Chapter 23 #2
“You love rides, kiddo. Next time, we’ll save the cotton candy and cheese curds until after.” I begin gathering the plushies from the bench, preparing to wrap up our evening.
Nellie throws her arms out, frantically sitting upright. “Wait! We can’t go yet!” Urgency colors her tone.
“What else is there to do?”
“Miss Alice has to ride the Ferris wheel!”
“Oh no, sweetie. I’m okay. If you don’t feel well—” Alice protests.
“No.” Nellie hops off the bench, planting her hands firmly on her hips. “You told me it’s your favorite. You love the Ferris wheel. You have to go on it! You have to.”
Alice’s mouth drops open before closing.
“What’s wrong with my favorite girl?” Silas walks up to our trio in full police uniform. He lowers the volume of the radio at his shoulder, tucking his hands inside his vest, and smiles down at his niece.
“What are you doing here?” I intercept my brother, hoping Nellie will forget about this little tirade she’s on.
“Been back and forth all day. Mostly minor theft. Kids being too rowdy. There was a small fight over by the petting zoo. Apparently, some women paid to feed the goats, but the first one ate it all, so she wanted a refund. She climbed into the pen and refused to leave.”
Silas and I share a look. “Glad it’s my day off.”
“Uncle Silas.” Nellie tugs on my brother’s arm.
“Yeah, Nell-Bell?” He drops to a knee at her level.
“Can you watch me so my daddy can take Miss Alice on the Ferris wheel?”
“Silas is working,” I interject.
Silas’s grin grows three sizes. He makes a show of checking his watch. “Would you look at that? I’m on break. Come on, kiddo. I’ll give you a tour of my car. It’s parked near the Ferris wheel. We can wave when they get to the top.”
“Really, Nellie. It’s okay, sweetie. I don’t need to ride—”
“You’re going, Miss Alice. That’s the end of it.” Her stern finality has me fighting a smile despite wanting to get out of here.
“Sutton, you don’t really want to.”
I sigh. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” The reluctance in my voice is unmistakable, but I know there’s no point in dragging out the inevitable.
“You’re giving in?”
Silas and Nellie walk off, leaving me with two options. Chase them and risk disappointing my daughter—or I could simply give in.
For the sake of my sanity, I choose the latter.
“Are you afraid I might bite?”
“No. It’s just I love Ferris wheels for the tranquility. I’m not sure that’s within your wheelhouse.”
I scoff, striding across the fairgrounds. “I’m the picture of calm.”
“Your blood pressure might tell a different story.”
“I didn’t know you were so concerned about me. I’ll have you know I’m in perfect health.”
Alice pauses at the gate to the ride. “Shoot. Hey, Silas?” she calls loudly.
My brother turns around, stopping Nellie with a hand on her shoulder. “Yeah?”
I wait while she pulls the straps to her purse and cooler off her shoulder and extends them his way. “Can you watch my things? They won’t let me bring them on.”
He jogs across the grass to meet her. “Sure thing. I’ll put them in my car.”
“Thanks.”
She meets me back at the gate, and we wait for the next rotation for the attendant to unload the bottom car. Alice slides in first. I drop onto the bench beside her. I pull the lap bar over both of us, making sure we’re secured in place.
The car jolts forward and then back, stirring up the lingering nausea left from the Scrambler. It moves slowly, beginning its climb to the top.
“You really like this?” I mutter, my hand pressed against my twisting stomach.
She keeps her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Look at how beautiful it is.”
I let my eyes trace over her hair and face. I note the pink healing line left behind from her stitches and scan the escaped tendrils tickling the slope of her neck before shifting my attention to the purple evening sky as we ascend higher. My lips part, mouth dry. “It’s something.”
Her elbow digs sharply into my ribs. “Come on, Sunny. You don’t have to be a tough guy up here. Tell me what you really think.”
I hesitate, but the softness in her voice makes it impossible to hold back. The stubble on my chin prickles my palm as I rub it thoughtfully. “It gets more beautiful the longer I look,” I admit, eyes lingering on her again as the words slip out.
She catches my gaze and grins. “See? You get it. I could sit up here for hours just watching the sunset.”
We jolt to a full stop a quarter-turn from the top. The entire structure sways beneath us.
“Don’t like that,” I mutter, trying to keep my unease in check.
“I try not to think about the fact that they assemble and disassemble these things every time they move to a new town. Some guys got up the other morning and put in some nuts and bolts and decided it was ready for riders.”
I curse beneath my breath. “What is wrong with you?”
Alice’s brown eyes glitter with a challenge in the waning sunlight. “Scared?” she teases.
“No.” I scoff. “But that’s not something I care to think about when I’m forty-fuckin-feet in the air.”
Alice giggles, her laughter echoing into the evening. “Ope, here we go.”
The wheel completes one full turn, this time stopping nearly at the top. I glance down at the crowd below.
“How many people are they going to let on this fuckin’ thing?” I grumble.
Alice counters, “How do you know they aren’t letting people off?”
My phone chimes loudly, distracting me from the dangling feeling in my feet.
Alice spots someone below and waves heartily. “There’s Nellie and Silas.”
I join her even though they look like specks on the ground.
Dropping my attention to my cell, I snap my brows together as I read the notification. “Your sugar is low.”
