Chapter 16
JESS
Music drifts from the carousel, bright and a little warped by the breeze. Then we cross some invisible threshold, and the fair hits all at once: bells clanging, a kid screaming-laughing until he hiccups, grease popping in a fryer somewhere close.
Even the air goes thick with caramel, salt, and hot oil, powdered sugar dusting everything it touches. It’s loud and layered and exactly the right kind of too much.
I breathe through my mouth. Taste sugar and salt on my tongue.
“Come on,” Cassian says, grin turned up to eleven, already pulling me toward the gate. He buys a fistful of tickets, presses half into my palm, deals a strip each to Eli and Rowan, then tucks the leftovers into his back pocket.
The strip flaps like a tail behind him as we walk, and something about his easy enthusiasm makes my own smile feel less borrowed.
We start with a coaster that creaks like it has union hours and isn’t happy about overtime. Cassian insists on the front car and throws his hands up at the first drop, yelling like a dare. I scream—half terror, half exhilaration, wholly unprepared for how good it feels to just let go.
The descent hits my stomach and my brain, and I’m laughing before my lungs catch up.
Somewhere in the climb to the second hill, his hand settles on my thigh. Not a grab. Not a question either. Warm, solid, the kind of touch that says I’m here more than mine.
My heart kicks against my ribs—too fast, too eager, too honest about what this means. He starts to move it away—gentleman instincts sparking late—and I lay my hand over his, fingers threading between his knuckles. Stay.
His gaze cuts to me, lashes lifting slowly, and the smile that spreads there is private and wrecking at the same time.
We rattle into the station and climb out grinning like idiots, hair whipped into chaos.
“Again?” he asks.
“Obviously.” My legs wobble, but I’m not sure if that’s the ride or the phantom warmth of his palm still burning against my thigh.
We stagger into rounds two and three. By then, my voice is a rasp, and my stomach is composed of fifty percent cotton candy smell by osmosis.
When the cars screech back for the fourth time, Rowan’s leaning against the exit rail, arms folded, watching like he planned for exactly this moment.
“Ferris wheel,” he says, mouth quirked. “Before Eli eats the whole fair.”
“I’ve eaten less than half the fair,” Eli protests from not far behind, powdered sugar turning his black shirt into accidental galaxy print. “But I’m willing to make it a goal.”
“I’ll take her up,” Rowan says to Cassian, and respect layered with stubbornness hums along the edges like two notes that shouldn’t harmonize but do.
Cassian nods, flicks his gaze to me. “I’ll meet you after the ride?”
“Deal,” I say, and it tastes like three things at once: permission, promise, and problem. Because I should be keeping my distance. I should be protecting myself. Instead, I’m leaning in.
Rowan’s palm slides against mine without looking, warm callus at the base of my thumb. He doesn’t tug so much as assume I’ll follow, and he’s right. My fingers curl around his like they’ve been waiting for permission. It’s terrifying what he does to me with something so simple. What they all do.
We climb inside a yellow car, and the Ferris wheel groans as it lifts us skyward. The city shrinks below us; the sea goes out forever. A draft lifts the tiny hairs at my nape and slips cool under my collar.
Down below, the fair is a carnival of sound—screams, laughter, the bark of attendants, bells, the distant thud of a game starting. Up here, it’s quiet enough to hear the small things: my own breath, the creak of the seat.
Rowan doesn’t talk at first. He looks out where the water bruises purple toward the horizon. His scent breaks through salt and burnt-sugar haze—sandalwood and rain on warm stone, clean and steady, a low note that settles something anxious in my chest without asking.
I focus on the lights. How they pulse, how they smear into comet tails when the cars pick up speed.
“You look like you belong here,” he says finally, voice soft enough that I have to turn my head to catch it.
“Windblown and sticky?” I offer, trying for lightness even though my pulse is hammering. Because if I don’t deflect, I’ll do something reckless. Kiss him again. Tell him things I’m not ready to say.
But he doesn’t laugh.
“Free,” he says instead.
The word punches through something I keep locked.
Lands in the place I don’t poke because that’s how I survive.
My airway constricts. The ticket strip crinkles under my thumb—I’m picking at it, pulling threads, doing something with my hands so they don’t reach for him and reveal how desperately I want to believe he’s right.
“Like you stopped bracing,” he adds, quieter now.
He’s right. I have stopped, at least a little. I didn’t even notice. My shoulders aren’t up around my ears. My jaw isn’t locked. I’ve been breathing full breaths without checking the exits or cataloging who’s too close.
