by Sarra Cannon
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Hallie murmured, hoping to get Matthew to focus on the magnificent view - and not the fact that they were dangling several hundred feet into the air on a piece of very old, very rusty machinery. But before she could take her next breath, something happened that made her heart stop.
As they were about to grind to a halt at the very top, the ferris wheel gave a terrible creaking sound and a hard shudder. The entire massive wheel wobbled, then dropped about a foot—and Hallie’s stomach flew up into her chest for an instant, while Matthew gave a horrified shout that echoed the shrieks and gasps around them, closed his eyes, and gripped the restraint bar like it was his last hope.
Hallie peered over the side of their cart, and in that moment, she understood why Matthew was so freaked out. They were really high, and from the anxious looks of the numerous uniformed carnival workers crowded around the control panel… they were also stuck.
Hallie curled her fingers as best as she could around his hand again and tried to breathe deeply, hoping her calm energy would rub off on him.
“Ok. We’re okay,” she told him, twisting to face him and squeezing his forearm. We’re going to be fine.”
Matthew looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“I can’t believe I let you drag me up here,” he said, his voice low and faint. “Are we stuck?”
She hesitated. “We might be just a little stuck… but I’m sure they’re on top of it,” she added quickly. He seemed wholly unconvinced.
“Look,” she murmured, resting her head on his stiff shoulder. “Just look at the sun. It’s about to go down. It’s about to disappear… and we get to see it from up here, where no one else can.” She sighed as his body relaxed slightly.
Together they watched the sky darken, the moon glow brighter, and wisps of clouds float past. Slowly, his hand loosened on the bar and he interlaced their fingers together.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, after enough time had passed to make her think that they had better settle in.
He shifted, and she glanced up at him, her smile faltering at his intent gaze.
“So beautiful,” he said, brushing his lips against the back of her hand. Now it was her turn to stare at her lap.
“Um, I meant the scenery, Romeo. Look at the scenery.”
He reached up with one hand and tucked her stray curls behind her ear. His fingers were slow and deliberate as they trailed back down her neck, to her shoulder and then back down to her hand. When he took it again, his grip was much gentler, and she longed to bury her face in the warmth of his chest, partly to relieve her nervous embarrassment and partly because it felt so right, to be touching him, to be taking comfort in his warmth and strength and the rhythm of his strong, beating heart.
“I’m going to keep looking at you,” he warned lightly, “because looking at you takes my mind off this hunk of scrap metal that’s dangling me five thousand feet above the ground.”
Hallie snorted, though she felt her ears turning red. “Drama queen. Weren’t you in the military? Don’t military people fly in planes all the time? How’d you manage that?”
He chewed the inside of his lip and shook his head. “Well, I wasn’t a pilot. And the answer is that I hated it, avoided it when I could, and made sure I had a vomit bag handy when I couldn’t.”
“Where did you go?”
He hesitated a fraction of a second too long. “Oh, all over.”
Hallie looked away from him and back out to the sunset, feeling stung. Again. Even after what she’d seen that night, after all they’d shared and all he knew about her, he didn’t want her prying into his life. He wanted to keep her distant, separate. How many more missteps like this would she take? Was she so desperate for connection that she’d keep pushing herself, again and again, onto people who cared for her differently than she cared for them? Her face and neck and chest burned hot with shame, and the old stabbing feeling in her chest returned.
Then he squeezed her hand. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded,” he said. “It’s the truth that I’ve been all over. France, England, South Africa, Korea, Afghanistan. Those are the places I can remember off the top of my head.”
Hallie stayed quiet, thinking, watching the last sliver of sun sink below the treetops.
“There are so many things I want to ask you,” she said finally, “but I don’t know where to start.”
Matthew sighed and let go of her hand. He withdrew from her, retightening his grip on the restraining bar.
“If I tell you, it’s going to change things.” He bowed his head and traced his thumb back over his knuckles. “I’m not ready to give you up.”
“Why do you assume I’m going to give up? I’m still here, aren’t I?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if you stay or not. Sooner or later, you’ll be gone too. That’s the one thing that’s always true.”
Hallie simply settled back against his bicep and closed her eyes, feeling drowsy and cocooned by the warmth of his body and the gentle way the wind rocked their cart. She wasn’t going to push him anymore.
After a few moments, he reached behind her to drape his arm around her shoulders, and with her eyes closed she felt his fngers gently untangling her braid. Once he’d loosened her hair, he slid his hand up to massage her scalp. She hummed and sank further into his embrace to give him better access.
“I was born in the year 1844,” he began, his voice shaky. He raked his fingers gently through her hair. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I was born right here in Abingford… to a family that didn’t want me.”
He was right—it was crazy. But the thread between her heart and his grew tangible and real, taut with longing. Whether she understood why or not, they were made of the same stuff. The same pain. She believed him without question. The strokes of his fingers on her tender scalp sent ripples of pleasure down her neck and spine, and she suppressed a whimper of longing.
