“I’m all right,” I said before Hannah could ask me. She scrunched her nose; either she didn’t like being cut off, or she didn’t quite believe me. In Dutch, I elaborated: “Everything here is new and a little scary. But Reid has offered to take care of me, so I think I’ll manage.”
Hannah’s expression softened. She turned her gaze on Reid, evaluated him, then nodded slowly. And all six of us made our way into the fairgrounds proper.
We split up almost immediately, but Hannah assured me and Beth both that she wouldn’t be far. She’d left before either of us could ask any more questions, though, and soon I found myself spirited away through the tide of bodies to an alley lined with games. Men and women stood beside the booths or within, calling out to passersby that the odds were “in their favor.” Many of them gestured to prizes suspended from the ceilings or mounted on their back walls, mostly stuffed animals in various sizes and breeds.
I marveled at them. They were so… colorful. So intricate, compared to the toys my sisters and I had grown up with. And fluffy, too. Not made of burlap or straw.
Reid must have caught me eyeing them, because he grinned and swung around so we were standing face-to-face. “Like what you see?”
I looked him over and blushed. I was doing a lot of that lately, but I couldn’t help myself. The low growl of his voice threatened to undo me, and it got even worse when he rumbled with laughter.
His eyes flashed. “I meant the prizes, you know.”
“I… I know what you meant!” I insisted, chewing the skin off my lower lip. It was a bad habit, I knew, but my nerves were frayed and I would take comfort wherever I could get it. “And yes. I think they’re quite cute. Especially that bird. The black and white one.”
I gestured to what appeared to be some kind of shooting range, only the guns didn’t look real. Reid followed my line of sight and squinted. “The penguin?”
“Yes.” I’d have to take his word for it. I’d never seen one before.
Reid grinned. It was downright feral. “What the lady wants, she gets,” he said before pulling me toward the booth.
I stood to the side as he paid the gentleman manning the booth for the chance to take a few shots from what I now realized was an air rifle. Pumping it, Reid pressed the butt against his shoulder and assumed what I could only surmise was a practiced stance. I’d seen our men go hunting before, and none held a gun so well as Reid did, nor did they look half as good doing it. The way his jeans stretched taut over his rear made my core shudder and pulse.
I hated that I was having these feelings, but at the same time, I wanted to revel in them. Wanted to explore them. Wanted to find out what they meant and learn what might happen if I indulged them. The kind of sweet, succulent jolts that would run through me as a teen, and now as a young woman, were a taboo subject where I came from. The only time women were educated on “wifely duties” were when they were about to become wives, and then, as I understood it, they were only provided the vaguest of details.
I bet Reid had the answers to all my questions. And I bet he could provide those answers without uttering a single word. I swallowed thickly and raised my gaze to his face, memorizing his narrowed eyes, the look of concentration that pulled his jaw tight.
He lowered his finger from the trigger guard to the trigger. And then, as a parade of wooden ducks went shuffling to and fro across the booth’s back wall, Reid began to fire.
The rifle hardly made a sound, but I saw one of the ducks collapse. Reid pumped and loaded the rifle again, returned to his stance, and fired a second time.
Another near-soundless assassination. And after that, three more. Five shots, five “kills.” I stared in wonder. So did the carnival worker. So did several onlookers who obviously hadn’t expected to see Reid succeed, let alone rack up a perfect score.
“Jesus, dude,” the attendant said, followed by a disbelieving bark of a laugh. “I mean, holy shit. You some kinda ex-Marine, or something? Head of SEAL Team Six out for a night on the town?”
I wasn’t sure what most of those words meant, but Reid laughed, so it must have been a kind of compliment. “Nah. Just good at what I do.” He winked at me. “Besides, I couldn’t disappoint the lady.”
Now all eyes were on me. I felt a flutter in my chest that told me my heart was coming out of sync with the rest of my body. I shifted under the weight of their stares, surreptitiously pulling a few strands of hair out from behind my ears so as to hide a bit of my face. I looked to Reid, hoping he would save me, but he was pointing to the penguin I’d spotted earlier, eager to present it to me.
