smell of coffee intensified as the dining hall doors opened. An athlete in a French jacket jogged past, breath clouding in the air.

Carla leaned a little further onto the divider, frost be damned.

“Didn’t mean to invade your territory,” she added, nodding toward the glove.

“It’s not territory.”

Carla’s smile deepened, slower this time. “It definitely is.”

The word lingered between them.

Territory.

These balconies were the only sliver of private air in a Village built for scrutiny. Cameras in hallways. Media in lobbies. Shared dining. Shared gyms. Shared expectation. This thin strip of cold concrete was the closest thing to solitude either of them had.

Yet, as Carla reached across the divide to retrieve her glove from Lisa’s side, her fingers brushed Lisa’s knuckles in the process in light, unhurried contact.

Lisa didn’t pull away.

Neither did Carla.

“Border restored,” she said.

Lisa crouched to pick up the beanie that had tipped closer to her door and handed it across. Their fingers touched again, colder this time, deliberate.

Still no spark.

But something had shifted.

“You’re up early,” Carla observed.

“I like quiet.”

Carla glanced out at the blazing peaks of the Dolomites, now fully lit in gold morning light. “Quiet’s overrated.”

“You don’t know what to do with it.”

Carla’s eyes flicked back to her, amused and appraising. “Oh, I do. I fill it.”

The statement hung there, threaded with meaning neither of them fully unpacked.

Inside Carla’s room, her own roommate, a snowboarder from down south, thumped faintly against a wardrobe, likely hunting for clean gear. Inside Lisa’s, the Abi snored softly, oblivious. Separate rooms. Separate lives. Thin walls. Thinner balcony line.

Carla pushed off the divider eventually, stretching her arms once more as if to reset the air between them.

“Breakfast?” she asked.

“In a bit.”

“Try not to reorganise my side while I’m gone.”

Lisa’s mouth twitched despite herself. “No promises.”

Carla caught it instantly as she slid her headphones back on, music spilling faintly into the cold morning once more.

“See you around, neighbour.”

The door shut behind her and Lisa remained on the balcony a moment longer, staring out at Cortina, at the church spires in the distance, the rising sun, the immaculate slopes waiting for her.

She stepped back inside, closing the door quietly.

Across the room, Tina sat upright on her pillow, bright eyes fixed forward, Olympic scarf stitched neatly in place.

Lisa adjusted the plush mascot absently, then reached for her gloves.

Distraction, she told herself.

Nothing more.

But as she left her room and walked down the corridor toward the noise of the Village, towards the coffee and cameras, the memory of that thin balcony line lingered in her mind.

It no longer felt like a boundary.

It felt like the beginning of something neither of them had planned for.

———

By mid-afternoon the Olympic Village in Cortina had shed its dawn serenity and had become a pressure cooker disguised as a postcard. Sunlight bounced blindingly off the snowbanks lining the walkways, and the Dolomites loomed beyond the Village like silent judges. Inside, the corridors hummed with movement, with boots thudding against the floors, the bursts of laughter and coaches raising their voices as they attempt to wrangle their athletes.

Carla Connor stood halfway down the corridor outside her room, back to the wall, phone held at arm’s length as she angled it for maximum light. She had changed into fresh training gear, navy fleece joggers and a cropped hoodie that was unzipped just enough to look effortless rather than calculated. Her hair, now properly styled, fell loose over her shoulders in a way that suggested she’d glanced in the mirror more than once before stepping out. Behind her, doors opened and closed, athletes drifting in and out of frame like set dressing.

“Right,” she said brightly into the camera, flipping it to selfie mode. “Day One in the Village, Cortina edition. We’ve survived accreditation, the food queue is longer than a bank holiday at the Trafford Centre, and apparently the mountains are real.”

She turned the phone briefly to capture the window at the end of the corridor where the peaks sliced into the sky like something painted rather than geological. Then she swung it back to her face, grin widening.

“For everyone asking. Yes, the beds are small. Definitely too small for two if you catch my drift. No, I will not be doing a room tour because my roommate’s currently asleep and she’d actually kill me. Team harmony and all that.”

She lowered her voice conspiratorially and leaned closer to the lens. “But don’t worry. We’re behaving. Mostly.”

A snowboarder from two doors down walked past and saluted dramatically to the camera. Carla laughed, completely at ease, thriving on the small orbit of attention that seemed to follow her without effort. She moved slightly further into the corridor to widen her shot, stepping backward without really checking what might be behind her.

That was when Lisa came into shot.

She had come from the physio room downstairs, jacket zipped high in an effort to fight against the draft that always seemed to snake through the building despite the heating. Her hair was pulled back tight again, cheeks faintly flushed from the cold outside. She carried a folder tucked under one arm with race notes, course analysis, and her timings.

Straight into frame.

For a split second she didn’t register it, didn’t even register the presence of someone else standing in the middle of the corridor. Then she saw the phone angled toward her.

And Carla didn’t cut the recording.

Lisa’s pause was subtle but absolute, like a brake applied with precision. Her expression didn’t flare but it definitely tightened. Controlled irritation, neatly contained but unmistakable.

“And here we have…” she began lightly, pivoting the phone slightly to widen the shot, “…Team GB’s very own…”

“Could you not?” Lisa’s voice was calm, but it cut cleanly through the corridor noise.

Carla looked at her properly now, still holding the phone up. The camera captured Lisa in profile, her shoulders squared, jaw set, eyes level.

Carla raised her brows slightly and angled the phone back to herself. “Some people aren’t morning people,” she said to her followers, voice pitched just playful enough to soften the edge, with a couple of athletes further down the corridor slowing their pace as they sensed the tension between the two women.

Lisa stepped forward, closing the distance until she was no longer peripheral in the frame but central. Her gaze didn’t flicker to the lens. It stayed on Carla. For a beat, the hallway felt smaller.

Carla studied her through the screen for half a second longer, before lowering the phone. She didn’t switch it off immediately, letting the phone rest against her hip, thumb hovering over the stop button.

She was smiling.

Not dismissive. Not apologetic. Just amused.

“Relax Swain,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “It’s just a hallway.”

Lisa’s gaze flicked briefly to the phone in Carla’s hand and back again. “That’s exactly the problem.”

Silence pooled between them, thicker this time. No church bells. No mountain breeze. Just the muffled shuffle of trainers and the distant clatter of fellow teammates actively avoiding the corridor as Carla shifted her weight onto one hip, folding her free arm loosely across her stomach.

She had the posture of someone who refused to be cornered in her own narrative. “You think me filming a thirty-second video is going to derail your race?”

“I think,” Lisa replied, her tone tightening by a fraction, “that this isn’t a brand deal. It’s the Olympics.”

“And I’m aware of that,” Carla said, the smile thinning slightly. “That’s why I’m here.”

Lisa held her gaze. “Then act like it.”

There it was.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Sharp.

A few doors down, someone cleared their throat and suddenly found great interest in adjusting their jacket zipper.

Carla’s jaw flexed almost imperceptibly. She straightened, pushing off the wall so she stood fully upright now, phone lowered but still in hand. The performance energy drained a notch, replaced by something more grounded and personal.

“You think I’m not taking this seriously?” she asked, quieter now.

Lisa didn’t hesitate. “I think you like being seen.”

“And you don’t?” Carla shot back.

The question landed differently than the others.

Lisa’s mouth tightened. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

“No,” Carla replied, a flicker of heat entering her voice for the first time, “you’re here to win. So am I. The difference is I don’t pretend the cameras don’t exist.”

“I don’t need them,” Lisa said.

Carla gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Everyone needs them. Sponsors, funding, visibility. Unless you’ve found a way to fund your entire career on pure stoicism?”

Lisa stepped even closer, lowering her voice so it didn’t carry. “This isn’t about sponsors. It’s about focus.”

“And you think I’m unfocused.”

“I think,” Lisa said carefully, “you treat this like a stage.”

Carla’s eyes sharpened. “Maybe it is.”

There was ego in it now. Not playful. Not accidental.

Carla saw in Lisa what she had glimpsed on the balcony that morning, discipline so tightly wound it bordered on self-denial. A belief that seriousness equalled legitimacy. That visible joy or swagger diluted commitment.

Lisa saw in Carla something equally provocative. Saw confidence that spilled into spectacle, ease under scrutiny, an ability to thrive in chaos that felt, to Lisa, dangerously close to distraction.

They were equals in talent. That much the headlines had been clear about.

