“Nope.”

“It’s amazing.”

“I’m sure it’s not as amazing as your baking.”

“Listen, I may be a good baker, but nothing beats a fresh funnel cake at the fair.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “I’ll put that to the test after our ride, then.”

We climbed the three stairs to the metal platform and they let us through after I handed them two of the tickets Bailey had given me earlier. He’d snuck in early to buy a shit ton of tickets before the lines got long and gave each of us a handful of them.

Letting Sage go ahead of me, she slid onto the seat, the entire cart swinging with her movement. I eyed it warily, and she let out a snort. “Come on.” She patted the seat beside her.

Reaching a hand out to steady the contraption, I sat. The guy who took our tickets dropped a metal bar across our laps, the tiny knob at the end clicking into place, and then we were moving.

“You trust that with your life?” I asked, staring at the little knob where it knocked around in the lock.

She squeezed my thigh, scooting closer to me. “No, but I trust you with my life.”

I shook my head as I set my hand on hers. “I wouldn’t. Not up here.”

A small laugh escaped her. “I thought you could fly?” she teased.

“Only on the back of a thousand-pound animal.” 

She looked out at the fair below us, people walking every which way, lights lit up in an array of colors. “I bet it does feel like flying when you get to a certain speed.”

I nodded. “Helps clear my mind when I need it most.”

She turned her gaze to me then, her eyes reflecting the lights below. “What do you need to clear your mind from?”

I shrugged, wrapping my fingers around hers. “Life, I guess.”

“You can talk to me, Callan. Just because I have my own issues doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me about yours.”

She was right. It went both ways. It wasn’t that I was under the impression that I couldn’t open up to her, but when other people had things going on in their lives, it felt so burdening to unload my own problems. Because of that, they stayed bottled inside.

“Before you, I rarely went to town unless I had to,” I told her.

She nodded, but she already knew that, so she waited for me to continue.

“When my ex gave me the ultimatum that I’d have to choose between her and the ranch, it gave me this outlook on life that I wish I never saw.” 

Just the thought of saying this out loud made my pulse quicken.

“She made me believe we were living this fairytale life, like I really could have it all and things would be fine. But that day, it all switched. A full one-eighty, if you will. It broke that trust I’d built that things could all work out. I could get the girl, the house, the job I always wanted, and be happy. She tore that dreamland away faster than I could blink, and I knew it couldn’t be her. Who gives that kind of choice to the person they love, right?”

Sage sat silently, our seat swinging slightly as we continued going in circles.

“It turns out that even if you give your whole heart to someone, it doesn’t mean they’ll take care of it, regardless of the words they say. And I should’ve seen the signs. I really should have. But I didn’t. I was blind because I thought what we had was love and it so clearly wasn’t. And being blindsided by that, it proved to me that I really didn’t know anyone at all. I may see the image they try to portray, but that’s all it is. An image. A perception of who they are that they want to show, but one day, that disappears. Their true self comes out, and it can either be the most beautiful thing or the ugliest.”

I inhaled deeply through my nose, not taking my eyes off the metal bar strapped across us.

“Seeing that side from someone I thought I loved ruined my perception of the other people around me. Like maybe one day, they’d change, too. So I stopped entertaining friendships and stayed home, only hanging out with my brothers or Bailey.” I looked at her then, her rapt attention focused solely on me. “I pushed everyone away to protect my heart. And you, Sage? You spilled that coffee on me on a real shitty day, but I didn’t think for a second how much you inconvenienced me that day, only that you made me slow down while I was somewhere out of my comfort zone and I felt. I saw you and I wanted to feel again. To stop caring so much about what others might do to me, or how my family was doing, and finally fucking feel something for someone without the fear of it ruining me. Because when I saw you, I didn’t think for a split second that you could ever ruin me. That look in your eye that day, the fear on your face when you spilled that drink on me, I knew someone put that there in you, too. You were hurt by someone, and maybe not in the same way I was hurt, but hurt people know hurt people.”

She sat on that, letting my words sink in. I’d kept it all in for so long, I didn’t know how to say any of it without it sounding messy, but she didn’t need me to spell it out simply or sugarcoat my feelings. 

She sympathized, but most important of all, she understood.

I didn’t fall in love with Sage McKinley slowly. Every moment with her added up to me plunging off the cliff, and my heart was swimming in affection for her. I fell for her hard and all at once, and I didn’t want it to happen any other way. Things happened for a reason, and Sage and I? We were damn good together. Our reasons were our past, and before I met her, I was just scraping the bottom of the barrel when she swooped in and showed me how great life could really be. 

I’m just glad fate let us end up in the presence of each other.

Before she could open her mouth, the ride swung to a stop at the bottom and the ticket man lifted the bar across our laps. I intertwined my fingers with hers, the two of us standing from the seat, and walked down the three steps to the yellow grass. Only a few feet away, she turned and threw her arms around me, her cheek resting against my chest. The beat of my heart pulsed against her with the knowledge that I just spilled every transgression to her on a fucking Ferris wheel.

My arms wrapped around her, holding her tight to me.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

I let out a disbelieving chuckle. “For what?”

“For sharing that with me.”

My throat worked around the emotion that suddenly clogged it.

Her head lifted off my chest and she looked up at me. “I love you.”

“I love you, baby. For a million years.”

“A million years,” she repeated, her lips a caress around the words.

This was love.

37

Sage

The sugary funnel cake we’d inhaled after our Ferris wheel ride sat heavy in my stomach as if I had chugged a gallon of milk along with it. I felt bloated, my dress feeling a bit too tight as we walked through the rows of booths. 

“Hey, Cal!” Bailey shouted from somewhere behind us.

We turned to find him and Lettie by the goldfish booth. We headed over to them as Lettie attempted to toss a ping pong ball into the little bowls of water in the center.

“Do you two really need another pet?” Callan joked.

I took a sip of lemonade as Lettie’s ball bounced off the rim of the glass. 

“Lettie would take the whole damn bucket of fish home and raise an aquarium full of ‘em if I let her,” Bailey said.