Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I immediately felt like shit about that. That was truer than true.
Lynn was older than me. I’d guess late thirties, mid-forties, and he’d been married when I’d met him. But soon after he’d moved in, the wife had moved out, and I’d watched it all go down from my front porch in disbelief.
She’d been caught cheating, and he’d kicked her out of their house. She’d begged and pleaded, and then she became angry, going as far as to hit his car with a metal sprinkler to show her displeasure at being caught.
Then the cops had arrived—Loki and Trance, two members of the Dixie Wardens MC, Benton, Louisiana chapter—and had taken her away in cuffs.
After that, Lynn had cleaned out her shit, set it on the curb, and I’d watched as the movers came to pick it up the next day. She was never to be seen again, and Lynn had established his place in our fucked up neighborhood.
We had an ex-preacher, who no longer liked to preach, directly across from me. Lynn, who I assumed was a cop at some point but never had it confirmed, lived next to him. An ex-con who had been convicted of killing his wife—though I’d looked the story up when he’d first moved in, and apparently his wife had been about to run him over with her car at the time. Though, he’d had no clue that it was his wife, at first. He had just reacted to a car that was coming at him in a parking garage, and he had nowhere to go since he had a pillar on one side, and a concrete guardrail on the other.
Then there was the sex offender.
Though, she wasn’t actually one. At the age of eighteen, she’d had a boyfriend who was sixteen. The parents had found out about their relationship and had her arrested for statutory rape of their son. They had a really fancy lawyer, and she didn’t have money for an attorney, a good one or otherwise. So, she had to use a state appointed lawyer who didn’t give one flying fuck about her since she wasn’t paying. The young girl had been charged with statutory rape and would be forever labeled as a sex offender. Though, she was really far down the block, and I didn’t see her all that often because she worked nights.
The person on my right was an older man who’d lost his entire family during Hurricane Katrina, and barely ever came out of his house unless he absolutely had to.
Then you had me.
Everyone knew my story.
And I’d thought that, at the time, Josh had fit on this street, too. But I’d been wrong, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t really a widower, either.
A man who was in mourning didn’t latch onto his neighbor and not let go.
“You’re distracted today,” Lynn said. “Do you need help with anything?”
My eyes flicked to Lynn’s, and I shook my head automatically.
“No,” I grimaced. “I’m okay.”
Second lie in five minutes. Good going, Morrison.
“You know, if you ever have a problem, you can come to me, right?” Lynn pushed.
I looked away, not able to handle the fierce protectiveness in Lynn’s dark green eyes. Green eyes that looked so much like Tunnel’s that it sometimes hurt.
Greatly.
I think that was why I’d first latched onto Lynn as I did. He’d reminded me of Tunnel.
No, not really outwardly.
Where Lynn was a tall drink of water, Tunnel was more of a shot of whiskey straight to the soul. He’d affect you faster and harder than anything else would.
Lynn was tall, muscular, but built more like a runner whereas Tunnel was tall, really muscular, and built more like a football player. Though, he didn’t have a thick neck and too many bulging muscles. He was more of a running back rather than a lineman.
Lynn had brown hair that was bordering on silver, whereas Tunnel had curly dirty blonde hair that he shaved off because he hated his curls. I’d, of course, adored them. I’d love when they started to get long enough to curl.
But Tunnel and Lynn’s eyes, they were so similar to each other’s that it was almost uncanny. I’d never met anyone with their eye color, and the minute that Tunnel died I’d met Lynn. Yeah, it was no wonder that I’d latched on and didn’t let go.
“Yeah, I know,” I nodded. “I’m nervous. Really nervous. I’ve never worked anywhere else.”
Conversation went sort of back to normal after that. We talked about how Lynn’s job was going–he’s a broker of some kind. We spoke about how Sienna was doing at school—terrible. We spoke about where his job was taking him to next month—South Louisiana. And we spoke about what my plans were once I got down to Uncertain. This, I still had no clue about, but I at least had an apartment to stay at thanks to the hospital hiring me.