But here, in a narrow corridor in Cortina, they were opposites in philosophy.

Carla finally pressed the screen of her phone, locking it. She slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie with deliberate slowness.

“There,” she said. “No more filming.”

Lisa didn’t soften. “That’s not the point.”

Carla’s brows lifted. “Then what is?”

“The point,” Lisa replied, “is that some of us need quiet.”

“And some of us don’t,” Carla countered. “Doesn’t make either of us wrong.”

“It makes you inconsiderate.”

That one stung as Carla’s expression shifted, not wounded, but edged. “Careful.”

Lisa held her ground. “You want to be taken seriously? Act like it.”

The air between them felt charged now, no longer mild irritation but genuine friction. Not explosive. Controlled. Which made it sharper.

She moved past Carla, shoulder brushing lightly against her as she did. The contact was brief but impossible to ignore.

Carla watched her walk down the corridor toward her room, back straight, stride even. No theatrics. No second glance.

Around them, the hallway resumed its ordinary rhythm as though nothing had happened.

Carla stood still for a moment, jaw tight, eyes narrowed slightly toward the end of the corridor where Lisa had disappeared. Then she exhaled sharply through her nose and leaned back against the wall again.

She pulled her phone out and looked at the unfinished video. For a second, she considered deleting it entirely.

Instead, she lifted the phone again, this time framing only herself.

“Right,” she said evenly, the brightness dialled down but not gone. “Some people are very focused today. Which is fair. Big week. Catch you later.”

She ended the recording.

No apology.

No explanation.

But something in her expression lingered, a flicker of irritation matched only by something more complicated.

Down the corridor, inside her room, Lisa shut the door and leaned against it for a moment longer than necessary. The quiet pressed in around her. Tina the Stoat sat on her pillow, stitched eyes permanently bright and neutral.

Lisa exhaled slowly.

Unfocused.

Performing.

The words she hadn’t said but had implied.

She crossed the room and set her folder carefully on the desk, movements precise again.

The Village carried on.

———

The days that followed settled into a rhythm that felt less like routine and more like ritual. Cortina revealed itself differently each morning, it was sometimes washed in blinding blue, the sky so clear it looked sharpened; sometimes wrapped in a veil of fine Alpine mist that clung to the peaks before burning away under the sun. The Dolomites stood vast and immovable above it all, their pale stone faces catching light like cathedral walls. Shuttle buses climbed the winding roads before dawn. Boots crunched against packed snow. The Village hummed, emptied, refilled.

Lisa preferred the early lifts.

The gondola rose steadily above Cortina’s rooftops, carrying her and a handful of other downhill skiers toward the start of the course ahead of their practice runs. Below, the town looked almost delicate. Church spires piercing white roofs, narrow streets threaded between chalets, café awnings striped in muted greens and creams. The world seemed harmless from that height.

At the top, wind cut across the ridge in steady gusts. Course officials moved with clipboards and radios, adjusting safety nets and checking gates. The downhill course unfurled below in a series of sweeping curves and treacherous compressions, the surface hard-packed and fast. It wasn’t a playful course. It demanded commitment.

Lisa clicked into her skis with practised precision. She didn’t rush the process. Gloves adjusted. Goggles seated properly. She stepped toward the start area and crouched slightly, feeling the pitch of the slope beneath her boots. One of the Team GB coaches moved to her side, voice low and focused.

“Top section’s running quick,” he said. “Watch the crosswind on the third gate. But your lines are textbook. Stay aggressive through the mid-course.”

She nodded once. No theatrics. No unnecessary response.

When she pushed off, it was clean.

Her first turns were deliberate and powerful, carving sharp arcs into the snow that sprayed fine clouds behind her. She stayed low over her skis, torso compact, hands forward. Each gate approached and vanished in a rhythm that looked almost effortless from a distance but was, in truth, a constant negotiation between gravity and control. The sound was a steady rush of skis slicing, wind pressing hard against her helmet.

At the mid-course compression she absorbed the impact through her knees without losing speed, maintaining a line so tight it bordered on audacious. Coaches at the bottom watched with folded arms, nodding as she crossed the line.

“She’s flying this year,” one of them murmured to a volunteer who had paused to watch. “Best shape she’s been in.”

Lisa skidded to a controlled stop, snow fanning around her boots. She pushed her goggles up and inhaled sharply, breath visible in the cold. There was no fist pump. No shout. Just a small, contained nod to herself as she unclicked one ski and began the slow glide back toward the lift for another run.

Higher up the mountain, on a separate face carved into a playground of sculpted jumps and rails, Carla trained on the slopestyle course. The energy was different; less clinical, more electric. Music pulsed from portable speakers near the base. A small cluster of spectators had already gathered behind barriers, drawn by the promise of spectacle. Slopestyle invited risk in a way downhill did not. It demanded creativity as much as precision.

Carla adjusted the strap on her board and scanned the line ahead. The air was crisp, the landing zones clean. She pushed off, knees flexed, gaining speed before launching off the first jump.

Her body rotated cleanly in the air in a controlled spin with a grab held just long enough to show confidence rather than desperation. She landed smoothly and rode out without a wobble.

A coach at the side of the course raised an eyebrow. “That was tidy.”

Carla didn’t stop. She rode straight into the second feature and went bigger.

The jump wasn’t designed to demand maximum height, not for a training run, not this early in the Olympics. But she carved harder into the lip, letting her speed build, and Carla exploded upward with more force than necessary. For a heartbeat she seemed suspended against the impossibly blue sky, board angled slightly off-axis in a move that edged toward reckless but stopped short. The landing was heavy but stable, knees absorbing the impact as she rode it out.

A small cheer rose from the cluster of onlookers.

“She’s sending it way higher than last season,” someone muttered near the barrier, half-impressed, half-concerned.

Carla slowed at the bottom and pushed her goggles up onto her helmet with her breath clouding around her grin. Carla felt it, the eyes, the attention, the hum of adrenaline that came with pushing it a little further than required. It wasn’t showboating exactly. It was testing limits. Seeing how far she could stretch before the line snapped back.

One of her teammates skidded up beside her. “You don’t have to go full medal run in training, you know.” But she registered the comment. She always did.

Back at the downhill course, Lisa stood near the coaches reviewing split times on a tablet. The numbers were strong. One of the younger skiers approached, cheeks flushed from exertion.

“Heard you’re flying this year,” he said, repeating what had already circulated. “Heard the timing guys talking about it.”

Lisa didn’t smile. “It’s training.”

As the afternoon progressed, and as the light began to shift from bright white to honeyed gold, Carla found herself lingering at the base of the downhill slope longer than necessary. She had finished her session. She could have headed back down to the Village but instead stood with her board resting against her hip, helmet under one arm, gaze fixed upward as a figure launched from the top section, carving cleanly between gates.

Even at this distance, Lisa was recognisable in her compact stance and relentless line; there were no wasted movements. She attacked the course without theatrics, each turn calculated and committed. There was nothing flashy about it. And yet it was impossible not to watch.

Carla felt something tighten in her chest, not in irritation but appraisal.

When Lisa crossed the finish and coasted to a stop, she pushed her goggles up and scanned the area briefly. For a moment her eyes passed over the cluster of snowboarders.

Then she paused.

Carla stood slightly apart from the others, gaze steady.

It lasted only a second. Maybe less.

Lisa looked away first, speaking to her coach.

The next morning, the pattern reversed.

Lisa had completed her downhill session and was removing her skis near the equipment tent when a burst of applause carried across from the slopestyle course. She turned before she could stop herself.

Carla was mid-air, higher than anyone else had gone that morning, body angled into a trick that rode the fine line between brilliance and overreach. For a fraction of a second the entire slope seemed to hold its breath. She landed hard but upright, riding out cleanly as cheers broke properly this time.

“Connor’s pushing it,” one of the ski technicians beside Lisa remarked. “She’s going bigger than she needs to.”

Lisa’s jaw tightened slightly. “Or bigger than she thinks she can.”

The technician glanced at her, surprised by the comment.

Lisa didn’t elaborate.

She watched as Carla coasted to the side, pulling her goggles up, scanning the base instinctively. Their eyes met across the distance.

This time, neither looked away immediately.

There was no smile. No nod. Just recognition.

They didn’t speak much in those days. Exchanges in the dining hall were brief and functional. A shared lift once, standing shoulder to shoulder in silence as the gondola carried them skyward, the glass walls revealing the vastness below. They didn’t fill the space with small talk. They didn’t apologise for the corridor. They didn’t revisit it.

