Chapter 29
twenty-nine
The noise hit her first.
She was three steps past the entrance gate when it caught up with her — country music thumping from speakers mounted on poles, the screech of a girl on the Zipper somewhere to her right, the rolling bass of a tractor pull happening one arena over, a kid screaming for cotton candy ten feet from her shoulder.
Then the smells came at her in layers. Diesel from the carnival generators.
Frying dough. The sharp animal stink of the livestock barns.
Cinnamon-sugar. Someone’s beer. The midway was packed with bodies moving in currents she tracked without meaning to, and the rides spun lights against the bruised purple sky — Ferris wheel turning slow, the Gravitron strobing red and white, the Tilt-A-Whirl throwing pulses of green across the faces of the crowd waiting in line.
Greta stopped. Her hand dropped to Atlas’s head, fingers buried in the thick fur behind his ears, before she’d thought about reaching for him. He pressed his ribs against her thigh and held still.
Bear’s palm settled at the small of her back, warm through her shirt.
“Too much?” he asked, close to her ear.
“No.” She took a breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way she did on bad climbs. “Just—give me a second.”
He gave her a second. He gave her ten. He stood beside her with his hand at her back and let the fair go on around them while she found her footing.
Atlas pressed against her left leg. King was already pulling toward the livestock barns with his ears pricked forward, but Bear had a firm hand on his lead and he held, watching her too, big head tipped.
“Okay,” Greta said eventually. “Okay.”
“You sure?”
She exhaled. “Yeah.”
Bear’s hand stayed where it was as they started walking.
The fair was bigger than she remembered.
The midway curved past the food trucks and the carnival games—ring toss, milk bottle pyramid, a basketball hoop with a rim she knew from experience was bent half an inch smaller than regulation—and opened onto the wider grass alley that ran past the exhibition tents.
Kids ran past with neon glow sticks looped around their necks.
A boy younger than Oliver tripped over his own feet ten yards ahead of them, dropped a paper cone of cotton candy, and started wailing while his mother tried to scoop it up off the grass.
Bear stepped around them without breaking stride and kept his hand at Greta’s back.
They wandered. She wasn’t tracking where they were going. She was tracking the noise level, the density of the crowd, the distance to the gate if she needed to bolt. But Bear had a course in mind and she let him steer her.
The floral exhibition tent was strung with Edison bulbs that threw warm light over everything, and the smell hit her before she was fully through the entrance — cut stems and potting soil and something sweet she couldn’t name, thick enough in the air that she could taste it.
The tent was narrow and deep, tables lining both sides in a tight corridor, arrangements competing for attention in explosions of color that made her eyes want to skip over all of it at once.
After the midway, the quiet felt strange.
Like stepping into a different building.
Mariah Duval’s booth was halfway down on the left.
Greta spotted it because it was the only display that looked like someone had actually thought about what they were doing.
White linen draped over the table. Copper vessels holding tight arrangements of late-season dahlias and dried grasses, everything measured and centered.
A hand-lettered chalkboard sign propped on an easel read Pine & Bloom, Solace MT in script so perfect it looked printed.
Mariah stood behind the table in a cream blouse with her hair pinned up, not a strand out of place.
She was adjusting a copper vessel by increments so small Greta couldn’t actually see the difference.
Her face had the set of a woman who knew exactly how things should be and would accept nothing less.
X was draped over the corner of her display table like he’d been poured there. Both forearms on the white linen. Grin at full wattage.
He was saying something Greta couldn’t hear from this distance, but she could read the posture — the lean, the eye contact, the way he’d angled his whole body toward Mariah like she was the only person in the tent.
Mariah set the copper vessel down and picked up a small spray bottle.
X kept talking. He gestured at one of the dahlia arrangements, then at Mariah, then back at the flowers, his grin never faltering. He looked like a man who had never been told no in his life and wouldn’t recognize it if he heard it.
Mariah raised the spray bottle two inches and squirted him directly in the face.
He jerked back, sputtering, one hand coming up to wipe his eyes, but the grin didn’t die— if anything, it got wider.
