Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 39689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 198(@200wpm)___ 159(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 198(@200wpm)___ 159(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
Curled up on the cushion with my bag at the ready, I grab a few hours of sleep before I’m woken by the angry shouts of a middle-aged man, none too pleased to find a stranger asleep in his backseat at six in the morning. Thankfully, I made sure both back doors were unlocked before I fell asleep, so I’m able to scramble out of the car with my bag, just as the man starts to dial 911.
I run. The man doesn’t chase me, but I don’t stop running until I’m far away. Panting and reeling in the empty parking lot of a shopping mall.
My throat burns and my side aches. If there was anything left in my stomach, it would be all over the sidewalk right now. Smoothing my blond, sweat-dampened hair out of my face, I squat on the pavement and force myself to breathe.
It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I left the group home, and already, I’m so fucking tired. Not to mention hungry. There’s no way I can do this again tonight.
I call my uncle. Knowing he never picks up until well after ten, I leave a voicemail.
“Please call me, Craig. It’s really important.”
Leaving the mall, I take the highway overpass into a neighborhood, away from the morning traffic that’s starting to pick up. I walk until my feet are sore, until I find myself standing in the middle of an elementary school playground. With school closed for the summer, the playground is mine to conquer.
I allow myself a moment to forget about last night and the fact that I’m virtually homeless. I climb the monkey bars. I zoom down the slide. I pretend I’m six years old again, without a care in the world. But the fantasy only lasts until my empty stomach starts to coil in on itself.
Taking a seat on a swing that’s too short for me, I check my phone. My uncle hasn’t called or texted. He doesn’t call back all afternoon, and by five o’clock, I know he isn’t going to.
With only ten-percent battery life left on my phone, I know I need to make the next call count. The only person in the world I can turn to now is the last person I want to ask a favor of. But it’s either that or sleep on the play structure tonight with one eye open, which isn’t sleeping at all.
Reaching into my pocket, I grasp the crumpled sticky note I forgot to get rid of. Smoothing out the creases, I take a deep breath and thumb Mary’s cell number into my phone.
She answers on the second ring.
“It’s Teagan,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Do you think you could still find me a bed?”
Chapter Three
Jonah
Stare at the same set of letters and numbers long enough, and after a while, they’ll stop making sense.
Go on. Ask me how I fucking know.
Leaning back in my chair, I drop the receipt I’ve burned into my retinas onto the mountain of invoices covering my desk. You’d think after running my own business for six years, I’d be used to all the paperwork. The bookkeeping and invoicing, the keeping track of payroll.
No such goddamned luck.
I wasn’t built to work in an office. Service is in my blood. I grew up in a family of cops and vets. I was a cop for ten years, and I had it in my head that I would wear a badge until the day I took a bullet. That day came a hell of a lot sooner than I anticipated.
My phone rings with an incoming call somewhere beneath the stack of papers on my desk. I feel around for the device and check the caller ID before answering.
“Hey, Mare. What’s up?”
“Jonah, I need a favor.” The lack of a Hello tells me this must be important. My little sister doesn’t ask for favors. More often than not, she’s the one bending over backward to help everyone else. Hell, she’s the reason I’m on my feet today.
After I got shot, Mary refused to let me sit around and fixate on everything I’d lost, not while I still had two perfectly good hands to work with. I hadn't been unemployed since I was fourteen, and there I was, at thirty years old, with no fucking clue how I was going to fill my time. Money wasn’t the problem. I had my pension, and I was willing to put in the work.
What I needed was a purpose.
I’m not going say I found my passion in construction, but with Mary’s encouragement I did find the will to get off my ass and do something, which eventually led to me and my oldest pal starting our own commercial and residential contracting firm.
“Are the girls okay?” I ask, referring to my nieces.
“The girls are fine. I need to rent your guestroom.”