In just a short span of time, Reid had gathered something of a following. But not everyone was as impressed with him as I was.
“You’re a fuckin’ cheat!” I heard someone say.
Reid turned, raising an eyebrow at a man with a foamy cup of beer in his hand. He was waddling and swaying between the worst of the throng, a sneer on his pale lips. “Come again?” Reid said, though I was certain he’d heard him; the man wasn’t exactly using his inside voice.
I took a step back as the man surged forward, sweat beading on his upper lip. His short, mud-colored hair clung to his forehead and he reeked of alcohol, even at this distance. I raised a hand to cover my nose and mouth as he said, “You heard me, asshole. You’re a fuckin’ cheat. I been at that thing half the damn day tryin’ to score, but you just waltz up and claim a prize? No way. No fuckin’ way.” Now he was turning to the others. “He’s a fuckin’ plant. Some fucker they hired to make us all think we got a chance. These games are all rigged. He ain’t really that good.”
The din around me fell silent. Tension culminated in the air like rainclouds filling their bellies before a storm. The way Reid was looking at this man made my stomach flop and threaten to fall at my feet. There was an intensity in his mahogany eyes, something inhuman. Something animal.
And yet he kept that cocky grin plastered to his face at all times. I wasn’t sure which disturbed me more: the unspoken threat of violence hanging over us all, or the fact that Reid might be willing to commit it without ever flinching—without that smile ever wavering.
My palms were beginning to sweat, and when Reid said, “Step right up and let me show you just how good I am with a gun,” my heart leapt straight into my throat.
No. Not my heart. A scream. Because, as the men stared each other down—as the fat, drunk one pushed past several others and grabbed the air rifle next to Reid’s—as Reid pumped and loaded and waited for the attendant to move out of the way—someone wrapped their hand around my waist.
And then they tugged me back, away from the safety of the crowd.
Hard.
A yell pushed past my lips on instinct, but it was mostly lost in the mass of people as I was dragged further away from everyone else. I had already put so much distance between myself and Reid that he had no idea what was going on. And now I was going to pay for it.
7
Reid
I hadn’t intended on throwing any punches in front of Sarah. At least, not yet. But this fucking asshole was pushing his luck.
Not only had the fat bastard called me out, he’d brought my reputation into question. I was Reid-fucking-Brody. I didn’t need to cheat at anything; I was just that good.
He really pushed my buttons. He also really distracted me from keeping an eye on Sarah like I should’ve been. This part, right here, is the story of how I almost lost her.
The first time, anyway.
I’d just pulled the trigger and knocked down another duck when I heard what almost sounded like a cry for help just over the noise of the people surrounding us, all of them cheering us on. We’d made something of a spectacle of ourselves and truth be told, I didn’t mind the attention. I liked it when people stopped and stared and stroked my ego with their awestruck gazes. Especially since I’d been called out in front of everyone by this drunk piece of shit who probably couldn’t shoot straight sober, let alone three sheets to the wind.
A
ll I wanted to do was show him up. To prove to anyone and everyone watching what a sorry fuck he was. To uphold my reputation and put the final nail in the coffin where this accusation of cheating was concerned.
But that sound…
I turned just enough to look over my shoulder. Through the mass of bodies, I saw Sarah. She was toward the back of the crowd, her eyes wide and pleading, and she was yelling something that was lost in the noise of everyone around us. Someone tall and ugly had their hand wrapped tight around her tiny waist as they dragged her backwards, away from the crowd. Away from me.
I don’t even remember putting the gun down. I don’t remember turning and charging after her. All I remember is the moment my hand came into contact with hers—how cold her skin was. I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and felt her frantic pulse.
My other hand slammed into her aggressor’s chest, hard enough to send him stumbling backward. “What the fuck?” I demanded, pulling Sarah behind me. “Get your fucking hands off her!”
