Page 51 of Love at Full Tilt

Mason steps onto the edge of the Hurricane’s curved track and helps me up beside him. We scoot along the edge like we’re walking a tightrope, him first, me clinging to the back of his shirt.

When the steel rails turn into giant strands of DNA spiraling around us, we use the various bars and ladders to climb from piece to piece, pointing out birds’ nests and trash and random shoes and a doll (creepy) caught in the loops.

There’s something serene in Mason’s face as he leans down to pull me onto the next straight shot of track.

His eyes siphon off the blue of the sky, and his jaw doesn’t clench the way it usually does.

As if up here, where it feels as though all we’d have to do to brush the clouds is stretch up our arms, the weight of the world can’t touch him.

“Lia, what happens when you leave tomorrow?” He stops, still holding my hand at the small of his back, where he’s been using it to shepherd me along behind him.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I say quietly. “If I’d won that money, this would be so much easier. I’d have a timeline. A real sense of when I would be back.”

I want concrete answers. I want to be able to make solid promises.

But all either of us have are maybes and somedays.

I can feel that buzzy feeling threatening my limbs again.

Brushing past him, I mount the metal stairway beside the Hurricane’s first descent.

I scale it about halfway to the top, then sit.

A minute later, Mason settles beside me.

The sun is moving across the horizon, and it gilds the plants and metal around us, melting them to burnished gold. Ahead, the steeples of Reddingshire Castle jut into the sky as if they’re level with us. The corners of other roller coasters curl around the castle like clouds.

Clenching my hands into fists, I jam them into my lap and turn to him.

“I know you don’t do magic and promises and all that, but it feels like there’s no version of me you’re not a part of now.

So if we say goodbye, then you’re going to be this absence I carry with me like a ghost. I don’t want a ghost, Mason.

Especially not yours.” I take a deep breath to steady myself.

I’m sitting at the top of a roller coaster and it’s not nearly as scary as the thoughts in my head right now, the things I need to say to him so I can leave here with no regrets.

“I think…I think that I could love you someday.” I swallow hard.

I’ve never said those words to a guy before, and yet, with every step we’ve taken through Cloud Kingdom tonight, I’ve become more certain they’re true.

“I feel like this thing with us could really become something.”

He closes his eyes. “Lia, it already has.” When his eyes open, they catch on the top of Reddingshire Castle, the point farthest from us.

Even though there’s still an hour until it’s dark, the lights in the parks have begun to pop on, casting everything in the distance in a hazy, ethereal glow.

This week, I’ve spoken my mind more times than I thought I ever could. And every time, it has helped change something. With my parents, with Tess, even with Mason, though it hurt. But this time, I need him to be the one to tell me what he wants. He already knows where I stand.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

He faces me, his gaze locking with mine.

“I want us to be together. I don’t care how far away you live.

I can’t let you leave tomorrow and know I’ll never see you smile again, that you’ll never make me laugh again, that I won’t have you to talk to, to make me see the world in a more magical way.

” He brushes a few strands of my hair off my temple. “I don’t want to say goodbye. I can’t.”

I rest my chin on his shoulder so I’m staring into his profile.

I can feel the rise and fall of each breath move through him and into me.

“Then we won’t. We’ll text and call and email.

” A burst of wind shakes the structure beneath us and tries to snatch the words from my mouth.

“We’ll find our own path.” The same way I’ve done with everything else this week.

This thing with Mason and me, it was never what I thought. We weren’t rivals. Or allies. We weren’t a summer fling. From the moment our eyes met, he was always so much more.

I don’t know if he’ll still be that once I go home, once our lives move forward, once he’s no longer a car ride away and there’s more than a breath’s space between our skin.

But I’m not ready to let go. To fall without him.

And it’s clear he’s not either. Which is all the promise I need right now.

I angle my head, tipping my chin up so my mouth finds his. His body melts against mine as we sink into a deep kiss. As if he’s finally letting go of all the fears he’s been grasping so tightly.

I let him tug me closer, let him kiss me with abandon, my own lips just as urgent on his.

I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I need to imprint his touch, his mouth, onto my skin.

I need to remember every sensation, every word we spoke to each other.

Every smile that broke across his face. It’s all proof that this was real, in case the distance between us ever starts to feel like too much.

Mason’s mouth drifts to the shell of my ear. “We’ll make our own magic,” he whispers against my cheek.

I draw him back into another kiss. “We already have.”