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Vegas Strong
Vegas Strong
Vegas Strong
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Vegas Strong

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58 people killed. 500+ people injured.
Hundreds of first responders and civilians protecting and saving countless lives.
Thousands of Las Vegas residents coming together to help.
19 stories about the city we love.

October 1, 2017. It’s a day the world will never forget, and the people of Las Vegas will always remember. One man committed an act of domestic terrorism on a crowd of unsuspecting concert attendees and changed this city forever.

In the days that followed, a city that was bruised and battered proved just how strong it truly is. Blood banks had lines that never ended. Food was delivered to police stations, fire stations, and community centers. Massages were donated to therapists helping everyone who needed someone to talk to. Vegas Strong was on buildings, signs, and t-shirts all over a city that came together in unexpected and beautiful ways.

During those first few days, two authors had a late-night talk about what they could do to help, and this anthology was born. Authors who live in Las Vegas, or grew up here, were asked to write about their favorite places in Vegas or just Vegas itself. These are their Fiction and Non-Fiction stories. We hope you enjoy them and never forget that one person can make a difference or that love will always win against hate.

Jessica Arden, Paul Atreides, Joey Blue, Tera Lynn Childs, Rekaya Gibson, Chris Marie Green, Jessie Humphries, Sam JD Hunt, Thomas Hunt, Verlene Landon, Lindsey Leavitt, Gwyn McNamee, Mareta L. Miller, Ni'cola Mitchell, Crystal Perkins, Brian Rouff, Chelsea Sedoti, Daria Snadowsky and Mercedes M. Yardley

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 31, 2017
ISBN9781370992553
Vegas Strong
Author

Crystal Perkins

Crystal Perkins has always been a big reader, but she never thought she would write her own book, until she sat down and did it. She lives in Las Vegas, where you can find her running author events when she isn’t reading, buying too many Sherlock t-shirts online or watching the Vegas Gokden Knights. A mac and cheese connoisseur, she travels the country looking for the perfect version, while attending book conventions and signings as a cover for her research. She writes Romantic Suspense, New Adult, Romantic Comedy, Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, and even a little Horror!

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    Vegas Strong - Crystal Perkins

    Collide

    by Jessica Arden

    When you buy out a whole car on the High Roller observation wheel for yourself, you’re bound to get some strange looks. Especially when it’s Saturday night and everyone’s already been waiting in line for an hour. But a promise is a promise, and Sean had no intention of breaking the one he’d made to his little brother Mikey two years ago .

    The line moved, and Sean looked up from his phone with a frown. He’d almost completed the application to get a spot in the food truck festival next month, but his finger hovered over the submit button, and a familiar guilty feeling gave him pause. Damn it. The application was due by midnight, and if he didn’t go ahead with this, he’d have to sell the savings-eating truck collecting dust in his driveway.

    The attendant ushered him into one of the holding areas just before boarding. Sean watched the smiling, laughing people load into their clear plexiglass and steel globes before they made their way around the loop of glittering lights with the Strip in the background. He patted his messenger bag for what he’d brought with him and wished he could catch their enthusiasm.

    Two guys in football jerseys with too much cologne started into the holding area with him, and Sean tensed.

    Sorry guys, I’ve got a solo ride. Sean held up his ticket.

    Both dudes furrowed their brows with a guess you’re too good for us unwashed masses look.

    If only they knew the real reason.

    Sean sighed and looked in the opposite direction, only to find similar looks of reproach. But then he landed on a familiar face. They’d never spoken, but he’d seen her almost every Wednesday at the library after his grief group meeting. Always sprawled on a chair by the window, something defiant even in her relaxed posture, her striking gimlet eyes trained intently on a comic book.

    She looked at him now, her brows drawn together too, but not in disapproval. This was more like he was a puzzle and she was a grand puzzle master.

    For the first time tonight, the fog of sadness that buffered him from the world thinned. The corners of Sean’s mouth lifted in a half smile, and he raised a hand in greeting. Her enigmatic smile brought out a dimple in her cheek, and he felt a tug of longing. She was a puzzle to him too, and one he’d like to figure out. Maybe if things were different. If he could finally find a way to pick up the pieces and start moving forward again.

    She gathered her honey-colored hair and pulled it over her shoulder, trailing it over her olive green sweater that brought out her eyes. Something from Before—time seemed divided that way now: Before and After—stirred inside of him.

    You’re the library guy. Her eyes twinkled at the recognition in a way that made his chest tighten. So she’d noticed him, too.

    He nodded, lips tugging upward toward a smile. The whole sequence made him feel out of practice. He should take the chance to speak to her when she wasn’t concentrating so intensely on Paper Girls or Lucifer or Gotham Academy.

    She had a look about her like she’d been through the ringer, too. It was more a feeling than a thought he could trace to any concrete origin. Everything about her was bold and sure, from her ruby lips to the steady way she held his gaze. But there was also something restless to her, like the boldness was in defiance of a battle she was waging. And maybe unlike him, she knew how to navigate the way out.

    He had the sudden wild urge to ask her to join him. To have someone along so he didn’t have to do this alone again.

    The metal gate in front of Sean popped open, and the attendant motioned him onto the loading platform. He lingered a beat, with the mad invitation on the verge of spilling out. But then that familiar stab of guilt hit, like he was wearing a mental shock collar.

    Would he ever be able to do something in the pursuit of his own happiness without that sting? And its reminder that someone he loved would never have those experiences.

    With a half-smile at the girl whose name would still remain a mystery, he strode for the moving carriage and stepped aboard. Sadness overcame him as his memory echoed his brother’s voice from their trip here two years ago. Look at all the lights, Sean!

    He thought it might hurt less as time went on, but the weight that had settled in his chest never seemed to lighten.

    Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the library girl moving toward the next carriage. Their gazes held, his brimming with the grief of the last year and a half and the seemingly impossible desire to rebuild after all of it, and hers with questions and compassion. He preferred to stay under the radar lately, but in this moment, she’d seen him.

    And for the first time, he welcomed it. As much as he wanted to stay hidden, maybe what he really needed was for someone to see him and shake him out of this dark, awful place.


    Then mischief flickered in those green eyes of hers. She darted a glance beside her and then changed course, making a flying leap into Sean’s pod seconds before it skimmed the end of the platform .


    Sean’s eyes widened, and before he could process what was happening, momentum sent her careening right for him. His arms shot out on instinct, wrapping around her to steady them both. A heavenly blend of vanilla wafted up from her hair, and the softness of her body against his awakened something long-frozen inside of him .

    A laugh shook free from his chest from the sheer unexpectedness. She met his gaze with a half-guilty smile.

    Hi again, she said.

    Protests from the workers were silenced as the doors shut, enclosing the two of them inside.

    For a few blessed instants, he gave in to one of those serendipitous moments that happened in this city that he’d almost inured himself to. He took in the flecks of gold in her green eyes and the openness in her smile that made him immediately want to match her impulsive act for impulsive act.

    But then the mental shock collar buzzed again.

    He broke contact and stepped away from the girl he didn’t know if he was allowed to want.

    ***

    Crap. That was Zadie’s first thought as the hot library guy retreated as far away as humanly possible inside of the ten-foot-wide car.

    Dread washed over her, and she gave herself a mental face-palm. She just had to unravel the reason he was all alone so much that her feet started moving before before she’d had a chance to evaluate the plan. She had to know that one of these times, following her whims would land her in a whole vat of awkward.

    Did I totally misread that? Because if I did… Heat crept to her cheeks. I just thought—the way you were looking at me back there, you looked like you could use the company.

    He looked at her with a pained expression.

    I’m just going to go over here and die of chagrin. She pointed to the red bench that rimmed one of the support beams. You go ahead and do your thing and pretend I’m not here. This was going to be the longest thirty minutes of her life.

    No—wait. You didn’t misread anything. He raked a hand through his chestnut hair.

    But? She bit her lip.

    But there was something I needed to do up here.

    All by yourself?

    That was the idea.

    She sighed, feeling awkward all over again. Then I threw a wrench in all your plans.

    He dropped his messenger bag on the seat, leaving a little tuft of yellow plush that looked like a Pokemon peeking out. Another mystery. He caught her looking and covered it up.

    It’s okay. Company’s nice, too. He took another step closer and cast his gaze to the lights of the Strip sprawled out around them as the car slowly ascended into the sky. Despite her lingering mortification, she couldn’t help but be a little dazzled by it. She pressed her palms to the cool plexiglass and watched the Bellagio fountains dancing, probably to Andrea Bocelli or an old Frank Sinatra tune.

    Next to her, library boy adjusted the cuff of his shirt that was rolled up to the elbow, the corded muscles of his forearms flexing. With his pressed Oxford and cords, he had a sort of hot fictional professor thing going on, but without all the tweed. He cleared his throat like he was trying to get something out, but it wasn’t coming easy.

    Have you ever wanted something and wanted the exact opposite thing at the same time?

    Zadie turned her eyes back to the lights and flexed her right hand. She thought of the way she wanted to continue illustrating for hours on end but hated how much pain doing the thing she loved now inflicted. She nodded slowly and thought of a concept from her favorite book.

    "Sort of an alar-type thing: holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time."

    This brought a rare smile from library boy. "You’ve read The Name of the Wind?"

    Zadie grinned. Only six or seven times.

    I run the audiobook on a loop when I need something to take my mind off of things.

    They rose through the air, and she thought of quote she’d heard somewhere about a book recommending a person and felt some of the out-of-placeness on both of their parts dissipate.

    I’m Zadie, by the way. In case you’re wondering who you’re trapped here with for the next half an hour.

    Sean. He looked over at her with those soulful brown eyes. That spark of awareness sizzled down her spine the same way it did where their gazes collided at the library on Wednesdays between her studying visual techniques she might never be able to recreate again and him wandering the stacks with Y: The Last Man or Saga issues tucked under his arm. Sometimes, he looked as lost as she’d been last year, like the answer to the way forward was hidden in the stacks somewhere between Gaiman and Stevenson. Besides having great taste in books and making her chest go all warm and fluttery, she’d had the feeling he might get what she’d been through because he’d had his own demons to slay.

    Nice to finally meet you, he said and flashed her a smile more luminous than the neon skyline all around them.

    Her curiosity about his story and why he was up here piqued again, but she had a feeling asking too soon would make him retreat. She elbowed him playfully instead. You didn’t have to wait for me to hijack your High Roller pod to meet me, you know.

    Sean grinned, and his arm brushed hers, and the contact sent her veins racing with a charge of heat.

    You always look so engrossed in your comics. I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, a wise woman once told me never to come between a girl and her books.

    Zadie smirked. Generally sound advice. But in the future, you can come say hi.

    Okay, I will.

    So are you origami, salsa dancing, or grief group? Zadie asked. Those were the other three classes that ran at the same time as the one she taught at the library.

    A crease formed between Sean’s brows, and he cut a glance at his messenger bag before he masked whatever was going on in his head. There’s an origami group? Maybe I should check that out instead. So, are you a salsa dancer then?

    Zadie laughed at the thought of her learning any kind of choreography. No, I teach a water color painting class for kids.

    An artist, then. Is that why you study your comic books so intently?

    Zadie shrugged, feeling the restless dissonance between the artist

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