Logan comes in low like a linebacker, knocking me flat into a snowbank with a loud grunt. She heaves her arms up and covers my face in snow and the rest of me with her body. “I win. I win!!!” She pants like a puppy.

I grab her around the waist and roll us over, shaking melting snow all over her like a wet Saint Bernard. She covers her face with her gloves. “Who won?” I ask.

“I won!” I take her wrists and hold them above her head. She grins, a mega-watt smile. Her clumped dark lashes accentuate the gold flecks lighting her eyes. Her grin slides off her face into something intense and serious. We’re both breathing hard. I should let her up, but I find myself drawn closer, so close that I’m barely a breath away.

“Remember our bet?” I whisper.

“Yes,” she whispers back.

“I’m cashing in. What’s going on in that mind of yours?”

“This.” She kisses me and I’m kissing her and it’s not enough. Her arms come around my back. I press into her, pouring every ounce of myself into this one kiss. One kiss and it’s not enough, it will never be enough. How is it that we’ve spent so many seconds, minutes, hours, days, inches from each other and deprived ourselves of this?

A car honks and startles us apart. We laugh. Logan lifts an arm and waves at the passing car. I roll off her, stand, and reach down, offering her a hand. Her cheeks are pink from the cold and from our PDA.

“Not bad,” Logan says, brushing off some snow from her jeans.

“Not bad?” I fake insult.

“There might be room for improvement.”

“Maybe not interested.”

She fists my coat, yanks me forward. “Maybe I’m not, either.”

We’re kissing again, and it’s everything, everything, and yet not enough. I want more. Her. Me. Us. Together.

“There’s an inn down the street if you need a room,” a girl calls from the open passenger window of a pickup truck. The guy in the driver’s seat gives me a thumbs-up, then drives away.

Laughing, eyes sparkling, Logan starts walking backward toward the inn. “C’mon, Mr. Room-for-Improvement, I’m starving. Let’s go see what Nana baked for you today.”

My kiss-crazed high tanks as I take my time joining Logan.

* * *

When we enter the inn’s parking lot, Mom is dragging a large plastic garbage bag toward our fenced-off dumpster. Oh no. I forgot to take out the trash? On warp speed, I recheck my daily a.m. to-do list, but for the life of me, I don’t remember.

I jog over to Mom and head off the lecture. “Sorry. I got it,” I say, taking the bag out of her hands and hoisting it off the ground. Spying the unfamiliar car, I ask, “We have guests?”