“That’s okay. I’ve had a lot of time to think about who I was and who I want to be. Maybe you need some time, too. The main thing is that things will be different. I’m done with being that old Chase. Forever.”

Chase had hung up the phone, feeling a million pounds lighter. She walked downstairs and handed Olivia the phone. “Done.”

“And?”

“Went very well. You can check communicating my feelings for my mother off the mental health checklist.”

Olivia nodded. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m a different person.”

And Chase truly felt that way as she searched for Spencer in the sea of people at the festival. He should have arrived in Cotter’s Creek thirty minutes ago. She’d left his bracelet, bought with the money Olivia had paid her for painting the shutters, at the front gate under the name Roman Suede. He’d said he would come incognito so no one would recognize him, and Chase was worried that his disguise might be a seventies porn star. How did one make a guy who looked like Spencer fly under the radar?

“What did you do to your hair?”

Chase yelped and spun toward the glass window to her left, where a guy in camo, wearing a bright-orange hat and sporting a grizzled beard, leaned against the pane.

“Wait,” she breathed, her eyes widening. “No way. Spence?”

He turned, lowered his mirrored glasses, and grinned. “Whatcha think about the beard? I had makeup do it, and then they loaned some wardrobe to me.”

“You look like a country boy,” she said, not bothering to hide her amusement.

“Excellent,” he breathed with a grin. “You know, I thought about getting a chaw, too, to complete the whole rural look.”

“A what?”

At that moment, three teenage girls approached the booth. Spencer quickly shoved his glasses back on and walked away. The girls looked at him suspiciously, then at each other. One giggled and made a face.

Chase suppressed a smile. Obviously they thought Spencer was totally weird.

They weren’t far off.

She took the money and secured the bracelets on the girls’ wrists. Seemed it was important to do it for them so that they couldn’t do it loosely to shrug off and pass on to someone else.

“So can you leave? It’s been forever since I’ve ridden a Tilt-A-Whirl or the Ferris wheel,” Spencer said, leaning back onto the ticket booth so she could hear him. “And your hair is different, but I like it. You look like I always thought you would look.”

Chase made a face. “And what’s that?”

“A cool chick.”