“How low?”
I tilt my screen in her direction, showing her the red 69 with double arrows down.
“Holy shit.” She frantically pats her pockets. “I don’t have any glucose.”
“I don’t either.”
She lays her palm across her forehead. “I need my meter. I need to manually check and see. This isn’t good, Sutton.”
“We’re only going to be on here a few more minutes. We can get you some sugar.”
“You don’t understand. This device”—she taps her nail over her CGM on her thigh—“measures differently than a blood glucose. It runs about fifteen minutes behind. If it’s telling me I’m a double down low, then I need some glucose fast.”
“Do you feel bad?”
She wipes the palms of her hands off on her hips. “I-I thought it was the ride. I don’t know, I definitely don’t feel good. I don’t usually get anxious, but if we’re stuck, that could be really bad.”
Fuck.
I quickly dial my brother on the ground.
“Are you calling from the top of the Ferris wheel?”
“I need you to tell the operator to let us off.”
“What’s going on?”
“Alice’s blood sugar is low.”
“Fuck,” he mutters. “We ran over to the bathrooms. I’ll hurry Nellie up and get over there as soon as I can.”
My heart trips over itself in my chest as I end the call.
Before I can offer any reassurance, Alice interrupts, her voice trembling. “I’m freaking out.” She fans her face. “I need a distraction.”
Catching her frantic hands, I turn her toward me. We shift as much as possible on the narrow two-seater bench, swaying high above the ground. Below, life keeps moving, but up here, our world feels suspended.
“Take a deep breath,” I urge.
She shakes her head, her expression tense.
I place her palm flat on my chest and cover it with my own hand. “Breathe with me, Alice.”
Her shoulders rise and fall with a deep inhale, but she shakes her head again. “It’s not helping.”
“I saw this article once that said staring into someone’s eyes for four minutes can make you fall in love.” I blurt the first thing that comes to mind. “If you want to give that a try.”
The comment has the intended effect. Alice snorts, her breathing becoming a bit steadier.
“That’ll never work.”
I grin and press further. “Why? Scared you might fall in love with me, Firecracker?”
She tucks her chin to her chest and rolls her eyes, her tongue flicking across her bottom lip. “Not a bit.”
I meet her gaze, settling my blue eyes on her whiskey-brown ones. “I’m doing it. You’re going to have to look away first,” I challenge, a smile tugging at my lips.
“You’re insane,” she complains, but she doesn’t look away.
Beneath us, the Ferris wheel sways, pitching us around another rotation before stopping again three-quarters around.
“Okay, see? It moved again. We’re on the other side. A few more turns and we’ll be off this thing.”
“I don’t think you’re meant to talk through this experiment.”
My thumb brushes across the back of her hand. It’s only then that I realize I’m still holding her palm against my chest. The steady rhythm of my heartbeat thuds beneath her touch.
“Does it make a difference? You aren’t going to fall in love with me anyway.”
She offers me a wry smile. “You’re right about that.”
The longer I hold her gaze, the more details emerge and hold my attention.
The unique pattern of black flecks encircling her pupils, the warm brown of her irises that remind me of colored glass, catching and transforming any light that touches them.
Her lashes are thick and long, gently curled at the tips, each one perfectly defined beneath a careful layer of mascara.
The small details draw me closer, desperate to learn each one, even as the space between us remains taunt with uncertainty.
Alice curls her fingertips into my chest. “We still aren’t moving.”
“I know,” I reply softly, my hand gliding over her finger and gently tracing down to her wrist, hoping the motion will soothe her anxiety.
Panic flickers in her wide eyes. “Something is wrong.” The fear is unmistakable, raw and vivid as it fills her gaze.
“Almost done,” I try to reassure her, though the tension in the air remains thick and unyielding.
Her words tumble out in a rush, each one sharper than the last. “What if the lever got stuck or broke or something? What if we really can’t get down?
Silas will probably call in the fire department, but that could take—what, ten?
twenty?—minutes for them to get here? By then, I could be in full-blown diabetic shock. I could go into a coma. I could—”
“Fuck it.”
I can’t let her spiral any further. My fingers slip into her hair, anchoring her to the present as I pull her close, and I press my mouth to hers.
She doesn’t even hesitate. Alice melts against me, surrendering as if she’s been waiting for this moment all along.
Her hands clutch my shirt, gripping tightly over my chest, drawing me closer as though I’m her lifeline.
She tastes sweet, like fresh watermelon on a scorching summer day.
Like the relief we both desperately need.
The Ferris wheel turns beneath us, and we slowly part. Our breaths hover in the space between us. I rest my forehead on hers and close my eyes.
“Well, that sucks,” Alice murmurs.
My eyes snap open in shock. “Excuse me?”
“You ruined the experiment.” A smile tugs the corner of her mouth, drawing my attention back to her luscious lips. “Now we’ll never know if it worked.”
It might just be me, but I swear she almost sounds…disappointed.
“I guess not.”
We move a respectable distance apart as the wheel completes another full turn, stopping at the bottom on the second rotation.
“Come on, Firecracker. Let’s get you a Coke.”
We step off that Ferris wheel as if we didn’t just alter our relationship. An echo of that moment lingers, subtle but undeniable, changing how we see each other when we walk away from the ride back to our normal.