Page 64

Down in the arena, Sterling ripped his glove off and swiped sweat from his forehead. Two rodeo hands thumped his shoulder, laughing, but Sterling didn’t turn toward them.

Something pulled his eyes upward instead. His gaze swept the bleachers, searching.

Then it caught on mine.

CHAPTER 16

SIENNA

Our gazes slammed together, like he’d roped me from fifty feet away and pulled tight.

Heat shot through my chest, bright and startling. The noise of the crowd blurred, my attention narrowing to the line from his eyes to mine.

He didn’t look away.

His gaze lingered, a slow, claiming hold that pinned me exactly where I sat. Something warm and reckless fluttered low in my stomach, and I swallowed, but it wasn’t a simple gulp. It felt like my whole body was trying to steady itself while his attention pressed against my skin.

Hattie made a dramatic little gasp. “Oh. Oh. That’s a look.”

“It’s indigestion,” I said weakly. “From the popcorn.”

Lies. Filthy lies.

Sterling tipped his chin a fraction, and I forgot how lungs worked.

Someone in front of us yelled his name and a group of kids started frantically waving napkins and pens for him to sign. He tore his gaze away from me to wave at one of them, that almost-smile cutting across his face for the briefest moment.

I drew in a breath that felt dust-dry and blazing hot, like the arena itself had branded me.

“Okay, I need a minute after that,” Hattie muttered. “And maybe a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.”

The announcer’s voice rolled over the speakers again, calling the next rider, and the moment shattered with it, slipping through my fingers before I even realized I’d been holding on. Around us, people shifted in their seats, brushing off dust, leaning into new conversations as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

The spell loosened. The world resumed its noise and for a second, I could almost pretend I’d imagined the way he looked at me.

Almost.

“Come on,” Hattie said, nudging me with her shoulder. “Let’s get you somewhere with fewer abs and more oxygen.”

“Where’s that?” I asked, my voice still sounding funny.

She jerked her thumb at the cluster of lights behind the arena. “The carnival. There’s a Ferris wheel and enough fried dough to clog your arteries and heal your soul. We’re going.”

“I don’t know if I should be trusted around mechanical rides with what I did to Big Hank,” I muttered, but I let her tug me along.

We started down the bleachers, the boards creaking under our feet as something irrational pulled at me to catch one more look at Sterling. But he was already gone, and my steps faltered for half a heartbeat before Hattie tugged me onward.

“Come on,” she said. “If we hurry, we can get in line before the high schoolers take over.”

I kept walking, but a strange, aching awareness lingered, like I’d missed something important by looking away too soon.

The walkway between the arena and the carnival was packed with people. The air crackled with overlapping sounds like the shrieks of kids on spinning rides, the hissing of oil from food stands, and the steady grinds and creaks of the old Ferris wheel turning against the deepening night.

String lights draped overhead like fallen constellations. Teenagers clustered in loose circles, with girls in boots and cutoffs and boys in hats and smug grins. A toddler staggered past with cotton candy bigger than his head, its blue sugar staining his mouth.

For a second, I let myself imagine I’d grown up somewhere like this. Somewhere loud and small and nosy, where everyone knew your business, but at least they knew your name, too. Where nights smelled like sugar and dust instead of polished wood and expensive wine and the sharp tang of resentment.

Where I might have been allowed to exist as more than an accessory.