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)
His grin is immediate. “That’s the second time you’ve invited me up to your bedroom, Lowyn McBride.”
I didn’t mean it as innuendo, but it definitely came out that way. I want to say something clever back. Maybe even something flirty. But I can’t. So I don’t. I just… stand there. Unsure what happens next.
Collin can read a room. So he does that thing he does, trying to smooth over rough edges. “Yeah. I’m gonna sleep on the couch.”
He looks disappointed, but only for a moment. That’s not his style. Not at all. Collin Creed isn’t a beggar. And he’s polite to a fault. Even if he wasn’t all these years he’s been gone, he’s reverted back to that nice young man he was a teen. And he’s not going to pressure me, or make me feel guilty, if I’m not sure where this is going.
Truthfully, I know damn well I will be sleeping with Collin Creed. And it’s probably gonna happen sooner rather than later. But tonight it’s late, and I’m tired, and I don’t know how to have the conversation that we must have before anything can go any further.
So I just walk to the stairs on the far end of the living room, and start up them. But when I get to the top I stop and look down. He’s not there at the bottom. “Good night, Collin.”
“Good night, Lowyn.”
He hasn’t moved. But he was waiting.
After Lowyn goes up to bed, I just stand there on the edge of the living room that used to be mine. I didn’t snoop last night, and I did sleep on the couch, but I did look around. At least down here. Only because she changed the layout a little. The hallway where I blew that man’s brains out is gone and in its place is a pantry. She made the two other small bedrooms down here into one big office. And she moved the stairs, which used to be at the end of the death hallway, opposite the back door, to the other side of the living room.
The living room here in her house is a lot like the one in her shop. Same look and feel, at least, even if the pieces are not twins. The color scheme from the kitchen—tangerine and sea-foam green—continues into this room too. A couch that looks aged—but I don’t think it is—is the centerpiece. It’s a sectional, like the one in the store. But this one is wide and is covered in a peachy-gold velvet. A very nice textile to fall asleep on, I know from experience.
The chairs are overstuffed here, a contrast from the sleek, minimalistic ones in the get-the-look set-up at McBooms. But they are nearly the same color of a Caribbean sea, except this pair’s brightness has been toned down with a shadow, like a storm hanging out in the distance.
There is a large, overarching umbrella lamp and the familiar credenza. But this time I feel like there might be a hidden bar inside instead of a record player. I can’t help myself, I go look.
Indeed. There is. All the fixings, at least. But no booze.
Lowyn’s house—Lowyn’s version of my house—it’s got a family feeling to it. Like teenagers hang out here on Friday nights and play Monopoly and records. It’s comfortable. And safe. A room filled with colors once bright, now even better slightly muted.
It’s nice. I approve.
But it’s all very weird.
I was gonna sleep in my room last night, but I went in there and found some old pictures and it was just too much.
It’s too much tonight, too. Especially after dealing with Jim Bob and Simon, my dad’s replacement. He was trying really hard to make me like him. He was telling all about his sermons, and his son, who is his disciple on stage for the show, and I just didn’t wanna hear it.
That part of my life is over. And I’m not stupid, so I know that all the people in charge of the Revival—up to and including the new fuckin’ preacher himself—are thinkin’ that I might just slip back into my old role.
Which was never mine in the first place, so what the fuck, ya know?
I think signing that contract was a mistake. I think I should maybe try to get out of it.
But it’s probably not possible. And it’s just one year. Not even. It’s one season. Which is only eight or nine months long, depending where Easter falls each year.
How much can go wrong in eight months?
I blow out a breath, pick up my duffle bag, and hit the bathroom for a shower.
When I’m done, and I come back out to the living room, I find a pillow and a blanket sitting on the couch for me. The pillow is down—pretty much the softest thing my head has rested on in over a decade—and the blanket is tan chenille with big old orange flowers woven into it.