“I like when everything shuts up,” he says. “Lets you hear what you’re really thinking.”
“What are you thinking right now?”
He looks at me then. Reallylooks. His eyes burn like coals, steady and smoldering.
“That I should kiss you.”
My breath catches. The wind slips under my coat, but I’m suddenly warm everywhere.
“And why don’t you?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
“Because once I do…” His jaw flexes. “I won’t stop.”
The air charges between us.
And for a moment, I think I might close the distance.
Say to hell with logic, the contest, the show, all of it.
But then?—
CRACK!
A sharp thunderclap of ice reverberates across the riverbed. The sound echoes off the trees like the forest just slammed a car door.
I yelp and stumble back a step. “Jesus—was that?—?”
Nash catches my elbow, steadying me. “It’s fine. Ice flexes. That wasn’t a break, just a shift. She’s talking tonight.”
“She?”
He shrugs. “The river. She sings when the cold’s just right.”
We stand there for another long moment, listening to her groan and sigh, the sound ethereal and almost human.
Nash’s hand lingers on my arm.
I don’t pull away.
“You ever think about leaving?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. “I did. Once.”
“What stopped you?”
He looks at me, voice low. “Same thing that brought me back. Loss.”
I nod, heart thudding.
“Funny how that works,” I say. “Loss making you leave. Making you stay.”
The wind kicks up and sends a swirl of snow across the ice like confetti. We both watch in silence.
And it’s… peaceful.
Unexpectedly peaceful.
I feel it settle over me like a weighted blanket—the kind that costs five hundred bucks and comes in limited edition flannel.
