I don’t look away.
He moves. Not toward me, not directly. He moves through the crowd and comes to rest at the edge of the fire lantern display. When I follow—which I do, because my feet have been making decisions independently all evening—he turns to look at me at close range for the first time.
This close, in the full light of the carnival, I can see his face properly. He has beautiful hazel eyes, deep and honest. His lips are full and quirk up just at the sides. His blond hair looks soft enough to run my hands through. He looks at me directly. Presently. Like he’s decidedsomething and the over thinking portion has come to an end.
“You’ve been here all night,” he says.
“I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been here all night,” he repeats, and I understand that the first time was information and the second time is something different.
“I’m leaving soon,” I reply, which is true, which I have been meaning to do since eight, which I have not done yet.
“There’s no rush.” He says it simply, like a fact rather than an invitation. “The lanterns go up at ten. It’s worth staying for.”
I look at the display. The lanterns are waiting for their release, paper and light, the kind of thing that’s been done in every culture that ever wanted to sayhere, look, this is beautiful.I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it and not stayed to watch it, and been fine both ways.
“Ryan,” I say, and his name in my mouth is strange. “What is it that you actually want?”
He regards me for a significant duration. The carnival noise is around us, the music from the stage and the crowd and the creak of the Ferris wheel, and in the middle of all of it he is very still.
“Right now?” he asks. “For you to stay for the lanterns.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
The lanterns go up at ten.
I don’t know why but I stay for the lanterns.
I stay while they rise in their dozens, orange and glowing against the black sky, drifting out over the river and reflecting in the water below. The crowd coo and aww at the beautiful sight.
Tristan appears at my left shoulder with something warm in a cup. It’s hot cider, it turns out, which I didn’t ask for and which is exactly what I want. Jack is somewhere in the crowd, I can hear him, and Archer is behind me, that familiar cold-air pressure. Ryan is beside me, not close but present, watching the lanterns go with the same attention he gives everything.
And I am standing in the middle of it.
And I am not planning my exit.
And I am not running scenarios about Amber or evidence or the next move.
And I am not thinking about the ‘borrowed’ car with the slow leak in the rear left tire or the burner phone or the four hundred dollars in my jacket pocket next to a small tin trophy.
I am watching the lanterns go up, and the cider is warm in my hands, and the pack is here physically and whispering through the partial bond.
They’re around me. Not surrounding me.Aroundme. In the way that weather is around you. It’s not containment, just presence, the vicinity of four people whose attention has oriented in a direction and the direction is me. It doesn’t feel like what I thought it would feel like. It doesn’t feel like a wall. Or a cage.
It feels like something I don’t have the right word for.
A lantern clears the tree line and catches a current, lifting fast. I watch it go.
Somewhere between the entrance arch and this moment, I have not thought about leaving. Not once. Not even a little.
Ishouldbe thinking about leaving.
I look at the lanterns. I drink the cider.
I don’t think about leaving.
Chapter 9
