Page 26 of Just Can't Fall for the Enemy

When his gaze lifted and he found me, his smile widened. “There she is. Looks like they fit.”

“In a manner of speaking.” They squeaked when I walked, and I felt like I couldn’t stride as deeply as usual, but I felt like Sandy. Now I just needed a tight black shirt that showed off my shoulders and we’d be the cheesiest couple here. The thought warmed me from head to heel. I offered an elbow. “Shall we?”

“I’d love to.” He took it, nodded a farewell to a huffing Lucille, and turned his full attention to me. I’d just lost the battle to Tanner, yet I felt I’d won something far greater.

Or maybesomeone.

We walked toward the crowds gathered around the food trucks and three carnival rides set up near the center of the park. It was a completely different scene from two days ago when I danced with him near this spot and felt the world around us freeze in time. Food trucks lined the lawn, the old trees dropped their bright yellow and orange leaves, and a stack of pumpkins towered over the Pumpkin Walk, where a circle of children in costumes leaped from number to number. The smell of fresh-baked pies from one of the stands made my stomach rumble despite the fact that I’d just eaten. A chorus of young, delighted screams rose from the “Haunted” Trailer at the far end of the row. Its doors hung wide open, held in place with straw bales topped with grinning jack-o-lanterns.

Tanner had extended his elbow for me to take, and we now matched our strides, arm in arm. Whispers peppered the crowd around us as people turned to stare.

He seemed oblivious as he looked around, smiling. “Small-town carnivals are so charming. Do they have that spinny ride that’s super questionable?”

I motioned toward the ride that looked like an alien spaceship with colorful lights. “Of course. What’s a carnival without a questionable ride or two?”

“Agreed. The dinosaur thing is new though.” He nodded toward Benny the Brontosaurus, a plastic dinosaur big enough to ride and who currently wore a fur coat and baseball cap and smiled at newcomers entering the park. “Any special meaning there?”

“Now, that I can’t tell you. You’ll have to guess.”

“The god of the Huckleberry Creek harvest.”

“Sorry, that’s a big black bear.”

“Of course it is.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Then it must be a gift of peace from a neighboring town.”

“Not quite.”

“A graduation gift? We bought a big rubber spider and gave it to the principal. She didn’t appreciate it much.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “No, but that’s good to know. I’ll be sure to look out for giant rubber spiders.”

“Then there’s only one other thing it can be—a monument to the town’s founder in the 1800s.” He pumped his free arm to the sky. “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.”

“You’re pretty close, actually,” I admitted. “It’s an old gas-station gimmick that got moved here when it shut down. Benny’s become the town mascot. The mayor even tried to have him put on our ‘Welcome’ billboard, but nobody could agree on where he should be permanently placed. So now Benny gets moved around. Sometimes you’ll find him outside the library, sometimes in the grocery store parking lot. He even showed up in the yard of a family who had a new baby. They came home from the hospital and there he was, guarding their house wearing a giant diaper.”

He chuckled. “Nowthatis going into the show.” He began to set up his tripod.

I felt my smile die and reminded myself for the hundredth time that I was driving him away, not convincing him about the charming nature of my town . . . and myself. And I certainly wasn’t trying to make him feel welcome here. I looked around and saw a group of church ladies—mostly single and a couple who obviously wished they were—approaching.

“Here comes the cavalry,” Tanner muttered.

Just then, I caught a glimpse of Nate under a tree. “I’ll be right back.”

Tanner looked at me in mock horror. “You’re throwing me to the wolves?”

I just winked as the church ladies swarmed him, not like a pack of wolves as much as a hive of bees, all circling him while a few reached out to touch his arm, chattering away.He shot me a helpless look as I left, chuckling to myself.

By the time I reached Nate, his mom was pushing his wheelchair toward the shaved-ice truck. Smiling at me, she bent down to whisper in his ear as I approached. My little friend’s face lit up. “Sophie!”

“Hey, buddy. I haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to?”

“Physical therapy in Missoula. Mom found some specialist there that’s helping with my hands. Right, Mom?”

She nodded and put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “School has been hard for him. There aren’t enough resources available to get him the assistance he needs. If I didn’t have to work . . . anyway, the specialist works with tetraplegic patients who have partial paralysis in their hands. The therapy’s intense, but Nate’s handling it beautifully. Aren’t you, big guy?”

“That’s what everyone says.” As usual, Nate sat stock-still as he spoke. I’d gotten used to it, but occasionally, the memory would return of what he’d been like before, running around playing football in this very park and riding his bike on the sidewalk. It brought back a familiar pain in my chest, a pain that would never go away.

“And I heard you’re getting a new wheelchair,” I said, swallowing back the emotions.

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