Page 77 of Avenged By Lov

ME: ** one fingered emoji **

I shoved my phone in my pocket and looked up to find her staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head and flipped the ticket book open. “How about a good, old-fashioned game of shooting milk bottles?”

“Psh. Should be a piece of cake,” I said, and we moved toward the game booths.

When I’d lost not only two of her tickets, but another five dollars of my own, she burst out laughing, trying to hide it behind a hand.

“I thought you had military training?” she teased.

“Damn thing is rigged,” I groused, but it wasn’t a real grouse. Inside, my heart was jumping up and down like a kid on his birthday, because she was laughing and smiling.

“Or you’re just a lousy shot,” she teased.

“Trust me. In real life, I always hit my mark.”

I hadn’t really meant the innuendo, but it was there anyway. Her eyes slipped down to my lips and back up.

“I’m sure that’s true,” she said in her whisper voice that I could barely hear over the crowd, and the music, and the screams from the rides.

“Come put your money where your mouth is, Coastie,” she said, leading the way to a water gun race. The kind where you squirted water into the clown’s mouth, and it filled the balloon until it burst. She tore out coupons, setting them down on the counter between two of the guns.

“Kind of hard to put my mouth anywhere when you’re the one paying,” I said and was rewarded with another flick of her eyes to my lips.

I grabbed the gun, aiming it, while she did the same thing. We waited while the other spots were filled. A little boy with an older woman took the final two spots, and then the buzzer sounded. We all pulled our triggers. I swear, not one ounce of my water missed the mouth of that clown, but Jersey’s balloon still burst before mine. The attendant asked her which of the stuffed Avenger babies she wanted, and instead of answering, Jersey looked at the boy who’d been racing next to her and said, “You pick. It’s all yours.”

The boy’s face exploded from a pout to a smile. His mom, or whoever the woman was with him, said, “You don’t need to do that.”

Jersey returned the smile of the boy and responded, “I don’t really want the toy. I was just trying to teach Big Ego here a lesson.”

The boy picked the Hulk, and I smiled at him and said, “Perfect choice!”

Jersey did a little huff that I adored.

As we walked away, I said, “That was pretty impressive.”

She flipped the book in her hands and said, “The secret is finding the clown with the balloon that looks like it’s had the most wear.”

“Damned cheater,” I said, and she laughed again until I said, “you know that isn’t what I meant, though.” She knew I was referring to her giving the toy to the little boy.

She ignored the compliment, stopping at the ring toss. “This was always my mom’s favorite.”

It wasn’t said with the same amount of pain I normally heard in her voice when she talked about her mom. It was lighter, and I wanted to pat myself and Violet on the back for making her do this. For showing her she didn’t need to hide.

As we played, one of my rings landed on the extra-large prize. “What do you want?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You won. You pick.”

“You gave your prize away to that little boy, but I can’t give you mine?”

“Totally different.”

“Fine, what one do you think Violet would want?”

“Oh, that’s easy; the sloth.”