Is he going to—
Is he—
Oh.
I almost feel like laughing and cringing at the same time when Santino simply ends up adjusting my coat collar and pulling it up against the wind. His fingers brush my neck—just barely, just for half a second—and, well, there goes my again.
"So you don’t freeze on the way down.”
His hand lingers. Just for a moment. Just long enough that I can feel the warmth of his fingers against my skin, can feel my pulse jumping under his touch.
Then he pulls back.
Steps away.
The cold rushes in to fill the space where he was, and I want to protest, want to tell him to come back, want to close that gap myself.
But I don't.
I just stand there with my coat collar pulled up and my heart racing and the exact imprint of his fingers still burning against my neck.
"We should go," I say, and my voice comes out rough. "It's getting late."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then: "Yes."
We turn and start back down the trail.
The walk back is different. Quieter somehow, even though we weren't talking much on the way up. But this silence feels heavier. Weighted. Like there are words neither of us is saying, and the not-saying is taking up all the space between us.
I count steps to distract myself. Thirty-one from the overlook to the outcropping. Twenty-four to the switchback. Seventeen to where the trail levels out again.
He stays beside me. Not behind. Not ahead. Beside.
And I'm hyperaware of every single thing—the sound of our boots on the snow, the way our breath comes out in white clouds, the careful distance he's maintaining now, like he's deliberately not getting too close.
Like touching my collar broke some rule he'd set for himself.
Like he's trying to rebuild the distance.
We're halfway down, maybe twenty minutes into the descent, when I hear it.
Voices.
Female voices, bright and carrying through the cold air. Coming up the trail toward us.
My stomach drops.
I see them before they see us—a group of three or four women, dressed in expensive ski gear that probably costs more than my car. Designer jackets. High-end boots. The kind of people who winter in Jackson Hole because they can, not because they live here.
And in front—
Kimberly.
She's wearing white—white puffer jacket, white pants, even her hat is white—and her blonde hair is perfect despite the wind, and she looks like she stepped out of a ski resort catalog.
She sees us. Her eyes go wide for a second—genuine surprise—and then her face rearranges itself into that bright, glossy smile.
"Oh!" Her voice cuts through the quiet like a knife. "Santino!"
