“No.”
“Where’s your stuff?”
That made him laugh again. “In storage.”
“Oh,” I said again. Because my brain works good sometimes.
“And I didn’t quit my job. The sheriff and I had a long talk.”
“Wait, really? Bobby, that’s amazing. God, that’s wonderful. You’re such a good deputy.”
“I don’t know about that. But the sheriff made some convincing points.” His eyes crinkled. “Among other things, she suggested you might get yourself killed if I wasn’t around to help.”
“Okay, first of all, how dare you?”
That big, goofy grin bloomed in full, and for an instant, he was the old Bobby again. “So, that’s that. I’ve got my job back. I’m not going anywhere. Everything I own is at the Park & Store. I am officially homeless. And most important, we’re still friends.”
“You’re not homeless,” I said. “You can stay here as long as you want.”
His expression changed again, and once more I got the impression that he was searching my face for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard. Something grew in the silence—grew and grew until it was a weight on my chest and I couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath. That he might say something. Or that I might. Or that he might cross those last, final inches—
And then the moment passed, and he said, “Thanks. Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”
He didn’t move. And neither did I. And that sense came again: of something building between us, something so big that there wasn’t any room left for air.
The grandfather clock began to toll the hour, and whatever it had been, it was gone.
Bobby’s crooked smile could have meant anything. “Goodnight, Dash.”
“Goodnight, Bobby.”
I didn’t think about it; if I’d thought about it, I would have honestly, literally, instantly died. I leaned in and kissed his cheek. Just a brush of my lips, really. When I stepped back, my face was hot.
Bobby’s hand rose like he wanted to touch his cheek, but he stopped himself at the last moment. His eyes were wide. And then, slowly, he grinned.
The clock was still tolling. Twelve chimes. Twelve hours. Midnight, I thought. And then, more clearly: It’s a new day.
I caught Bobby’s gaze, held it for a moment, and let a smile of my own slip out. And then I said, “Welcome home.”
Broken Bird
Keep reading for a sneak preview of Broken Bird, the next book in The Last Picks.
Chapter 1
“Where’s Bobby?” I asked.
No one bothered to answer me, but that might have been because the library was so noisy. For a library, I mean—a low-grade roar of voices just begging to be shushed. Indira, Fox, Keme, Millie, and I took up a full row of seats in the multipurpose room. It looked like the whole town had turned out for tonight’s event; we’d even had to surrender the seat we’d been saving for Bobby to JaDonna Powers—which was honestly probably a good thing, because if she’d sat in front of us, I wouldn’t have been able to see past the mountain of church hair. Say what you would about Hastings Rock (its shockingly high murder rate, for example), the people here loved books. Tonight, thriller-writer extraordinaire Marshall Crowe (author of the Chase Thunder series) was stopping in Hastings Rock to promote his latest book (Thunder Clap, book seventeen in the Chase Thunder series).
The library’s multipurpose room was decked out for the occasion—well, for multiple occasions, which was probably the point of a multipurpose room. At the far end of the room was a temporary stage, complete with podium and chairs and an easel displaying a poster of Marshall Crowe’s handsomely grizzled face. (Chase Thunder, by no coincidence, was also handsomely grizzled, and in literally every book of the series, yet another tall, striking, dark-haired, Amazon-esque woman fell prey to his charms—only to be abandoned when Chase Thunder inevitably moved on.)
But the library also had paper snowflakes hanging from the, admittedly, water-stained acoustic tiles, and it had glittery snowmen taped to the walls, and an enormous candy cane propped in the corner. (God only knew why they had it or what it could be used for—clubbing children over the head after they’d been lured inside a gingerbread house seemed like the only practical possibility.) Tinsel-strewn paper chains hung everywhere. With so many bodies crammed into such a small space, the smell of overheated synthetics mixed with the odors of aging bindings and carpet that needed to be torn up. One of the things that had struck me, when I’d first come to Hastings Rock, was that it was such a cute town, and everyone seemed to love books, but it had such a dingy little library—it just didn’t make sense.
Regardless, everyone seemed to be having a great time. Mr. Ratcliff was nosing around the stage, clearly hoping he’d pick up some interesting tidbit he could share with the rest of the town. Princess McAdams (not a real princess) had come dressed from head to toe in camouflage, and it looked like she’d brought the stock of a shotgun, presumably for Marshall to sign. And Mrs. Shufflebottom—librarian, wearer of uncomfortably tight cardigans, and apparently, for reasons unbeknownst to me, my self-appointed nemesis—was currently trying to force a family of six (tourists who had apparently wandered in during the off season) into the already overfull space. It was enough to make me, with my charmingly mild case of social anxiety, want to bite someone.
And still no Bobby. I checked my phone, but I didn’t have any missed messages from him.
“Dash, aren’t you SO EXCITED?”
Even over the hub of voices, Millie’s carried.
“I’m excited to get out of here,” I said. “Does anybody know where Bobby is?”
“You know who you should have invited?” Millie asked. (It wasn’t really a question.) “You should have invited DAMIAN!”
I scowled, but it didn’t have any effect. Damian was a bum—and a surfer—I’d met a few months before. He’d been irritatingly persistent about asking me out, in spite of my rejections. He was also Trouble, with a capital T. “Damian went to Hawaii. Permanently, I hope. Seriously, nobody knows where Bobby is?”
“He’s probably running late, dear,” Indira said.
“I know he’s running late,” I said. “I mean, he’s not here yet, is he?”
Indira looked at me. The thing about Indira is that she’s probably a good thirty years older than me, still strikingly handsome, utterly composed, and has a lock of white hair like a witch.
All of which were good reasons for me to mumble, “Sorry. It’s all these people.”
