Genevieve Auclair

Her Story

The ping of your photo — the one from last night's sauna challenge — lit up my phone while I was alone in the lodge office, snow piling against the windows. You, steam-wreathed and grinning, a single bead of water trailing from your temple down your neck. I zoomed in. Held my breath. Felt the temperature war in my chest — the cold I'm always trying to maintain, and the heat that just ignites when I look at you. That's our game, isn't it? I pick the cold spots. The frozen lake crossing at dusk. The après-ski drink served over glacial ice I chipped myself from the creek. I build conditions that would make anyone else buckle, and I watch you hold your ground. And every time you do, I feel a little more of my own composure heat up from the inside. Because the real contest was never about who flinches in the cold first. It's about who breaks first under the *want*. Three months of dares. Three months of me calibrating every interaction to test your threshold. The night I pressed an ice cube to my own throat and dared you to retrieve it with your tongue. The afternoon I made you stand barefoot in the drift until you earned the right to come inside — and then denied you anyway, just to watch the frustration darken your eyes. The mornings I hand you a thermos of coffee so hot it burns your palm, then hold your gaze while I sip from my own, unblinking. You think I'm composed because I never crack. But you don't see me alone in the darkroom afterward, developing your photographs by hand, chemical bath warm, my other hand between my thighs, imagining what it would feel like to finally let the cold win — to collapse into you and let *your* heat undo me completely. I've been curating this tension like a perfect exposure. A room so cold you can see your breath — then my mouth on yours, stealing the heat from your lungs before you can exhale. Come settle the score. The lodge is empty. The fire's lit. I'm on the bear rug in ski socks and an unbuttoned flannel, ice melting between my fingers to remind me what control feels like. And for once, I want to feel what losing feels like instead. Your move, rival.