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I swallowed hard, staring straight ahead as the fairground lights blurred into streaks of gold and red. I was curious how he knew, but it didn’t matter—what he said was true.

Most people never make it out.

I almost didn’t.

Not until that night—the one where the shouting became something else. The night where fear finally tipped into the point of no return.

The one where I realized no one was coming to save me.

I pushed the memory back down, where it lived with all the other secrets I’d stitched shut.

“Yeah, well,” I whispered. “I did.”

The Ferris wheel creaked and moved again, lifting us higher. The metal car swayed gently, and I resisted the urge to scream until it settled again.

“My ex…” The word still tasted like something sour. “He liked things a certain way. He liked order and control and…I used to think that was stability.”

“Was it?” Sterling’s voice was neutral.

“At first.” I watched the town falling away below us. “We met in law school. He was…magnetic. Charming. He knew the right people. He came from the kind of Boston family where your last name is basically a currency. When he looked at me, it felt like standing in sunlight. Like I’d been chosen.” I let out a humorless laugh. “That should’ve been my first red flag.”

“Being chosen?” he asked.

“Needing to feel that way.” I lifted one shoulder. “Anyway. We got married. Moved into this big house that backed right up against a forest. He had the career, the expectations, the five-year plan. My job was to fit into the spaces around all of that without making too much noise.”

“How’d that work out?” he asked.

I thought of my forehead pressed to the window. Of the way my heartbeat used to stutter whenever I heard his car in the driveway, as I tried to somehow gauge from the sound of the engine whether I needed to brace for anger or silence.

“I got very good at being small,” I said. “At anticipating his moods and smoothing over every little conflict, so it didn’t ripple into something bigger.”

The car rocked as the wheel stopped, with us near the top now. Blackwood spread out beneath us, swallowed by dark at the edges.

“And then one day,” I continued, “I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said no to anything he wanted. Or the last time I’d wanted anything that didn’t fit inside his life plan…I didn’t want to do that anymore.”

“What happened?” he asked, his eyes rapt on my face like his life was attached to my words.

“He obviously didn’t like that,” I whispered. The memory clawed up, a hand closing around my neck. I wiped quickly under my eyes, annoyed to find dampness there. “Sorry,” I muttered, giving a little huff of breath that was half laugh, half defeat. “I did not plan on trauma-dumping on a stranger at a rodeo.”

“I’m not a stranger,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “We shared pie—that makes us best friends in this town.”

My jaw dropped as I stared at him. “I’m not sure it counts as sharing pie if I threw it at you,” I mused.

“I’m counting it,” he said, leaning back as if his words were an entirely normal declaration.

A startled laugh escaped me—thin and shaky, but real. “Can I remind you once again that you don’t know me?”

“I know enough,” he said, turning his head just slightly so the Ferris wheel lights slid across his jaw, softening him…making him unfair in every way. “You’re brave enough to start over. Strong enough to leave someone who tried to break you. And stubborn enough to ride a Ferris wheel, even when you’re terrified of heights.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t be fooled, Sterling. My marriage destroyed me,” I said bitterly, the words tearing on the way out. “And not just because of what he did to me. There was also the fact that everyone was on his side. Our friends. His family. My parents. They all said things like ‘marriage is hard’ and ‘this is your fault’ and ‘you don’t know how good you have it.’”

The wind tugged at my hair, pulling more strands from my messy bun. My throat burned, and I blinked hard, cursing as one tear escaped anyway, tracking hot down my cheek.

His thumb brushed it away, and I flinched at his touch. Sterling’s hand was gentle, which somehow made everything worse. “Hey,” he murmured.

I kept staring straight ahead. At the lights. At the crowds. At anything that wasn’t him. If I looked at him, I’d break open. And I’d done enough breaking for one lifetime.