Page 33 of Rebel Moon

I’d had no idea it would be so fun to speed down a hill in the cold with someone laughing behind you. The sled hit a bump and we caught air and I heard myself shriek like a little girl. Behind me Knox let out a whoop, as we kept going, the whole white world a blur now. By the time we hit the bottom and spun out sideways into a bank of soft snow I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Then, we tipped. The sled went one way and we went the other, and I landed in the snow with Knox half over me, both of us tangled up, gasping. I looked up at him laughing above me and suddenly I couldn’t move.

“Fun, right?” he asked, grinning down at me. God, that grin. It changed his whole face.

“A bit, yeah.”

“Hearing you scream like a kid might be the best thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“It was that bump. I thought we were goners.”

He was still on top of me, making it acutely aware of every place our bodies touched, his weight against me, his breath on my mouth, his eyes gone dark and fixed on mine. In this light, I spotted yellow flecks in his green eyes and the skinny scar on his cheek. Before I knew what I was doing, I traced it with my mittened finger. “What happened?”

“An altercation. A guy and my sister. He had a knife.”

“It could have been your eye.”

“But it wasn’t.” His gaze seemed to move to my mouth and stay there.

Nervously, I licked my top lip.

I felt him swallow, his breath shallowing. “We should get up,” Knox said quietly.

“We should, yeah.”

“You’ll get cold if we don’t keep moving,” Knox said.

“I don’t feel cold now,” I said softly. “Not with you right here.”

“Can’t say as I do either.”

“Y’all need help, or are you just gonna lie there?”

We both startled at the sound of Rhett’s voice. He was standing over us with Holly next to him. Rhett’s grin told me he’d seen exactly what was going on here. Knox rolled off me and was on his feet so fast I felt the cold rush into the space where he’d been. He hauled me up by the hand. Neither of us looked at the other. My heart was pumping like I’d run up the hill instead of sledding down it.

“Just a hard landing,” I said, flushing hot despite the frigid air.

“Y’all having fun?” Knox brushed snow off himself with a great deal more attention than the snow required.

“We sure are,” Rhett said and dragged Holly off toward the rope tow.

I heard Holly say, “Mind your own business.”

“I am, I am,” Rhett said.

Knox glanced down at his snow boots, clearly unsure what to say. So I took over like I always did.

“Let’s go again.”

His face lit up with another grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

We went again. And again. Whatever had just happened between us hummed under every race down and every trudge back up. We stole glances and pretended we hadn’t. His arms were tighter around my waist than was truly necessary, and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, it was the most fun I’d had in longer than I could remember, but also a slow form of torture wondering what might have happened if Rhett and Holly hadn’t appeared.

Daylight had turned into twilight while we were climbing back up the hill for what I’d promised myself was the last run. All at once, the bulb lights came on—strings of them, big round white bulbs that ran along the tree line and up both sides of the sledding hill. The whole slope lit up soft and gold against the blue dusk.

We were most of the way up the hill, a little apart from the others, hauling the toboggan between us, when it happened. There was a patch where the sledders had worn the snow down to ice and Knox’s boot slid and his leg went out from under him. He came down hard and cursed.

I dropped down beside him. “Are you hurt?”