The chirping picks up again—Eli laughing, Daniel tossing tape rolls across the room, Peter narrowly dodging one. Coach’s voice cuts through the chaos from his office doorway.
“Good practice, boys. Keep skating like that tomorrow, and maybe I won’t run you into the ground before Friday.”
“Big talk for a man who doesn’t have to do suicides,” Blue mutters.
Coach pretends not to hear, but there’s a ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth as he disappears back into the office.
I lean against the edge of my cubby, watching Logan tie his shoes, his hair still damp and curling at the edges. He catches me staring and quirks an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say, trying not to smile. “Just glad we’re good again.”
He grins. “Good? You mean perfect.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Let’s not push it.”
He winks, and Daniel groans dramatically. “Jesus, not this again.”
“Get a room,” Peter adds.
“Already did,” Blue fires back, and the whole room bursts out laughing.
I bury my face in my towel, cheeks burning, but I’m smiling too hard to care.
Because the truth is—they can feel it. The whole room can. The shift, the spark, the thing we almost lost but managed to hold onto anyway. And it feels good.
When we finish packing up, the guys are still being loud from every corner of the room. Peter’s arguing with Daniel about who missed more passes, Blue’s threatening to hideEli’s lucky towel again, and Coach is pretending not to hear any of it.
Logan catches my eye as he slings his duffel over his shoulder. “You ready?”
I nod, biting back a grin. “Let’s get out of here before they start placing bets.”
“Too late,” Blue calls after us. “Fifty bucks says you two are making out in the parking lot before you hit the main road.”
Laughter follows us out the door, echoing down the hallway.
The cold hits as soon as we step outside. The kind that cuts straight through sweat-soaked clothes and turns every breath into fog. Logan pulls his beanie lower over his ears, glancing sideways at me.
“Pretty sure they’re really taking bets on us,” I say, voice puffing white in the air.
He grins. “Then we better give them something to talk about.”
“Logan—”
Before I can finish, he hooks a hand around my wrist and tugs me toward his Jeep. My back hits the cold metal, a startled sound slipping out before I can stop it.
He’s smiling—that soft, crooked smile that always undoes me—and his breath comes out warm against my cheek.
“We both smell like a locker room,” I say, trying to sound annoyed and failing miserably.
“Guess you’ll just have to deal with it,” he murmurs.
Then his mouth finds mine.
The kiss starts easy, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world. But when his fingers slide to the back of my neck, everything tilts. The cold disappears. The noise fades.It’s just the heat of him, the taste of winter air and sweat and something that feels a lot like love.
By the time we break apart, I’m breathless, the smile tugging at his lips mirrored on mine.
