Page 141 of Them Bones

“’The Mean One’, huh?” he mused.

“They think I’m a Grinch.”

“More of a bitch, really,” he said.

She laughed, and his heart swelled.

He didn’t know how long they talked, but when Midden appeared, a smile on his face, Shane realized that his ass was sore from sitting in one place for so long.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Okay… call me tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

“And the next day?”

“Okay.”

“And the next?”

“Yes, Laney. I’ll call you every day.”

“Okay,” she said.

They hung on the line.

“Alright, Mathers, wrap it up,” Midden muttered, sounding amused.

“I love you,” he said. He didn’t care that Midden was standing right there.

“I know,” she said, “I love you, too.”

Shane hung up, and Midden clapped Shane on the back. He was a good guy, never bugged the inmates who didn’t cause trouble, even slipped him a joint now and then that they’d smoke together in the yard at night when the other guards weren’t around.

“You look like you’re about to come in your pants,” Midden said.

Shane grinned. “Yeah… she likes that."

Midden snorted, and Shane felt like his prison sentence was already over.

One more month…

SHANE

Shane was so nervous he was sure he was going to be strip-searched as a suspected trafficker. His bag was between his feet as his knee nervously bounced and bounced and bounced, watching the clock tick down.

It was 8:09am, and his flight was due to start boarding any minute.

He’d been released exactly 48 hours prior, and the first thing he’d done – after smoking an enormous doob with Cody and Jenna who had picked him up – was buy a plane ticket to New York.

A TV hung above the flight desk, headlines scrolling along the bottom, and he mindlessly watched the endless weather reports and celebrity gossip, trying to keep from crawling out of his skin.

In less than two hours, he’d be on the ground in Manhattan. Laney and Dustin had some meeting in New Jersey with Henry Bard, but Laney said she’d be getting back to their apartment in Manhattan at the same time as he would, by the time he got a taxi through city traffic. He had their address written down on a post-it in his pocket.

Laney…

They’d spoken every day for as long as Midden would allow, Laney telling him everything about her life in New York. She’d made a friend, which was new… Laney had always been such a loner… a girl named Sophie who worked at a bowling alley.

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