“When the War - the Civil War - broke out, I was seventeen. I joined the Union army, partly because I knew it would make my parents furious… and partly because of the cause, which I believed in. My father and brother both joined the Confederacy, and the day I left was the last day I ever saw them.
“Looking back, I think it was the war that made me foolish. It made me want things that were unnatural, because war itself is unnatural. The battlefield is the only place I’ve ever felt right, since everything happened, since I changed.”
He traced one finger absently along the slope of Hallie’s neck, up and down.
“The day it happened, it was early spring. One of the first warm days where all you can hear is the constant trickle of melting snow, no matter where you go. We were staying in this small town somewhere up in Virginia. We were relatively safe. Everything was going fine. But we got word of some—some fighting, not far from us. They said it was bad, but everything then was always bad… and we were always scared. I was scared.”
He swallowed.
“We marched and came to a juncture where ambush was certain. They sent me and five others, including a friend of mine, James, to find an alternate route. But instead, we wandered right into a group of rebels.
His hand stilled over her neck, his palm warm and heavy.
“I can’t explain to you what that kind of war is like. Man-to-man, hand-to-hand, where you look at a man close up and realize he’s no different from you. Where you can shoot or stab him and watch the life go out of his eyes. Where there is blood, so much blood, and the sound of your friends dying… You don’t forget it.”
Hallie laid her hand over his heart, wishing she could shield him from his own memories. His jaw clenched, then unclenched.
“When the fighting finished I was the only one left standing, and I watched James die. I couldn’t save him.”
He paused. “You know what I remember most?”
“What?” Hallie whispered.
“I remember kneeling on the ground beside him and not knowin
g whether the wetness seeping through to my knees was melted snow or his blood.”
He traced the curve of her ear. “I sat there for a while, feeling hopeless. Then a man came from behind the trees and told me that he could lead me to safety. He was dressed like one of us, so I believed him. He took me to a nearby stream and told me if I drank from it, I’d make it back home alive. He said I’d never have to worry about death again. I was tired, confused, thirsty, desperate… So I did. And I wandered out of that forest and back to my men.
“I didn’t think of the stream again until two weeks later, when I took a bullet to the chest and walked away. And when the war ended, I came home, just like the man promised. I was okay, my life was good. I was invincible. I met a beautiful girl, and we were going to make a future, a family…”
He trailed off, sounding so broken, so dejected, that she caught his fidgeting hand and squeezed it tightly, trying to ground him. It took a moment, but he squeezed back.
“Nothing’s free, though. One night, right after I returned home, a man came to my door. He said that I had a debt to repay for the gift I’d received. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, but he knew things about me. He said that people like me were indebted to this group, a society, called The Guardians. He’d come to give me an assignment for them.”
Matthew hesitated, fighting several shallow breaths until Hallie pressed her hand to his chest.
“What did they want?”
“I… I don’t know. I told him to leave.”
She rubbed small circles on his chest.
“I sometimes think back over that conversation and wonder if I should have… done things differently. I don’t know. But since I decided to shirk my ‘responsibilities,’ I’ve been on their blacklist. They don’t want someone like me out in the world, outside of their control. So they look for me and I hide, I move, I lay low. I know a little about how they operate. Despite their power, they rely on mortal humans for intelligence. But they are secretive, influential… and ruthless.
Hallie straightened a little. “Ruthless… how?” His lips tightened, his expression darkened.
“Not long after I sent him away, people in town began to talk about me. A town this small, strange things don’t stay hidden for long, you know? But I should have had more time before people realized something was up. People got violent - you’ve seen how superstitious this town is. The girl that I… I loved. She was killed. They ran me out of town and I’ve been running ever since.”
He lifted his hand from her hair and rubbed at his brow. Hallie fiddled with the zipper of her—his?—leather jacket, fighting the tears burning in her throat. She hurt as if her heart had grown corners and edges and didn’t fit properly in her chest anymore. All of this time she’d been fascinated, intrigued by the life he must have led. But there was nothing magical about the way he had suffered. She straightened up to gauge his expression and felt small, looking into his eyes. She wanted to comfort him but was struck by her insignificance—too ordinary, too mundane in the eyes of a man with so much life behind him. What wisdom could she offer?
In their silence, music drifted up to them from the carnival below, and she remembered the way he had danced with her, the brilliance of his grin as he spun her around. She thought of the mischief in his eyes when he teased her about her romance novels, and the boyish excitement he’d shown in the Belleyre attic, when their search had paid off. In some ways, he was ancient—but Hallie had glimpsed the young man he must have been all those years ago. Here was a man who had lived an eternity… and not at all.
When she reached up to cup his jaw, he tore away.
“Stop, Hallie. I don’t need pity.”
“Compassion isn’t pity. You showed me that.”
But he shook his head.
“I’ve lived for more than a hundred and fifty years. Not a day passes that I don’t imagine what it would be like to live like everyone else. To experience things—and not to see them for what they are: insignificant moments in a world that just doesn’t give a damn. But it doesn’t, Hallie. That’s what time teaches you. That you have to stop giving a damn. So I have.”
