Will’s voice drops to a whisper. “I’m in a bad spot, Hudson.”
“Why? What’s going on?” I touch my hand to his face and turn him toward me. “Talk to me.”
He looks at me for a long time, eyes glassy and red. “I can’t.”
“Will, I’m—”
“Believe me when I say it’s not about you. And it’s nothing crazy like drugs or cops or anything. Okay?”
I nod slowly, swallowing back the hurt. Why won’t he tell me?
“It’s just … it’s all hockey stuff,” he says. “Family stuff. God. I sound like one of those people who drops this big bomb looking for attention and then acts like everything’s fine. I’m not trying to …” He closes his eyes and shakes his head.
“If you want to talk, I’m here. Okay?”
“I can’t tell you the details.” He slips his hand into mine again and I lean my head on his shoulder, both of us breathing softly, water pounding furiously outside, all around us. “I don’t mean to be such a downer. I just wanted to say you don’t have to practice with us anymore. Dodd’s on my ass about everything now, and if he finds out you’ve been helping us …” He sniffs in a deep breath, but he doesn’t look at me.
I hate the thought of ditching the team. I hate even more that Will is asking me to. But I knew from the first day that we couldn’t tell Coach Dodd. Strictly off the record, that was the deal. And now that Dodd’s more involved, and the NHL people are nosing around, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.
I don’t know what else to say to make this okay. I just know that right now, here in this beautiful white palace, I don’t want either of us to feel bad anymore. My hand circles his wrist and pulls him closer. He hesitates as he turns to face me. Looks at me dead-on, eyes searching mine in the soft glow of the streetlamp over the car. He leans forward and I look at him and I say it, just a whisper. “Let’s forget about everything else. Just for tonight. Just for right now.”
He nods slowly and I pull him toward me and we send our obsessions away, over the Falls in an invisible barrel. Will leans against me, hair crackling in the winter air as I pull the shirt over his head. There’s no more talking, sad or serious or anything else. His hands are strong as they run along my shoulders and arms, his eyes taking in my face, lips brushing the skin of my neck, whispers hot in my ear until I’m afraid my entire body will turn to mist, leaving nothing of me to bury but the long pale silk of my hair laced through his fingers.
His mouth presses against mine, soft like the gentle snow falling outside. The muscles in his back tighten beneath my hands, and then he kisses me harder. Deeper. He’s done this before. Maybe a lot, even, and I let him take over—no awkward fumbling or pointless questions. With Will, I don’t have to think; my mind is free to roam, just like that night at the Empire Games. Maybe it’s like that for him, too, our mouths pressed together in the car, breath on skin, erasing everything else.
Beneath the weight of him, I close my eyes and let go. I run through the doors of my mind faster than I’ve ever run before, Will’s mouth moving over my skin. Door after door after door, I crash through them all as his fingers loosen the buttons on my shirt, his hands gentle on my stomach, and then I’m gone. Out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but white ice ahead, far from my mother and Hurley’s and the food critic, far from Dani and Trina’s cupcakes and everything I’ve messed up this winter, far from school and the team and Fillmore Steel, far from my father’s blogs, farther even than the old Erie Atlantic train to nowhere, running until there’s nothing left behind but a darkness so black and barren that not even a memory can grow there.
But then, in the utterly cold and empty space, a light flickers. An image. A face. A smile. A tiny white scar and deep blue-gray eyes …
The moment is broken. I open my eyes and I’m back in the car, all the old doors shut tight and locked again, Will expertly navigating the landscape of my skin.
“Hudson?” he whispers. My gaze goes blank and fuzzy until there’s two of everything. Two lamps outside. Two gajillion years of water rushing over the edge. Two Wills hovering inches above me, waiting for me to decide what happens next.
“Sorry.” I lean forward to kiss him again, to erase Josh and Mom and Dani and the competition from my mind. But he pulls away and all the bad things rush back, impossible and immense, water cascading over a frozen gorge and eroding everything in sight.
“I can’t do this,” he says. “This isn’t … where are you right now?”
He asks me, but I can’t give him an answer—not the real one. The one that admits I’m back on the ice at Fillmore, watching Josh perfect those backward crossovers. Back in my kitchen on New Year’s, listening to the Addicts with him on the phone. Back at the game tonight, wrapped in that immense and secret hug while Will wasn’t looking.
The spark returns, rushing through my veins, electrifying my entire body. Half-naked in the back of a car perched on the edge of Niagara Falls, I remember Kara’s warnings again, how they’d secretly filled my insides with prickles of fear and loss.
But tonight, somewhere beneath this bone-white city of glass, my panic over the thought of Will ending things eroded, replaced by something much more lasting and intense:
Disappointment that he didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should get back. I have to get up early tomorrow and … anyway.” I turn away so I don’t have to see his face. His touch is light, first on my bare shoulder and then my cheek, but still I don’t move. He passes me my shirt and jacket. The back door opens, the dome light blinks on, and the roar of the Falls fills my ears, drowning the guilt, muting the confusion. The door clicks closed. He leans against the car while I dress, his back to me in the window.
“Are you mad?” Outside, I tug on his jacket, desperate for him to tell me no. Or yes. I don’t know. Maybe that would make things easier. If he’s mad at me, if he tries to make me feel guilty or calls me a tease, then I could have something to hate about him. Something to cling to, some reason to tell myself I shouldn’t be messing around with a guy like Will. A guy who—no matter how technically perfect his kisses are—can’t chase the cold from the inside.
“No.” He smiles without showing his teeth and kisses me on the cheek, just below my eye. “I’ll take you back. Come on.”
Riding along the desolate I-190, I look at Will’s profile in the dark, the lines of his face lit only by the moon on the bright snow, the headlights passing by and vanishing in the northbound lane. My eyes are all over Will, his perfectly angled face, his wavy hair, his hands on the wheel, but I can’t stop thinking about Josh. Wishing he was here. Wishing this was us. Wishing I could kiss him under the moonlight as the water rushed past like the hooves of a thousand horses.
“You know you have to tell him,” Will says, as if he can read my mind. He looks at me straight on, eyes so dark and sad that I can’t find the courage to argue. “Otherwise, what’s the point of anything, right?”
I look away, vision blurring as the snow falls in white needles against the windshield and the long list of tonight’s revelations finally hits me.
My gig training the Wolves is over.
My best friend has a new crush and a new crew.
And for all the time I’ve spent making out with hockey captain number seventy-seven Will Harper, I still couldn’t outrun the truth.
I’m totally falling for Josh Blackthorn.
And I have no idea what to do about it.
Chapter Twenty
The Perfect Storms
Eggless white vanilla cupcakes topped with a thin layer of mashed blueberries and white meringue frosting; dusted with powdered sugar and served chilled