Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
My heart hurt for it.
“You’re going home,” Niles decided.
I frowned at him. “I’m not.” I nodded at the computer screen. “I’ve got three articles to go through, one to copy edit, and one more to likely completely rewrite because Anna would’ve been too busy drooling at the college boys to get anything on the game itself,” I listed. My responsibilities were more than mounting, as Niles had to continue laying off ‘nonessential’ staff in order to keep the doors open and the printers hot.
He straightened, folding his arms. “I’ll take care of it. That’s my job. And we’ve got unpaid interns from the high school. I’ll put them to work. They fuck it up, we’ll blame it on them.” He narrowed his eyes when I didn’t move from my chair, knowing me well enough to understand how stubborn I was.
“This is an order, Lauren,” he continued. “Go. Home. You’re no use to us if you pass out on your keyboard, and I can’t afford the lawsuit if you do.”
I stared at him, though I reasoned the power of said stare was hindered by the fact that my throbbing head stopped me from putting all my effort into it.
Which meant Niles won.
I sighed dramatically. “I’ve never taken a sick day the whole time I’ve worked here,” I snapped.
He nodded in triumph. “Yes, which means you’re well overdue for one. Take the day. And tomorrow if needed.” He held up his hand as I started to protest. “And I know the idea of two consecutive days off is deplorable to you, so I’ll allow you to work from home. Tomorrow. Not today,” he clarified firmly. “Today you go home, get yourself situated on the sofa with bad TV and worse junk food.”
I raised my brow. He knew me. Which meant he knew I didn’t watch bad TV or eat junk food. I was more than a little obsessive about what I put into my body, determined not to poison it, to make it healthy and live a long life that wasn’t shortened by choices that brought about short-term pleasure.
“Up!” Niles demanded, shaking me out of my thoughts before they ventured to a dangerous place.
I did as I was instructed because he was right, I wouldn’t be able to get any work done as I was right then. Even with my glasses, the computer screen was blurry at best; if I tried to edit anything, I’d likely make it worse than it was to begin with.
Niles squeezed my arm, his smile rare but warm when it appeared. He was a hard-ass, but he was also a good man. He’d treated me as somewhat of a daughter, since he made the paper his life and didn’t have much outside of it.
“You call me if you need anything, okay? And I don’t want to see you in here tomorrow if you’re wincing at the fucking light like you are today, okay?” He didn’t wait for my response. “Okay.” Then he turned, storming about the office, shouting orders and chastising people for missing deadlines, telling them they’d be working at FedEx if they didn’t “pull their fingers out of their asses.”
My eyes touched Lucy’s old desk, and inexplicably I missed my friend. She wasn’t the closest of my friends—I didn’t even have close friends—but she was important to me. She was kind. Cared about me. Didn’t judge me. Had a great sense of humor. Was just a nice person to be around.
But she was in LA, living her journalistic dream, even if it had almost gotten her killed. It had gotten her stabbed, more accurately.
To me, getting stabbed on the street after a drug lord put a hit out on you for exposing him was nothing short of horrifying.
When I’d called her, she’d been light and breezy. “It’s nothing, really. Just a flesh wound. And you’re not a real journalist unless someone tries to kill you, anyway.”
Yeah, she was fearless.
Maybe that’s what I missed most, seeing that fearless, carefree aura around me. Pretending for a couple of moments that I might be like her.
Now I didn’t have any illusions to cling to about what I was.
That was all on my mind as I walked slowly and carefully toward my apartment. It was just off Main Street, facing the ocean, and I loved it. An ocean-view apartment would’ve been out of my price range anywhere else, even here where property prices were modest, but I’d bought it when the market was good with the small inheritance I’d received from my grandmother when I came of age.
It was eight months after the thing I did not speak of or even think about, and I was twenty-one years old.
Maybe before things turned dark and gray and hellish, I might’ve used the inheritance to buy a backpack and a one-way ticket to travel the world like I’d always dreamed. Like we’d always dreamed. But then it happened. And things like taking off to Europe for a crazy adventure were more terrifying than staying in one place, which was bad enough.