Snow Job by Tara Wyatt (best large ereader .txt) 📗

though he’s eleven and getting in fights and telling teachers to fuck off. He’s just a needy little attention whore.’”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s cruel.”

“It was. When I was twelve, a friend from school offered to take me snowboarding for a weekend. His family had a ski chalet upstate, and I went because why wouldn’t I want to get out of that damn penthouse for a weekend? I had my first taste and I was hooked. It came naturally to me and I loved it. My friend’s mom saw that and made sure to bring me up as much as possible, and eventually I caught the attention of one of the instructors at the local resort and he fast tracked me into a competitive training program. Two years later I was competing in major World Cup events in Switzerland, Austria, Canada. It became my entire life and it gave me something positive to focus on. It made me feel good about myself for the first time in my life, and I had an outlet for all of the crazy energy inside me.”

“That’s amazing. It sounds like you were a prodigy.”

He shrugged, feeling mildly embarrassed at her praise. “I rose fast and it felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do. When I was eighteen, I went to the World Cup with one goal in mind: finish in the top fifteen so that I could qualify for the 2006 Olympics.”

“What happened?”

“I came sixteenth and they offered me a spot as an alternate. If someone got hurt, I was in, but that didn’t happen. I was so mad at myself for coming so close and not making it, and so I was determined to do whatever it took to get to Vancouver in 2010. It became my entire focus, my entire reason for existing.”

“I can’t even imagine the kind of sacrifice and dedication it takes to compete at that level.”

“I’d moved out when I was seventeen and was staying with one of my coaches in Colorado. I lived and trained there and while my siblings came to visit and came to my competitions when they could, my parents never did.”

“Bastian, I don’t mean any offense, but your parents are grade-A assholes.”

He chuckled softly and gave her a squeeze. “Oh, believe me. I know. I don’t really talk to them anymore.”

“So what happened?”

“I spent the next four years competing and training my ass off. World Cup events, X Games, you name it, I was there. The 2009 World Cup came around and I had to finish in the top fifteen for my ticket to Vancouver.”

She looked up at him, her eyes bright, entirely focused on his story. “Did you?”

He grinned. “I came third.”

She smiled, pride beaming out at him. “That’s incredible.”

He sighed, getting to the part of the story where it all fell apart. “It was definitely a high point. But then about a month before the Olympics, I was training and I blew out my knee. My ligaments were already stretched from overtraining, and all it took was one off-kilter landing to wreck everything. I felt a pop—I’ll never forget that feeling, God—and that was it. I’d completely torn my ACL and needed major surgery to fix it.”

“I’m sorry, Bastian. You must’ve been devastated.”

“I was. But I had the surgery and started physio, determined that that wasn’t the end. But it didn’t seem to matter how much physio I did. My knee was never the same. I could still ride, still do tricks, but there was no way it could handle the strain of intense training I’d need to commit to. I was done. Everything I’d worked for, everything I’d wanted and poured myself into for over ten years was just gone.”

Kayla didn’t say anything, just held him tighter.

He sighed. “So, I went back to New York and stayed with Max, who encouraged me to get a degree. I’d finished high school—barely—but college had never been on the radar because I’d been so focused on snowboarding. It had been my whole life. I was twenty-four and felt like I was starting my entire life over again.”

“So you went back to school, obviously.”

“I did. I did a fast-tracked business degree and then my MBA. It felt good to have something to focus on. But once I was out of school and working full time, things started to come off the rails.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head slowly, his hand trailing up and down her arm, anchoring himself with the feel of her soft body pressed against his. “It wasn’t any one thing. All I knew was that I felt empty, like something was missing and it didn’t matter what I did, nothing made it go away. So I started trying to ignore it, drown it out. I was drinking too much, and when I drank, I did stupid shit, trying to feel something. Trying to find that missing piece of myself that I’d left out on the mountain. I craved the adrenaline rush I’d gotten from competing and I looked for it in riskier and riskier places, and I’d find it—temporarily. But then the high would fade and I’d be left feeling even worse about myself and my life because of the stupid shit I’d done. So then I’d drink more and find another stupid thing to do to make myself feel better.”

“What kinds of things did you do?” she asked softly, and he could hear the apprehension in her voice.

“Sex. Fighting. I was part of this underground fighting ring for a while, and there were times when I felt so fucking awful about myself that I’d just let the other guy pummel the shit out of me, because it was what I deserved. In dark moments, I’d hear my dad’s voice, telling me that I was worthless, that I was a waste of space, that I was a useless fuck-up.”

“Bastian,” she whispered, holding him tighter.

He cleared his throat and swallowed around the lump there. This was only the second time he’d