Page 83 of Cross Ice

He’d dressed for the cold February night—jeans, an insulated jacket, hands buried in his pockets. When he spotted my car, his face broke into a smile.

I got out and met him halfway. The moment he was close, I pulled him into my arms.

“Hi,” I said into his hair. “Missed you.”

“Missed you too.”

Four days of texting from hotel rooms, and now Evan was beside me in the parking lot, real and present after days of only his voice and his name on a screen. We’d been doing this for weeks and it had worked. The team knew. A handful of friends knew. We’d been to Cap’s, to the climbing gym, to dinner. We’d managed it.

Standing there in the dark, the restaurant behind us and the nearest streetlight far enough away, I told myself this was the same. Private enough. Dark enough. Just us.

I kissed him.

He kissed me back just as fiercely, his hands fisting in my jacket, and for a minute we just stood there wrapped around each other like we were the only two people in the world. His mouth was warm, and he tasted like anticipation. I kissed him again when we broke apart, because I wanted to, because being with him felt natural, because somewhere over the last few weeks I’d stopped treating every public moment like a threat.

“We should probably go inside,” Evan said.

“Probably.”

I kissed him once more anyway.

We spent hours over dinner at a corner table with good pasta, better wine, and two hours of easy conversation. By the time we paid the check and pushed back from the table, I was more relaxed than I’d been all week—the road trip’s tension finally dissolved, the distance between us closed. Outside, we walked back through the cold night air to our cars, and I pulled Evan close one more time, stepped back from the streetlight’s glow, and kissed him again.

“Come back to my place?” I asked.

“I’ll follow you.”

The drive home felt long, even though I could see his headlights in my rearview mirror the whole way. When we finally pulled into my driveway, I was out of my car in a flash, and Evan met me halfway across the driveway. I pulled him into a kiss that was probably too desperate for a four-day separation, but I didn’t care.

We stumbled through my front door, still kissing, shedding jackets and shoes. Four days wasn’t that long—I’d been on longer road trips—but it felt like forever since I’d had him like this.

When we fell into bed, there was a franticness to it, the four days collapsing into hands and mouths and the urgent need to reconnect, to prove we were still real, still solid, still us. I pulled him closer, and he came willingly. When I finally pushed inside him, the sound he made undid me completely.

We came together with an urgency that left us both breathless, and in the quiet after, the desperation gave way to something softer. Relief. Contentment. The satisfaction of being exactly where we were supposed to be.

“Next time I’m coming with you,” Evan said, settling into my side.

I laughed. “To Winnipeg in February? You’d freeze.”

“Don’t care. Worth it to be with you.”

I kissed the top of his head and held him closer. He went quiet and still against my chest, and I lay there in the dark knowing exactly what I felt and exactly what I wanted to do about it. I’d say it. Not tonight—he was already breathing deeply in sleep—but soon.

Then I closed my eyes. The night was quiet, and I slept better than I had in four days.

I woke to my phone buzzing incessantly on the nightstand.

It was barely light outside, the gray winter dawn filtering through my bedroom blinds. Evan was still asleep beside me, his breathing soft and even.

My phone buzzed again. And again.

Frowning, I reached for it, squinting at the screen.

Seventeen missed calls. Forty-three texts. Hundreds of notifications on social media.

I opened Instagram.

The first post had over fifty thousand likes.