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that I’ve ever dreamed about—Olympic gold. These are just the first steps. First steps that hundreds of girls start taking when they’re seven or eight, and the only the tiniest handful ever finish.
    I need to see if I could still do that. I need to see if I lost that too—or if I just decided to throw it away.

Chapter Four
    “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” my dad asks for the fourteenth, and possibly final, time. At least, I’d be impressed if he squeezed in the question again, as I’m halfway out the door at the curbside drop-off.
    “Yes.”
    He smiles. “If you change your mind…”
    “I will call you and you will come,” I finish.
    “Exactly,” he says.
    “I know.”
    “Love you, kiddo.”
    “Love you, too.”
    “And if you change your mind, I really don’t care,” he looks me in the eye. “And nobody who matters cares. Whether or not you ski.”
    I smile. “Dad. I get it. I do. I have to do this, though.”
    He nods. “Be safe. Good luck.” As I jump out, standing on the pavement and look at him, he slips the question in one more time: “Pippa, are you sure you don’t want me to co…”
    I smile and close the door. “Dude, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. I’m gonna be fine.”
    He sighs. “Right, right.”
    I know that I’m lucky to have parents who always seemed more confused by my Olympic dreams than anything else. I’d met so many kids with psychotic parents, who never had a choice. Most of them turn out used up and washed out—the worst cases ended up really screwed up and sad by the time they’re fifteen.
    I always knew I could walk away. Maybe knowing that is what made me work so hard. It was always a choice. When my friends were in high school, going to homecoming and getting ready for prom, I was running sprints, practicing turns, falling hard and bouncing back up.
    It never seemed like work—I loved the training as much as I loved the competitions. I loved skiing alone as much as I loved racing.
    And what got Danny and Ryan killed wasn’t a race—it was a backcountry avalanche.
    My first date with Danny had been when we were skiing backcountry—sneaking up the mountain after the lifts had closed the spring we both turned 18. He’d been the shy, cute Alpine skier for as long as I could remember—the one I never really got to talk to because we were never alone.
    And our mutual best friend, Ryan, had dragged us both out of bed that morning, loaded onto the Snow Cat, and then quickly bailed, claiming he’d fallen suddenly and dramatically ill.
    Later, he told us it was a set-up. He always said we would owe him our firstborn child, because Danny was too shy too talk to me, and I was too focused and clueless to notice that he wanted to. “If it weren’t for me,” Ryan would declare to anyone who’d listen, “these two idiots would have ended up alone forever.”
    It had been a dangerous, steep run—the kind that made adrenaline pump through your body so hard, you didn’t realize you’d been a little scared until it was over and your body was shaking.
    On a flat stretch of mountain, we’d both stopped and looked back up the steep, vertical slope we’d just whipped down.
    “Jesus, that was stupid,” Danny said breathlessly, and I’d laughed because I was relieved too, barely having time to catch my before, before he’d grabbed my chin and kissed me.
    He tried to flash me a cocky smile. “Told myself if I didn’t break my neck on the way down, I’d try that.” He flushed furiously, failing to act cool at all, and dipped down the next run, leaving me shaking a little more—torn between amusement, shock, and something else.
    You were swooning , Lottie told me when I recounted the story. There’s really nothing unusual about swooning. He’s cute. You two are going to get married.
    ***
    I have to shake Danny from my memory to get through the airport. The TSA at Denver thinks they’re the last line of defense against al-Qaeda, for some