But Carla noticed the steadiness in Lisa’s splits, the way coaches spoke about her discipline with a kind of reverence. Lisa noticed the incremental increase in Carla’s amplitude, the way she refined each trick rather than merely performing it.

Irritation remained. Ego remained.

But beneath it, something else began to form.

Respect, reluctant and unspoken respect.

By the end of the week, it had become almost instinctive. After their own sessions, each would find themselves glancing toward the other discipline’s course, scanning the base of the mountain for a familiar figure. Not to wave. Not to approach.

Just to confirm.

You’re here.

You’re pushing.

The Dolomites stood above them, indifferent to rivalry and reputation alike. Snow fell lightly one afternoon, softening the tracks carved into the slopes. The Games loomed closer with every passing hour.

And somewhere between clean downhill lines and gravity-defying jumps, between controlled aggression and calculated risk, irritation began to evolve into something sharper.

Not friendship.

Not yet.

But the unmistakable awareness that the other woman was not a distraction.

She was a standard.

And neither of them intended to fall short.

———

By the time the event edged closer, something had shifted in the air between them. The rivalry hadn’t softened by any stretch of the means. If anything, it had sharpened and it had definitely changed temperature. The friction that had once sparked irritation now hummed with something warmer, more deliberate. Carla, for her part, had stopped pretending it was accidental.

It began in the gym.

The training facility at the base of the mountain was all glass and steel. The hum of treadmills, the metallic rhythm of weights being racked, the low thud of medicine balls against rubber flooring created a steady backdrop of controlled exertion. Athletes moved through circuits with focused intensity; headphones in, eyes forward.

Lisa was midway through a strength block, barbell resting across her shoulders as she stepped back into a lunge. Her movements were precise, economical, each rep identical to the last. Sweat darkened the collar of her racer back top, but her breathing remained measured, controlled. Even here, even under strain, she carried that same contained discipline.

Carla had noticed.

She was on the adjacent rack, ostensibly working through her own set, though her attention drifted more than she’d ever admit. When Lisa re-racked the weights and reached for a towel, Carla seized the moment.

“You ski that serious too?” she asked, tone light but pointed.

Lisa didn’t look at her immediately. She wiped her hands, then finally glanced sideways. “Serious works.”

Carla grinned, leaning her forearms casually against the bar. “Just wondering if you ever smile mid-run. Or is that against regulations?”

“I’m not there to entertain anyone.”

“Shame,” Carla replied, eyes dragging deliberately over the curve of Lisa’s body before lifting back to her face. “Bit of flair never hurt.”

Lisa bent to adjust the plates on her bar, ignoring the undercurrent. “Flair’s what you do when you’re compensating.”

Carla barked a quiet laugh. “Compensating for what?”

Lisa straightened, meeting her gaze evenly. “You tell me.”

The air thickened between them, not hostile but charged. Carla stepped closer under the guise of reaching for a weight plate on the rack beside Lisa. She leaned in slightly, closer than necessary, the warmth of her body cutting through the cool air of the gym.

“For the record,” Carla murmured, voice pitched low enough that it didn’t carry beyond them, “I’ve got excellent control.”

The innuendo hung there, unmistakable and entirely intentional.

Lisa’s jaw tightened. She didn’t move away.

“Focus on your set,” she said evenly.

Carla’s smile widened, slow and satisfied, as if that in itself were a victory.

It didn’t stop there.

In the dining hall that evening, the atmosphere was loud, trays clattering and accents overlapping, steam rising from vats of pasta and trays of roasted vegetables. Outside, the mountains were fading into a violet dusk, Cortina’s town lights flickering on below like scattered embers.

Lisa stood in line, plate balanced carefully in one hand as she reached for a ladle of risotto. She was halfway through calculating protein intake when a familiar presence slid into the space beside her.

“You watching my run tomorrow?” Carla asked casually, reaching across Lisa to grab a serving spoon.

The movement was deliberate. Her arm brushed against Lisa’s side, torso angling close enough that Lisa could feel the heat radiating through layers of fabric.

“I’ll be training,” Lisa replied without looking at her.

“Multitasking’s a skill,” Carla said, leaning slightly so her shoulder pressed more firmly for a fleeting second. “You could learn something.”

“Like what?”

“How to land something properly.”

Lisa turned her head slowly. “I land just fine.”

Carla’s grin turned feral without her fully realising it. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

The implication again was unmistakable.

Lisa’s fingers tightened slightly around her tray. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet,” Carla replied, lowering her voice as she reached past Lisa again unnecessarily for cutlery, “you haven’t moved.”

It was true. Lisa could have stepped aside. Created space. Reasserted control, but she didn’t.

Instead, she finished serving her food and walked toward the tables with measured composure, fully aware that Carla’s gaze followed her.

Her testing became subtler and bolder.

At the equipment tent, Carla would drift just a fraction too close when discussing wax conditions with a tech, standing within Lisa’s peripheral vision. On the shuttle bus, she’d choose the seat across the aisle rather than further back, knees occasionally brushing when the road curved sharply along the mountain.

She wasn’t soft about it. She didn’t know how to be.

There was something instinctive in the way she pushed, like she was circling something she didn’t yet have language for. The teasing bordered on reckless, threaded with innuendo she delivered with a straight face and bright eyes.

One afternoon in the recovery room, as Lisa lay on a mat stretching her hamstrings with clinical focus, Carla hovered nearby.

“You always this flexible?” she asked, watching the clean line of Lisa’s leg extend.

“It’s part of the job.”

Carla crouched slightly, resting her elbows on her knees as she leaned closer. “Must be handy.”

Lisa shot her a look that would have frozen lesser people.

Carla just smiled.

Yet the real shift came one evening on the balcony.

The sky over Cortina was streaked with deep indigo and molten orange, the last of the light catching the Dolomites in a glow that felt almost theatrical. The Village had quieted for once, most athletes indoors, conserving energy, reviewing footage, sleeping early.

Lisa stood on her balcony, hands resting lightly on the railing, watching the mountains fade into shadow. She had come out to think. To regulate. To reclaim stillness.

However next door the sliding door opened.

Carla stepped out, phone absent for once, hoodie thrown loosely over her shoulders. She didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she leaned against the divider, gaze drifting outward as if she hadn’t noticed Lisa at all.

Lisa’s eyes moved before she could stop them.

From Carla’s profile to the line of her jaw. The slope of her neck. The way the fading light softened the sharpness she carried during the day.

She looked longer than she meant to.

Carla felt it.

She turned her head slowly.

Caught her.

Carla’s mouth curved slowly upward. “See something you like?”

Lisa didn’t miss a beat outwardly. “You’re blocking my view.”

Carla shifted deliberately, leaning further into the divider so that she occupied even more of Lisa’s line of sight.

“Pretty sure I am the view,” she replied, voice low and edged with amusement.

Lisa’s breath hitched before she could regulate it. Only slightly. Only enough for her to notice.

Carla stepped closer, forearms resting against the metal barrier between them. “Careful,” she added, gaze steady and unapologetic. “You keep looking at me like that and I’ll start charging for the show.”

“You assume a lot,” Lisa said, but her voice lacked its usual steel.

Carla’s smile sharpened. “I observe a lot.”

The air between them felt warmer despite the cold. The thin metal divider that had once symbolised territory now felt almost irrelevant.

Lisa straightened abruptly. “You’re insufferable.”

“Not what your eyes say.”

That landed.

Lisa stepped back toward her door, composure cracking just enough to flush her cheeks.

Carla watched her retreat, satisfaction mingling with something she didn’t entirely recognise. It wasn’t triumph exactly, but intrigue.

At the threshold, Lisa paused just long enough to steady herself.

“You’re distracting,” she said quietly.

Carla’s brows lifted. “That’s new.”

Lisa didn’t elaborate. She stepped inside and closed the door firmly behind her.

In the privacy of her room, she leaned against it, breath uneven for the first time all day. Tina sat on her pillow, stitched smile unchanged, absurdly cheerful in the face of emotional chaos.

Out on the balcony, Carla remained where she was, staring at the closed door with an expression that had lost some of its swagger.

She hadn’t set out to destabilise Lisa.

But she had.

And now she knew it.

The rivalry was no longer just about lines carved into snow or height measured in metres.

It was about proximity.

About control.

About who could unsettle the other first.

