Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Her fingertips brush against the back of my hand as she reaches for the package. She looks up and our eyes meet once again. “Hi,” I say.
She smiles at me. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“No. Well, yeah. Thanks for the blanket and pillow, by the way. I was ordered not to look around without permission, so I had to forgo those two luxuries that first night.”
She’s still smiling, but she doesn’t say anything back. Just takes my clothes and disappears down the hallway. “Don’t shave.” She calls this out as I hear her opening up a cupboard in the laundry room.
I scrub my hands down my face again. “You don’t think I should?”
“That’s one perk of playin’ the bad boy, Collin. You get to keep that sexy shadow on your face.”
Oooooh. She called me sexy. My grin is wide and my whole body gets warm.
I help myself to a cup of black coffee and then wander down the hallway to watch her as she waves the steamer wand over my black trousers, making the wrinkles disappear like magic. She’s smirking at me, giving me a side eye, but not in a bad way.
I tease her about this smirk. “Lowyn McBride, you look like you’ve got yourself a secret.”
Her cheeks puff out with her laugh. Like she had every plan of holding that laugh in, but there was no way she’d manage it.
“What? What’s so funny?”
She takes a deep breath and pauses her magic-wanding to look at me. “What were you talking about in your little meetin’ last night?”
“Which one? I feel like the whole town had me cornered at one point or another.”
“The one I interrupted. The one with Jim Bob and Simon.”
“I told ya. Preachin’ shit. Which is not gonna happen.” She’s still looking at me. Not smirking, but… “You do have a secret. Spill it. What’s going on?”
She sets her magic steamer wand down on the laundry counter and takes my trousers off the hanger. Then she folds them at the new crease and offers them to me. I put out an arm and she drapes them over it. Then she picks up my shirt and puts it on a hanger. She resumes her steaming and her talking. “Well, Collin, ya see, things have changed a lot around here since you left.”
“I’m followin’. So continue.”
“And part of those changes is a… a…” She makes a face, like she’s desperate to find the correct word to describe what comes next. “A narrative. Yeah.” Now she smiles, proud of herself. “A narrative. A story that runs the whole season. It starts on opening day—today.”
“OK.”
“And it comes to a crisis on Fourth of July.”
“All right.”
“And it ends with a cliffhanger on Christmas Eve.”
“They play this story out all the way up to Christmas Eve? Doesn’t that kinda ruin the festivities?”
“We need to set the story up for the next season, right?”
I sigh. “OK. So what’s the story?”
“Well, it was a story about a girl from Revenant who runs away with a boy from Disciple. We’ve done this one before. Twice, actually. First, the girl was from Disciple and the boy was from Revenant. Then we did a side story with Bishop once, too. Boy running away, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Maybe I’m just being paranoid here, but I’m getting the feeling that this is somehow leading up to me.”
She points at me with her wand. “You are correct. It does. I got a fat envelope with your costume delivery this morning.”
I narrow my eyes. “What was in it?”
“A new story.”
“About me?”
“Not you personally. But yeah. You’re the story.” She points to the shirt and waves a hand at my trousers. “You are a gangster. You left town for Revenant twelve years ago—walked out on your daddy and your family. And now you’re back—”
“And I’m the bad guy? But I’m security!”
“You seem to think that being security involves walking around with the word ‘security’ printed on the back of your body armor, Collin. And that’s just not how things work anymore. You’ll have your gun, or whatever you’re gonna carry, but you’re gonna act out your part just like all the rest of us.”
I sigh and rub my hands down my face for a third time. “I should’ve never signed that contract.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad. It’s actually quite fun.”
“What part do you play?”
“I’m not a real player. I’ve got too much going on with McBooms. So I’m mostly just a nameless face in the background.”
“Where is this envelope?”
“On the kitchen counter. Right by my little purse.”
I go out to the kitchen and find the thick envelope made of tan paper. It’s got one of those string-tie fasteners over the flap, the kind where you tie the string around a little paper button to keep it closed.
I untie the string and take out a thin, spiral-bound booklet. On the front it says, “Season Nine: The Prodigal Son Returns.”