The hard plastic seats jutted against her thighs and she fought the urge to stand up and shake some sense into him. If there was anyone who mattered, who deserved to feel hope, it was him. He was a good person. How could he not see that? But he seemed to know where her mind was headed, and when she opened her mouth to reply, he cut her off.
“None of that is a reason to feel sorry for me. Don’t misjudge me, Hallie. I’ve been selfish and cruel. The ‘life’ I lead makes it easy to be selfish and cruel because to me nothing ever has to matter… because nothing ever lasts. Don’t you see? Imagine a man for whom nothing matters, and you’ll imagine a monster.”
Hallie opened her mouth to protest, but at that moment, the ferris wheel gave another loud groan, and they began to descend. Cheers rose from the other carts around them. The figures on the ground grew larger, closer, before the staff stopped the wheel again to let the next group of passengers on the bottom off. Hallie leaned over the side of the car and watched the families and couples climb out of their seats and hurry away.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” she said, turning back to him. “You’ve been trying to make the best of an untenable situation. No one else knows what it’s like to deal with what you’ve—”
“Don’t,” he said savagely. “Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses. Don’t try to convince yourself that I’m something other than what I am, just because of what I’ve been to you these last few weeks.”
“And what is that?” she asked, but he ignored her.
“Nothing about me is magical or mystical. What I have is a disease. It’s a sickness, loneliness. One that’s had almost two centuries to eat away at me.”
The ferris wheel dropped them lower, but the ride was halting and jerky, which made Hallie queasy, unsettled. The whole world swayed; her stomach churned. Somewhere down on the ground, a baby was crying. The nighttime chill had enveloped them, darkness dousing the sky, and the ferris wheel’s lights hadn’t turned back on. An electrical problem, maybe. Their rough descent had been like a slow, manual crank, without the automatic whirring of a powered, well-oiled machine. Bathed in darkness, they still dangled high above the tops of the carnival tents. She couldn’t make out his expression as he spoke, but his voice was hard and angry and hoarse.
“You think you’re so safe with me,” he said, as though the words were bitter on his tongue. “You’ve asked me for answers. But my answer isn’t what you want to hear. I’m going to hurt you. Someday soon, it will happen. After all this time, I don’t have it in me to do anything else, no matter how hard I try.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he continued into the darkness. “I wanted to go on pretending as long as I could, until the fire. But you want the truth. And the truth is that no one is ever, ever going to get me to fight for something that can’t last. Because if there’s one thing I really hate… it’s goodbyes.”
The ride gave an enormous creak and they began another descent, the wheel’s axis creaking with a continuous whine that echoed into the night—a great screech of metal that threatened to drown out her words.
“Stop trying to scare me,” she said, withdrawing from him entirely, so that she no longer touched him. “And don’t tell me what I think.” They were two of the last people left on the entire wheel, so low now that the screech of the giant gears mingled with the sound of shouts and laughter and cheers from the crowd below.
“All of my life,” she said, “people have been hurting me and leaving me, or hurting me by leaving me. Not one of them ever warned me up front that they would do it. They let me trust them before they struck. They let me love them before they left. You’re different because you know what it’s like to get left behind, Matthew. And so do I. You’re not the only one.”
She shrugged off his jacket and tossed it at him, as a reminder of the loss she’d suffered—
and of the inexplicable connection they shared.
“Why do you think I wear that? It’s because when I’m with you, I’m know I’m not alone. You try to pretend that you’re hard and damaged and frightening, because of what you are. But don’t underestimate me: I already know you too well to be afraid of you.”
He raised one eyebrow and she stamped down the flicker of doubt, of insecurity that said no, you don’t really know him. She might not know everything about him, about his history… but she knew a little about his baggage: about loss and loneliness.
“Not to mention,” she continued, “you’re the most permanent thing I’ve ever known. I’m not going to pretend I don’t take comfort in that—in you—no matter how much you tell me not to.”
Just then, they ground to a halt at the center of the boarding platform, and a slew of uniformed teens and a medic descended on them, asking if they were all right and apologizing profusely.
She wasn’t sure what had made her rally like that, to take his remarks as an invitation, not a painful dismissal. All she knew was that the more he tried to push her away, the more she knew she shouldn’t leave. As impossible as his story was - and as heartbreaking, and breathtaking - it also made her determined to stay.
“I don’t want you to take comfort in me,” he said softly. “I want you to tell me to leave… or make me promise never to hurt you.”
“Would it work? If I did either?”
The little gate hung open for them to exit. The fair crew had moved on to the next cart.
“No.”
And with that, he stood and walked back onto the platform, then down to solid ground, and away from her.
Chapter 13
Matthew pushed through the crowd, unable to shake the pressure building in his chest and throat. He heard Hallie calling after him and pushed harder, the chatter and laughter pressing in around him until he broke through the crowd and ducked into a dark, narrow alleyway between a string of game tents and the horse stables. He leaned his palms against the stable building, the smell of manure burning his nostrils, and let out a growl of frustration.