And for the first time since arriving in Cortina, Lisa Swain, disciplined, contained, immovable Lisa Swain, was no longer entirely neutral.

———

The halfpipe sat on the far side of the mountain, carved into the snow like a white canyon, its walls rising clean and steep against a sky that had turned a hard, brittle blue. By late morning the sun had climbed high enough to cast sharp shadows along the lip, exaggerating the depth and curvature of the feature.

Carla preferred the halfpipe to slopestyle when she needed to feel something immediate; to feel that thrill. She would argue it was her favourite out of her two events.

Slopestyle allowed for creativity, for style and sequencing. The pipe demanded precision in repetition. It was rhythm and timing and the kind of commitment that left no room for second-guessing once airborne. She had been building toward a more ambitious routine all week, incrementally increasing height on the left wall, tweaking her grab to add amplitude without sacrificing control. The coaches had warned her not to rush the progression this close to qualifiers. She’d nodded. She’d heard them. She hadn’t necessarily agreed.

At the lip of the pipe she dropped in without hesitation, knees flexed, weight centred over her board as gravity pulled her down the vertical face. The first hit was clean, a sharp pop with a controlled spin, landing centred and riding the transition smoothly into the opposite wall. The second was higher, the air stretching just a fraction longer beneath her board. There was a small ripple of approval from the cluster of coaches and athletes watching at the top.

On the third wall she pushed.

The speed was there. The approach was tight. She felt the compression in her legs as she rode up the curve, timing the extension of her body to explode upward. For a split second everything aligned and the sky opened around her as the mountain fell away beneath her board and she initiated the rotation with confidence.

Then something slipped.

It was not dramatic in its origin. A fraction too much shoulder. A micro-delay in spotting the landing. The kind of miscalculation that happens in less than a blink but carries consequences measured in impact.

Mid-rotation, she knew.

The horizon tilted at the wrong angle. The landing zone arrived too quickly and not where it was meant to be. She tried to correct by tightening her core, pulling slightly, forcing her hips to square but the adjustment came a heartbeat too late and she came down flat on her back.

The sound was sickening in its bluntness, a hollow, concussive thud that echoed off the walls of the pipe. Snow exploded upward around her in a white burst as the impact reverberated through the structure. For a moment the entire halfpipe seemed to inhale.

Gasps cut through the air from the sidelines.

Carla lay still.

The sky above her was painfully bright. The world narrowed to the sharp sting radiating from her spine, the air knocked violently from her lungs. It felt as though the mountain had punched straight through her. She tried to breathe and found only a thin, wheezing drag of air that refused to fill her chest properly.

At the lip of the pipe, one of the coaches had already started moving.

“Carla!” someone shouted.

She blinked hard, forcing focus back into her vision. The first rule had always been the same, get up if you can. Control the narrative before it controls you.

Her fingers twitched. Sensation. Good.

She rolled to her side with more determination than grace, teeth gritted against the flare of pain that shot along her lower back. The breath returned in shallow pulls. She pushed herself onto her knees.

“I’m fine,” she called before anyone could reach her, but the words came too quickly. Too rehearsed as she stood.

There was a brief, unmistakable wobble in her stance before she squared her shoulders and adjusted the strap of her glove as though the fall had been nothing more than a missed edge.

“Got a bit too friendly with the deck,” she said, brushing snow from her hoodie. “It hits back.”

The coach who had slid halfway down the pipe stopped short, studying her with a trained eye. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she replied, nodding once. “Just winded.”

He held her gaze for an extra second, measuring. Yet, after a pause, he gave a reluctant nod. “Take five.”

She rode out of the pipe under her own power, though each vibration of the board across packed snow sent a quiet protest up her spine. At the top she unclipped from her board and leaned casually against the fence, ignoring the way her muscles tightened protectively around her impact site. The cluster of onlookers dispersed slowly, conversations already beginning in low murmurs.

“That looked bad.”

“She over-rotated.”

“She went huge.”

Carla rolled her shoulders, stretching her neck as if to demonstrate flexibility. She even managed a grin and fist-pump when one of the younger riders approached.

“Thought you were done for a second,” he said.

“Please,” she scoffed lightly. “I’ve had worse slams.”

It was almost convincing.

She stayed another ten minutes, watching a teammate take a run, laughing at something inconsequential, projecting steadiness. But when she bent to retighten her boots, the stiffness in her back flared sharply enough to make her jaw clench and her coach noticed.

“Let’s call it for today,” he said quietly.

Carla opened her mouth to argue.

He cut her off with a look. “You don’t prove anything by limping through another set, we need to protect you not push you when we’re this close to the main games and gold.” Carla hesitated just long enough to betray reluctance.

“Fine,” she muttered, straightening.

Word travelled faster than any lift could carry it.

By the time the afternoon sessions began on the downhill course, fragments of the story had already filtered across disciplines. It was the nature of the Village, news moved through equipment rooms and dining halls with startling efficiency.

Lisa was reviewing footage with her coach when one of the support staff stepped into the tent, brushing snow from his shoulders.

“Did you hear about Connor?” he asked, glancing between them.

Lisa didn’t look up immediately. She kept her gaze on the tablet screen where her last run replayed in slow motion. “No.”

“Hard slam in the pipe this morning. Back-first. Sounded nasty,” causing Lisa’s coach to wince slightly. “She alright?”

“Got up quick. Played it off. But it rattled people.”

Lisa’s thumb paused against the screen.

“How bad?” she asked, tone neutral.

The staff member shrugged. “Hard to tell. She walked away.”

Lisa nodded once before resuming the footage. “People fall.”

Her coach studied her profile briefly but didn’t comment.

Outwardly, nothing changed. Lisa completed her final run of the day with the same clinical aggression, carving precise lines through each gate. She didn’t glance toward the halfpipe. She didn’t ask further questions. At the base she removed her skis with measured calm, discussing edge angles and snow conditions as if nothing beyond her own course existed.

But later, back in the Village, as dusk settled and athletes filtered in for recovery sessions, she found herself pausing near the posted slope schedule. The laminated sheet listed training allocations by discipline, colour-coded and precise.

Her eyes moved without conscious permission.

Halfpipe — Evening Block.

Connor — 17:30–18:30.

Lisa checked the time on her phone.

18:45.

She stood there a moment longer than necessary.

Athletes passed behind her, conversations overlapping in different languages. Laughter drifted from the cafeteria entrance. The mountains were fading into silhouette beyond the Village rooftops.

If Carla had returned to the pipe, there would be noise. Word. Someone mentioning she was back out there proving a point.

But there was nothing.

Lisa stepped away from the board, expression unreadable.

In her room later that night, she set Tina upright against the pillow before sitting on the edge of the bed. The quiet pressed in heavier than usual. She told herself it was irrelevant. That competitors getting hurt was an inevitability of the sport. That concern implied something she had no intention of acknowledging.

———

Soon enough, night settled softly over Cortina wrapping the Village in a hush that felt almost reverent. The mountains were dark silhouettes now, their jagged outlines etched faintly against a sky brushed with silver stars. Most of the lights in the surrounding rooms had dimmed; early bedtimes were a quiet discipline shared among athletes this close to competition. The air carried that clean, glacial bite that sharpened breath and thought alike.

Lisa stood on her balcony with a novel open in her hands, an Agatha Christie that she’d not long since picked up, though she’d not turned a page in nearly twenty minutes. The book rested loosely against her palm, her thumb marking a place she hadn’t truly reached. Her eyes drifted over the same paragraph again and again without absorbing a word. The evening had a stillness that usually grounded her, but tonight it felt charged, as though something unspoken lingered just beyond the edge of perception.

She told herself she was thinking about gate spacing, about wind direction, about the line she intended to take through the upper section of the course. Instead, her mind replayed an image she had not seen but had been told about, about Carla falling.

She hadn’t asked for more details. She’d kept her expression flat when the news reached her. She’d trained as usual, eaten as usual, spoken as usual. Control was a discipline she had perfected over years. Feel what you need to feel later. Perform now.

The curtains next door were drawn, but not fully. A narrow gap allowed a sliver of light to spill onto the balcony divider and Lisa shifted slightly with the novel lowering by instinct rather than intention. She had no reason to look.

But then she heard it.

A sharp intake of breath.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just sudden and involuntary.

Her body reacted before her mind did. Her gaze flicked toward the sound, landing on the thin opening between the curtains.

