Page 33 of The Pack's Knotty Runaway
“Right,” I say. “So. How do you stand it. Doing everything right, knowing that doesn’t actually mean you won’t lose.”
Bram sets his glass down and looks at me.
“You don’t,” he says. “You just... pick.”
I tilt my head.
“You can be so afraid of the frost,” he says, “that you don’t plant the tree. And if you don’t, you’ve guaranteed nothing grows. Or you plant. And you take care of it as best you can. And you accept the storm could come. And if it does, you figure out how to regrow.”
The words tangle in my throat for a beat.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Well, according to our parents, yes.” He smiles.
“Also, sometimes you cry in your room,” Reed adds after three seconds, dimple fully deployed.
“Or,” Ash says, leaning in the half-inch he hasn’t already, his gaze sliding down my face and back up. “You drown your worries at a fancy bar.”
My face goes hot. I take a sip of cider I don’t entirely feel going down, a sudden warmth settling low in my stomach. Fresh slick.Again.
Come on, Luna. We are in public.
“MILLER.”
Hal’s voice cuts the air from across the bar and I almost drop my glass.
“We need worthy opponents over here!” He’s gesturing at the dartboards with the dart still pinched in his hand, next to a guy in coveralls, grinning.
Reed lets out a slow whistle. “Demand from the public.”
Ash twists in the booth to look and Bram raises one eyebrow at me.
“You in, VP?” Reed asks, eyes already bright.
I slide out of the booth, grinning. “Let’s go, Miller boys.”
14
Reed
Hal Brody chokes when he’s winning.
Every time. Give the man a four-point lead and he gets cocky, starts narrating his own greatness to the whole pub, and throws his next three shots straight into the wall.
So we keep it close. Let him stay cocky. Let him think he’s got us.
We’ve been doing it for forty minutes.
On purpose.
Well... mostly.
“Twenty to go,” Maggie calls.
She’s got the chalk in one hand and a dish towel over her shoulder, keeping the score diligently (a guy who tried to correct her addition got cut off for the night).
“Brody’s team is one shot away from winning,” she says, tapping the chalkboard. “Hal just needs to hit the double-sixteen ring. The Millers are trailing, you need a double-ten just to stay in the game.”
