Page 51 of Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC 7)

I reached beside the condiments, grabbed a few napkins, and handed her one. “Thank you. I try to take care of myself, teeth included.”

“Well, it shows. I’m guessing you liked it?” she asked as she tossed her stick and the mustard-covered napkin in the trash.

“It was actually pretty good,” I admitted.

“Stick around,” she said. “I’ll change your mind on a lot of things.”

As much as I hated the thought of change in my life, I hoped she was right.

“What’s next?” she asked.

“Ferris wheel,” I said.

She grabbed her stomach. “Oh God.”

“What?” I asked as I walked to her side.

“Those things kind of make me queasy,” she said.

“So…”

“No,” she said. “I’ll do it. We’ll see how it goes. It’s been a long time.”

A few minutes later, we were atop the Ferris wheel, sitting stationary, gazing back into the city we had driven from earlier.

“I haven’t seen the city from this perspective. It looks peaceful and small,” she said.

“That’s one of the reasons I like these things,” I said.

She glanced over her shoulder. Although it was pitch black, and I was able to see very little, her blue eyes stood out in clear contrast to her tanned skin. After a few seconds of staring at each other silently, she grinned. “Why?”

I felt like I had been awoken from a dream, and couldn’t immediately remember what we were talking about. I shook my head, feeling somewhat foolish for losing my train of thought.

“Why do you like them?” she asked.

I pried my eyes from hers and gazed out over the city as the wheel slowly began to turn, lowering us to our next stop. The city of almost 2,000,000 people seemed to be much smaller than the city of 400,000 I had recently moved from. The speeding traffic, busy highways, and overcrowded restaurants and bars were hidden by the distance, making the city seem rather unoccupied and peaceful.

“Perspective. It lets me see things from a different perspective,” I said as I shifted my eyes to meet hers.

As she gazed in my direction, waiting for me to continue, she tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder. She was obviously more comfortable on the ride than she expected she would be. After gazing over her shoulder for a moment, she turned to face me again, and I continued.

“It’s all too easy to be stuck in a certain mindset about something, and often we can’t convince ourselves to maintain an open mind. This lets me see the exact same thing from a different vantage point. It doesn’t change anything; it just provides a different point of view. It’s a great reminder to maintain an open mind,” I said.

“I like that. And, I like you. Let’s do this again,” she said.

“The Ferris wheel?” I asked.

She shook her head and grinned.

“No, this,” she said as she waved her hand in a circle over her head. “Do something together.”

And I couldn’t have agreed with her more.