The Player's Club: Lincoln Read Free Page A

he’s not going to be available.”
    “Oh? Why not?”
    “Because he just went to jail for embezzlement,” Lincoln told him, and was gratified when Finn’s eyes widened. “How, exactly, do you think he afforded the teams to go to Everest?”
    Finn sighed. “I mean it, I’m not like George. He wanted to use the club as his own private fraternity, an ego trip, and he would’ve cut anybody out that didn’t agree with that. That’s not what I want at all,” he argued. “Right now, it’s predictable and frankly, I’m getting bored with it.”
    Now Lincoln drew his mouth in a tight line. “You know why I started the club, Finn.”
    Finn ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “You know, I can barely remember.”
    “We were in that hospital room,” Lincoln said. As if he could ever forget it. “You’d just finished up a bad bout of radiation, and I’d totaled my car and had both legs in casts.”
    Finn grinned. “Well, yeah. It’s not like I’m going to forget that.”
    “And…”
    “And we both decided that if we were almost going to die anyway, we might as well do something fun before it happened.”
    “Well, that was more your thing. I just figured that it was time I stopped acting like an idiot, trying to kill myself with stupid stunts, trying to run away from my past.” A past he’d never really gone into detail about with Finn, he acknowledged. Not that Finn had ever asked. His loyalty and his willingness to accept Lincoln as he was were what made Finn like a brother to him.
    Finn nodded. “So we wrote our list. Did our challenges.”
    “And you got bored,” Lincoln pointed out, with a grin of his own. “So we decided to bring on some other people. Like your cousin George.”
    “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
    “It was a good idea,” Lincoln said. “Not George, but sharing it, making it into the club. Now, whenever I bring on a new member, that’s what I see. I see myself, back when I thought life was just something you conned your way through, something that didn’t matter. Before we pushed ourselves to try stuff we’d barely dreamed about. And I know the new guy is about to change his whole life, and he doesn’t even know it yet.”
    Finn let out a breath. “Okay, I feel a bit ashamed.”
    Lincoln shook his head. “Wasn’t meant to make you feel ashamed. I’m just telling you what I feel the club’s about.”
    “Live like they were dying?” Finn asked.
    “Cliché, perhaps,” Lincoln said. “But I’m not complaining. And neither are the other members, Finn.”
    “But if they’re going to move to the next level…if we’re going to keep people in the club,” Finn persisted, “I think that it wouldn’t hurt to bring on someone who can show them something new. That is not just traveling the world or skydiving. We need something new. ”
    “All right, Finn. Whoever you want to bring on next, I’m okay with it. Go ahead.”
    Finn smiled. “Thanks, man. I’ll see who I can find this week.”
    “Just…” Lincoln clenched his jaw. He knew the club was sort of his family—his baby. He had some trouble letting go. “Let me meet him first, okay?’
    Finn shrugged. “Okay, Dad. You ready to get back in there?”
    They were going to “stomp” Jerry into the Native American tribe. It was something Jerry had wanted to do all his life—something he’d dreamed of. Something he’d swore he’d do before he died.
    “Yeah,” Lincoln said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

2
    JULIANA SMILED WHEN her phone rang. “Hey, Finn.”
    “Hey, Jules. Listen, my friend and I are just about there…are you sure about the address?”
    “Yes, absolutely.”
    There was a pause. “Because…it’s a store.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    Another pause. “Are you telling me you want to meet us at Agent Provocateur?” There was a laugh in his voice.
    “Yup.”
    “Um, mind if I ask why?”
    “Because I could use some new thongs,” she said. “So come