For the Love of the Law

Chapter Eighteen | Just Like The Movies

Flynn grunted, turning back to me. "I almost won it." 

I laughed, patting his cheek. "Almost."

He scrunched his nose at me playfully and grabbed my hand, tugging me towards some of the other games. We passed them, surprisingly, and I found myself listening to Flynn ask the lady inside the ticket booth for two tickets to the ferris wheel. I started to get a little giddy with excitement. 

The ferris wheel rocked. Sometimes literally, especially when Sophie was in your carriage and you stopped at the top.

We got in line behind what looked like a group of teenagers, and we didn't have to wait long before I was secured in a small carriage with Flynn pressed up beside me, heading upwards into the starry night. I looked down as the ferris wheel spun and we got higher and higher, the view becoming a beautiful display of carnival lights, the dark natural scenery around it, and the towns lights of houses and streets and buildings a little way away. I sighed and looked up, to the stars.

"Having fun?" Flynn's voice was closer than I had first anticipated, and when I looked over to him, I wasn't surprised to find him right there, his beautifully structured face too much to take in so up close. I nodded slowly, moving even closer to him.

Why had I ever tried to avoid this man again?

The past few hours had made me feel more alive than I had been in months, if not years. We had spent more than Flynn was willing to admit on the carnival stall games, he had dared me to a cotton candy eating contest (I won, of course), and we'd even been into one of those really corny photo booths and Flynn had pulled faces that had me doubling over and clutching my stomach with laughter when I'd seen what the pictures had come out like. There were tears, streams of them, because someone who was so attractive and yet had such unattractive facial expressions seemed like the funniest thing to me. 

And now we were stopping at the top of the ferris wheel, the view around us beautiful, the man beside me even more alluring. 

And I didn't feel like that girl who worked all day and stressed over her family. And Flynn didn't feel like a cop.

We felt like two teenagers out on that first date that took things somewhere. That didn't end with an awkward "I'll call you," at the girls doorstep. I was a girl, and he was a boy, and we were having the best time, riding ferris wheels and eating tons of sugar and trying to win stuffed toy alligators.

And I felt like I was finding first love. And that was frightening.

"I am," I mumbled back to his earlier queston, getting a little lost in his blue eyes. There was no other way to put it other then the fact that they were just too enticing. 

"Good, that's good." He laughed lightly into the kind of chilly night, and way up high, the moment felt intimate. Like I could forget the people in the carriage just below us. Like I could forget everyone below us for a little while and just be wrapped up in Flynn.

I should have been scared at how I was feeling; how hard it had hit me. The sudden emotion that had been hidden away in the back of my mind, not ready to come out until it was sure, really sure.

Now it was so adament, it rocked through me at full force, to the point where I got slightly light headed.

Was I in love with him?

Surely not. No way. I liked him to the point of pain, sure, but not love.

Never love. I'd seen where that path led.

"I was a little nervous you wouldn't like my date idea." Flynn chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "But I knew you would tell me straight if you didn't, so I had back up, just in case."