Page 3 of On the Edge

I walk around my desk and glance out the window at the tall grass that grows for miles, right up to the jagged mountains that are forever capped in ice. It’s a beautiful view, but I can’t wait for it to be entirely covered in pure, white snow. It’s been two months since we were in New Zealand for summer ski training and I can’t wait to get back out there again.

I take a seat at my desk and glance at the manila folder filled with medical files that TJ left sitting there for me. It’s about ten times thicker than the medical file of any other athlete I’ve worked with. Whoever this new guy is, TJ wasn’t kidding about him having “some medical issues.” How the hell does a guy make the national team with a health record long enough to fill a folder over an inch thick?

I open the folder to scan the first page and my eyes land on the one name I never wanted to see again in my entire life.

“Oh. Hell. No.” Anyone but him.

CHAPTER2

NATE

Park City, Utah

I lean up against her doorframe and cross my arms loosely over my chest. I want to appear casual, but I need to be prepared for the very real possibility that she’ll try to kill me.

I take the moment to observe her. She’s sitting behind her desk and the sun streaming in the window behind her is lighting her up like an angel, a trick of the eye that could throw me off my game if I let it. She reaches to pick up the manila folder thick with my medical records. Her full pale lips, the color of cotton candy, pull down at the corners into a frown. A folder of medical records this big means a significant challenge for her, a challenge I imagine she’ll welcome ... until she finds out it’s me.

She reaches behind her neck and sweeps her dark, wavy hair around to one side so it falls over her shoulder, hanging nearly to her elbow. It’s longer than the last time I saw her, and I wonder how many other things about her have changed in the years since she was mine.

I watch her flip the file folder open, wondering if I used to find every movement of hers so fascinating or if it’s because I haven’t seen her in person in so long.

“Oh. Hell. No.” Her voice is a whisper and a groan, then a hiss of anger escapes her lips as she scans the first page of my records.

She flips to the back of the file, to start at the beginning. Everything contained in those early pages she already knows, intimately. But then she flips the pages until she gets to the part she’s less familiar with—the last five years. And suddenly, I can’t stand the wait for another second. I need to see her face, to know how she’ll react to me being in her life again.

I clear my throat and her head snaps up. “I see you found my file.”

She narrows her eyes at me, those thick black lashes descending to cover half of her bright green irises. She’s always had an expressive face, and right now her look is murderous.

“This is not happening.” Her voice is icy as she rises to stand behind her desk. “Go away and stay there.”

“Sorry, Jackson.” I shrug so she won’t see how the guilt is eating away in the pit of my stomach, sending a burning pain up into my chest. I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have, but the pain of this reunion is inevitable. There is no reconciliation without it.

“What are you doing here?” Her hands are on her hips as she stands behind her desk, but it’s hard to feel threatened by her when she’s in florescent purple leggings and a navy workout tank that saysI do it for the tacosin metallic purple script.

“I missed you too,” I say, taking a few steps into her office. Her cheeks flush in anger as my words hit her and I know my tone was all wrong, but I take another step toward her desk anyway. While anyone else would have the good sense to stay away from her when she’s this mad, her anger and I are old friends.

“Like hell you did,” she says, her eyes narrowing to let me know she doesn’t for a second believe me. If only she knew. “Get out of my office.”

I try to stay calm, act like this isn’t a reunion moment I’ve dreamed about for years. I was never delusional enough to believe that she’d make it easy on me, or that I deserved for her to. “Here’s the thing, I can’t really leave. Because now that you’re my physical therapist, we work together.”

“I will kill you, and this time neither your parents nor mine are here to stop me.”

The last time I surprised her like this was twelve years ago, before we started dating. We were seventeen—so young and innocent, unaware of all the ways we could hurt each other. I’d unintentionally turned her friends, and really our whole high school, against her. At that moment, her father held her back when she wanted to claw my eyes out. I deserved it then. I deserve it far more now.

I focus on not reacting to her mention of my “parents,” since now I only have one. I see that realization—and the regret—cross her face, briefly, before she shuts that emotion down. She’s a fortress now, she wants to think she’s impenetrable. I will find my way in.

“You can’t kill me either, Jackson.” I keep my voice calm, like it’s no big deal that I’ve made the National Ski Team and she’s expected to be my physical therapist after all this time. “You have to get me ready to compete.”

“Youcan’tbe on the men’s team. I go away for one month, and ... how could this happen?” She walks around her desk, which feels big and formal for a physical therapist’s office in an athletic training center.

“The usual way: by being an exceptional skier.”

She doesn’t appear to appreciate my sarcasm. As she approaches me, her eyes are still narrowed. This look of determined concentration is the same way she looks right before she orgasms, which has my mind going in the completely wrong direction. Those memories are the reason I neither expect nor have time to block the right hook she delivers to my jaw.

“Ow,” we both groan at the same time, me clutching my face and her cradling her hand.

I breathe through the pain—it’s not even close to the worst I’ve felt—and right myself. “Jackson, c’mon,” I say through my clenched jaw. I already know my face is going to hurt like hell later on.

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