“Paige.”
“Wren. Honey. Light of my life. You are the worst liar in this county.” She jabs a finger at me. “You've already said yes. It's all over your face. You said yes days ago.”
“I—”
“Does this have anything—anything at all, even a little—to do with a certain animal tamer with cheekbones from God and forearms of sin?”
The heat starts at my collarbone and climbs. My throat, my cheeks, my ears—I feel every inch of it happening and I am powerless, absolutely powerless, to stop it. Paigewatches the blush conquer my entire head like she's watching a sunrise.
“Oh mygod,” she breathes. “You're in love with him.”
“Paige—”
“You're going to run away with the circus for love. This is the plot of a movie. This is the plot of a movie I would watch twice.” Her eyes are shining, and then they spill over, and her voice cracks. “You're actually leaving.”
“Hey. Hey, no?—”
“No, I'm happy. These are happy tears. Mostly happy tears. Seventy percent.” She swipes at her face with her sleeve and laughs. “You've been here six years and you never once looked like this. You know that? You'd come in, you'd do the work better than anyone, and you'd go home to an octopus documentary. And then a monkey bruises its hand and suddenly you're—” she gestures at all of me, “—glowing. You glow now. I hate it. I love it. I hate how much I love it.”
“I'll write. I'll call. The route loops back through?—”
“You'd better.” She points at me, deadly. “And I want an invite when there's something to be invited to. I don't care if it's in a tent.”
“It'll definitely be in a tent,” I say dryly.
The laugh bursts out of both of us at the same time, and then she's around the table, and we're hugging, really hugging, her chin on my shoulder, squeezing hard enough to make my ribs creak.
“He'd better deserve you,” she mumbles into my hair.
“He does.”
“He'd better know he'd better.”
“He knows.”
We hold on for one more second. Then she pulls back,wipes her face, and straightens my collar like a mom sending a kid to picture day.
“Go on. Get out of here. I'll lock up.” She sniffs. “Go see your lion.”
The carnival risesout of the fields in the evening light, the Big Top catching the last of the sun, and my chest does the thing it does now—that loosening, thathomecoming—before I've even turned onto the access road.
Rowe is in the lot. Of course he is. Standing in the gravel with his hands in his pockets, tracking my car the way Caesar tracks him, and the whole terrible day slides off my shoulders at the sight of him.
I park. He walks over, and then, instead of coming around to open my door the way he's done every day since the beginning, he pulls open the passenger side and folds himself into the seat next to me.
I blink at him. He's never been in my car. His knees barely fit. He smells like hay and soap, and he'ssmiling, that rare full one that shows in his eyes, and it's aimed at me from eighteen inches away in a space the size of a phone booth.
“Hi,” I manage.
“Hi.” He pulls the door shut. “Drive.”
“Drive where?”
“Your apartment.” He buckles the seatbelt and settles in like this was always the plan. “We're packing you up tonight. All of it. I cleared space in the trailer this afternoon—built shelves into the closet, moved my gear to the equipment storage. Silas found boxes.” His eyes cut to me, warm and completely serious. “Trucks roll in six days, and I'm notspending another one of them with you driving back and forth like we're dating.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Aren't we dating?”
“We'redonedating. You live with me now.” A beat. “If you want.”
