Chapter 13 Annie
ANNIE
By midmorning, the fairground is a long bright hum, the kind that gets into your bones and vibrates there like a tuning fork.
The sun is already high. The announcer is warming his vowels on sponsor names.
Bulls are complaining like kings forced to wait.
I can’t tell if they’re impatient to get this over with or impatient to get revenge on the riders by flopping them into the air.
I prop open the medic tent flap to catch the slowest, laziest breeze and try to pretend it’s air-conditioning. It isn’t.
Jaden sets two bottles of water on the counter like he’s presenting a fine wine. “For you, my queen of triage.”
“I’ll knight you later,” I say, twisting a cap and drinking half in one go. The cold aches behind my breastbone in the best way.
He glances at the clipboard, scans the morning schedule, then leans an elbow on the table with his casual tell me something stance. “So. On a scale from ‘I slept’ to ‘I made questionable life choices,’ how was your night?”
“Somewhere in the middle.” I pretend to focus on reorganizing the suture kits we already organized twice.
He smiles. “Middle, huh?”
“Mmhm.”
“You know I’ve got a refined ear for lying, right?”
“I know you have a refined ear for gossip.”
“Semantics.” He drags his finger across the condensation on his bottle until it squeaks. “You do look…lighter. Less murderous. More manslaughter-y.”
“Great. A step down the felony ladder.”
He laughs and turns when a volunteer sticks her head in to ask for Band-Aids for a kid who attempted heroics with a Ferris wheel bolt.
Jaden handles it. I take another drink of water and let my mind drift where it wants, which is to my phone even though it’s face down on the counter and I promised myself I’d be a functioning adult until lunch.
Buzz.
It’s like Brick knows when I’m thinking about him. I don’t look for two seconds on principle, then give up and flip it over with my thumb.
You look like you hate the sun, he writes.
I glance out through the flap. Brick’s standing fifty feet away at the fence line, hat pushed back, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He isn’t watching me, not directly. He’s talking to a stock hand and laughing at something. But he knows exactly where I am. He has to. The text has me dead to rights.
I type without thinking. I do hate the sun. We’re not friends.
He answers fast. I can fix that. I’ve got shade and a bad sense of humor.
You’re insufferable. I feel my own mouth curve despite myself.
He adds, I’ve also got pink lemonade if that sweetens the pot.
I put the phone face down again because if I don’t, I’ll stand here grinning like an idiot until Jaden stages an intervention. My chest feels lighter. It shouldn’t. But it does.
I’m reaching for a roll of tape when I catch the smallest shift in the corner of my eye—Jaden stepping up to the sink, glancing down at the counter, not meaning to snoop but absolutely reading what’s visible on my unlocked screen before his eyes flick away.
I move to cover it, but I’m a second too slow.
He goes very still, then says lightly, “I didn’t see anything.” Which is how he announces he saw something.
I slide the phone into my pocket. “Good, because there’s nothing to see.”
He pivots, tone easy. “If you ever want to run potential life choices past your friendly neighborhood nurse, my rates are very reasonable.”
“I’m paid up forever,” I say, aiming for breezy. But my stomach does that hollow drop like when a roller coaster pauses at the top.
He hesitates, then sits on the edge of the cot, hands on his knees. “Is it Reno? Is that why he’s been sniffing around? You know you can tell me. I don’t judge.”
“No,” I say, too fast and too sharp. I soften it because he doesn’t deserve the serrated version of me. “No. Definitely not Reno. Not now, not ever.”
“Okay.” He nods once, taking the answer as gospel and wisely not asking for footnotes. “Good. He’s…you know.”
“I know.” I let the two words hold all the old ache and the new hard line. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”
“Copy,” he says, instantly pivoting. “In that case, did you clock Blaze yesterday? Our favorite agent of chaos? She’s pretty cute.”
“She’s a little young for you, don’t you think?” The words come out before my inner critic shouts, “Hypocrite!” and I try to hide my wince.
“I’m not talking about marrying the girl. Just appreciating her brand of anarchy.”
“And by anarchy, you mean her ass?”
He snorts at that. “Among other attributes…”
I let him fill the tent with talk about Blaze because it gives my hands something to do—restocking gloves, counting ice packs, pretending to tidy the chart drawer.
He’s right. She is pretty. She’s also trouble in the way of people who know their own edges and don’t apologize for them.
It makes sense that he noticed. It makes sense every man with a pulse notices her.