When did that happen? When did I start feeling safe?
“Maybe I forgot to.” My voice comes out softer than I meant. More honest.
The Ferris wheel creaks. Someone below us screams on the Tilt-A-Whirl, bright and fearless. I want that. The fearless part. The bright part. The part where I stop waiting for the bottom to drop out.
“I could remind you how,” he offers, “or say nothing and let you figure it out. I’m capable of both.”
A surprised laugh escapes me. “You, saying nothing. Bold claim.”
“I’ve been practicing with Eli,” he says, deadpan. “He narrates enough for three people.”
A bead of condensation runs down the metal strut. Rowan tracks it with his eyes like he’s trying not to look at my mouth. The air between us feels heavy, expectant. Cool air threads under my collar, but I don’t shiver. His warmth is too close, too tempting.
Kiss him. Just lean in and—
My pulse spikes. Palms damp. I press them against my jeans instead.
The wheel lurches, and the chance snaps before I can make the mistake.
We ride twice more—neither of us suggesting we stop, neither of us ready to break whatever spell this is—then we meet Eli at the food booths, where he’s declaring funnel cake the winner “by a margin too large to be statistically respectable.”
He pinches off a piece and offers it to me, eyebrows raised. Powdered sweetness dusts my lower lip; he wipes it away with his thumb like it’s no big deal and then looks, briefly, like maybe it is.
My chest does a weird clench-and-release thing. These men are going to ruin me, and the worst part is, I think I might let them.
Cassian rejoins us, carrying pink cotton candy as big as his head and hands Rowan a generous wad, then hands me and Eli. The absurdity of a six-foot-something Alpha with shoulders like a shipyard delicately eating spun sugar shouldn’t make me soft, but here we are.
I’m watching him like he’s performing some kind of magic trick, and I guess in a way he is. Making the world feel lighter. Making me feel lighter.
We walk through the fair, checking out what we want to do next while we eat the rest of the cotton candy.
Eli points his chin toward a tent draped with beaded curtains and a cardboard sign that reads TAROT in hand-painted gold. “Come on. Let’s consult destiny and then immediately ignore her.”
“Eli—” I start, but he’s already walking, and Rowan and Cassian are following, and somehow I’m being swept along.
The inside smells like incense and old paper with a floral note that makes my nose itch. A woman with silver hair and too many rings fans a deck of cards and smiles like she knows the end of a joke I haven’t heard yet. Eli pays because he insists on funding his own doom.
“Cut,” she tells me, sliding the deck.
When I go to take a step back, all three of the guys motion me forward.
My palms feel clumsy as I grab the cards, cut them, and give them back to her. She flips them over. The Fool. The Lovers. The Two of Swords. I don’t know enough to be spooked, but the image of a blindfolded woman holding two crossed blades isn’t hard to decipher.
“Two paths.” The fortune teller hums, tracing the crossed swords with one ringed finger. “Two truths. You already know which one you’re taking.”
My palms go slick. I wipe them on my jeans, trying to ignore the way my heart is hammering.
Two paths. The words echo. The blindfolded woman on the card holds two blades, perfectly balanced, choosing nothing. Or choosing both. Or already knowing and pretending she doesn’t. Whichever way she turns, a sword will cut her.
The version of myself who keeps everyone at arm’s length. Who stays safe and small and alone. And then the three men standing behind me, patient and steady and here. The path where I let them in. Where I stop bracing. Where I choose the terrifying thing.
I already know. God, I already know.
“Vague,” Eli says, but his voice is gentler than his sarcasm. He glances at me, and there’s something careful in it like he’s checking whether the word hit bone, whether I’m okay.
The woman smiles, unbothered. “Vague is how fate keeps her job.”
I slide the card back with fingers that aren’t quite steady. Rowan’s palm finds the small of my back, just a touch, grounding me, and I’m grateful he doesn’t ask if I’m alright. Because I’m not sure I could answer honestly.
“Your fates are entwined. All four of you.” She taps the lover’s card, and my whole face heats like I’m a teenager again.
“Um…thanks.” I duck through the beads, letting the cool air help my heated skin.
The air off the water raises goosebumps on my arms.
The tent flap sighs closed behind me, and the pier’s chill steals some heat from my cheeks. For a heartbeat, none of us speaks. Then Eli bumps my shoulder with his, light as a question.
“Funhouse?” he asks, like he’s offering a pressure valve instead of a plan.
Rowan’s knuckles brush mine; Cassian tips his chin toward the string lights.
I breathe in the sea-cold and nod. “Yeah. Sure.”