She should have looked away. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

Through the gap, she saw part of Carla’s room, the lamplight casting a warm, uneven glow across the wall and the edge of the bed. Carla stood with her back partially turned, skin exposed just above her waist. She was angled toward a mirror, twisting awkwardly, one arm reaching across her body in an attempt to inspect something just out of view.

The bruise was already blooming, a dark violet spreading across the lower half of her back and up her spine before feathering outward in mottled blues and deepening reds. It was raw in a way that made Lisa’s breath catch in her own chest. Carla’s back, which usually moved with such confident power, now looked tender and almost fragile under the lamplight.

Carla winced again, quieter this time, teeth sinking into her lower lip as she tried to rotate further. The movement was stiff, careful in a way Lisa had never seen from her. There was no swagger here, no grin, no careless innuendo. Just a young woman alone with the consequences of a fall.

She looked smaller somehow.

Not physically, no. Carla’s frame was still strong and defined by years of training, but her posture had shifted. The way she hunched slightly, as though guarding the injury from the world. The way her free hand hovered uncertainly over the bruise without quite touching it. It was the kind of vulnerability that was never meant for an audience.

Lisa felt something inside her fracture.

Attraction she could manage. Attraction was a spark, a distraction, something to compartmentalise and suppress. She could label it chemistry or irritation. She could file it away under adrenaline.

But this was different.

This was an ache that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with instinct.

Carla tried again to twist toward the mirror and failed, a frustrated exhale slipping from her lips as she dropped her arm and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, shoulders rounding forward as she pressed her palms against her thighs. For a moment she simply stared at the floor, jaw tight, as though calculating the impact not just on her body but on everything that depended on it.

Lisa’s fingers tightened around the spine of her book until the paper bent.

The urge to step across the narrow space between their balconies was sudden and overwhelming. To knock. To say something measured and clinical like, “You should ice it properly,” or “Have you had it checked?” To reframe concern as practicality.

But beneath that practical layer lay something softer, more dangerous.

She wanted to ease that wince.

The realisation landed heavily in her chest. It was protectiveness.

It rose uninvited, curling through her ribs and tightening in her throat. It wasn’t about medals or rivalry or destabilisation. It was about the sight of Carla alone in that room, trying to assess her own damage with her stubborn pride preventing her from getting help.

That image burned into her with uncomfortable permanence as Carla shifted again, reaching blindly for what looked like an ice pack wrapped in a towel. She winced as she manoeuvred it into place against her back, shoulders trembling faintly at the contact. The bravado she wore so easily during the day had dissolved completely. There was no one to perform for now.

Lisa stepped back from the railing abruptly, heart pounding harder than it had during any downhill run that week. She felt exposed, as though she had trespassed on something sacred. The book slipped from her grasp onto the balcony chair without her noticing.

This was not neutral.

Neutral was watching someone send it too high and analysing technique. Neutral was trading barbed comments in the gym. Neutral was refusing to move when she leaned too close.

This was something else entirely.

The fear came quickly on the heels of the tenderness.

Because protectiveness meant investment.

Investment meant vulnerability.

And vulnerability was riskier than any slope she had ever descended.

Inside, for a fleeting second, before the curtains shifted with a draft and narrowed the gap, Lisa caught the unguarded expression on her face. It wasn’t cocky, not defiant. It was just tired. Human even.

Lisa retreated from the balcony as though burned as she stepped into her room and shut the door more firmly than necessary, pressing her back against it as she tried to steady her breathing. The walls felt too close. The air too thick.

Tina stared up at her from the pillow with her stitched indifference.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered under her breathe to the toy, though whether she meant the situation or herself was unclear.

The energy had nowhere to go.

Within minutes she was pulling on her running tights and a thermal jacket, lacing up her Adidas trainers with brisk, efficient movements that bordered on aggressive. If she couldn’t control what she felt, she could at least exhaust it.

The Village paths were dimly lit, gravel crunching underfoot as she began to run. The cold night air sliced into her lungs, sharp and bracing. She welcomed it. She pushed harder than necessary, pace quickening until her breath came in steady, punishing rhythm.

Each stride was an attempt to outrun the image.

Carla twisting toward a mirror.

The dark bloom of bruising.

That unguarded exhale.

Lisa lengthened her stride, muscles burning, calves tightening against the incline of the path that curved toward the outer edge of the Village. She focused on the sensation of her heartbeat, on the discipline of breath in and breath out. This was familiar terrain.

But no matter how fast she ran, the image remained.

Not just attraction.

Care.

The realisation threaded through her with unnerving clarity.

When she finally slowed near the edge of the Village where the lights gave way to shadow and mountain silence, her lungs heaved and her skin burned with cold. She bent slightly, hands braced on her thighs, and stared out toward the dark slope where tomorrow’s training would resume.

Something had shifted tonight.

A wall she had built carefully, brick by disciplined brick, had cracked.

And the fracture did not feel like weakness.

It felt like risk.

She straightened slowly, drawing in one long, steadying breath as frost gathered faintly along the edges of her hair. Above her, the mountains loomed vast and indifferent, ancient witnesses to human ambition and fragile hearts alike.

Lisa turned back toward the Village at a slower pace, pulse gradually settling.

She could not unknow what she had seen. She could not unknow what she had felt.

And for the first time since arriving in Cortina, the stakes felt heavier than medals.

———

The path curved upward toward a quieter edge of the Village, where the gravel gave way to a narrow strip of packed snow and a low glow of floodlights casting shadows into the night. Lisa slowed near a wooden bench positioned at a bend in the trail, it was the kind of stop point placed there for athletes to stretch calves or to catch their breath between circuits. Her lungs still burned from the run, the cold air cutting sharp and clean through her chest, but the frantic edge had dulled and sweat cooled quickly against her spine, leaving a faint shiver in its wake.

She braced her hands on her hips and tilted her face toward the night sky, trying to regulate her breathing in the way she always would. Deep breath, in for four, hold, out for six. The mountains loomed ahead, vast and impenetrable and the quiet should have soothed her.

But it didn’t.

The image from earlier of the gap in the curtains, of the dark bloom of bruising spreading across Carla’s back, returned with unsettling clarity. The way her shoulders had rounded, unguarded and human. Lisa had run to outrun that image. She hated how heavy it remained in her chest, how it had followed her out here.

Almost without thinking about it, she reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her phone. The screen lighting her face in pale blue, she told herself she was checking the time. Or the weather forecast for morning training. Or messages from the team and her coaches.

Instead, her thumb hovered for a fraction of a second before tapping the familiar pink gradient icon.

Instagram opened with its usual flood of colour and movement. Teammates’ posts. Team GB clips. Reposted Olympic content. Her thumb moved idly at first, scrolling without absorbing, the act mechanical and detached.

Then an image stopped her.

Carla’s name.

A thumbnail from earlier in the week, of her laughing at the base of the slopestyle course, snow clinging to the sides of her helmet, captioned with something playful and brash about “sending it for the Great Britain.” Lisa’s thumb hovered, then pressed allowing Carla’s profile to fill the screen.

At first, the grid was a mosaic of energy. Clips from past X Games competitions played in short loops, of Carla launching off colossal snow ramps, her body compact and controlled mid-air before exploding into rotations that looked almost impossible. In another, she soared high enough that the crowd beneath appeared microscopic, she was a distant blur of colour and sound. The landing was clean, decisive, celebrated by a fist raised toward the sky and a grin that bordered on wild.

Lisa watched the clip twice, then three times.

She studied the mechanics of it at first despite knowing nothing of the sport. The pop, the tuck, the timing of the grab. She told herself it was technical interest in her fellow Olympic competitor, the way she dissected any high-level performance if it were one of her own. But beneath that analytical layer lay something else entirely, awe.

Carla looked fearless. She wasn’t reckless. Not careless.

She was fearless.

The confidence radiated through the small screen, a physical presence that seemed to expand into the quiet night around Lisa. In another clip, Carla stood at the top of a halfpipe under bright stadium lights, the crowd roaring in anticipation. She winked at the camera before dropping in, shoulders loose, utterly at home in the spectacle. The kind of person who didn’t just tolerate attention but absorbed it and transformed it into fuel.

Lisa swallowed before she scrolled further and the grid shifted tone slightly. Training shots, candid moments in gym wear, a series of photographs from a summer camp in the Alps where Carla stood against a backdrop of green slopes instead of snow. Cropped tops. Snow-dusted shoulders. A smirk that bordered on dangerous. There were some bolder images too, unapologetic in their framing. Carla leaning against a railing in a cropped top, muscles defined and sun-warmed, gaze steady and challenging as though daring the viewer to look away. In another, she was stood in front of a mural in Rome pre-Olympics, her hair loose, smirk sharp, caption laced with double entendre.

