Page 76 of Sinners Reunion

Maverick raises his hand. “Same for me. I have a bad habit of bumping my big toe against any and everything.”

“Might not be a bad strategy to put Frankie between us,” King says to Maverick. “We can haul her around.”

“And me?” I ask.

King turns to me with a smirk. “I’ll just drag you.”

“Ever the gentleman.” I roll my eyes.

Jim, Gary, and Blayne go around the groups, helping everyone get fastened in place with colored bands. Jim helps those two once everyone else is connected.

I hope King isn’t grossed out by my sweaty leg touching his sweaty leg. I mean, I’m grossed out, but I hope he isn’t.

“I always wanted to do one of these races,” Frankie says. “When I was in the fourth grade, my mother took me to the city’s Father’s Day Picnic. She put me in a frilly dress with frilly socks, and I felt so foolish. But she said my father would be there.”

“Did he show up?” I ask.

Frankie takes a deep breath. “No. He didn’t. I sat and watched the other little girls in the three-legged race with their dads, and I tried not to cry.”

“Your mom sounds like a real bitch.” It isn’t my place to say, but I say it anyway. “She makes my life-giver sound like a saint. Your dad isn’t much better. I’m sorry he wasn’t around.”

“Yeah, that’s why she’s dead and he soon will be,” Maverick says with a laugh. “Frankie had enough of the bullshit.”

Frankie laughs too. “At least I get to have the race now, and King’s been like a father to me. This makes up for it.”

The starting pistol fires, startling all of us. Or maybe it just feels like we’re all startled because we’re hooked together. Either way, two of us try to run toward the woodpile while the other two fall down.

Maverick and I are the other two.

“On second thought, maybe we should have put the two of you on the inside,” King says. He grunts as he heaves me back to a standing position.

At least we aren’t the only clumsy assholes. Looking down the line, only Cat, Bennett, Aven, and Quinn have made any real ground. The rest of us are a jumbled mess of legs and arms.

“This is stupid, Jim!” Kindra shouts from beneath Ezra’s arm. “It’s like the shittiest game of Twister I’ve ever played.”

We get upright again, and Maverick takes the wheel. He assigns lefts and rights to each set of legs and the two on the outside. “I’ll give us a cadence. Just walk until we get there, okay?”

We nod, and he gets us going

“Left, right, left, right,” he says.

I fall immediately. “My bad! I forgot which one was my left.”

He starts again, and I get it right this time. We hobble down the field until we reach the woodpile, and we’re not even last. Next to last, but not last! Each of us grabs a log, which proves difficult when our hands are connected. My arms are too short and my hands are too small, and Frankie is having the same problem.

“Just let us carry the logs. You two do your best to walk,” King says.

Being strong, independent women who don’t need a man, Frankie and I both hate this option, but we relent because we can’t risk falling further behind because of our pride. We focus on moving our legs to the rhythm of Maverick’s voice, and it carries us all the way to our pot.

We dump off the logs and hurry to the next station. Shrimp and lobster tails lie entombed in aromatic seasonings and slippery butter. Baby red potatoes, small ears of corn, and the most fragrant andouille sausage I’ve ever had the pleasure to smell surround the seafood.

The other seasonings and ingredients must already be in the broth. Now I almost wish we could eat it. It smells incredible.

“Are we really wasting all this food?” I ask as I eye a fat lobster tail. “Could we maybe make our seafood boil without the man meat?”

King snatches our arms as he leans forward and encircles the majority of the ingredients. Maverick cleans up the rest with his free arm, and we start toward the pot again.

“Jim doesn’t only have a vested interest in saving animals,” King says as Maverick keeps us in step. “We’re preparing a meal for a small cannibalistic tribe Jim took in. Their section of rainforest was being shorn to shit, and he thought the Louisiana reserve most closely mimicked their homeland.”