The Daughter They Sacrificed Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: House Rules

The summer show opened on Friday, and the print shop had three hundred posters to make by midnight on Thursday.

My post had cost us two days of phone calls.

I said so as soon as I came in, with my apron half tied.

"I'm sorry about the phone. I'm sorry you've had to deal with all of it, and I'm sorry that the copier is still smoking."

"The copier is always smoking." Flynn didn't look up from the plotter. "Stop."

"Stop what?"

"Apologizing for things that aren't yours. New house rule." He fed a sheet of paper in. "You didn't call anyone. You didn't write the video. You don't owe me for what other people did."

"It's your shop."

"It's my shop, and I make the rules, and that's the rule." He pointed at me. "First offense, you buy coffee."

I took a breath to apologize for apologizing.

Then I closed my mouth.

"Better," he said.

We worked.

The plotter hummed and the paper slid out in long wet lines, and I trimmed each sheet on the cutter with my hand behind the guide.

Around nine he brought me a stool and a paper cup of vending-machine cocoa and sat on the table across from me with his knees up.

"Fresno," I said. "You said you were from Fresno."

"I did."

"What's in Fresno?"

"My mom. A one-story house with a lemon tree and a mortgage I'm going to pay off before I'm thirty." He picked at the paper cup. "And my dad, sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

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