“Don’t, Reid,” Sarah began, but her voice sounded so small and far away from me that it was easy to ignore. I was pissed. Who the fuck was this guy?
He held up his hands. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“Bullshit!” I pushed him again, this time nearly slamming him against one of the other booths. “You some kind of pervert? A creep? You just go around grabbing girls, huh? Fuck no. You picked the wrong target tonight.”
“Reid…” Sarah was saying again. She sounded closer now. Through the red veil draped over my thoughts, I felt the brush of her fingers at my elbow. “Come on, let’s go.”
I yanked my arm away from her. “I want to know who you are,” I insisted, taking in the stranger before me—the stranger who had put his hands on Sarah. “Come on, motherfucker. Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Please, Reid, don’t do this. I don’t want you to hurt him!”
Finally, I whirled on Sarah. “What? Why the hell not?”
A split second. That’s how long my attention was divided. Long enough for me to make eye contact with Sarah, to see the fear and concern on her face. There was something else there, too. Something that ran just a little deeper. Something that looked an awful lot like disgust.
It was enough to distract me. I never saw the punch coming until it landed.
Sarah shrieked and moved out of the way as I stumbled backward, a series of brilliant nebulas collapsing in front of my eyes. I was hurtling through the darkness of space, gravity a thing of the past as I struggled to maintain my footing on solid ground. Bastard had got me right in the jaw, right where that nerve is that’ll knock your lights out. But I wasn’t about to let myself collapse in front of Sarah, never mind this crowd. I wasn’t about to go down on account of some cheap-ass sucker punch.
While I breathed through the urge to faint, the crowd closed in around us. I could feel Sarah’s breath against my ear, soft and sweet as she whispered, “Reid? Reid, are you okay?”
I steadied myself and raised up, blinking away the last of the flashing lights. Doucheface was gone.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered. I hadn’t felt the pain quite yet, but I could tell my jaw was swelling. The words came out a little rough, a little slurred. My heart was pounding in my ears and the adrenaline in my veins made my hands shaky. My eyes darted over the crowd, but I couldn’t find that piece of shit who’d put his hands on Sarah. Either he’d high-tailed it out of the fairgrounds completely, or he knew how to blend in. Asshole.
Beside me, Sarah flinched. Gingerly, she brushed her fingertips over my face. “That looks bad…”
I pulled away from her. “What’d you expect? I had everything under control, Sarah. Right up until you started defending the jackass who tried to…” My anger waned just a little, replaced by confusion. “What the hell was he trying to do to you?”
“I… I don’t know,” she admitted, looking way more shaken than she’d been just a minute ago. She’d been ready to get between us before I’d gotten hit, but that bravery had departed once she’d seen what a well-placed punch could do. “He grabbed me around my waist, and…”
“Do you think he was trying to cop a feel?” I asked, still surreptitiously looking for any sign of her assailant. “Looked kinda like he was trying to drag you away.”
Sarah’s gaze grew distant. She refocused on the ground and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know, Reid. I was scared. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me.”
I watched her wring her hands. Something about this didn’t seem right to me, but it also looked like Sarah had no idea what the hell was going on. A naïve little Amish chick like her wouldn’t have had enough life experience to cultivate a poker face good enough to fool me. That bewildered look was genuine. Huffing out air through my nose, I said, “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have stopped me. Who knows what he would’ve done to you if I hadn’t pushed him away? Assholes like that only understand one language: violence. You gotta beat the bad out of them.”
“That’s not how things work, where I’m from,” she whispered softly. “The Amish… we don’t do things like that.”
I snorted. “Like what? Try to molest people, drag them off to a white panel van?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes. And we don’t strike one another, either.”
I shook my head at her and turned away. Christ, it was like she thought she was better than me. Like her whole “community” was. She didn’t understand how dangerous it was out here, how sometimes words weren’t enough. It was dog-eat-dog in the real world. That “turn the other cheek” shit didn’t play.