Lisa’s throat tightened.

Heat rose slowly along her neck, blooming across her cheeks in a flush she was grateful no one could see in the dark. The body confidence was not performative in the way Lisa had once assumed. It wasn’t about spectacle alone. It was ownership. Carla looked directly at the camera in nearly every image, never coy, never apologetic.

Lisa realised she was holding her breath.

She exhaled slowly and scrolled again.

The algorithm, cruelly efficient, offered older posts. A throwback to a previous season. A carousel from the X Games finals. The first image showed Carla mid-air, captured at the apex of a trick so high it seemed unreal. The second was a slow-motion clip of the landing. The third—

The third was the crash and Lisa’s thumb stilled.

It was posted only hours earlier, a fan video from the grandstand, the caption reading how “Olympic favourite Carla Connor has taken a rough landing today during practice run two.”

Her stomach tightened as the video started to automatically play.

It was grainy, clearly filmed from the side of the halfpipe by someone standing near the fence of the grandstand. The angle was imperfect, slightly tilted, and the audio crackled faintly in the cold air of the mountains. Lisa recognised the setting immediately, recognised the same halfpipe she had glanced toward earlier that afternoon. The same training session she had heard about in fragments.

Carla dropped in without issue.

The footage captured the clean first wall, the second hit higher, sharper. Even through the poor quality, Lisa could see the ambition in the third approach, could see Carla’s speed building, the compression of knees before the pop.

Then the rotation tipped wrong.

It was grainier than the professional footage and the camera shook slightly as Carla launched off the pipe, the angle just off enough that the rotation appeared skewed even before it was complete. The impact came hard and fast, a violent collision with packed snow that sent a spray of white exploding outward. The sound was distorted through the phone speaker but unmistakable in its brutality even as a gasp rippled through the recording, the sound a hollow, concussive thud that carried even through the tinny speaker of Lisa’s phone.

Carla lay motionless for a beat too long, flat on her back with the camera jolting as someone gasped behind it.

Lisa’s breath caught painfully in her throat.

The stillness lasted only a second, maybe two, but it stretched unbearably long. She remembered the bruise she had seen blooming across muscle under lamplight. Remembered the sharp intake of breath from behind those curtains.

The video continued. Carla rolled onto her side, pushed up too quickly, shook her head as if to clear it. She stood. Played it off. Even in the grainy footage, Lisa could see the slight stiffness in the way she straightened, the micro-hesitation before she rode out of the pipe.

Lisa stared at the frozen final frame, of Carla upright and her board under her feet, as if nothing had happened.

But Lisa had seen the bruise and she quickly pressed replay.

This time she watched with a different focus. The way Carla’s left hand pressed into the snow for leverage. The fraction of a second before she rose. The subtle arch in her back as she tried to disguise discomfort.

That was the moment that had marked her skin.

That was the impact she had witnessed in lamplight, dark and spreading across muscle.

Lisa’s stomach dropped further, a cold, heavy sensation settling beneath her ribs. This wasn’t an abstract reminder of risk. This was today. This was the fall that had left Carla twisting awkwardly in front of a mirror, biting back pain. It was a body that could break. A spine that could absorb too much force. A person who joked and teased and leaned too close in dining halls but who could also lie stunned against ice while a crowd held its breath.

The shift inside her was immediate and undeniable and Lisa stared at the screen long after the clip ended.

The tenderness from the balcony returned in a rush, but now it was threaded with fear as Lisa lowered the phone slightly, her pulse unsteady.

The pivot was quiet but undeniable.

The flush that had risen from bold photographs faded into something colder, deeper. The heat in her chest transformed into a hollow ache that settled low and heavy. She imagined that impact happening again and again. Imagined it happening worse. Imagined a scenario where Carla did not rise quickly enough.

Her breath caught.

The earlier flush from bold photographs drained away, replaced by something steadier and far more unsettling. Fear did not arrive dramatically; it seeped in, quiet and insistent. The recognition that the body she had watched soar so confidently through the air could just as easily slam into unforgiving ice. That bravado could not cushion bone.

She hadn’t realised how much the possibility mattered until this moment as she lowered herself onto the bench without quite deciding to, elbows resting on her knees, phone cradled in both hands. The cold began to creep into her muscles now that she was still, but she barely noticed.

Around her, the night remained indifferent. A breeze stirred faintly through the trees lining the path, carrying the distant hum of the Village generators. Somewhere far below, a vehicle door closed with a muted thud.

Lisa looked down at the phone again.

Carla’s profile picture, that defiant half-smile, stared back at her.

Desire had been sharp and destabilising, something she could deflect with sarcasm or discipline. This was different. This was a tightening in her chest that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with the sudden, visceral awareness of fragility.

It wasn’t about proximity or teasing or territorial glances across a slope. It was about the quiet hope that Carla would wake up tomorrow without pain. That she would step into her bindings with strength intact. That the mountain would be kind.

The cold crept in now that she was still, cooling sweat against her skin. She should move. She should resume the rhythm, purge this spiralling awareness the way she had intended.

“Idiot,” she murmured softly though there was no real condemnation in it.

Only concern.

Only care.

She closed the app but did not lock the phone immediately. The reflection of her own face stared back at her in the darkened screen, her cheeks still faintly flushed, her eyes unsettled.

This was no longer simple rivalry, It wasn’t even just desire.

It was investment, emotional and immediate, and it frightened her in more ways than the steepest downhill ever had.

After a long moment, Lisa stood slowly, sliding the phone back into her pocket. The run had lost its original purpose; there was no adrenaline left to burn away. The image of Carla lying stunned against packed snow had rooted itself too deeply, there was nothing left to purge.

She had opened the app to distract herself. Instead, she had confirmed the bruise, the impact, the vulnerability she had glimpsed through parted curtains.

She turned toward the Village, toward the soft cluster of lights that marked rooms filled with athletes carrying their own private fears and ambitions. And somewhere between that grainy footage and the memory of Carla wincing alone in her room, something inside Lisa shifted from attraction into attachment.

The mountains remained silent witnesses.

But the stakes, suddenly, felt painfully personal.

———

The knock was quieter than Lisa had intended.

For a moment after her knuckles had left the wood, she considered retreating, thought of returning to the safety of her room. The corridor was hushed at this hour, most athletes were already asleep or stretching through final mobility drills behind closed doors. The overhead lights of the corridor cast a muted glow across the carpet. Her pulse was louder than the hallway.

Yet, inside she could hear the rumblings, small echos of movement that were slow and uneven.

Then there was the subtle sound of something being nudged aside. A muffled exhale that carried strain of the day within it as the door opened halfway.

Carla leaned gingerly against the frame, one hand braced slightly higher than necessary as though she needed the support. Her hair was loose now, falling messily around her face, and she still wore her thermal top and quarter zip jacket, snow pants hanging loose at the hips, ski boots very much still buckled. There was a guardedness in her posture that didn’t quite disguise the discomfort tightening in her shoulders.

Yet despite her bruised back, and her even more bruised pride, she still managed a crooked, dangerous smile.

“Well,” she purred softly, leaning against the frame lifting an eyebrow, her defensive humour sliding into place with practiced ease, “if I’d known getting knocked down would summon such a devoted nurse, I might’ve fallen over sooner.”

Lisa’s breath hitched despite herself, eyes flicking over Carla in concern and something warmer. “Be serious, Carla. I came to check you.”

Yet Carla’s grin deepened.

“Oh, I’m serious too. I’ve got a tender back, a fragile ego… and I hear an attentive bedside manner can be very hands-on.” Lisa stepped inside anyway, telling herself it was strictly professional, checking in on a teammate, though the way her pulse quickened suggested she might be the one who needed checking next.

Lisa’s gaze flicked downward, taking in the boots, the undone waistband, the stiffness in the way Carla shifted her weight.

“You haven’t changed,” she observed evenly.

Carla’s mouth curved. “It became a bit of a production tonight. Thought I’d keep the costume on.”

Her voice carried the familiar innuendo that Lisa had become familiar with, but it lacked its usual brightness. There was an edge beneath it of fatigue? Maybe. Pride? Definitely.

Lisa didn’t smile.

