“Are you serious?”

Josh nods. “You saw what happened this season. And Will’s right—it was all because of you.”

I shake my head, that train still idling at the station. Catching its breath. Bracing for the long, cold journey ahead, grateful it doesn’t have to stay here long. “You guys are really good. You just needed a push.”

“And you gave it to us. We made it into the division championships, Hud. We could win this thing.” He steps forward, closing the space between us. “I came to say thank you. I mean it.”

“You’re … um … you’re welcome.”

“This is for you. It’s from everyone.” Josh hands me a package from inside his coat, warm from resting against his chest.

“What did you guys do?”

He grins. “Just open it.”

I tear off the paper to reveal a baby-soft pile of blue-and-silver fabric. It can only be one thing.

“A jersey? That’s so cool!”

“Not just any jersey. Check it out.” He unfolds it and holds it up so I can take a closer look. AVERY, it says, stitched across the back over my very own number: forty-two.

“That’s my favorite number!”

“Well, it’s yours now, forty-two—no one else can use it. But the best part?” He flips the jersey around. On the front, there’s a wolf’s head, just like on the boys’ jerseys. But mine’s a she-wolf. And she’s wearing a sparkling pink tiara.

“What do you think, Princess Pink?”

I slip off my jacket and pull the jersey on, right over my Hurley Girl dress. “I don’t know what to say.”

Josh smiles. “Say that you’ll come back and help us train for nationals. We’re good, but not undefeated. I think you can still teach us a few tricks.”

My heart races, but I force it to slow down. I know in every bone, every muscle, that I belong on the ice. Not as a solo competitor in some glossy-perfect parallel life, but as a team skater. A part of something more than glitter and roses thrown on the rink after everyone else has been eliminated. I think about Amir and Rowan and Gettysburg and even Will, and how much they grew together as a team this season, despite Will’s initial solo plans. I helped them get there. And they helped me. And now they want me back.

“Do you remember that day we crashed at Fillmore?” I ask.

“I’ll never forget it.” His fingers reach for my forehead, but stop just short. “I thought I gave you a concussion.”

“Then you came to Hurley’s and asked if we could spend some time on the ice together. Just the two of us.”

Josh nods. “But you got suckered into training the whole pack. Lucky you.”

I pull the jersey sleeves over my hands and sigh. “Josh, listen. I’m not training with the wolf pack again. I promised my mom I’d stick it out at Hurley’s until we bring in some new people, and I want to spend more time with Bug. But if the offer’s still on the table, I wouldn’t mind skating with you sometimes. Just the two of us.”

“You sure?” he asks.

“As long as I don’t have to give back the jersey? Yes.”

“You got yourself a deal, Avery.” He pulls me into a hug, but it only lasts a few seconds, the awkwardness of everything creeping back up, fracturing our momentary reunion.

Below us, over the hill, the train starts up again, its breath ragged and loud as it prepares to exit the station. Josh puts his hands back in his pockets, and I know in my heart that this is one of those times, those now-or-never moments that we grow to look back on for the rest of always, asking whether we did the right thing, the best thing, the true thing. Maybe he doesn’t want me—maybe I misread all the signs and looks and the near kiss. Maybe he really does want me, and we’ll fall in love and then one day he’ll decide he wants a female Elvis impersonator instead. Or maybe there’s a real romantic pirate-ninja-assassin love story in there somewhere, just like in Dani’s books.

Anything is possible. The only thing I know for sure is that he won’t make the first move, and if I let him walk away now, we’ll forever be a “just”: Just hockey player and skating coach. Just music swappers. Just friends. A not-quite-almost whose time passed through as quickly as the train, fading into the distance before it even had a real chance at staying, at becoming something more, because I didn’t speak up. Because I waited for someone else to do it for me.

“Josh, wait.” I grab the sleeve of his jacket. “That night with Will, when he said that stuff about me—”

“Stop.” He holds up his hand. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I overreacted. I’m not …” He trails off, shaking his head.

“I need to say this.” I grab his hand, holding it tight. “Will and I were seeing each other for a while, but it ended a couple weeks before the storm at Fillmore. Because—”

“Hudson, you—”

“Because I realized I was falling for another guy, fifty-six.”

He raises his eyebrows and takes a step back, but I force myself to keep going, to follow him, to catalog the intensity in his eyes. All the colors. The tiny scar near his temple. The new, temporary scruff along his jaw. The soft lips that once brushed across mine during a storm.

Josh takes a deep breath. “I don’t—”

“Blackthorn? Please. Shut. Up.” I grab the collar of his jacket and pull him into me, answering every last protest with a kiss—a real one, deep and intentional.

After months of imagining this moment, his lips on mine fully, unbroken, uninterrupted, nothing could have prepared me for the real thing. Maybe Will was well versed on the technical points of a good kiss, but this?

Josh pulls me tighter, looping his arms around me. Our hearts find their familiar opposite beat, banging against each other through our clothes as Josh slides his hands into my hair, his beard tickling my lips, thumbs caressing my ear, my face, my neck. Being with Josh is like being touched from the inside out. An unexpected blaze of sunshine on an otherwise bleak winter day. Wrapping your fingers around a mug of hot chocolate after walking home in that frigid lake-effect wind. A fire crackling softly beneath your outstretched hands. The perfect combination of cupcake and icing, the kind where you can’t quite identify all the secret ingredients, but you feel them melting together on your tongue, and you know that for as long you live, this will be the best thing you’ve ever tasted.

Not almost.

Perfection.

Josh pulls away slowly, shell-shocked and smiling. “Um, okay. Now that we’ve got that straightened out,” he says, a little breathless, “explain to me again how this whole ‘friends with benefits’ thing works?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s just … all right. Those cupcakes smell really good, and I was thinking maybe I could score one. Or four.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and steps closer, kissing the sensitive skin beneath my jaw. The spark from his kiss travels straight to my toes and I shudder, nearly slipping on the icy pavement.

“Chocolate Cherry Fixer-Uppers,” I say, leaning into his arms. “Bug’s the one you’ll have to bribe, so if you’re just doing this for free cupcakes, you’re—”

“Doing what—this?” He brushes his lips against my ear again and my bones wobble.

“Don’t push your luck, Blackthorn,” I whisper.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Avery.” Josh’s smile disappears. He looks at me again like that first time on the makeshift rink at Fillmore, playful and serious and a little nervous all at once. He pulls me into another kiss, deeper than the first, initial surprise replaced with utter certainty.

The snow falls on us in soft, white feathers, but I’m not cold. On the other side of the door, the familiar sounds of Hurley’s echo through the kitchen—the sizzle and pop of the grill. Trick’s radio on low, humming those bluesy old tunes. The whir of the mixer as my little brother blends the frosting for his new confections. Somewhere in the distance, the Erie Atlantic whistles again, fairy godmother lamplight glowing on the tracks, the fleeting call of that old night bird echoing through the icy air as it finally exits the station. For as long as I live in this crazy, lake-effect, chicken-wing-capital-of-the-world town, that old train howling up at the moon will always be the sound of someone leaving, the promise of another place.