Chapter 8
8
Sadie followed Melissa through the festival, enjoying the scents of caramel apples, pumpkin tarts, buttery popcorn, and her favorite festival food ever—funnel cakes. “Wait,” Sadie said as she veered toward the cart with the funnel cakes. “I need one of these immediately.”
“Now?” Melissa sounded horrified. “You don’t really want to meet your date with powdered sugar all over your face, do you?”
“You have very little faith in my ability to eat without turning into a toddler.” Sadie stepped up to the window and glanced back. “Do you want one?”
“Oh, no. I’m not going to have sticky fingers when I meet the man I’m going to marry.”
Sadie rolled her eyes and turned back to the teenager working the booth. “One funnel cake and a bottle of water. Thanks.” She paid, and a moment later she had her order in hand. “Isn’t this roughly where we’re supposed to meet our dates?”
“Yeah. There’s the Ferris wheel.” She pointed to the lit-up ride behind them.
Sadie scanned the area, spotted a group of wooden picnic tables, and said, “Let’s sit there while I wolf this down.”
“They’re gonna show up while you’re shoving fried dough in your face,” Melissa admonished.
“No they aren’t. They said seven. It’s only six-twenty. There’s plenty of time to tackle this and clean up after.” Sadie took a seat and dug into her funnel cake.
“You look like a rabid raccoon,” Melissa said with a light chuckle.
“I feel like one too,” Sadie said around a bite of the yummy goodness. “You just don’t know what you’re missing.”
Melissa eyed the funnel cake, staring longingly at the fried dough.
“You know you want some.” Sadie stabbed a piece of the cake and held the plastic fork up to her friend. “Go on. It’s probably the best thing you’ll put in your mouth all night.”
“Goddess, I hope that’s not true. If this date works out, I was planning on taking that gorgeous man home with me.” She grabbed the fork and did her own impression of a rabid raccoon. “Oh my effing hell. This is delicious.”
“I told you.” Sadie took the fork back from her friend. “You know it’s not too late to get your own funnel cake.”
Melissa stared longingly at the funnel cake booth but ultimately shook her head. When she turned her attention back to Sadie, she pointed at her face. “You have powdered sugar on your chin.”
Sadie took one of her napkins and wet it from her bottle of water and cleaned up her chin. “Better?”
“For now.”
Sadie knew her friend was regretting turning down the funnel cake when she wouldn’t stop staring at the plate in front of her. “Here.” Sadie pushed it toward her. “Take it.”
“Are you sure?” Melissa asked, even as she dug in for a bite.
Sadie laughed and jumped up to go get herself another one from the booth. After she had her new funnel cake in her hands, she started to walk back to the table but stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted King and Briggs standing in front of a booth that advertised fried pumpkin pie on a stick. The worker handed one to each of them and what looked to be a can of whipped cream to Briggs.
Should she just walk back over to her table and pretend she didn’t see them? Immediately, she wondered if she still had powdered sugar on her face. Melissa had been right when she’d said that stuff got everywhere no matter how careful you tried to be.
She decided she didn’t want to look like a fool in front of King and quickly headed back to her table.
“King is here,” Melissa said as soon as Sadie sat down.
“I know.” Sadie didn’t look back while she cut the funnel cake in half and deposited a portion onto Melissa’s plate.
“That’s too much,” her friend said even as she took another bite.
“Eat what you want, leave the rest,” Sadie said, wondering if she could choke down whatever her friend didn’t eat.
Before she could find out, Sadie heard someone call out, “There he is! It’s King McGrath!”
The announcement was followed by high-pitched squealing as a group of six or seven college-age girls dressed as scantily clad sexy witches ran toward King and Briggs.
King froze like a deer in the headlights while Briggs automatically stepped in front of him, trying to shield him from the onslaught. But it didn’t work. They swarmed in from the side and behind. And then one of them had the audacity to walk up right behind King and wrap her arms around him as she rested her chin on his shoulder.
Immediately, King gently pried her hands off him and stepped away, putting as much space between them as he could without knocking down other festival goers. He looked highly uncomfortable with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets as he said something to them she couldn’t hear.
One of the girls sauntered up to him holding out a wand. She gave him a sexy little smile as she pressed the tip of the wand to his chest and then slowly lowered it until it reached the top of his jeans.
King reached down and grabbed it, stopping her from doing something obscene.
If it had been Sadie, she’d have broken the wand in half and then would’ve needed to be restrained so she didn’t stab someone with it.
Briggs was talking and moving forward, trying to get the women to back off.
The one with the wand appeared to be pouting as she clung to King’s arm.
His expression was blank as he stiffly tried to disentangle himself, and Sadie got the distinct impression that he was only seconds from losing his shit. When she spotted two of the women filming the interaction, she recalled what he’d told her about how people would manipulate anything to create a narrative. It was likely why he was tolerating their invasion, and it made her sick to her stomach.
Her funnel cake forgotten, Sadie jumped up and strode over to King’s side.
“Sadie—” he started, weariness in his gorgeous blue eyes.
She walked up next to him, nudged the overly aggressive witch out of the way, and wrapped her arm around his waist. Smiling up at him, she said, “Hey. There you are. I wondered where you’d got off to.”
“Uh, Briggs and I got a little hungry.” He held up his pumpkin pie on a stick.
