Jay spends a while packing snow into a ramp, and they take turns launching from it. The ice creaks when they land where the tire tracks have patterned the lake, and they instinctively shift the angle of their jumps to avoid the spot.

Despite their care and obvious skill, she looks down, suddenly unable to watch. Instead, she focuses on the way her skin swirls in the strange blue light. Tiny ice crystals land on her arm and then sink in, becoming part of her. Colin bikes over and kisses her again, releasing a puff of steam against her face. It disappears into her cheek.

“Jump’s ready,” Jay yells from the middle of the lake.

Colin pedals away from her before turning and taking off hard down the hill and onto the ramp. He flies through the air, his torso twists and arches, and for only a moment, she can see his eyes close in euphoria, can imagine what it would be like to see him make that face closer to her own. His arms flex and his hands squeeze the grips as he recovers and lands. Releasing a loud “Whoop!” he circles back as Jay takes off. Over and over they ride the ramp, and each turn their jumps are more daring, their lands are more solid, and their cheeks glow redder in the frigid air.

“I’m starving,” Jay yells as he bikes to the lake’s edge and pulls his phone from his pocket to check the time.

“You’re always starving. Ten more minutes.” Colin pedals to Lucy. “Are you bored?”

As soon as she shakes her head, he’s off again. But this time, what has to be his twentieth jump, Lucy can tell immediately that he’s crooked—too far to the right—and when he lands, the ice splits open with a deafening crack.

Water, blue and sharp, bubbles up and across the surface. Colin slips under as if he’s melted into the lake; there’s not even a moment when he gripped anything but his bike handles. It all happens so fast, but the yawning pause after he disappears feels like it lasts a year, and never has the world been more silent.

He’s gone. Beneath the snow and thick ice. Lucy is screaming and Jay is screaming, digging his arms into the water, reaching wildly for Colin. The first thought hits her like a dark shadow: When he’s dead, will he be able to find her?

“Colin!” Jay yells, lying flat on the ice and leaning over the jagged hole. He shoves his arms in again and again, feeling for any trace of a body. The ice where he leans groans and cracks, and he scrambles back as Colin appears and punches at the solid surface. Jay tries to grab his hand, but he can’t reach him.

“GET HIM!” Lucy screams, scrambling closer to the edge. “Jay, get him out. Get him out. Get him out!”

Jay lunges, but Colin is too far away, now moving beneath the ice in the wrong direction. Lucy shoves him aside and dives in without thought, but the water pushes her up, bobbing her uselessly against the ice. She has no strength against the weight of water that presses into her. Colin falls unconscious, his face eerily blue as he begins to slip away. It makes him look already preserved.

With a surge of wild strength, she ducks under to grab his sinking hand, pulling his arm close enough that Jay can grab him. He’s screaming so many words at her as he pulls Colin out, but she doesn’t hear any of them because she’s already out and up, running for help.

She charges down the trail, screaming her head off and intent on heading straight for the kitchen or Joe’s or somewhere where someone can help. She falls in the snow and gets up again, clothes leaden with water that’s quickly turning to ice and limbs propelled by terror.

“Luce?”

It has to be a hallucination. In his voice she hears relief. But it’s impossible because she just left him unconscious and frozen and dying on the lake.

“Luce, stop!”

Whipping around, she sees Colin behind her on the trail. Somehow he manages to both smile and apologize with his eyes. “Stop,” he says. “Please.”

She can’t see through him, can’t blink him away. He’s there, saying her name one more time and waiting for her to respond, hands curled into fists at his sides.

Relief floods her so rapidly that she’s choking on words, unable to speak. All she can do is turn and run, throw her entire body against his. He catches her, and where he has always been hard and too solid, now he’s simply warm and perfect. His forearms wrap around her back, pulling her to him, and he presses his face into her neck. Not too hot, not too much. Just Colin and the contours of eyes and lips and nose and chin against her skin. She feels him kissing her, feels his mouth open on her throat, his lips tasting her skin before he whispers, “Hi.”

Strange, but perfect. They feel the same.

She wants to scream words of relief into the air. Her question, “How did you get out?” comes out shrill, her voice disappearing in a rasp at the end.

Colin silently bends and kisses where her neck dips into her shoulder. “Where are we?” he whispers, voice heavy with awe. “Is this how it always looks to you?”

“Where is Jay?” she asks, looking behind him down the trail. Muffled shouting drifts from the lake, and Lucy registers with a leaden clarity that Jay is there, panicking.

But Colin is here. And dry.

Understanding seeps into her, slow and thick. His skin is like her skin and it’s warm and soft and familiar. His skin isn’t freezing. Looking back down the trail again and behind Jay’s crouched body, Lucy can see the top of Colin’s soaking-wet hair and a single unmoving hand against the ice.

Panic and confusion flood her. “Hey,” she says, tugging at his hair so that he meets her eyes. And it’s then that she finally sees what he sees when he looks at her: His irises swirl, flames licking. Where his used to be amber-dark, honey flecked with gold, now they are molten. He’s afraid, excited, and hopeful.

And she can see, too, that he knows something is wrong. He knows and he doesn’t care.

“Just touch me.” He shakes his head, looking around as if caught inside a wholly different world. “Just pretend it’s okay.”