CHAPTER 30
BLAIRE
W e spent hours following Ruby from one ride to the next, our stomachs full of fair food.
Hunter and McCoy had joined us shortly after leaving June’s booth, and I’d felt on edge all night as I played with Ruby and tried to ignore her dad.
Now Ruby struggled under the weight of a stuffed bear that was bigger than she was, but she dragged it along with pride, refusing to let Colt help her.
“That thing is not coming home with us,” Colt muttered, eyeing the bear. “We’ll send it to your uncle Hunter’s.”
Hunter nudged his brother’s shoulder. “Ruby, sweetheart, your daddy’s just jealous because I knocked down those bottles first try while he wasted fifteen bucks.”
Colt’s jaw tightened, and I bit back a smile.
Hunter wasn’t wrong. After watching Colt mutter profanities with each missed shot, Hunter sauntered up, knocked down all the bottles on his first try, and claimed the bear Colt had been trying to win for Ruby. The muscle in Colt’s jaw hadn’t stopped twitching since.
Ruby hugged the bear tighter against her chest, and Colt rolled his eyes.
“Let’s go on the Ferris wheel, Ruby,” McCoy said, reaching for her small hand. “You and me in one car, and Hunter can babysit your bear since he doesn’t have a date.”
Hunter rolled his eyes. “Rich, coming from someone who also didn’t come with a date.”
Ruby hoisted the bear tighter against her and looked over its head at me with concern. “What about Blaire?”
“Don’t worry about Blaire,” Colt said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and drawing me against him. “She’s with me.”
I caught three different expressions aimed my way—Hunter’s raised eyebrow, McCoy’s knowing smirk, and Ruby’s wide smile.
“She’s with you, huh?” McCoy teased.
Colt shook his head. “Shut up and go before we lose our place in line.”
Ruby skipped ahead, and as soon as she fixed her gaze on the towering Ferris wheel, I drove my elbow into Colt’s side.
He jerked away with a laugh, rubbing at his exposed ribs. “What was that for?”
“You know exactly what that was for,” I said quietly as we approached the Ferris wheel’s entrance.
Ruby scrambled into the waiting car, legs swinging freely beneath her.
McCoy settled beside her, his arm curling protectively around her small shoulders as he pulled her close.
When the attendant pushed the safety bar down with a metallic thunk, Ruby let out a delighted squeal and clutched the bar with both hands.
“Be good and listen to uncle Coy,” Colt called out as their car jerked backward and began its ascent.
Hunter claimed the next car, wrestling the oversized bear into the seat beside him. When he caught us watching and laughing, he shot us an annoyed grin before raising his middle fingers as the ride whisked him upward.
I stepped into our car, the metal floor swaying beneath my feet. Colt followed, his shoulder brushing mine as we settled in. The attendant secured our bar with a practiced push, and our car rocked. I tilted my head back, taking in the carnival lights and the scattered stars above.
We rose, the initial movement gentle before the car lurched higher with a groan. The fairgrounds dwindled beneath us, and the carnival music and laughter faded as the wind whistled through the struts and the rhythmic mechanical hum of the motor echoed around us.
I could feel every inch of Colt beside me. His thigh pressed against mine and the denim between us felt too thin and too much at the same time. His arm rested on the back of the car, fingers threading into my hair, and his calloused thumb skimmed over my pulse point where my heartbeat betrayed me.
The car jolted to a stop, leaving us dangling above the ground while more riders climbed in below.
From this height, I could still see mine and June’s booth and all the others, and I smiled at the string of lights crisscrossing between the stalls like stars.
I tried to memorize this moment, to match all the others that came before it, but all I could focus on was the gentle pressure of his fingers woven in my hair.
I turned toward him, and my gaze crashed into his. His blue eyes were so dark they reminded me of the sky. One corner of his mouth lifted, his mustache twitching, as his thumb brushed my skin in a silent promise, and my pulse thundered beneath his touch.
My eyes traced the hard line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, and that damn mustache. His gaze dropped to my mouth, lingered there with such raw hunger that my lips parted involuntarily, my breath coming quick and shallow.
I should have gotten this itch out of my system by now, but somehow, it was worse.
The night stretched wide and reckless. At the top of the Ferris wheel, there was no boundary left to cross. After years of pushing and pulling, fighting not to be the one who wanted more, I was suspended with him. Nobody watching, no one left to blame for the way I’d come undone but me.
