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“Okay, but if you don’t think you can...”

His sinking confidence only riled me up more. I dropped my skis in the snow, grabbing my ski boots to switch out my shoes, then clipped myself in. Goggles on and skis in place, I snapped at him. “Are we going or not? Let’s not waste any more time.”

His brows flicked up and fell back into place so fast I thought I imagined his incredulous look, but he moved into position, teetering over the edge and peering down the cliff.

“Keep close. Shout if something’s wrong. See you at the bottom.”

I nodded, teeth grit hard enough to make my jaw sting.

He leaned forward, going over the edge first, and I hurried to follow.

The sky opened up above me. Gray, menacing, and threatening more snow. The forest was a wide open mouth, flanking both sides of the mostly bare and snow-covered easement. It was a drop so steep and long that my knees knocked together instinctively, and I almost backed out.

Yet, gravity got the better of me, and I teetered forward.

Locking my knees too soon, I thrust out my arms to guide me and chased after Fox with a scream of terror lodged in the back of my throat. He was a black blur ahead of me kicking up snow, glancing over his shoulder with whiplike motions to be sure I followed. When he noticed me catching up, he straightened his board and angled himself downward, picking up speed faster than I wanted him to.

Wind whipped around my head, deafening me and stinging my cheeks, but so far, I was managing.

Then came the first obstacle.

Fox leaned early, trying to give me a heads up of what was coming, then wound around a Christmas tree-sized sapling. Not a deadly threat, but it would certainly unbalance me if I clipped it.

I forced my wobbly knees to unlock and shakily followed suit, leaning into the turn and narrowly avoiding the tree. Then narrowly avoiding a boulder when I overcorrected, then narrowly avoiding a bare patch since I got too caught up in the first one that I almost missed it when Fox wound around another bend.

My breath came out in stilted pants, my cheeks puffing out as I concentrated with all my might, and my quads were already burning, but we were only halfway.

Lean, correct the path, straighten, tuck my arms in, lean again—

I started to get the hang of it.

We picked up speed, neither of us holding back now, and I let out a laugh of utter exhilaration as powdery snow sprayed up beside and behind me. We had to be going almost forty miles an hour, but I tried not to think about it since I was barely handling the adrenaline without losing focus.

The bottom of the hill came into view, and judging by how fast the tree line was moving up, we’d have to stop as soon as possible. Fox must have forgotten to warn me.

I’d chew him out for that later.

In the meantime, I had one more bend around a boulder the size of a bus to avoid. Luckily, I’d perfected the motion from earlier turns, so I wasn’t too worried about this one.

Unluckily, my knee chose that exact moment when I leaned to give out.

I yelped and tried to stay on course, but I lost my balance, my whole body careening on the weak side like I might fall right over and roll the rest of the way down the hill.

I went too far, losing the path and shooting into the trees on the side of the easement strip.

I must have blacked out temporarily, because I remembered nothing after careening into the branches. When I came back into focus, I was in a heap in a huge wind-swept bank of snow, one ski skidding down the slope without me and the other still attached to my ankle at an odd angle.

My hat and gloves somehow stayed on. No blood stained the snow, so... I was okay?

“Rae!”

Fox crashed into the clearing I landed in. His snowboard was nowhere to be seen, his goggles missing, too. He looked like he’d thrown everything down to race uphill and find me.

Unless I was actually at the bottom of the hill and just didn’t remember rolling twenty-seven times.

“Are you okay?” He dropped to his knees in the snow beside me, his black snow pants crinkling loudly in the otherwise silent forest.

“I... I think so,” I mumbled, feeling myself over. Patting my torso and arms and head. No limbs were missing, so that was a good sign.