(rivals to lovers, small town, sports) [WATTYS 2024 SHORTLIST] (Season 3 coming soon) After a devastating Olympic loss puts her career in a downward spiral, an aging skier returns to her laid-back mountain hometown to rediscover her love of her spor...
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Eddie was the dream girl Holly never could have dreamed up.
She was patient with them in bed without ever making them feel like a burden. She was more fun to ski with than anyone since Juniper, back when Holly still thought the James siblings might go to the Olympics together someday. And she wanted to stay. Not just for them, which would be a kind of pressure they weren't sure they could handle, but because she genuinely liked it here.
Up here on the mountain, with no distractions, that impossible future Holly had imagined suddenly didn't seem so impossible.
But they couldn't stay at the lodge forever. Work waited. The gala was almost on them. They still needed to call a dozen possible sponsors off Eddie's contact list, confirm details with their keynote speaker, and finalize a trillion other little decisions and tasks that had been impossible to delegate or needed their sign-off.
Eddie might be able to keep this lodge away from the Partners, but she couldn't do anything for the resort. That was all on Holly and their World Cup races.
They half expected Eddie to suggest they play hooky and stay the week she'd wanted instead of three days, but she didn't. She respected Holly's obligations. For once, they almost wished she wouldn't.
The last morning there, they drifted awake to calm darkness. No wind rattled the shutters. No feet tapped against floorboards. The silence was broken only by Eddie's gentle breathing.
They curved their body around hers, fitting the bowl of their hips against the curve of her ass, their elbow in the soft dip of her waist, their chin where her shoulder met her neck. They memorized the scent of her skin, the steady rise and fall of her ribs.
They ran their fingers over her shoulder lightly, and Eddie surprised them by saying, "Trying to figure out the secrets of my bionic shoulder?"
They'd thought she was still asleep. "I can't tell," they whispered.
She still hadn't opened her eyes, but she took their hand and guided it along her skin, nudging her shirt out of the way. "There's a plate and six screws in there. You can totally feel it."
Last night, she'd told them the stories of all her scars. Some had been funny, like how, when she was a kid, taking the training wheels off her bicycle had made her so confident she'd challenged her brothers to a race. She'd ended up with six stitches along her hairline. Some were scary as hell, like the snowboard crash that had left her needing that jewellery in her shoulder joint. She'd said the nerve damage had been so bad that for a while, the doctors hadn't been sure she'd ever regain full use of her arm.
Last night, listening to her war stories, watching her take an edible just so she could sleep, was the first time Holly had ever felt glad that they'd washed out of ski racing as a teenager.
They were so proud of everything Eddie had accomplished. Proud, too, of Juniper. But if Holly hadn't quit racing when they did, would they be here, whole enough to look after the people they cared about?
