To pretend the pretty blue-and-white room with the four-poster bed belonged to her. To pretend the closet full of clothes Sloane let her borrow—so she wouldn’t have to wear the same three shirts week after week, the fabric thin from too many washings—was hers by right instead of by charity.
Her daddy spent most of his days and nights down at Duffey’s, playing poker and drinking in the back room until Duffey tossed him and his buddies out into the gravel parking lot. She assumed he showed up at the O’Hara Ranch for work from time to time, because they hadn’t been kicked out of the little house they rented from Tommy and Simone O’Hara. And he always seemed to have money for his drinks and the poker pot, even if there was never quite enough for groceries or new shoes when hers wore through at the sole.
Her father hated her. She knew that the way she knew the sun would rise—inevitable, unavoidable, a fact of her existence. But he also feared her gift, and that fear was a living thing between them, coiled and ready to strike.
He’d said more than once that the devil lived inside of her. That beating it out was the only way to get her cleansed, to drive the darkness from her bones. She’d believed him when she was younger. Had lain awake at night wondering what was wrong with her, why she was cursed, what she’d done to deserve the touch of something unholy.
But as she’d gotten older, she’d started doing research. Late nights at the library, her fingers trailing over books about parapsychology and extrasensory perception. There were others like her. They might not have a gift as strong as hers—the visions that came unbidden, sharp as broken glass—but she wasn’t alone in the world.
That knowledge had saved her, she thought. Kept her from believing she was as wrong, as evil, as her father claimed.
She was also smart enough to know her days under the same roof as Harley Whitlock were numbered. She’d learned to stay out of his way. Learned to keep her mouth shut and her head down and her visions to herself. But something had gotten into her three nights ago when the vision had slammed through her mind. The plate shattering in the sink. Her father’s death playing out before her eyes. She’d gone through the motions since then in a daze, knowing what was coming, knowing it would be bad.
Maybe that’s why tonight felt important. Maybe that’s why she’d let herself come to the carnival, let herself pretend to be normal for just a few hours. Because she knew—the way she always knew—that everything was about to change.
Even doormats had a threshold of tolerance before they unraveled completely.
Now, standing in the chaos and color of the carnival, Marnie let herself breathe. Let herself be someone else for a few hours. Let herself pretend.
Carson Hamilton owned a large stretch of land on the outskirts of town, and every year he loaned it out to a traveling carnival. They came rolling in like a promise—trailers and tents and rides that materialized within hours, transforming the empty field into something magical. When the sun went down, the whirl and flash of carnival lights could be seen all over Laurel Valley, even from the little house down in the valley where Marnie lived.
She’d borrowed some of her freedom money for tonight. The mason jar she kept hidden beneath the pieces of tin and rotten wood from a shed that had fallen down in their backyard held her dreams in crumpled bills and counted coins. It had only taken once—coming home to find her room ransacked and the money she’d kept in her drawer gone—before she’d found a better hiding place.
Sloane had told her tonight was an investment in living. So Marnie had splurged. Mascara and a lip gloss that Sloane swore would plump her lips right up. Her father would kill her if he ever saw her wearing makeup—tools of the devil used to incite boys, he’d say, and only certain kinds of women wore makeup—but her father wasn’t here. For tonight, she could be just a girl at a carnival.
She’d borrowed a little more of her freedom money for a Coke and cotton candy, for tickets to a few rides. She’d been saving for over a year now, ever since she’d been old enough to get a part-time job at the library. By her calculations, in one year and three days—one year and three days and she’d be eighteen—she’d have enough to move to the city. Find a better job while she went to college. Build a life that belonged to her and no one else.
She’d ridden with Mama to the fairgrounds earlier, helped her unload homemade jams and a quilt that would all be sold at the auction. Anything to bring in a little more money, though Marnie knew where that money would go. Same place it always went.
She’d always thought her mama had probably been beautiful once. Helen Whitlock was too thin now, worry having carved deep lines around her mouth and eyes like rivers cutting through stone. There was no extra money for haircuts or color like the mothers of her friends had, so her dark hair hung long and threaded through with gray. She almost always wore it pulled straight back in a tight bun, severe and unforgiving.
At thirty-eight, she should’ve still looked youthful. Should’ve had light in her eyes and color in her cheeks. Instead she looked like an old woman, tired and worn down, afraid of her own shadow. Afraid of everything.
Mama had chosen to stay in the tent with the other women and their wares, so Marnie had set out alone into the carnival noise and light. She knew Sloane was around somewhere—Sloane was always around somewhere, a force of nature that couldn’t be contained.
What she found instead was Beckett Hamilton.
Her heart did something complicated in her chest at the sight of him—a flutter and squeeze that made her forget, for just a moment, about the vision she’d seen three days ago, about what she knew was waiting for her at home.
He was nineteen and home for the summer after his first year of college. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him, even when she was small and she and Sloane would spy on Sloane’s brothers and Beckett as they worked the ranch. The boys had always had better adventures—mostly because they were boys and had the run of the place—but there’d always been something about Beckett that captured her attention and held it.
He was quiet, but there was a presence about him that made others listen when he spoke. A gravity that pulled people into his orbit.
He was king of his own land—heir to one of the wealthiest ranches in the state—and he was so far out of her league she should’ve been ashamed of even dreaming he could love her in return. But the heart didn’t care about leagues or logic or the unbridgeable distance between their worlds.
He stood a little over six feet, and she’d noticed after his time away at college that he’d come back broader in the shoulders and chest. His hair was sandy blond and thick and wavy, always a little messy no matter what he did with it. His eyes were storm-cloud gray—solid gray with no variation, which she’d always found mesmerizing. They were direct, those eyes. Kind. And when he smiled, his eyes smiled too.
Beckett was surrounded by the O’Haras—Hank and Colt, who shared the same sharp jawline and easy grin of brothers, and Levi and Jax, who had that same rangy build and restless energy that marked them as kin. Cousins all, they moved through the world like a pack, comfortable in their own skin and in each other’s company. They were close in age, born within a handful of months—Jax the baby at eighteen and still finishing up at Laurel Valley High, Hank the elder statesman at twenty-two and wrapping up college. The middle two fell somewhere in between, and more often than not, you’d find them together, a force of nature that couldn’t be separated even if you tried.
Beckett stood with a pellet gun to his shoulder, knocking down wooden ducks with sharp pings, not missing once. He’d always had hawk eyes—could spot a calf in distress from a quarter mile away, could shoot a tin can off a fence post without breaking stride.
The O’Haras hooted with laughter as Beckett was handed an oversized stuffed bear as his prize, and the grin on his face was wide and unguarded. Boyish, despite the man he was becoming.
“Marnie!”
Sloane came running up, black hair flying wild behind her, cheeks flushed with excitement and heat. The summer evening had curled little tendrils around her face and neck, and the short denim skirt and crop top she wore showed off curves Marnie envied with everything in her. Sloane dragged Emmitt Strain behind her by the hand, and he was holding a couple of small stuffed animals and a bag of popcorn, looking dazed and happy to be there.
“Man, that was awesome, Beck,” Sloane said, slightly breathless. “I couldn’t see the whole thing because Colt’s giant head was in the way, but you really mowed down those helpless wooden ducks.”
