He made one last adjustment to the binding and then rattled it and made a satisfied grunt.

“Some people are like drowning man. If you try to save them, they only pull you down too. Sometimes you need save yourself, Katie Bomber.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a paternal smile.

That season was abysmal, and by the end of it, I was starting to feel the pressure from my sponsors. If I fell any further away from the top ten, I knew some would drop me. Red Bull—by far my most lucrative contract—was already looking itchy. I started seeing Gena the therapist, and for a while things got better. By the time the 2007–2008 season began, I was back on the podium again in my first two races.

My relationship with Luke was still shaky. I could feel him beginning to inch away from me, and the more he retreated, the harder I clung. After all that I’d lost, adding Luke to the list of casualties just wasn’t an option.

He’d encouraged me to go to therapy, but as for talking to me about Penny, he’d act sympathetic but shut the conversation down almost instantly. He seemed relieved when I started feeling better.

“Glad you’re getting back to your old self, Bomber,” he said after my first solid finish of the season. “You were really hard to be around for a while.”

I feigned a smile, gutted.

Luke wasn’t skiing well during our final training camp of the off-season in La Parva, and when Blair suggested a side trip to Buenos Aires, Luke shrugged it off.

Blair and I spent a delirious two days in Buenos Aires. He’d had his best season yet and had nearly taken home the World Cup globe. On our last night, we walked back to our little bed-and-breakfast in Palermo after a good steak and a lot of wine. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. and plenty of people around us seemed to be just starting their night; we hadn’t even closed down the restaurant we’d been in. We got gelato and strolled around the plaza. It was the beginning of fall in Buenos Aires, but they were having an upside-down Indian summer and it was unseasonably warm.

“Bomber, you seem like you’re doing so much better,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “I’m so glad. I really admire you and your parents, you know? You guys really stuck by each other and it can’t have been easy. I’m proud of you, you’re a tough cookie.”

“I know I wasn’t easy to be around for a while,” I said, parroting Luke without meaning to.

“I wouldn’t say that. It was hard to watch you go through all of that, sure, but being around you is always good.”

“I wasn’t exactly at my best,” I said, unsure why I was doubling down.