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“One more try and then we’ll call it a night and go back to my cabin,” I said.
“I’m in.”
He took my hand and we pushed off together. Or tried to. Grant’s right skate went forward while my left went sideways, pulling our joined hands between us. We lurched, recovered, and managed three uneven glides before colliding shoulder to shoulder. But we stayed upright. For the next few minutes we made our way around the outer edge of the pond in a series of badly coordinated shuffles. We fell twice more. Once backward, landing side by side. Once forward, Grant throwing an arm around me so I landed on him instead of the ice.
No one appeared to pay much attention to us. They were too busy falling themselves.
We were hiding in plain sight.
“You ready to give up on this?” Grant asked.
I started to answer, but my skates slid out from under me. Grant grabbed for my waist, overcorrected, and went down with me.
We landed in a tangled heap for the fifth time. I scrambled off of him but he remained on his back, looking up at the sky. “Why would anyone find this fun?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said.
He turned to look at me. “Let’s get out of here and go do something warm.”
“And enjoyable.”
If anyone noticed us half crawling to the edge of the pond and out onto the snow, no one called out to us. I took that as a sign. To skedaddle while we could.
Once we were out of sight of the rest of them, Grant pulled me into his arms and kissed me before we followed the lantern light home.
The next morning, I was scheduled to meet with Blake for an interview. I had breakfast at the table with the others, sitting next to Grant, my foot pressed against his under the table. Afterward, I headed to the lodge where Blake had set up her interview room.
Blake was on her computer when I arrived, but looked up, breaking into a smile at the sight of me. “Good morning. You all set?”
“I am, yes.”
She asked me to sit while she got her camera situated.
“Before we start, I wanted to show you something,” Blake said. “And this is as a woman, not a filmmaker.”
My throat went dry. “Yeah?”
She picked up her phone, which was sitting on the table. “It’s not a big deal, just something I thought you should see.”
She scrolled, found what she was looking for, and turned the screen toward me.
It was shaking vertical video, dark, the lantern path glowing on both sides. Beck was walking ahead of her, hands in his pockets, and I could hear Blake laughing behind the camera.
“The view is excellent from back here,” Blake is saying.
Beck turns back to look at her, grinning into the camera. “Are you filming my butt?”
“Not just your butt.”
“That better not go in the film,” Beck says.
“Why not? It’ll sell lots of tickets. Especially once they see how cute you are in the rest of the film.” Blake laughs. The phone bobs, and the frame swings wide for half a second toward the trees along the left of the path.
And there we were. Grant and me. Kissing.
We were small, way over at the edge of the picture, half behind a pine, but unmistakable if you knew who you were looking at. A very large man with his hands on a woman’s face, kissing her like Knox says should only be done under a full moon.
The frame swung back to Beck and then went black.