“You can’t reach that properly,” she said quietly, her eyes lifting to meet Carla’s, taking in the jacket, trousers and boots.

The room was warm, only illuminated by lamplight that was soft against pale walls. Carla’s equipment was scattered across the room in a controlled chaos, several pairs of gloves on the desk, a helmet resting on a chair, a towel half-folded on the bed, stacks of Red Bull boxes leaning against the wall at the far end of the room by the foot of a bed.

The curtains were drawn fully now, sealing Carla’s space from the cold night beyond.

Carla shut the door carefully behind her, the motion slower than usual. When she turned back, she tried for levity again.

“You’re not here to tuck me in, are you?” she asked. “Because I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

Lisa ignored the comment and moved closer, the space between them shrinking again until she could see the tension threading through Carla’s jaw.

“Sit down would you Carla,” she said softly, gesturing toward the bed.

Carla hesitated, but it wasn’t out of defiance, it was because sitting required bending, and bending hurt her far too much.

“You planning on bossing me about all night?” she asked lightly, though she chose to obey, lowering herself onto the mattress with a controlled exhale that betrayed more discomfort than she intended.

Lisa crouched in front of her. The action was instinctive, it was practical. But the intimacy of it settled immediately in the air. Carla’s knees framed Lisa’s shoulders and the scent of cold air and snow clung faintly to the fabric of her snow trousers.

Yet Carla’s grin flickered back into place.

“Well,” she murmured, voice dipping, “I always knew you’d end up on your knees for me eventually.”

The joke hung there, somewhere in a provocative, familiar territory. But her voice softened on the last word, it was almost…searching for something.

Lisa’s hands found the first buckle of the boot without hesitation.

“Try not to sprain anything else would you,” Lisa replied evenly, though there was no bite in it as her fingers worked methodically, releasing the tensioned clasps on the snowboarding boots one by one. The metal snapped open with small, precise clicks and she slid the boots gently from Carla’s feet, careful not to jostle her too much in the process. The movement was slow, deliberate.

And Carla watched her every movement.

The bravado that usually sparked in her eyes dimmed, replaced by something quieter. She had teased about the position, but now that Lisa was here with her task in hand so steady and focused, Carla’s gaze lowered not in submission but in concentration and the humour of the moment felt thin.

Once both boots were removed, Lisa rose slightly to her feet. “Stand,” she said, voice softer now.

Carla complied, though the effort showed. She steadied herself with a hand on Lisa’s shoulder and the contact was warm and grounding. For a moment neither of them commented on the closeness as Lisa’s fingers moved to find the waistband of the snow pants.

“Careful,” Carla said lightly, though her tone lacked conviction. “People usually buy me dinner first.”

Lisa shot her a brief look but it wasn’t irritated, wasn’t even flustered. Just steady.

“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured.

But her hands were gentle as she loosened the fastening, easing the heavy fabric downward slowly so it wouldn’t drag or catch. The process was unhurried, almost reverent in its patience as she crouched again to guide the material over Carla’s hips and thighs whilst being careful not to twist Carla’s spine.

Carla’s breathing shifted subtly, not strained just deeper as the room felt smaller somehow and the air began to feel thicker.

When the snow trousers pooled at her ankles, Lisa eased them the rest of the way off, setting them aside neatly.

Carla remained standing in her thermal tops and base layers, shoulders slightly rounded, as though unsure what to do with her hands now that her defences were being stripped away layer by layer.

Lisa stepped behind her.

“Turn,” she said quietly.

Carla did.

Lisa’s hands were careful as her fingers gently brushed over warm skin as she slowly peeled the thermal base layer up her sides. As the fabric lifted inch by inch, it revealed the dark bloom of a bruise spreading across the snowboarders back. Angry purples and deep blues were clearly visible despite being half-hidden beneath the edge of Carla’s sports bra, blooming outward in irregular shapes, deepening toward the centre where the impact had been fiercest. It looked almost painted on, violent against Carla’s pale skin, a stark reminder of gravity’s indifference.

Lisa’s breath caught before she could stop it, a soft, involuntary sound that betrayed more than concern. The bruise was worse under full light. The sight of the injury tightened her chest, but so did the closeness of this moment.

The heat of Carla’s skin under her palms, the subtle rise and fall of her breathing. Carla tilted her head slightly, as if she’d heard that hitch, and the air between them grew heavier than the bruise ever could.

Without thinking, her fingers hovered, then brushed lightly across the unbruised edge, a tentative contact that was more of a question than touch.

Carla inhaled sharply but it wasn’t from pain. It was from the softness as the room went still.

Lisa’s hand stilled as well, her fingertips resting lightly against warm skin. She could feel the heat radiating from the injury, the tension in the surrounding muscles.

“You should have had this checked out properly by the medical team,” she said, though there was no reprimand in her tone.

Carla’s voice, when it came, was quieter than Lisa had ever heard it.

“I’m fine.”

But it wasn’t defiance but vulnerability.

Lisa moved away briefly, retrieving an ice pack from the bedside table, wrapping it securely in a towel before returning, stepping close again until the warmth of her body was a subtle presence at Carla’s back.

“This might sting,” she murmured.

Carla nodded once.

When the cold pressed gently against bruised skin, Carla’s shoulders tightened instinctively causing a soft hiss to escape from her lips. Lisa adjusted her hold, easing her pressure, whilst her free hand settled lightly at Carla’s waist in an effort to steady her.

“I’ve got you,” she said, almost without realising.

The words landed between them.

Carla went very still.

Silence filled the room, but it wasn’t awkward. It was heavy in a different way, it was dense with awareness. The kind of quiet that allows something unspoken to breathe.

Lisa held the ice in place with careful patience, adjusting as needed, attentive to every subtle shift in Carla’s breathing. Her touch was firm enough to be effective, gentle enough to be deliberate. There was no competitiveness in it. No sarcasm. No edge. Only care.

Carla’s gaze drifted to the mirror across the room, catching their reflection.

Lisa standing close behind her, brow furrowed in concentration, hands steady. Her posture protective without being possessive. Focused without being clinical.

Carla studied the image as though seeing something new.

“This isn’t very on-brand for us,” she said quietly.

Lisa’s eyes lifted to meet her reflection.

“No,” she agreed.

Carla swallowed.

For the first time since they’d arrived in Cortina, she felt seen.

Right now she was just someone who had fallen hard and needed help getting back up.

The realisation was disarming.

Lisa adjusted the ice again, her fingers once more grazing the skin of Carla’s waist with unconscious tenderness. She felt the shift too, a boundary they hadn’t yet crossed. Now they had stepped through it the moment Lisa had knocked.

Neither of them named it.

They didn’t need to and after several long minutes, Lisa eased the ice away and set it aside. “Keep it on for intervals,” she said softly. “Don’t try to be clever tomorrow, maybe take the run off to let yourself recover.”

Carla let out a quiet breath that almost resembled a laugh.

“Bossy,” she murmured.

But there was no mockery left as Lisa stepped back, giving her the space again, though the warmth lingered between them.

“I should go,” she said.

Carla nodded, then hesitated. “Lisa.”

Lisa paused at the door.

“Thanks,” Carla added, voice stripped of its usual armour, causing something steady and fragile to pass between them.

Lisa inclined her head once, unable to trust her voice without revealing too much before she opened the door and stepped back into the quiet corridor.

Inside the room, Carla stood still for a long moment, even long after the door had closed, fingertips brushing lightly over the place where Lisa’s hand had rested.

The bruise still ached.

But something else had shifted entirely.

And neither of them could pretend they hadn’t felt it.

———

The morning air over the Tofane slope carried a sharpness that felt almost metallic in your lungs, the kind of air that stripped everything down to instinct. The downhill course carved its way through the mountain like a white scar, gates set in ruthless precision, blue dye staining the snow where racers were meant to cut their almost impossibly tight lines. Spectators clustered along the fencing, a restless hum of anticipation rising and falling with each athlete who launched from the start.

Lisa stood in the start hut, her skis were angled forward, chin tucked as she rolled her shoulders once more in an effort to loosen the tension that had settled there overnight and had refused to leave. The world beyond the wooden frame of the gate looked distant as she flexed in her boots, feeling the familiar compression along her shins, a reassuring solidity of the equipment she trusted with her life.

Normally, this was where she became untouchable.

Normally, the noise receded and her mind sharpened into a single, ruthless line from top to bottom.

Yet today something kept intruding.