He straightened up off the table, still wiping water off his face with the back of his hand, and said something that made Mariah’s mouth tighten at the corners.
She set the spray bottle down with the care of someone holstering a weapon, smoothed the front of her blouse, and turned to help a woman who’d been hovering at the edge of the display.
She spoke to the customer with perfect composure, gesturing at the arrangements like she hadn’t just assaulted a man with a spray bottle ten seconds earlier.
X stood there a beat, staring longingly at Mariah’s back, and then he shook his head and walked away, still grinning.
Greta put both hands over her mouth, but the laugh came out anyway. Loud enough that Bear turned to look at her. It kept coming. Full-body, uncontrollable. She bent forward, one hand on Bear’s arm to keep herself upright, and laughed until she snorted.
Bear was staring at her.
Oh, God. How embarrassing.
She tried to pull herself together and failed.
Every time she thought she had it under control, she remembered the spray bottle, the way X’s face had done that full-body surprise reaction, the way Mariah had just turned away like spraying people was a normal part of customer service, and the laughter came back.
Bear brought his other hand up to her back, steadying her, and she leaned into it.
When she finally got enough air to speak, her voice came out rough and unsteady. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah.”
“She sprayed him in the face.”
“I saw.”
“Just—” She made a gesture that was supposed to indicate the spray bottle, but mostly just flailed. “Right in the face. And then she just—”
Another wave of laughter cut her off.
Bear watched her, a slow smile breaking across his face. She caught the look and tried to rein it in, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m fine. I’m good.”
“You’re crying. And… snorting.”
“I don’t snort.”
“You sure? I thought we were by the pigpen for a minute there.”
She straightened and smacked his arm. “You did not just call me a pig.”
He was all-out grinning now, and he was so handsome when he did that. It crinkled his eyes and softened the hard lines of his face.
“Oink,” he said.
“This is revenge for calling you Honey Bear in front of the guys, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Little bit.”
She turned to look back at Mariah’s booth. Mariah was still helping the customer, pointing out different arrangements like she hadn’t just committed assault with a spray bottle. X was nowhere in sight.
“I give her six weeks,” Greta said.
Bear followed her gaze. “For what?”
“Before she gives in and goes on a date with him.”
He was quiet for a beat, watching Mariah package up a small arrangement for the customer. Then he shook his head. “Six months. Minimum.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Mariah doesn’t strike me as someone who gives in easily.”
“X doesn’t strike me as someone who gives up.”
“Exactly.” Bear crossed his arms. “Six months. She’ll make him work for it.”
Greta looked at him, then at Mariah, then back at Bear. “You want to bet on it?”
“Sure.”
“Twenty bucks?”
“Done.”
She held out her hand, and he took it, his palm warm and rough against hers, and they shook on it.
His hand was so big hers disappeared into it, and when they should have let go, they didn’t.
They just stood there in the middle of the floral tent with their hands clasped, the Edison bulbs throwing warm light over everything, the smell of cut flowers thick in the air.
Greta looked down at their joined hands, then up at Bear’s face.
He was watching her again. Same expression as before.
She didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know what to do with the way her chest felt too full, with the way the laughter had left her feeling scraped clean and raw and more alive than she’d felt in weeks.
She squeezed his hand once and let go.
The grandstand lights kicked on as they climbed the bleachers, bright white against the sky behind the mountains, which was fading from deep orange to purple in bands.
The arena below was a perfect oval of churned dirt, the smell of it rising in the warm air along with the scent of horses and cattle.
The PA crackled with the announcer’s voice calling the bareback order, numbers, and names that meant nothing to Greta but got reactions from the crowd around them.
Logan was already there, two rows ahead and to the left, sitting beside River like he’d been doing it for years instead of weeks.
River was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, talking fast and gesturing at the chutes, and Logan was listening with his arms crossed and his chin down, only half paying attention but not minding.
Greta dropped into a seat in the middle of the row. Bear settled beside her, the bleacher creaking under his weight, and the warmth of him ran all down her left side.