Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
With the rain, I’m hopeful my prints are already gone, along with any other evidence of my visit to the grave. I shouldn’t have driven out there at all, but I needed to face it one time before I left.
It’s such a lonely place. Dark. And cold.
Forgotten.
Engines zoom past, and I count four motorbikes speeding to a halt in front of the firehouse. My elbow rests on the door as I rub one of my fingers over my lips, watching Farrow Kelly climb off his bike. No helmet and his hat on backward, he swings open the door that I put on that fucking place twelve years ago. Three others follow him in.
Quinn won’t have the future she deserves with someone like him. I don’t want Green Street to touch her at all, and if that means I can’t be in her life either to ensure my past doesn’t spill over onto her, then I’ll continue to live without all of them.
Even though it feels like it’s going to hurt to leave this time a little more than it did the first.
I was so desperate for something of my own back then that I sold my integrity for nothing.
It didn’t seem like it at the time. Young and excited, we only saw life getting better and better. Remembering that first day, it’s amazing how little I anticipated what Green Street would become.
Or how shit would change for me.
“What are we doing here?” I griped, climbing out of Lance’s 4Runner.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he called out, running for the old building. “Come on.”
Drew Reeves jumped out from the back seat, leaving his black ski cap and buffalo plaid button-up on even though it was clear we weren’t hitting the slopes. At least, not yet.
Lance broke his arm last week falling wrong on a black diamond run, and I thought he insisted on coming today so he could sit in the lodge and get drunk, watching us have fun.
Instead, we were in Weston, or what was left of it. This town had been dead since I was a kid.
Following him around the side of the building with its door missing and all the windows broken, I winced at the stench that hit me as we entered. Damn, did an animal die in here?
The water line from the flood more than a decade before rose up the walls about two feet, and various pieces of furniture sat broken, ripped, and decaying. I wandered deeper in, the large cement floor and closed garage door to my right allowing for one fire truck, or a few smaller vehicles, to fit inside. I let my head fall back and gazed up at the fireman’s pole.
“It’s the old firehouse,” Lance explained, “but it’s got a kitchen, bathrooms, and a shitload of space.”
“For what?” I asked.
Drew kicked a piece of wood out of the way, hands in his pockets as he strolled.
“A hangout.” Lance grinned.
Drew and I stared at him.
Like a biker clubhouse? I laughed to myself.
“I mean, it’s the deadfuck of winter,” he pointed out, gesturing to his arm. “I’m useless on a snowboard, and I know you two won’t have any fun on the slopes without me, so what do you think?” He held out his arms like we were eleven and he’d found us a treehouse. “By summer, we could elevate the hell out of this place. Clean it up, a little paint, a bar…”
“Someplace away from girlfriends…” Drew chimed in.
And Lance added, “…with our other girlfriends.”
I shook my head, knowing exactly what would happen in this place, and all of it with the express purpose to fuck something.
Might be fun for a night, but…
I don’t know. Maybe we could put in a pool table. A gaming system. Could be cool, I guess. Someplace to hang out—away from family and school—where we could relax. Maybe that was what I needed. A home of my own with a family I made.
Madoc never made me feel like an outsider, but it’s been a long time since he didn’t have to stretch his attention. Fallon, his brothers, the kids… I’ve wondered for a while if I should still be one more person he has to tend to.
Maybe it was stupid that I still hung around? I was an adult, after all. And they weren’t my family.
“Do we rent it?” I asked.
“We can buy it,” Lance told us, lowering his voice as if he was telling a secret. “The bank that owns it is out of Chicago, and they consider the real estate here a non-starter. If we get approval from the remaining city council, it’s do-able between all of us.”
Or Lance and me, anyway. Drew didn’t have any money, but Lance was trying to be nice. I wouldn’t have to use all of my inheritance from my dad for college.