“Come up here and bring me the sled!” I shout back, and he starts trudging up the hill. We’ve managed to make an okay path up one side of the slope, and after at least an hour of sledding we’ve both taken off our outer layers, which are currently on one of the granite boulders near the top of the slope.
“You can check all you want,” Gideon says when he gets to the top, half out of breath. “I beat your record, fair and square.”
“It’s not fair, you’re heavier,” I point out. “You’ve got more… momentum.”
It’s momentum, right? High school physics was a long time ago, and I’m vaguely recalling some experiment where we proved that a ping-pong ball and a bowling ball fell at the same speed. Velocity. Whatever. It may or may not apply to this situation.
“Life’s not fair,” he intones, and he sounds serious but there’s a hitch at one corner of his mouth, his pretty green eyes barely crinkling. I haven’t seen Gideon smile this much at a stretch since we’ve been together up here, and it makes me feel like the first time you plug in the Christmas lights. It feels like having him back.
“Thanks,” I deadpan. “Any other enlightening words of wisdom about sledding?”
“Youwere complaining about fairness.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I say, and now I’m grinning at him because this is winding him up, I know it, and it’s kind of fun. I like getting under Gideon’s skin more than I should, and I feel bad about it, but he doesn’t seem to mind that much and I kind of can’t help it. “Just making an observation.”
That gets a flat, unimpressed look, but I’m close enough to see the way his lips just barely move as he tries not to smile. They’re pink with cold but they look warm, and I think about that for a moment longer than I should.
“We should go soon,” he says, rubbing a hand through his hair and looking at the wide blue sky. “I’d like to be back well before sundown.”
“We have time for one more?”
“Sure,” he says, and gives me ayour turngesture toward the sled.
“Both of us,” I say on a whim.
“We won’t bothfit.”
“Sure we will,” I say, though I’m actually not confident, either.
“It’ll break.”
“If it hasn’t broken yet, I don’t think it will,” I say, again with more confidence than I technically feel. “C’mon. We’ll beat our distance record. Get in.”
Gideon makes a big show of sighing and shaking his head and acting like he’s giving in to me as a big favor, but I’m onto him. He likes fun as much as the next person and just thinks he shouldn’t for some reason that I’m not going to examine right now.
“Scoot back,” I tell him, and he does, upright in the sled with his knees wide, both feet planted in the snow outside it.
I guess I sit between his legs, and I can feel my face flush a little more because I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I’m suddenly nervous about it and even more nervous that I’m subconsciously giving into my newly discovered Gideon-is-attractive thoughts. Which seems rude to Gideon, who’s clearly humoring me until I leave.
“Are you getting in?” he asks, and yes, I am, sitting up ramrod-straight between his legs, trying to touch him as little as possible in this sled that is very much not designed for two adults.
Then Gideon ruins it by wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling our bodies together from hip to shoulder, and even through the layers he’s so warm and solid that I shiver. His arm tightens when I do, so when he says “Ready?” in my ear, voice like rough-hewn wood, all I manage is a wide-eyed, breathy, “Yeah.”
He pushes us off and then we’re hurtling down the hill, and I was right about momentum or whatever because we’re going way faster this time, the ground zooming by. I shout, just for the hell of it, and I could be crazy but I think I can feel Gideon laugh silently behind me, his arm solid around my waist.
Seconds later we’re at the bottom of the hill, flying past all the sticks we stuck in the snow, definitely beating the last record Gideon set—by a lot, actually—and oh,shit, we’re going way too fast and the trees are coming up and—
“Ohshit!” I yelp at the same time as Gideon says “Fucking—” and then we both fling ourselves to one side, landing in the snow in a tangle of limbs and profanity. A moment later, there’s the plastickyclunkof the sled hitting a tree and bouncing off harmlessly. I’m half on Gideon, his arm and one leg under me, and I roll off with all the grace I can muster.
“Sorry,” I gasp. “Are yo—”
“Did you—”
We stop and look at each other, both breathless and snow-covered. It’s stuck in his beard and his hat and his gloves as he rolls onto his back and I push myself onto my knees.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “How’s your—”
