Read The World is a Stage for Free Online Page A

again.”
    Larson’s lower lip quivered.
    “For fuck’s sake. I’ll go. Don’t break the poor kid into tiny usher pieces.”
    Michael turned to Jillian and smiled. “It really was nice to meet you. I’m sorry to run off before I could give you those goat-wrangling pointers, but all you really need to remember is to go for the eyes.”
    Jillian smiled directly at Rachel and gave her shoulders a little shake, obviously feeling the triumph of his kindness and eager to flaunt it.  
    No judgment. If ever a woman needed to be put in her place—a tight, cramped, uncomfortable hole where she’d be forced to smell her own shit—it was Rachel Hewitt.
    “It’s okay. Give me a call sometime,” Jillian added.
    “Hey, Larson—you want to walk me out? Make it official?”
    “Sure. Thanks, man. I’m sorry about before.”
    “You’re just doing your job.”
    Larson stood up a little straighter. Atta boy. A good three-fourths of confidence was just letting yourself feel it. For the rest, the kid would have to do a few thousand bench presses.
    “This satisfy you, Your Highness?” Michael smirked, turning back to Rachel. “Or would you prefer to get the cops involved? Maybe just the handcuffs? Some whips and chains?”
    He had the pleasure of seeing her turn on her heel and storm away, that ass making yet another grand departure to feast his eyes on. A righteous ass, that’s what it was, all mad and stomping and full of motion. He wondered if she did it on purpose.
    Still. Score . Michael O’Leary: One. Rachel Hewitt: Zero.
    He cracked his knuckles and allowed Larson to lead the way out the back door. He’d tell Peterson and Molly that he tried, but even Michael O’Leary had to know when to bow out of a fight.  
    It wasn’t fear, of course.
    Michael just wasn’t keen on losing his balls.

Chapter Four
    Cradle Will Rock
     
    In Rachel’s experience, early morning visitors to Evergreen Cemetery took the shape of one of two things.
    The first were one-half of elderly couples divided by fate. They were the little old men who’d lost their wives to breast cancer, the little old ladies mourning husbands taken by heart disease—coming almost every day, like clockwork, walking slowly and resting along the garden paths. It was as though a lifetime of saying “good morning” to the same person was an impossible habit to break, and there was no way for them to start their day without it.
    It wasn’t sweet, and Rachel wasn’t about to start cooing and clucking over their devotion the way Molly did. She didn’t approve of any kind of addiction that dictated a person’s actions so heavily. Caffeine. Alcohol. Drugs. Love.
    Especially love.
    The second types of visitors were runners, herself included. The gym was too confining, and Rachel much preferred the rustle of the barren tree branches and the crunch of her shoes on brown grass grown stiff and iridescent with cold. She wasn’t the only one. Nodding politely to a woman in a tracksuit, Rachel felt the rush that came when she finally hit her stride.
    Determination urged her to keep going, past the rows of somber headstones and sad elderly people until fatigue made it difficult to focus on anything but the movement of each leg. Forward, forward, always moving ahead.
    But she didn’t. She slowed to a walk and wrapped her arms over her stomach. It was fairly chilly out, the morning March air showing little puffs of her breath as she ran. Her body was an odd mixture of hot and cold, simultaneously covered with sweat and goose bumps. If she wanted to keep the adrenaline going, she needed to turn and run the rest of the way home.
    But she couldn’t.
    One hundred and seventeen rows back from the entrance. Eight places in from the path. The grave to the right of it had a little cherub sculpture that always seemed to Rachel to be too sickly sweet for the rest of the simple rectangle plaques. Someone showing off. Cemeteries were the worst for that.
    A huge spray of pink