Page 78 of Sinners Reunion

Frankie laughs as she looks up at him, and I wonder if this is healing that hurt little girl who didn’t get to do the three-legged race with her father. I hope it is. Murder really has a way of bringing people together.

I glance at the other teams. Everyone is at their Cattle station now, but we’ve worked our way into a solid lead. We gather our ingredients and hurry toward the pot, all of us covered in blood. Slippery blood.

It doesn’t matter who tumbled first. We all go down like red dominos. Instead of being angry, we giggle and scramble to grab the body parts before they roll too far away. Some of the other teams are gaining ground, but we’re laughing too hard to stand upright again.

“Get it together,” Frankie says through happy tears. “I don’t want to lose!”

“Right, right,” King says, then clears his throat. “Up and at them on three. One. Two.”

We grunt in unison as we get to a standing position again. As we hobble toward the pot, I see something break loose in King. The t-shirts and khaki shorts were a good first step, and that scruff is here to stay, but I’ve been waiting for the moment when he finally lets himself smile on the inside.

And I’ve just seen it.

“We’ve got them now!” he bellows, charging forward. “Keep it up, son,” he says to Maverick, who keeps calling out which leg to move. “You girls are brilliant! Keep stepping.”

Maverick keeps up that left-right-left, and Frankie and I keep stepping, both of us raising our knees a little higher under King’s praise. She feels that fatherly recognition she’s never known, but me? I hear that same praise when I’m on my knees in front of him, and now that’s all I can think about.

I had planned on getting the girls together after this, but now I think that might have to wait. After all, I haven’t properly thanked King for saving my life yesterday, and I did promise him a blow job if he saved all of us.

We reach the top of the stairs without another mishap, and we heave the body parts into the bubbling mixture. Shouts and cheers burst out of us as we look around and see that we’ve won.

Jim applauds and steps closer to unfasten our arms and legs. His cockatoo sits on his shoulder, shouting something about a secret uncle, and I can’t help but wonder what sort of shit this poor creature has seen if it has a vocabulary like that. It bobs its head, happy as a clam with all the shouting and hoopla.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Frankie asks once we’re free.

I look between her and King, then shake my head. “It’s not important. I’ll get with you at the next stop on the Oregon Trail.”

“You sure?” she asks. Maverick hands a rag to her, and she swipes blood from her face.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say as King does the same for me.

I definitely still need to run my little problem by the girls, but it’s gonna have to wait until after I celebrate this win with King. Seeing him cut loose has cut something loose inside me too, and not even a quadratic equation will stuff this desire back into its cage.

Maybe it’s time I remind King that he’s at risk of falling too, and I know just how to do it.

Chapter Twenty-Four

King

Iraise the CB radio. “Air Force Fun to RV There Yet, do you copy? Over.” I release the button and wait. Jim said he needed to talk to me after the event, and I’m just killing time at the front of his bus while he puts his bird to bed.

Static crackles before Josie’s voice comes over the speaker right as Jim returns to my side. “RV There Yet to Air Force Fun, I copy. Now hurry back over here so I can grease your cock with my⁠—”

My hand whips forward and kills the power. Jim clears his throat and looks anywhere but at me.

“Glad to see things are improving between the two of you,” he says. “Have you discussed the sloth with her? Is she more amenable to relinquishing her into my care?”

“Not sure,” I say with a shrug. “We haven’t discussed it much. I’d planned to at the dinner with Grim and Rose, but we nearly died, so it slipped my mind.”

Jim folds his arms over his chest and pouts. “You aren’t trying to help me get the sloth. You aren’t helping the Carter children reconnect. You aren’t doing⁠—”

“That’s a load of codswallop, and you know it. She’s already agreed to consider giving you the sloth. As for the Carter children, you saw how Frankie reacted today. The girl was over the moon, and we made that happen. We gave her that moment back.”

“We never should have robbed her of it in the first place.”

I close my mouth. I have no rebuttal for that. He’s right. It’s our fault Frankie’s father never showed up at that Father’s Day picnic. We didn’t think it wise. We didn’t want anything to interfere with our results.

That was well before the results stopped being important to us.