My body trembled, caught between what I wanted and what I feared, suspended in midair just like this damn Ferris wheel.
His breath warmed my neck, and I leaned into him, my breath hitching when he shifted closer. Ruby’s giggle cut through the fog, loud and sugar-fueled, and our heads snapped up as the wheel lurched back into motion.
As the wheel turned and we dropped back toward the earth, my stomach flipped in a free fall, and Colt’s fingers slid from my hair to my shoulder. He traced a slow path over my exposed skin, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but surrender to the feeling of him.
The metal car groaned beneath us, the sound vibrating through the seat beneath us, matching the pulsing between my thighs. Ruby’s laughter floated up from below, and a knife of guilt sliced through my haze of want.
Her happiness was the price we’d pay for this. I knew it. He knew it. But I burned for him, selfish and reckless, even knowing we would inevitably hurt each other. Because loving Colt Calloway had always felt like striking a match in a drought—consuming and impossible to survive.
“She’s so good,” I blurted out, nodding toward Ruby’s car. “Like, deep down good.”
“Yeah.” Colt’s face softened. “I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
I shook my head as my eyes met his, then focused back on the blinking carnival lights. “That’s all you, you know. You’re such a good dad.”
His smile faltered a little, and he shifted beside me. “I worry about her all the time. Worry that I’m screwing it all up somehow. I make all these decisions, and what if I’m making the wrong ones?”
I nudged him with my shoulder, my heart skittering as I looked at him. “Ruby’s the happiest kid I’ve ever met. She looks at you like you hung the moon.”
“She is happy.” He nodded, but then he hesitated. “I just want her to grow up strong and sure of herself. If I’m lucky, she’ll grow up to be like you.”
The words landed with a weight I wasn’t ready for, and I couldn’t breathe. My palms went clammy, nerves sparking under my skin. I tried to laugh it off, but it came out harsh and bitter. “No, you don’t want that.”
His eyes didn’t waver, but they softened as the carnival lights caught in them like stars.
“I mean it,” he said, voice dropping to that rough whisper that always found its way under my defenses.
“You’re fierce. You’re stubborn as hell, even when you shouldn’t be.
” His hand found my knee, thumb tracing a small circle that sent warmth spiraling through me, and I flinched.
His gaze tracked the movement, but he kept going.
“That’s all I want for her…to have that fire I’ve always seen in you. ”
“Fire?” The word caught in my throat. I gripped the metal bar until my knuckles ached, until I could feel the cold steel imprinting itself on my palms like a brand. “I don’t have fire, Colt. I wouldn’t wish any of my mistakes on Ruby.”
His hand remained on my knee, heavy and so warm, a counterpoint to the ache settling into my hands. I realized I was clutching the Ferris wheel’s safety bar so tightly the ridged metal pressed into my palms like a punishment, like I needed the sting to keep me from falling apart.
I stared at the fairgrounds below, at the mess of colored lights and the safe, ordinary world inside them. I wanted, just for a second, to be anyone but Blaire Monroe, the girl who ran away, the girl who loved a man who’d already broken her once.
Colt’s hand flexed on my leg, anchoring me to the seat.
“I wouldn’t wish them on her either,” he said, voice low and careful, like he was afraid he might spook me.
“But you know what I wish for Ruby, every single day?” He didn’t wait for my answer.
“That she grows up unafraid to want things, unafraid to fix things when she’s made the biggest mistake of her life. ”
My lungs seized. I could feel the air shudder in my chest, each breath scraping against a narrowing funnel in my throat as if the entire world was shrinking down to the Ferris wheel car and the man beside me.
The strobe of carnival lights below us made everything look unreal, washed in blue and gold and red.
Some small, traitorous part of me wanted to lean into his words and believe what he was saying, but the rest of me recoiled at the idea of exposing one more inch of soft skin for the world to bruise.
He leaned in slightly. “Blaire, when you left?—”
“Please, don’t.” The sound of my voice startled me as I pleaded with him.
I could still taste the memory of that day.
I remembered the way my hair stuck to my face as the rain poured down around us.
I remembered the words he’d thrown at me, words that left marks I’d never been able to erase.
I remembered the sound of my own voice as I shouted at him, as I begged him to stop. “I can’t do this tonight, Colt.”
“You can’t do what, Blaire?” His voice scraped against my raw skin. “You can let me fuck you any way I want to, but God forbid we talk about the past or about how I fucked everything up.”