Page 85 of On the Edge

His eyes crinkle as his hand strokes the hair above my ear. “Go on.”

“I was already thinking about this being my last season with the team before you arrived.”Tell him the whole truth, that little voice is screaming at me inside my head.Tell him you’re looking for jobs in New England. Tell him you’re leaving.“But I don’t think that means you should give up your dreams. You’ve come so far already this season. This is just the beginning for you.”

He shakes his head. “Nope. This is just the beginning forus. I’m not making the same mistakes we made years ago, putting skiing before our relationship.” What he doesn’t say, but I hear anyway, is that it wasmewho put skiing before our relationship, not him. “Making this team has absolutely been a dream for me, but it’s not my only dream, and I’m willing to give it up to get other things I want even more, like a lifetime with you.”

His eyes are so vibrant, the color of the water in the Mediterranean on a sunny day. He’s so alive right now, so sure of what he wants. But I’m not sure I can be the reason he gives this particular dream up. “I don’t want you to walk away from skiing for me. And I’m afraid that if you do, it’ll always be a wedge between us.”

“How so?” he asks, and I can see the confusion in his eyes.

“I’m afraid that every time things are hard, you’ll wonder if it was worth giving racing up for me. I’m afraid that years down the road, you might come to resent me for this.”

He rolls off me so he’s lying on his back next to me, and he reaches for my hand, lacing our fingers together. “If you had finished your last season and won that crystal globe, then retired like you’d planned, would you have resented me for it?”

“That’s different, Nate,” I say, giving his hand a little squeeze as I stare up at the vaulted ceiling. “I would have been retiring after achieving everything I’d ever set out to accomplish. Sure, I would have still potentially had some good years of racing left in me, but I’d have walked away with my gold medal and my crystal globe.” Career goals—achieved.If only it had gone that way.“But you won’t be in the same position if you walk away at the end of this season.”

“Which is fine, Jax, because those were your dreams, not mine.” I glance over at him and he continues. “I’ve honestly never had any goal in my adult life that didn’t include you by my side. And I’m not willing to forsake our relationship to achieve my ski goals. In order of importance, those goals just don’t rank as high as us being together.”

“Nate.” I sigh, and he looks over at me. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say that we’ll make this work, whatever the cost.”

“We will,” I assure him. “We’ll figure it out as we go. But I’m nowhere near ready to tell TJ and Matt what’s going on here. I need to look into my contract and figure some stuff out. And I need you to give me time to do that, okay?”

“No problem,” he says, but I can see it there in his eyes that it is a problem. He doesn’t want to wait, and after all the waiting he’s already done, I understand why.

I wish I could give him a different answer, but there’s no other choice right now.

“The sun is setting,” Nate says a few minutes later. We’re still lying on the floor with our fingers loosely intertwined. “Want to watch it from the hot tub?”

“Outside?”

“Yeah, the hot tub is under the deck. The sun sets on the other side of the mountain so it’s a pretty view of it from here.”

“You’ve watched a lot of sunsets from your hot tub, Romeo?” I elbow him and try to pretend like I’m not envisioning Nate in this hot tub with another woman. Or several other women, for all I know.

“Not a lot,” he says and sits up. “I’m going to go grab you a robe.” He slides his shorts back on.

I lie there on the floor while I wait for him to return, racking my mind for a solution. Two people with very different goals. How can we both get what we want without either of us having to sacrifice so much?

He doesn’t even see it as a sacrifice. Stop projecting your feelings onto him,that little voice inside my head insists.

“Here,” Nate says as he holds open a long plush robe by the shoulders. I stand and slide my arms in, and he pulls the sides around me, wrapping his arms across my front and pulling me back to his chest. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop looking for different solutions. I’m telling you that the simplest option is the best one. We need to tell TJ and Matt what’s going on and let them figure out how this can work within the confines of our careers. Or, we can do it your way and keep it a secret until the season’s over, and then both walk away from the team. But that seems much more risky because I think people will see what’s going on between us.”

“We have time to figure this out,” I tell him as I turn my head and kiss his neck.

He lowers his head and captures my mouth with his, and as he deepens the kiss, he lets the robe go so it drapes open. His hands run along my sides, from my hips to my breasts and back down, but he’s teasing me again and never touches me where I need him to, so I wrap the robe back around me as I pull away.

“I’ve never had hot tub sex,” I say as I tie the belt around my waist, take his hand, and lead him toward the stairs to the finished lower level.

* * *

We’re halfway through Nate’s workout two afternoons later when my phone rings. Normally I wouldn’t answer my phone while working with an athlete, but I know it’s TJ calling to talk about getting Nate back to Park City to clear him to go back to Europe.

“Carry on,” I tell Nate as I walk toward the couches in the living room and answer the call with “Hey, TJ, how’s it going?”

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