Her hand at Carla’s waist. The cool ice against warm skin.

“I’ve got you.”

The memory slipped in uninvited, vivid as the dye on the snow below.

She exhaled through her nose, irritated at herself. This was training, yes, but it was still public. Coaches were watching. Other nations were watching and taking notes. The narrative around her was always the same, one of discipline, of control. She was The Queen of Speed.

“Swain, ready,” the starter called in a thick Italian accent as she planted her poles and exploded out of the gate.

The first section of the course was steep and technical, it demanded immediate aggression. Lisa attacked it, her edges biting hard into the snow, body angling low as she threaded the opening gates with practiced precision. The wind clawed at her suit; the vibration of the terrain sang up through her skis and into her bones.

Too hard.

She knew it even as she did it.

She drove out of the second compression with more force than necessary, chasing speed that was already there. The course blurred faster than usual, gates flashing past in blue and red streaks. Her line was clean but razor-thin, margins shaved to nothing.

Halfway down, she clipped a gate.

It was small, the faintest of misjudgments as her inside shoulder brushed a gate that she would normally clear by centimetres. But at this level, small was costly. The contact knocked her rhythm just enough that the next turn came a fraction late, skis skidding wider than she intended before she hauled them back under control.

Yet a murmur rippled along the fencing.

Lisa adjusted instantly, regaining composure with the reflexes that had made her formidable for years. She drove the final section hard, body compact and aerodynamic, but the disruption lingered. It was subtle, invisible to casual observers, but she felt it in the way the run never quite clicked into that seamless, predatory flow she lived for.

She crossed the finish line and straightened slowly, poles digging into the snow as she coasted to a stop.

Her time flashed on the board.

Off, not by a thousandth of second. No she was off the pace by a second.

Not disastrous. Not humiliating. But off enough that her coach’s posture stiffened slightly at the edge of the corral.

She pulled off her goggles, the cold air hitting her face as she schooled her expression into neutrality. Athletes nearby were polite, noncommittal. A few exchanged looks that were almost sympathetic.

This wasn’t the queen of speed Lisa Swain.

She could feel the shift in tone without anyone saying it aloud.

Her coach approached first. “You rushed the middle sector,” he said, not unkindly. “You didn’t need to.”

“I know,” she replied evenly, already unfastening her helmet.

He studied her for a moment longer than usual, as though searching for something beneath the surface. “You’re forcing it. Trust the line.”

She nodded, brushing it off with the same composure she always wore like armour. “Just pushing margins.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he stepped back, leaving her space.

Lisa’s gaze drifted beyond him, almost against her will.

The crowd near the finish line had thickened during her run, spectators wrapped in Italian flags and heavy coats, phones raised to capture footage. And there, leaning against the barrier just past the coaches’ section, stood Carla.

Not in training gear.

Not strapped onto a snowboard.

She wore a thick Team GB jacket over a hoodie, hands tucked into the pockets, hair pulled back loosely. The halfpipe session she would have had should have been called off this morning if she followed the recovery plan recommended after the crash.

She had taken Lisa’s advice.

And she was watching.

Not with rivalry.

Not with sarcasm.

With focus.

Lisa felt it like a physical pull.

Their eyes met across the snow.

Carla didn’t smile.

She tilted her head slightly, studying Lisa with an intensity that felt far more personal than competitive analysis. There was something assessing in her expression, but not the smug satisfaction of seeing a rival falter.

It was sharper than that.

Lisa’s jaw tightened. She slid her goggles off and wrapped onto her arm as pushed through the corral toward the exit, every step deliberate. She could have avoided her. Could have turned toward the team area, buried herself in debrief and data.

Instead, she walked straight toward the barrier where Carla stood.

Up close, the bruise was hidden beneath layers, but Lisa could see the stiffness in the way Carla shifted her weight, still favouring one side.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Lisa said, keeping her voice low.

Carla’s gaze flicked briefly to the course behind her, then back to Lisa’s face. “I am resting,” she replied lightly. “Watching you self-destruct counts as low-impact.”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t self-destructing.”

“No?” Carla arched an eyebrow. “You nearly took that blue gate home as a souvenir.”

Heat flared in Lisa’s chest, defensive instinct rising fast. “I clipped it. It happens.”

“Not to you,” Carla said quietly.

The words landed harder than any mockery would have.

Lisa opened her mouth to counter, but Carla continued, her voice lowering just enough that it became something shared between them alone.

“You came out of the start like you were chasing something,” she said and Lisa just stared at her, “Today you looked like you were trying to prove something and I don’t know why.”

Silence settled between them, dense as the cold air.

Lisa’s pulse thudded in her ears. “You don’t know what I was doing.”

Carla’s lips curved slightly, but there was no cruelty in it. “I know what pushing too hard looks like. I’ve built a career on it.”

The admission hung there, unexpectedly vulnerable.

For a fleeting second, the image of Carla in her room the night before surfaced again, of her standing under the lamplight, bruise blooming across her back, breath catching at the touch of cold ice and Lisa’s warm hands.

Carla stepped closer to the barrier, reducing the space between them to almost nothing. The murmur of the crowd dulled, as though the world had stepped back.

“You told me not to be clever, to not do anything stupid,” she continued, her voice dropping into something that vibrated low and dangerous. “Maybe you should take your own advice.”

Lisa’s throat felt dry, “I’m fine,” she said automatically.

Carla’s gaze flicked over her face, slow and deliberate, as though assessing more than muscle fatigue as Lisa’s composure wavered for a fraction of a second.

Carla’s mouth tilted into a familiar half-smile, the kind of smile that usually preceded a reckless trick or a dirty joke. But this time, it carried something else beneath it.

“You were steadier last night,” she murmured, just loud enough for Lisa to hear. “On your knees.”

The memory detonated between them causing Lisa to go utterly still as Carla held her gaze. It was unapologetic, but her eyes were darker now, not teasing for an audience. She was testing Lisa.

“You had a better line down my spine than you did on that course,” she added, voice low and rough around the edges. “Maybe you should stick to runs you can handle.”

The words were undeniably provocative, the innuendo blatant. But underneath the humour was something else; an acknowledgement. Of the tenderness. Of the shift in their friendship.

Lisa felt the heat rush to her face before she could stop it.

For a split second, she was stunned into silence.

Carla watched the reaction with open interest, as though cataloguing it carefully.

“You’re unbelievable,” Lisa managed finally, though the sharpness had dulled into something closer to breathlessness.

“And you’re distracted,” Carla shot back. “Which is worse.”

The accusation cut closer to truth than Lisa wanted to admit.

Around them, another racer launched from the start, the crowd’s attention pulling briefly upward toward the course. The noise swelled and ebbed again.

Carla leaned slightly closer, lowering her voice further. “You don’t get to look at me like that,” she started, “Like I’m fragile whilst proceeding to throw yourself down a mountain at over 80 miles per hour like your trying to outrun it.”

Lisa’s chest tightened.

“I’m not outrunning anything.”

Carla’s eyes searched hers, unflinching. “Then stop skiing like you are.”

The bluntness of it stripped away any remaining defence.

For the first time since the run ended, Lisa allowed herself to feel it. To feel the misalignment, the distraction, the mistakes, the way her mind had splintered at the start gate. It hadn’t been about proving she was still dominant. It had been about control. About regaining the composure she had surrendered the moment she crossed into Carla’s room last night.

“Next run,” she said, tone lighter now but still edged, “try not to clip anything. Especially not because of me.”

Lisa met her gaze squarely. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

Carla’s grin returned, slow and dangerous. “You were very sure of me last night.”

The words hit like a second collision.

Lisa inhaled sharply, steadied herself, and forced her expression back into something controlled. “Go back to the village and rest,” she said, deflecting with effort. “That wasn’t a suggestion Carla.”

Carla’s eyes softened almost imperceptibly.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied with a salute, the tease gentler this time.

Another silence stretched between them, heavy with everything neither of them was ready to articulate.

Finally, Lisa stepped back, breaking the proximity before it consumed what little composure she had left. “I have another run,” she said.

Carla nodded once.

“I’ll be watching,” she replied.

Not as a rival.

Not as a critic.

As something else entirely.

Lisa turned toward the lift, heart pounding in a way that had nothing to do with altitude. The mountain loomed above her again, indifferent and demanding.

Behind her, Carla remained at the barrier, eyes tracking Lisa’s retreating form with an intensity that had nothing to do with competition standings.