I was about to tell her so when I noticed her eyes were gleaming. They were wet—she hadn’t started crying yet, but if I didn’t do or say something to stop her, she would be soon. And just like that, all the anger in me faded away, and I realized that maybe Sarah wasn’t trying to pull some holier-than-thou shit. Maybe she was just trying to explain to me how new this all was. How fucking terrifying.
“Hey,” I said gently, laying my hand on her shoulder. She trembled, but did not pull away. “You wanna get out of here? I mean, not the fairgrounds, but… away from the noise? These people?”
Slowly, Sarah raised her head to look up at me. When our gazes met, I could see the relief dancing in her beautiful eyes. She didn’t answer me—not with words—but I knew instantly what she wanted: a break from all this excitement.
“Come on,” I told her, grabbing the penguin she’d wanted from the vendor. “I know just the place we can go to be alone.” And I held her hand, guiding her to the Ferris wheel as she clutched that penguin so tight her knuckles turned pale.
8
Sarah
When I was a little girl, I used to climb some of the big oak trees that grew on our property, and on our neighbors’ lots. All the children did, really. I wasn’t anything special. Except that, though I could hoist myself higher up than any other child dared, I wasn’t especially good at getting down. Father had to retrieve me on almost every occasion. It was one of the reasons I’d stopped climbing trees altogether, the other being that at a certain age, it became inappropriate for girls to go sitting in trees wearing skirts.
I could remember, so vividly, that sensation of fear and apprehension as I would lift myself higher and higher into the ancient, gnarled boughs of those trees, my heart swelling with pride at how far I was willing to go, how I could leave everyone behind me so easily. I was brave, I told myself. I was strong. An adventurer. An example.
That was how I’d felt trying to stop Reid Brody from assaulting the man who’d assaulted me. I’d felt, in those moments, I’d climbed to the very top of the tallest tree and everyone else was beneath me, looking up. I had to set an example.
But then that man had hit him, and Reid had gotten hurt—because of me—and all at once, I remembered that fatal flaw of mine. The girl who climbed, but could not get down.
I felt a little like that again as Reid took me to the Ferris wheel, an enormous, metal
behemoth that sat square in the middle of the fairgrounds. We were surrounded on all sides by the hustle and bustle of the evening, cicadas singing from the fields, laughter and shouting and other noises all too human, all too much. Even this far away, I could still make out the ringing and dinging of the game booths, and each twinkling sound reminded me of the bruise along Reid’s jaw and how I had contributed to it.
But I’d done the right thing, hadn’t I? Risen above temptation—encouraged others to do the same? If I was going to spend time in the English world, shouldn’t I be trying to make it a better place? A more Godly place?
And how Godly was it for Reid to be harmed instead of that man? The latter had done something terribly wrong, the particulars of which I still couldn’t deduce. The former had only leapt to my defense. And yet, in my attempt to broker peace between them, I’d punished my defender and let the sinner get away. That wasn’t justice, Biblical or otherwise, and I felt like a fool.
My awareness of my mistake only intensified as Reid boarded one of the Ferris wheel cars with me and lowered the lap bar. I clung to it tightly as the attendant next to us pulled a lever and up we went, into the clouds. I held my breath on our ascent, the rickety car swinging like a cradle over the carnival below. People began to look like ants, and I too began to feel very small.
I glanced at Reid then. Purple splotches were beginning to spread beneath his beard, only partially hidden by the thickness of his facial hair. Every time I caught a glimpse, I felt awful. And yet somehow, beyond any reasoning I could conjure, that bruise made him even more attractive. Perhaps it reminded me that Reid was brave, too, and not in a childish way—in the way only a man like him could be.
I found myself admiring him, lost in these thoughts as the stars grew closer and the Earth faded away. I was just beginning to forget how incredibly high up we were when there was a metallic screech that rang through every spoke of the wheel and made our car shudder to a halt at the very top.
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