Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
It was magnificent.
It was stunning.
And Zachary could feel his victory slipping away. He closed the shade quickly, unable to look at it—or the man who’d created it—for one more second. He didn’t get Saturday’s mail on Sundays, so he’d have something to get on Monday mornings as part of his routine, so there was no need to leave the house.
He needed to rethink his Halloween plans, find places where he could turn up the volume, because this? This was a shot fired across the bow and Zachary was sure as hell going to return fire.
Three hours later and Zachary’s stomach was in knots. He loved his design of a ghost ship cutting through dark, monster-infested waters! He’d been working on it since late November, and it was perfect. He didn’t want to change it. But he couldn’t trust the committee to make the right choice.
Zachary paced around the house manically. He had already compromised his last three designs for the firm, and he’d be damned if he was going to do it for his own Halloween decorations. Why did Bram have to come here?
He was ruining everything.
Zachary didn’t precisely mean to do it. But before he knew what he was doing, he had grabbed a tin of yellow paint left over from the previous year’s design in his hand, and was stalking across the street.
Up close, the dragon was even more amazing. Zachary snarled at it and it snarled back. But since it was just wood, it couldn’t stop him when he tossed the can of sunshine yellow paint all over it.
As paint hit wood, Zachary felt a moment of spiteful elation. But in the second after, when the beautiful sculpture dripped paint onto the grass, Zachary felt light-headed.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh god, shit!”
That’s when he saw something move behind the window of Bram’s house—something tall and Bram-shaped. He’d been seen. He stood frozen for a moment, wondering what he could do, but there was nothing to do. So he turned and ran back to his house, shut the door behind him like he’d been running from an ax murderer, and closed his eyes.
This was low. This was so low. He couldn’t believe he’d done something so mean, so destructive, so incredibly petty. And to someone who’d just moved to town and didn’t know anyone.
Zachary barely made it to the bathroom before puking.
Chapter Seven
Bram
“Did you just...” Bram goggled as he watched through the window as Zachary Glass splashed paint on his dragon creature. At first, Bram had thought it was silly string, something he and his siblings used to spray on each other’s belongings as a prank. But one look at Zachary’s face in the moment after he doused the dragon disabused him of that notion.
And he’d kind of thought they were becoming friendly. Unless...maybe Zachary meant it in a friendly way? No! God, stop giving everyone the benefit of the doubt when they’re obviously being an asshole, he heard his sister Moon say.
But the truth was that Bram had begun to enjoy Zachary. He wasn’t quite sure why yet. The man was snarky, uptight, and borderline rude, didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, and dressed like he was on Mad Men. But there was just something about him that drew Bram in. He was intense and passionate, unapologetic and very straightforward.
Well, if you didn’t count the fact that he was currently scurrying from the scene of the crime.
Bram had a choice. You always had a choice. He could choose anger and confront or resent Zachary for what he did. Or he could decide that Zachary’s act was a prank. A mean prank, but a prank nonetheless. And Bram could respond in kind.
He chose the latter, and he called in his family for backup.
Chapter Eight
Zachary
Monday morning it was all Zachary could do to open his front door, but he couldn’t start his workday without going through his routine. He kept his eyes on the ground, as if maybe that meant he wouldn’t see Bram sitting on his stoop behind the paint-splattered dragon.
He would just apologize. Right. He took a deep breath.
“Morning, neighbor,” Bram called. His voice was cheery and open.
What the hell? Why would Bram be nice to him when he’d been so awful? Was it possible that it wasn’t Bram he’d seen through the window? That Bram didn’t know it was him? No, surely not. He’d seen Bram see him.
“Um. Morning,” Zachary got out, trying to figure out what was wrong with this sunny man. He opened the mailbox absently and reached inside. There should be an issue of Global Architecture. But the moment the mailbox opened, something hit him in the face. Shocked, he reeled backward. Had a bomb gone off? Had the world finally ended?
He sputtered and opened his eyes. His mailbox, the ground around it, and presumably he himself, were covered in...glitter?