“Yo!” Brad hip-checks Josh and yanks me into a side hug.

“Um … hi,” I manage. While I’ve come to appreciate inappropriate aggressiveness as one of sixty’s endearing little charms, in this particular moment, I might kinda cut him with an ice skate. “Nice game.”

He smiles, big and bright. “Nice doesn’t even come close, Pink. I think we can finally shake you.”

“I’d like to shake you.” I give him my most intimidating stare-down, but that just encourages him.

“Time and place, baby.” He turns his head, spits, and then winks at me. Sexy and classy. “You name it, I’ll be there. On the ice or off.”

“Off,” Rowan says, skating closer. “Will promised we could ax the princess as soon as we got our winning streak on.” He breaks into this spazzy little dance number, arms flailing.

“Why are you trying to get rid of me?” I ask. “You know I’m your good luck charm.”

“I can’t speak for these thugs, but I’m not letting you go.” Josh smiles, eyes fixed on mine, unblinking and intense. When he looks at me like that, the heat of his celebration hug radiates through my entire body again, every nerve reaching out for him.

I close my eyes. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Focus. Will. What’s taking him so long?

“What’s the plan?” Gettysburg asks, breaking into our circle. A few more Wolves crowd around me, some with their girlfriends, some without, everyone knocking into each other and laughing. Behind us, Amir is making out with Ellie like they’re in a competition, and from the corner of my eye, I spot Dani and Frankie, way too up close and personal for a couple whose first date was actually ladies’ night.

“Showers, then Papallo’s,” Luke says. “You coming with us, Hud?”

“To the showers?”

“Ooh, I want in on that. You can do my back, and I’ll do your front.” Brad makes a rather complicated gesture with his hands. I’m not even sure how to translate it, but apparently Josh knows what it means, because he smacks him on the back of the head.

I hold up my hands. “That’s a no on the shower invite, yes on Papallo’s.”

“Stick with me,” Josh says. “I have that mix in the car. Wait until you hear—”

“Hud’s mine tonight, boys. Sorry.” Will appears out of nowhere and puts his arm across my shoulders, settling the debate. He’s freshly showered and dressed, wet blond hair curling at his ears. I turn toward him and lean in, letting his rich, familiar scent envelop me. Slowly, the warmth of his body mixes with the feeling of Josh still lingering on my skin, still radiating from my insides.

But when Will kisses my lips, soft and quick, the radiating stops, and I relax. Maybe I just read into it, got all worked up over nothing. Josh is just a good friend, caught up in the moment. It really was just a hug. A slightly-longer-than-usual-yet-totally-platonic celebratory hug.

Will pulls away but I grab him for another kiss.

The guys whistle and laugh and Josh shakes his head and looks at the ice while Will leads us away from the group, and it’s just like that nature show again, the males of the species showing their prowess with a bunch of grunts and gestures to officially mark their territory.

Boys. At least I didn’t get peed on.

“You okay?” I ask when we get to Will’s car. “You seem a little tense.”

He tries to smile, but I see right through it, and when I open my mouth to say so, his jaw tightens. “Mind if we skip the group thing tonight? Go for a ride somewhere? I just … I need to talk to you about some stuff.”

I nod and tack on a smile, hoping it’s enough to mask my disappointment at leaving the group. “Was Dodd pissed about the news?”

“Yeah, but that’s not …” Will’s eyes flash, a storm flickering out in a blink. “Let’s just bounce, okay?” He puts his hand behind my neck and kisses me once more before motoring us out onto the I-190, Kara’s words from last week bleeding into Rowan’s and echoing through my head.

Once he gets what he wants, he moves on…. Will promised we could ax the princess…. Right now he needs you for the team, but after that …

We end up on the American side of Niagara Falls, ten below zero, hours after closing time, no other cars or pedestrians in sight. Ignoring the CLOSED signs, Will pulls into a spot near a pathway that snakes around the water and kills the engine.

“Hudson?”

I take a deep breath. I mean, it’s been less than a month. He hasn’t even tried to sleep with me. And now he’s ditching me? Axing me from the team? He doesn’t say anything for a full minute. Normally, I think the dramatic pause is a great performance technique, but in these situations? No, not a fan.

“Will, I don’t—”

“You okay to walk?” He nods toward the water. “Just for a few minutes?”

I follow him out of the car, gingerly stepping along the icy path. He takes my hand in his and leads us closer to the edge, the roar of water almost deafening.

“I’ve never been here in the winter,” he says. “You?”

I shake my head.

“I thought we should see it,” he says. “I mean, it’s here, right?”

I lean over the rail, staring down into the white abyss. I heard once that Eskimos have, like, a hundred different words for snow. Growing up in Watonka, I’ve been hit with all kinds of snow—fluffy, wet, slushy, icy needles, tiny flakes, blustery whiteout clouds of it—but it was always just snow to me. Just like ice was always the rink—Fillmore or Buffalo Skate Club or Luby or Miller’s Pond or anywhere else—it was all just the smooth surface beneath my feet. But here, the river’s eternal mist has encased the world in glass. Every twig on every branch on every tree, the railings and the paths, the lampposts—all of it sparkles in the moonlight. And as I look into the deep, white maw of the earth, I see a thousand different meanings, a thousand different words.

Even on my father’s blog, in all his pictures and stories, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful and amazing.

I wish Josh was here to see it.

We walk along the path to a lookout, and I scrape a thin layer of ice from one of the signs. “Says here that the Falls erodes about one foot a year. Eventually it’ll crumble all the way back to Lake Erie.”

“Crazy,” Will says.

“No, think about it! All of this …” I spin with my arms wide, scooping up the landscape. “In forty-eight thousand years, everything we’re standing on will be gone.”

“Guess we’re running out of time, then.” Will slides his gloved fingers over my shoulders and leans into a kiss, hot and steamy in the frozen mist.

I pull away slowly, lingering in his arms. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

“Maybe.” He gives me that grin, and even though I know he’s hiding something, I’m powerless to push. Talk? What talk? We half kiss, half stumble our way across the ice-slick path back to the car. Will cranks the heat, and we continue our mad race against geologic time in the backseat.

Will kisses his way from earlobe to collarbone, his lips brushing the hollow of my throat, his hair tickling my skin. “I could do this all night.”

“Stop! Stop!” I mock push him away, but my giggling makes him more eager, his fingers strumming my ribs. “I’m serious, Josh—Will. Will, stop!”

He raises his head, mouth turned up in a partial grin. “Did you just call me Josh?”

“Josh? What? No.”

“You did. You went ‘Josh-Will’ and then—”

“I’m cold. My teeth were chattering.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Something going on with you and fifty-six?”

“No!”

Will pulls back, watching me close. “You sure? Because sometimes you guys have this thing, you know?”

“What thing? We don’t have a thing.”

“Like an unspoken … thing. Like there’s this inside joke or something. A thing, you know?”

My heart freezes up, then jump-starts, racing double time. “We’re just friends. It’s not—”

“Forget it.”