Page 50 of Love at Full Tilt

A random stretch of road

Outside Hero’s Quest, Fableland

Near Orlando, FL

Cloud Kingdom was Fableland’s biggest failure.

The park was barely open eight years and almost every major injury that has ever happened at the resort occurred within its gates.

Rumors blame ghosts, but most likely it was due to Fable Industry’s attempts to build the park quickly and bring in extra revenue during the recession years.

No one has accessed the park in decades.

It remains standing but nonoperating at the eastern edge of the resort.

—FablelandFacts.com

Mason holds open a padlocked gate, waiting for me to slip through the gap.

This part of the street is shaded by a row of overgrown trees, and their branches shudder with the force of cars zipping by. The smell of exhaust burns the inside of my nose.

It’s after dinner, and the sun’s light has softened against the clusters of clouds overhead.

After we left Alistair’s workshop, Mason, Carter, Tess, Issy, and I spent the next few hours making the most of the parks, bleeding those FOTL passes for everything they’re worth.

Yet every end to a ride, every new treat that passed between my lips, every piece of swag I purchased, felt like a consolation prize.

A bunch of small Band-Aids trying to cover the gaping wound that was the cash I’ll never have.

Now Mason and I are alone for what little time we have left.

As I get closer to the fence, I fight the urge to do another round of plus-size geometry. I want to trust that Mason will make sure I fit. When I duck through the gate, he guides me forward with a hand on my elbow. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“You’ll see.”

“You know, when Tess insisted we have one last date, she didn’t mean take me somewhere to murder me.”

“You have an unhealthy preoccupation with murder.”

I grin. “I blame all the true crime podcasts.”

“Let me give you this one last piece of magic, okay?” His mouth is drawn tight, but I see the softness in his watercoloreyes.

This feels too much like an end. My fingers itch to grab him, to tow him back through the gate and all the way to Phoenix’s Landing, where everything started. As if that could reset the clock or defuse this ticking time bomb. Give us a chance to begin again. Or at least continue.

But all I can do is take his hand when he offers it.

The road ahead looks like it was once a part of the resort that nature has since reclaimed.

Weeds snake through cracks in the cement and clog the gaps of storm grates, and neglected trees arch over our heads, their branches heavy from lack of pruning.

The green blots out the sun and sketches creeping shadows across the pavement.

My mind swirls as we walk in silence. It feels like Tess, Issy, and I just got here.

That I’ve barely finished the first clue.

That Mason and I have only recently held hands for the first time.

But already, everything’s over. And without that cash prize to cushion my moving expenses, I don’t know when I’ll get back here. When I’ll see him again.

It could be months. Who knows how long it will take for me to save up, to find a job at Fableland? Without the contest, the path ahead of me is completely undefined, overgrown like the one we’re walking now.

But at least, for once, it’s mine.

It’s a mile or so before we encounter another fence, and Mason holds my hand the whole way. Tight, like if his grip is strong enough, I’ll never go anywhere.

I want him to be that powerful.

The chain-link fence bows close enough to the ground that we can climb over it easily. On the other side, through a thicket of bushes that scrape at my skin and tug loose threads from my shirt, I find myself staring at the butt end of a dilapidated roller coaster.

“Cloud Kingdom,” I say, my voice soft with awe.

This abandoned park makes every Fableland top ten secrets list. Not because no one can prove its existence—there are pictures of it all over the internet from people who’ve snuck in—but because there are so many stories about why it was shut down.

It opened in the ’80s, not long after Atalantia, but by 1992, it was no longer accessible to the public because there had been too many catastrophes and issues with the rides.

Tons of people think it’s haunted, but the more realistic explanation is that it was built during a time when Fable Industry’s movies weren’t performing well and they had to rein in their spending, which meant they sacrificed due diligence and safety precautions for the quick revenue of a new park opening.

It probably didn’t help that everyone hated the Cloud Kingdom movie.

The dips and curves of the coaster are a wooden mountain range looming before us. My eyes run up and down them as if I have to look at every piece of it to make it real.

Advancing, I rest my palm against one of the crisscrossed wooden slats of the structure. It’s warm from the sun. Small slivers of white paint cling to the corners, but most of the paint has flecked away, exposing the grayed-out, faded pine beneath.

