Page 61 of The Quiet After The Fall

My pulse kicks up. “I still don’t understand.”

“You said you can’t separate them. I feel the same way.” He lays his elbows on the table, leaning forward. “So we go make something new to put there instead.”

He pulls into the half empty parking lot slow enough to give us time to change our minds. I grip the edge of my dress and roll my bottom lip between my teeth. It’s just a stretch of asphalt, it can’t hurt me.

Knox parks and we sit there frozen in our thoughts, both of us looking through the windshield at the entrance gates, that hideous clown grinning down from the sign like he’s been waiting.

“We don’t have to,” Knox finally says.

I think about what my birthday would have been. Lonely and heartbroken. I think about next year, and the year after, still avoiding the memories, flinching every time the past is mentioned. I think about what he said at Mickey’s—so we go make something new to put there instead—and how badly I want that to be possible, how much I need to find out.

“I want to.”

Knox buys our tickets and we walk through the turnstiles. The smell hits me, popcorn and cinnamon, and I wait for panic to take over but it’s just the same tight chest, same roaring pulse. I can handle this. I’ve been living with it for months.

Knox reaches for my hand and I thread my fingers through his. We drift past the game booths and the carousel and I take everything in like it’s there but with a fuzzy filter over it. It feels like walking into a room after the furniture’s been moved around, everything’s recognizable but shifted, familiar but wrong.

I won’t look toward Velocity. I’m not ready for that. Even so, I can feel it there, a looming presence, like a barely healed wound.

“It’s still not running. Good.” He nudges his chin in that direction, like he’s reading my thoughts.

“I hope they demolish the whole goddamn thing,” I say.

“Yeah.” His grip on my hand tightens. “Me too.”

Knox leads us away from Velocity. The park is empty this late, the families with young kids mostly gone, leaving teenagers and couples and a few stragglers finishing their last ride of the night. The noise feels less oppressive than I expected, just background.

We end up in front of the Wonder Coaster, strung with colored bulbs, its cars shaped like old circus wagons. When I was young, it used to seem so intimidating, so grand, but now I see it for what it is…a ride that exists to make children feel brave.

And there it is. The height marker by the entrance, the cartoon ruler with Giggles’ face printed at the top. For some reason, it makes me smile. “I was always an inch short.”

He lets out a soft huff. “For years. You’d stand under that thing, fingers and toes crossed, begging under your breath.”

“It never worked.”

“No.” His eyes move to the empty line. Then he looks back at me, and there it is. That look. The one that’s driven me crazy my entire life, the one that has never once failed to get me to do something I swore I wouldn’t do. “You’re tall enough now, Thorne.”

I know what he’s thinking. “Don’t.”

“What? I’m just making an observation.”

“Knox. No.”

“About your height,” he continues, pulling us toward the entrance. “So there’s really nothing stopping you.”

I follow him, ignoring my damp hands and clenching gut. I follow him the way I always have, the way I suspect I always will. Some habits never die.

Chapter 16

Knox

The car rocks when I follow Sawyer in and I hold my breath, waiting for something bad to happen. It’s stupid. The chances of us going through a second coaster accident in our lifetimes has got to be miniscule. I’ll do the math later, but I know we’re fine. Safe. Nothing will go wrong.

Sawyer slides all the way to the inside and sits, and I squeeze in next to her. The space is narrower than I expected. Her dress rides up and every inch of our sides are pressed together. I rest my hand on top of her bare thigh. I know it’s bold but that doesn’t stop me.

Sawyer’s eyes drop to the spot and she opens her legs an inch to accommodate my hand. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“I’ve got you.”