Chapter One

Atlas

Even with the polarized goggles on my face, the sun flashing on the snow was almost blinding as I waited for the chair to finish its ascent up the mountain.

There was a blanket of fresh powder from just a day ago, which was the only good time to attempt this slope.

Affectionately—or was it?—known as the Swiss Wall, Pas de Chavanette, was too steep to be pisted, which meant that it was chock-full of moguls the size of small cars from other skiers constantly taking turns at the same place, making humps in the snow that could send any amateur flying.

I'd been training for this for years, taking on other ‘dangerous' slopes before I dared to bring myself to the one that had one of the fastest descents in the world.

I was confident in my ability to do it.

As with any slope, though, the most dangerous part wasn't necessarily the terrain itself, or even your own abilities.

It was the other skiers who didn't know what they were doing, who overestimated their own abilities, leaving them panicky and uncontrollable. And right in your way.

You weren't supposed to ride this slope if you were anything less than an expert skier. But a lot of intermediates thought that they were better than they are. Or, increasingly, someone wanted to show off for their social media followers.

I wasn't against that. I had my own camera clipped to my helmet. Because if you were going to spend your time messing around in extreme sports that others enjoyed, but would never attempt, why not make money off of their interest?

I had videos posted on various sites that brought me in a passive ten grand a month. It helped fund more and more trips, more interests to explore, more travels.

And, hopefully, this video would fund next year's three-month-long skiing marathon I had planned.

Damn.

I guess I wasn't the early bird this morning. Half a dozen other skiers were already standing there, all geared up, trying to peer down the icy slope.

From what I understood, that was pointless.

With an incline of about seventy-six percent you couldn't see the face of the wall at the drop-in point. This was not the kind of slope you could look down and prepare for. You had to nut-up, drop-in, and trust your instincts.

I joined the crowd, wondering how many actually did belong here, and how many were going to regret this decision in a few moments.

You'd think that the sign, warning that a fall here could prove fatal, would scare off people who weren't one hundred percent sure they could take this on.

But I knew from many past experiences, both skiing and other hobbies, that people were, well, stupid.

They likely didn't do the research. Or thought the warning sign was just to cover their asses, or for the insurance company's sake.

Six to ten people die on this slope each year.

I nodded at another guy with a camera on his helmet, hopefully a pro, not just someone doing shit for clicks and views, then lined up.

It wasn't that I was immune to the sensations of risk, of fear. It was that I sort of, I don't know, thrived on it, got high on the adrenaline that surged through me the second I pushed through the fear, and knew that this was it, there was no going back.

The moment you stepped off a bridge, needing to trust your bungee and the person who strapped you into it.

When you took a deep breath, then dropped out of the plane, hoping when you pulled the string that your parachute worked.

I lived for this shit.

So when it was my turn to move up to the edge, I took a deep breath, and trusted the only thing I had here on this mountain.

My own skills and instincts.

Then I was pushing down, the descent making my stomach drop in the way I remembered from when I was a kid, when my older brother, Kingston, would gun it on a road with a slope, sending us flying over it, making us squeal as our bellies bottomed out.

My thighs were burning immediately with the need to stay in the middle of my skis, to push my shins to my boots like I was trying to squeeze the tongues flat, to keep my center of gravity low and maneuver through the endless moguls.

It was all going fine.

Great, even.

Worth every moment of anticipation.

Until I saw some damn idiot decide to fly over a mogul ahead of me, just as I was going around it.

I knew it was going to happen before it did. There was no way our paths weren't going to cross. That he wasn't going to be in my way.

I tried to turn, to lower the impact.

But then it was happening, and all I knew was pain and cracking sensations in my body as I kept falling, body rolling over and over and over.

Until, inevitably, my body slammed into a mogul so hard that I blacked the hell out.

The next thing I knew, I was strapped to a rescue sled, wrapped up like a fucking corpse in a thick sleeping style type bag, with three men decked out in all red bringing me across the snow.

To a waiting helicopter.

Fuck.

If they called in an airlift, I had to be worse off than I thought.

At the moment, I was too damn cold to feel much of anything. But as soon as I was loaded in the helicopter, and the crew was unzipping me, undressing me, trying to get an idea of my injuries, all the pain came charging back, making me grit my teeth to keep from crying out as they poked and prodded.

I didn't have to ask to know where I was hurt the worst.

It felt like someone had sawed off my fucking leg.

When I finally steeled my stomach to look down, I saw it.

The bone protruding grotesquely through the skin.

I think it was right about then that I went into shock, because I didn't really remember much between that moment and when I woke up, warm, and floating in a pain-medicine haze, situated in a hospital bed.

"How's the other guy?" I asked as soon as I saw a nurse move into the room, all blonde hair and soft smiles.

