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Rebel told herself the lurching of her heart was a good reminder that all of this wasn’t real. That what they were doing had a coldly calculated purpose and a finite conclusion, no matter that she’d decided to risk making it a little bit more than the platonic undertaking they’d agreed.
Mentally shaking off the voice that probed the wisdom of changing the parameters of their agreement, she grimaced at him. ‘I’m not sure I want you as my trainer if every training session is going to be like this.’
‘It’s not going to be like this,’ he returned. ‘It’s going to be worse.’
Her eyebrow shot up. ‘Worse?’
‘I’ve seen what you’re capable of. You protest at every drill, yet you can easily achieve so much more.’ A frown locked between his eyebrows. ‘It’s almost as if you don’t want to achieve your full potential.’
Her gaze dropped from his probing look.
He caught her chin in his hand. ‘Arabella?’
‘I...it’s not that. I want to win this championship. More than anything.’
‘But?’
‘But I’m afraid after that there’ll be nothing else. Nothing to strive for. My father is gone, Draco. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. Once the championships are over, I’ll have nothing.’
His frown dissolved, but his jaw clenched. ‘Why were you doing it in the first place?’
‘Mostly for my mother. I want to honour her memory.’
‘But not with a win? How is coming fifth when you can be champion truly honouring her?’
‘It wasn’t so much the winning, as just participating in the sport she loved.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t buy that. And I don’t think you do either. This still has to do with your father, doesn’t it? What is it?’
She swallowed the rock that lodged in her throat. ‘He didn’t want me to become a professional skier. Like your father, he wanted me to do something else. My mother and I talked him around with...with a promise that I’d give up once I won a major championship.’
Fury roared through his eyes. ‘So you’ve been deliberately holding yourself back because of a promise you made when you were...how old?’
‘I was fifteen.’
‘You were a child!’
‘But old enough to understand what promises meant.’
A scalding curse ripped through the room. He levered himself off her and stood glaring down at her.
‘So that’s what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, always achieving a little less than your potential because of a father who doesn’t have a problem betraying you?’
Pain bit deeper. ‘Draco...’
‘What would your mother have wanted for you?’
She closed her eyes, her insides a churning river of sorrow. ‘For me to compete. And win.’
He crouched down and lifted her to her feet. ‘And what do you want, Arabella?’
Sharp tears prickled the backs of her eyes. ‘I want everything. To keep my promise to my father. To honour my mother. And to win multiple championships.’
He shook his head, a tinge of bleakness in his eyes. ‘You’re realistic enough to know that we never get everything we want. And by fruitlessly hanging onto one dream, you’re jeopardising everything else.’ He let go of her and took several steps back.
Rebel wasn’t sure why that deliberate withdrawal sent a wave of panic through her. ‘Draco?’ She reached for him, but he stepped farther away.
‘Choose, Arabella. Either you’re in this all the way or you’re not.’
Her hand balled into a fist, the vein of shame she’d always felt when she’d held back instead of going all in during competitions thickening uncomfortably. ‘Why? What is it to you?’
‘I’m not asking you to choose for me. I’m asking you to choose for yourself.’ He paced in front of her but still kept out of reach. ‘Imagine yourself thirty years down the line. Is this the legacy you’d want to leave? That you deliberately fell short of reaching for your goals?’
‘No.’ The word charged out of her, fired from a place she’d deliberately closed off because the desires that resided there were too painful to dream about. Being forced to confront them sent a wave of sadness through her. Because in order to achieve what she truly yearned for, she would be throwing away any chances of reconciliation with her father. But then what were the guarantees that they would reconcile when he’d stated plainly that the very sight of her wrecked him? Was she in danger of throwing out one dream to follow another that might never come true?
The memory of her mother pierced her thoughts, of her beautiful smile and ecstatic cheering when Rebel had won her first junior championship. All the way home Susie Daniels had babbled her pride and hopes for her daughter’s future to anyone who would listen. That day had been one of the happiest days of Rebel’s life. She wanted to relive that day again. And again. She wanted that memory of her mother to never fade. Never cease to inspire her. With a shaky breath, she looked at Draco. ‘No, I don’t want that.’
