Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Men filter in, watching, but not a single person races to help him.
“Macon!” the guy cries from inside the car.
His wife only sobs quietly now.
I come to Macon’s side. “Stop,” I order him.
“He’s a drain on my time and Bay resources.”
“You can’t kill him.”
He doesn’t reply, simply watching the crusher come down. The windows blow out, and I jump. Fuck this. I start after the guy. I have to get him out of the car.
But Macon yanks me back into him. I fight, but he holds me tightly, forcing me to watch.
I don’t know what I was going to do to help the guy, but no one else is moving.
“Your pretty little ass wants to go to bed with us,” Macon growls in my ear, “but you don’t want to wake up with us. This is the Bay.” He shakes me. “Fun, isn’t it?”
The hammers close, flattening the car more and more, the earsplitting screech of metal all we can hear over the man’s screams. I shake, nearly in tears as the guy disappears to the floor of the car, forced down.
“People say they want to die all the time, Krisjen,” Macon says. “Most don’t.”
His arm around my waist tightens.
“They’re just tired of fighting to live. They’re tired of problems.
Tired of nothing ever changing …” He pauses, his voice softening as his chest rises against my back. “Tired of money. People. Themselves. So tired of themselves and being in their own heads.”
I shake my head as the car gets smashed.
“Right now he’s remembering the color of the wrapping paper at his fifth birthday,” Macon tells me. “How good a cheeseburger tastes. How he wanted to have a store of his own someday, learn how to surf, and see some redwoods. The time he laughed so hard while watching a movie with his mom one night, how it felt to wake up to the smell of good food cooking, and how it felt to kiss a beautiful girl for the first time.” His voice drifts off as if the memories are his, too. “And that one time the night air smelled like flowers, the top was down, and his song came on. The wind was a perfect temperature …”
A tear spills down my face. It’s like he sees it. As if he’s remembering it himself.
His voice is a whisper. “Right now he’s remembering everything he’s forgotten.”
He releases me and the compressor stops, the man still crying out from inside the car.
While I exhale in relief, the men move over and rip off the door, pulling him out by his feet.
He falls onto the ground, wet with sweat and red from the panic, but otherwise uninjured.
They don’t help him up, though.
Macon walks over, peels him up off the ground, and I know he’s about to hit him. Or threaten him.
But that’s not what happens.
He hugs him.
I see him whisper something in the man’s ear as the guy cries and his wife climbs to her feet. Then he wraps his arms around Macon again, sobbing.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Aracely suddenly says at my side.
But I don’t care. “He’s a hypocrite,” I bite out. “He drinks.”
“Yeah.” She turns to face me. “Because he cares more about their lives than he ever did his own.”
19
Krisjen
If Macon’s way of doing things for that guy works, then everyone will believe it’s right.
Knowledge, skill, talent, hard work—they help, but how much of the outcome just ends up being the luck of the draw? A fifty-fifty shot? That man could sober up, find inner peace, grow stronger …
He could also hurt himself. Macon is constantly playing the odds. Do any of the people here know how brittle that game is?
No.
They trust him.
They put all their security into one man because he’s the reason they eat when they lose their jobs and stay in their houses when medical care takes all their paycheck.
I crane my neck under the shower spray, my hair pinned on top of my head as I let the hot water spill down my back and legs. What do I know about anything, right? I didn’t grow up here, with these challenges. There’s a reason he doesn’t look at me or talk to me.
The shower curtain slides open, and I pop my head up, seeing Trace step into the shower with me, naked.
I go wide-eyed. “Get out!”
He pulls the curtain closed again, holding his arms out around me to feel the water.
“Trace,” I grit through my teeth. “Get out!”
“I got a date,” he grumbles.
“Right now!”
He pushes me aside and leans back under the water, wetting his hair. “I won’t be long.”
I cock an eyebrow, moving as far away from him as I can. My eyes fall to his flaccid dick. “You never are.”
“Ouch.”
His nonchalance as he closes his eyes and smooths back his hair under the water makes me feel … I don’t know.