"Hm?" she asked as she checked my vitals and the bags that were dripping… something into my system.

"The other guy on the slope. The one I collided with," I clarified.

"They're not a patient of mine," she said, voice heavily accented. "But I hear he had minor injuries."

Minor.

Well, that was good at least.

Even if, as I looked down, I decided that I looked more than minor.

My entire fucking leg was in a cast. All the way up to my thigh.

My right hand had three fingers in splints. Likely broken too, given the bruising and swelling.

My left arm was in a sling, and when I tried to move, the pain was in my shoulder, not my arm. Rotator cuff, maybe?

Shit.

"Do I have a concussion?" I asked, thinking of how solidly I'd blacked out, the last thing I remember being colliding with the mogul.

"You should wait to speak to your doctor," she told me, and something about the way she said it gave me all the answers I needed.

But, eventually, the doctor came in and confirmed my concerns. A compound fracture in my leg with pins to keep it in place. A few fractures in my fingers, including Skiers Thumb—a tear of the UCL—that happen when you try to brace a fall while holding ski poles. Then there was a rotator cuff strain, bruised ribs, a herniated disc in my neck, and a concussion.

In short, I was a fucking mess.

"It is good you were wearing a helmet," he told me, nodding. "It could have been much worse."

Looking down at myself, I wasn't sure how that was possible.

For someone who thrived on movement, being laid up was the ultimate punishment.

The worst part was, well, I was in fucking Switzerland. With literally nowhere to go. Since I needed to be out of my hotel room in the morning.

Unsure what other options I had, I worked with a patient advocate for the next few days to figure out how the hell to get me home, how I would navigate the airport in the shape I was in, then how I might get home from the airport.

The second part was easy.

A ride share to my house would be no big deal.

From there, I could get anything I might need. One of those scooter things to use or a wheelchair until my shoulder and hands recovered enough for me to use crutches.

Suddenly, I was thankful that my family had bullied me into getting my own house. Their motivations had been selfish, originally. They were all getting sick of me shipping my clothes, gear, and souvenirs to their houses to have them hold onto them for me, since I didn't have anywhere else to send them.

Did I still believe that the house was really just a waste of money? Yeah. I only stayed there maybe a week or two a year. Meanwhile, I had to keep the heat on, the water, gas, taxes, all that shit.

But it was convenient that I had it now. And that it was a ranch. Easy to move around in when I was down.

Decision made, I lucked out that medical transport was willing to help me to the hotel, so I could grab my travel documents and phone that the hotel had put in the safe for me, then bring me to the airport.

It was the most miserable I'd ever been, with my pain medicine barely doing anything to ease the screaming in my leg, neck, shoulder, and ribs. My fingers ached, but it was the least of my worries as I finally slid into my first-class seat that would give me more room to stretch out.

It wasn't the worst flight in the world at just under eleven hours and without any major turbulence, but I'd never been so close to fucking crying in pain as I was by the time I made it to my house.

It wasn't much to write home about.

A simple ranch-style ‘starter house' with white siding and a brick fa?ade on the lower section.

It was fall in New Jersey, and the trees had dumped piles of red, orange, and yellow leaves all over the front yard and walkways.

"Man, how you gonna get in there?" the ride share driver asked, looking hesitantly from me to the house.

"Through the garage," I said.

"Yeah, but how? You can barely move."

He wasn't wrong.

With a sigh, I reached for my phone, adding a hefty tip on the app.

"What's that for?"

"Going into my house and getting me the rolling office chair out of the spare room," I told him, handing him my keys.

I could scoot. It might actually work even better than a wheelchair would.

"Alright," he said, shrugging it off before making his way up the front path, unlocking the door with the keys I'd handed him, then letting himself inside.

Not two minutes later, he came back out with my gaming chair, then actually helped me climb out and drop my ass onto it.

"You sure you got this?" he asked, looking toward the house.

"I'll manage," I told him, sliding my backpack on my good arm, then scooting toward the garage door.

The front entrance had a step. The garage slid right in after a small bump.

The bump might as well have been a fucking mountain, though. By the time I got myself over it and into the mud room directly inside, I was wet with sweat from the effort.

Pain was exploding through my entire body, blinding me to anything but my end destination.

The couch in the living room.

It would be a halfway point between the kitchen and the bathroom to make life easier.

I could barely breathe and think let alone move once I finally lowered myself onto the couch.

When I reached for the blanket on the back, I didn't stop to think about where the hell it had come from.

Or the coffee cup on the table in front of me.

Or the plant on the shelf next to the TV.

I just passed the fuck out.

—

Some time later, I woke up to something licking my goddamn face.

And a woman standing there with a frying pan raised, ready to beat me over the head with it.