It was good advice that Emily and Penny had given me to be direct with Luke, to make him choose. The stakes were too high. If he really broke my heart—and I was somehow certain that it would be him and not me doing the breaking—what then? I’d seen it happen with other skiing couples, and it was a mess. We lived together and trained together, we were best friends, and what about poor Blair, who would be caught in the middle? A week after my conversation with Emily and Penny, when Luke crept in my room, rather than open the covers up to let him in, I sat up in bed and pulled my knees to my chest protectively.

“What’s wrong?”

“We have to stop,” I said.

The moonlight was refracted by the blankets of snow outside my window, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, Luke’s features became clearer. My heart surged. Maybe we could go on forever like this. Didn’t I want, in some ways, to keep these ecstatic nights but maintain our friendship in the light of day too?

“Why?” Luke seemed baffled and a little bit pissed off. He reached out and put his hand on my knee, and I smacked it away. I meant to do so playfully but it felt aggressive.

“You know why, Luke. You’re my best friend, we train together, we live together. How could this possibly be a good idea? What if Blair finds out? What if Tad or Coach finds out?”

“How is Coach going to find out?” Luke asked, smiling.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re stopping. You can find some other girl to mess around with, you’ve had no trouble with that before.”

He looked hurt, and I felt him retreat from me on the bed. I hadn’t meant to come off quite so harsh; I realized only as he was sitting there that it was already too late for me. I had feelings for Luke—I didn’t quite want to put a name to them just yet—but knew I was on dangerous ground. And messing with my head was going to mess with my performance, and I couldn’t risk that.

“Jesus, Katie.”

I shrugged. “What, Luke? Don’t act like you’re all heartbroken. You don’t care.”

And this was the root of it, I realized, the way he’d dropped my hand when we saw our teammates on the street. If Luke was going to reject me, I would beat him to it. We were always racing each other, it was our whole thing.

“How do you know?” he said softly. “How do you know what I’m feeling?”