“Jesus Christ. Oh God. Holy Mary and Joseph.”
“You’re really pulling out all the Catholic stops here.” Alix bit her lip to keep from laughing. “You’re doing great.”
Grace shot her a glare. “I need all the divine intervention I can get.”
Bit by bit, Grace shuffled forward until they were both fully on the pond. The surface gave a steady, creaking groan under their skates — perfectly normal, but Grace froze like she’d heard the first portent of doom.
“That was a crack,” Grace hissed.
“That was the ice saying hi,” Alix said. “It does that. Totally normal. Science.”
“That can’t be real science.”
“Okay, wow, I didn’t take you for a religious nutjob who doesn’t believe in science, Gator,” Alix said. “I mean, I know you’re from Florida, but?—”
“I believe in science,” Grace interrupted with a huff. “I just don’t trust familial ponds who haven’t been, like, safety checked.”
Alix couldn’t stop smiling. God, she’d missed this — teasing someone who could match her pace, who made every line of banter feel like a spark tossed into kindling. She glided backward a few feet, arms out, the easy rhythm of skating coming back as natural as breath.
“See? Nothing to it,” she said. “Now come to me.”
Grace blinked at her like she’d just suggested flight. “Come to you? You’re moving away.”
“That’s the fun part,” Alix said, coasting backward, matching her speed to Grace’s hesitant shuffle. “I’ll skate backward, you skate forward. Just look at me, okay? I’ve got you.”
Grace muttered something about her inevitable obituary but took a tentative push forward. Alix kept her eyes locked on her — the stiff shoulders, the tight jaw — until Grace finally found a rhythm.
“That’s it,” Alix encouraged. “You’re doing it.”
“I’m doing it?” Grace’s grin broke out, wide and bright and so proud that Alix’s stomach swooped.
“You’re doing it,” Alix confirmed, laughing.
Grace laughed too — a sharp, delighted sound that cracked open the cold afternoon. It hit Alix square in the chest. She was done for.
They circled the pond once, then again. Each time, Grace’s movements smoothed out, her trust inching closer to real. Every time she looked up at Alix, the world felt like it was spinning a bit faster.
“This isn’t so hard,” Grace said, cheeks pink, dark hair falling loose from her hat as she reached out to take Alix’s hands.
Alix was about to respond when her skate hit a shallow rut in the ice. There was a sharp slip, a yelp, and then everything went sideways.
Grace shrieked. The next thing Alix knew, they were a tangled heap on the ice, her back flat on the freezing surface, Grace sprawled across her, breathless and warm and laughing so hard she couldn’t even apologize.
“Oh my God,” Grace gasped between fits of laughter. “We almost died.”
“Yeah,” Alix wheezed, equally breathless, “and not even by fallingthroughthe ice.”
Grace’s laughter quieted, the sound dissolving into short, shivery breaths. Her gloved hands rested on Alix’s chest, and the world narrowed to the press of her, the smell of snow and her perfume, the way her laughter still trembled at the edges.
“Hey,” Alix said quietly. “You okay?”
Grace nodded, her hair falling forward in a dark curtain. “Yeah. Are you?”
She reached up before she could talk herself out of it and tucked a stray lock of Grace’s hair behind her ear. Her fingers brushed skin, warm even in the cold, and Grace went completely still.
The air between them felt electric. A static charge had built up all week and finally found a fuse. Grace’s lips parted slightly, her breath visible between them in small clouds.
Alix’s voice dropped to a whisper as she licked her lips. “Can I… kiss you?”