“I still can’t believe we lost,” I mumble to the wood. “And that I go home tomorrow.”

“I’m not sorry I stopped Erica from making it through, though,” Mason says adamantly.

“Me either. She sucked.”

He huffs out a low laugh.

A few feet ahead, on an incline that dips low to the ground, one of the cars sits imprisoned by the brush and weeds that have clustered around its wheels and up over its sides. Mason stares at it as we pass it.

I sigh. “But I wish you could have still won.” I wanted one of us to get to hold our dreams in our hands. Erica ensured it wouldn’t be me, but Mason had made his choice by giving the jar of well water to Ember.

“Right now, walking here with you is more important to me. Besides,” he adds, tugging me closer to his side, “think of everything you got to do this week. All those smaller dreams you made come true. Your trip wasn’t for nothing.”

I know that in my heart. If I hadn’t come here, I probably never would have found the courage to tell my parents the truth about how I feel and what I want for my future. Tess, Issy, and I might have grown farther apart, rather than closer.

“And I met you,” I say softly. The biggest piece of Fableland magic, standing warm and solid beside me.

We pick our way around the base of the coaster. Every few feet, planks are missing, exposing holes that peer down into an endless sea of leaves and grass and insects. Twice, the wood buckles beneath me, but Mason catches me smoothly before Ifall.

After passing between two more motionless carts and turnstiles with no arms, we’re standing at the top of a tall set of open concrete steps.

From here, we can see out over the whole park.

Thirty years of neglect have turned the space into a muddle of green and gray and brown, a sea of cement disrupted only by weeds and bushes choking any rides close to the ground.

Small pops of color strain from under the leaves, as if the carts call out to remind us of their presence.

Rising above it all is the pristine skeleton of the Hurricane. One of those steel roller coasters full of twists and turns. I pointat it.

“I want to go there.”

“Where did you think we’re headed?” Mason asks, offering me his signature smile. I reach out and tap the dimple that flares in his cheek. I wish I could imprint it on my fingertip. Hold on to it, to him, forever.

The grass is up to our knees in places as we approach the Hurricane, and my mother’s voice sings a litany of dangers in my head: poison ivy, ticks, snakes, spiders, needles.

“My mother would die right now if she saw me.” I shake my head.

“Of course, she’d also die if she saw me sitting quietly on a bench, so I guess that’s not saying much.

” Before scaling the next thatch of weeds, I pause and peer up at Mason.

The slowly setting sun backlights him in shades of pink and Creamsicle.

“I talked to her, you know. To both of them.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he asks.

“Apparently they were tracking my phone, and when it was with you all day instead of at the resort, they just…showed up.”

“Oh shit.”

“It was actually a good ‘oh shit’ moment, though. I was so upset from our talk, then from yelling at Tess and Issy, that I blurted out everything I was feeling.”

“How did they take it?” He guides me up the steps to the roller coaster’s loading area. An old sign reads Welcome to the Hurricane with the image of blowing wind swirling beneath it.

“Surprisingly well. This whole time, they thought working at the store was what I wanted because I never said anything.” I squeeze my eyes closed and pretend I’m at the top of this broken roller coaster, ready to slip over the first hill. “They said we’ll figure it out when I get home.”

His arms find me, strong and solid and real as they wrap around my waist. “So what’s the new plan?” His breath blows hot against my neck.

“Work at the store to save some money. Apply for jobs here. Come back once I get one.”

“In the story department?”

I press my forehead to his chest and nod. “I’ve already bookmarked the application to fill out when I get home. But if not that, something else.” For a moment, I breathe Mason in. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I’m coming back.”

His chin settles on the crown of my head and he whispers, “Good,” into my hair.

My heart dances against my ribs. I hate that every touch tonight feels like the last one, that even as I promise to come back, it feels like we’re saying goodbye.

Pulling away, I stare up at the track curling above us. It’s so tall it feels like you could touch the sky if you climbed to the top.

“Want to go higher?” he asks.

Using an abandoned roller coaster as a jungle gym doesn’t seem like the wisest of decisions, but I nod anyway. I want to see every piece of Fableland, accept every touch of magic it’s willing to give me.