“My lateral collateral.” It seems like a sign of weakness to be admitting it. “But my knee’s great now.”

I’m not going to tell her how I worked eighty-hour weeks that summer to fund physiotherapy sessions on top of saving for my next season.

“Saskia busted her ACL a few years back,” Curtis says.

Her head jerks his way.

That’s a pretty major injury. I wait, hoping he’ll elaborate.

Maybe he catches the way she’s looking at him, because he leans back in his seat. “It’s a snakes-and-ladders game, that’s how I see it. You just have to hope you climb up higher than you slide.”

The other diners have disappeared and the woman who served us hovers in the background. Poor thing looks exhausted. It’s a feeling I know well from summers when I used to work the bar until four in the morning and grab a few hours’ sleep before I started my day job.

I lower my voice. “I think she wants us to hurry up so she can clock off.”

We finish our plates and she can’t snatch them up quick enough. She shows us to the dorms along the corridor. We have a room each.

“Hey, Milla,” Curtis says quietly as I’m about to enter mine. “If you get cold in the night, you know where to come.”

Saskia turns to look at him, a strange expression on her face.

“I think you’ll find my bed’s warmer than his,” Brent says from his doorway.

I dive into my room before my face burns up.

Athletes are physical people. We have all this energy and sometimes there’s some left at the end of the day. So it doesn’t surprise me that the boys did that. And I like how they did it. There was nothing leery or threatening about it; they simply put out the offer for me to take or leave.

My legs feel shaky as I stand under the shower. It’s no big deal to them—they must have girls chasing them all the time—but I’ve never been propositioned quite so blatantly by two such hot guys.

And you just know that anyone as talented as those two are at snowboarding would be equally talented in bed.

Water rains down on my head. They’re such different people. Brent is like a well-worn pair of skate shoes, comfortable and familiar.

And Curtis is next season’s snowboard boots. I’ve never tried or even imagined anything like them before, but if I put them on I sense I’ll never want to take them off.

I close my eyes and tilt my face to the spray. I’m still fragile after my last two breakups. The only kind of hookup I can risk this winter is something fun and casual, and there’s nothing casual about the way I feel about Curtis.