It should make me think about the ethics of crushes, or the age difference, or a dozen other responsible things.
Instead, it makes me think about her father. Deep voice, steady hands, patience like a muscle. The way his mouth felt on mine, which is a thought I absolutely should not be having right now.
“Annie?” Jaden says, amused. “You left the building.”
“I’m here.” I’m not, but I am. “Keep talking. It’s soothing.”
He obliges, riffing on Blaze’s ribbon collection, the way she smiles like she’s planning a small heist, how she praised his water station yesterday like he’d reinvented hydration.
I let him talk for both of us. Through all of it, my brain runs a second track underneath the first. One that involves rope.
I have never been this into someone so fast.
That’s the part that scares me. Not the wrongness that everyone else will point to first—the ex, the father, the tangled last names.
Sure, that’s a consideration, but it’s not as bad as the speed of it all.
The way a single reel of time can spool around your wrist and tug.
I don’t trust fast. Fast turned me into a version of myself I didn’t like when I was twenty.
Fast made me forgive things I shouldn’t have forgiven.
Fast took the critical filter in my brain and set it down in the sink like a dish that could wait.
Buzz.
I resist this one for four seconds and then give in because if I don’t, Jaden will launch into an ode to gluten-free churros, and I’ll hurl a tongue depressor at his chest.
I miss your face looking bossy, the text says.
I snort. I’m always bossy. That’s my default.
I know, he writes. I like it.
I bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t grin like a teenager. I text back, You concentrating over there, or are you going to get yourself bucked just to come in here for attention?
He replies, You wound me. I am a consummate professional. Also I might have “accidentally” cut my knuckle opening a gate.
I can’t help it. I chuckle out loud. Jaden glances over, eyebrow up.
“Memes,” I lie.
“Uh-huh,” he says, entirely unconvinced, and flips through the roster like it contains proof. He knows enough not to ask to see the meme. He’s a good egg.
Three riders in a row come through with minor scrapes that don’t require more than gentle hands and stern warnings.
Two mothers thank me with cookie coupons.
One father tries to argue about sitting his son out, and Jaden steps in with the kind of diplomacy I wish I could buy in bulk.
We make our little square of order over and over until noon.
When the noon lull hits, the tent breathes. The shade cools by a fraction. Jaden heads out to refill the water jugs and schmooze the volunteer EMTs. I sit on the edge of the table and finally let myself look at the thing that’s been pulling at me the past thirty seconds.
I wish you were here, the new text reads.
Where? I type. Trailer? Fence line? Kettle corn stand?
All of it, he replies. But mostly in my bed. On my face.
Heat rolls through me. You’re going to get me fired.
Doc, he sends, and I can almost hear the way he says it, low and amused, I’m going to get you smiling. That’s all.
You’re trouble.
Only the survivable kind.
My heart doesn’t care that he’s probably grinning. It’s busy doing the bumpiest two-step inside my chest.
He sends a second message, almost immediately after. I’ll behave, if you need me to.
The restraint in that lands harder than any of the teasing.
The thing is, I know he’d back off if I told him to.
He likes me—there’s no denying that. But he would stop the moment I told him to.
He’d be my friend, and he wouldn’t push for more if I told him that’s what I wanted.
That level of restraint is something I’m not used to, and it means something to me.
A shadow falls across the flap. “Knock knock,” Mac sing-songs, pushing her way in with her camera bag, bumping her hip. She looks like she hasn’t slept but is delighted about it—high ponytail, flushed cheeks, the kind of sparkle that says she did something dumb and lived to brag.
“I come bearing a medical mystery,” she says, wiggling her fingers. The whole unit crunches. “My right wrist says I’m thirty going on ninety.”
“Occupational hazard,” I say, motioning her toward the chair. “Grip too tight on the rig all morning?”
Her eyes go a little wider at that. “You know, I thought so. But if I’m being honest…” She glances over her shoulder to make sure the tent is empty. Jaden is still out charming the world. She leans in like the tent walls have ears. “I, uh, hooked up last night.”
I burst out laughing. “With the librarian of your dreams?”
“Shut up.” She grins so hard it looks like it hurts. “With the rider.”
“Jesus, Mac.”
“I know. I’m a walking cliché.”
“You’re adorable,” I say, then hold up a hand. “And I do not need to know what wrist-based acrobatics were involved.”
She groans, face in her hands. “You really, really don’t.” Her voice drops. “But it was…so good.”