“That’s good news, because I have half a funnel cake over there, and I need you to finish it off.” She nodded toward the table where Melissa was staring at them, her mouth open. Sadie glanced at the barely dressed witches. “Thanks for entertaining my boyfriend for me. I’ve got it from here.”
Sadie slipped her arm through his and guided him over to her table. She pointed at the funnel cake. “See, I really did have some fried dough for you to eat.”
King laughed as he sat at the table and then tugged her to sit next to him. As soon as she was seated, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the temple, making a shiver go down her spine. “Thank you for the save, Lewis. I owe you one.”
“No you don’t,” she said, trying to appear normal and certain she was failing. All she wanted to do was lean into King, revel in his familiar warmth, and spend the rest of the evening just like this. But Melissa would kill her if she bailed on the double date.
Sadie shifted to put a tiny bit of distance between her and King just for her own preservation. Then she eyed the sexy witches as they reluctantly moved on. “You don’t owe me anything. Consider it even after I misjudged you. Seeing how uncomfortable you were with that scene, I just can’t picture you hooking up with random fans.”
“He definitely doesn’t do that,” Briggs said, eyeing Sadie’s funnel cake. “Are you going to eat that?”
“Here.” Sadie pushed it toward him as he generously sprayed his pumpkin pie on a stick with the whipped cream. Then he sprayed it all over the funnel cake, and Sadie gasped. “What did you just do?”
Briggs was too busy chewing a giant bite of deep-fried pie to answer.
King shook his head. “Briggs kinda has a thing for whipped cream.”
“Kinda?” Melissa asked. “Looks to me like he has a full-on love affair with it.”
Briggs’s shoulders shook as he laughed silently.
“I think you didn’t feed him soon enough,” Sadie observed. “Look at him. If one of us reaches for the funnel cake, we might lose a hand.”
Briggs nodded happily as he shoved a generous bite of the funnel cake into his mouth.
“I like a man who knows his way around food,” Melissa said, pumping her eyebrows at him.
He let his gaze travel over her as if he were assessing her for the first time. When he swallowed, he gave her a sexy little half grin and said, “I know my way around a lot of things.”
Melissa giggled. Actually giggled. Sadie didn’t think she’d heard that sound from her friend since they were fourteen. Her bestie handed Briggs a napkin as she said, “I just bet you do.”
“Melissa?” A tall, dark-haired guy with a swimmer’s body asked.
His clone chimed in with, “Sadie?”
“Jasper, Kasper!” Melissa cried as she jumped up off her bench. “You’re here.” She hugged each of them quickly and then glanced at Sadie, who had yet to get up off the bench. “Uh, Sadie? Are you ready to go?”
Sadie absolutely wasn’t ready to go, but she couldn’t stand up her date just because she was crushing hard on King McGrath. Reluctantly, she stood. “Yes, of course.” She glanced down at King and felt a flash of raw jealousy as he stared at the twins, his jaw tight. Sadie put her hand on King’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Sure,” he said, not taking his eyes from their dates.
She stifled a sigh. “Okay. Have a good night. I’ll text you tomorrow.”
“Sure. Enjoy yourselves.” There was resignation in his expression as he nodded, and Sadie marveled that she could no longer feel his emotions. He’d put a lock on them, and from what she knew of the general public, most people had no idea how to do that. But King wasn’t just anyone. He was King McGrath, a minor celebrity who’d had to learn how to navigate the world when everything eventually ended up online. She was certain that wasn’t a coincidence.
Feeling as if she had lead in her feet, Sadie was introduced to Jasper and Kasper, who turned out to be two of the most boring men she’d ever met.
Melissa and Jasper walked in front of Sadie and Kasper as Kasper spent an entire hour talking about a new steam mop he’d bought for the house he and his brother shared. And when he moved on to robot vacuum cleaners, Sadie was ready to stab herself in the eye just to have a reason to escape.
Just when she thought Kasper was ready to take a breath, he pointed at Ms. Celeste’s tarot table and said, “Look! It’s Celeste. We should get readings.”
“We should?” Sadie asked, already knowing there was zero chance of her opening up to a tarot reader.
“Absolutely! If we do it this year, when we come back next year, we can evaluate how accurate the readers were. Fun, huh?” Kasper was so earnest and sweet, and he looked like a Greek god. On paper, he seemed like a perfect match. But in person, there wasn’t even a hint of a spark. She wasn’t gonna make it the entire date, much less a whole year.
“Tell you what, you go, and then I’ll decide if it was worth it,” she said, giving him a tiny nudge toward the tarot reader.
He sat down and asked, “What do I need to do? I’m a first timer, so…”
She reassured him he had nothing to worry about and then gave the blandest reading on the planet. It turned out that according to the reader, Kasper was due for some professional success. But personal relationships? There was no girlfriend for him in the cards at this time.
“No girlfriend?” He looked at Sadie. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. In fact, there’s one you like, but she’s going to go her own way. Sooner rather than later,” Ms. Celeste confirmed.
“That’s my cue,” Sadie said brightly. She walked over to Kasper, shook his hand, and said, “Thanks for a nice evening, but I’ve got to work tomorrow, so it’s best if I head out.”
“So soon?” Kasper asked. “But we haven’t even gotten to see what they’re playing at the open theater tonight. If it’s Carrie , you’re going to hate yourself for leaving.”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” she said and waved as she strode off, back to her little house on the edge of the woods with the best dog in the world. Back to her sanctuary where she’d be free to dream of King and forget that disastrous date had ever happened.