They lived in the car for three days before Lincoln got a job at a pizza place in Port Orange. It just so happened that he went in to ask for a job less than fifteen minutes after the prep cook walked out. Lynn waited for him in the parking lot for two hours, then took off, texting him that she would be back when he was done. She spent the next four hours driving around and putting in job applications. It took her another week, but she finally landed her own job waiting tables at an Applebees near the race track. Lynn didn't want to be a waitress because the work was gruelling and the pay was low. Her first few shifts, she made next to nothing in tips. On Friday and Saturday, she made close to one hundred dollars apiece, though, which was nice.

Neither she nor Lincoln made very much, so they both started looking for another job. Lynn's shifts usually lasted from 4 to 10pm so her days were free. Lincoln's were from 7am to 3pm, so his afternoons were wide open. Lynn left work everyday with a tight back and aching feet, but she pushed herself to get another waitressing job specifically, partly as a challenge to herself and partly because it was ready money. Sometimes she left with only twenty or thirty dollars, but she always had something in her pocket. They were able to rent a room at a motel with weekly rates and get by, though they never had much.

In late July, there was a race at the speedway and thousands of people from all over the country flocked to Daytona Beach. The streets, hotels, and beaches filled up to max capacity and every night for nearly a week, Applebee's was slammed with wave after wave of customers. Lynn had never been so busy in her life but she made a killing on tips. Around that time, she also started working at a breakfast place on the corner of Herbert and Clyde Morris in Port Orange. Sundays, they were packed, and she left with close to a hundred dollars.

Lincoln had trouble finding a second job but finally got one at a gas station from five to midnight three days a week. Lynn didn't like it because gas stations were always being robbed, but they wanted to get an apartment, so they needed the money.

For two months, they saved everything they could and hunted for a place. In early September, they signed a lease for an apartment on Clyde Morris Blvd. It was just inside the South Daytona town limits. If you had a good arm like Lynn, you could stand at the bus stop out front and throw a rock into Port Orange. The landlord, a guy named Mike, was easygoing and rarely came around, though his minion, a half-retarded man in his fifties named Dexter who lived for free in the unit three doors down fro Lynn and Lincoln, was always on patrol. If anyone stepped out of line, he stammered at them and threatened with a call to Mike. "I'll c-call M-M I'll call Mike on y-you."

Their first night, Lynn and Lincoln slept on sleeping bags because they had no furniture and ate Chinese takeout with plastic silverware. The place had a single bedroom with a master bath, and a living room and dining room separated by a kitchen. It was small, but after the motel, it was massive, and with no furnishings, every sound they made reverberated from one end to the other. It may have been a sad and pathetic sight to an outside observer, but they were deliriously happy.

Biting the bullet, they bought a couch and a TV from Rent-a-Center and had them delivered. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

For the rest of the year, they saved what they could and spent only what they had to. They needed housewares, so while Lincoln was at work, Lynn went shopping at Goodwill, getting plates, cups, silverware, pots, pans, and other miscilanaious things. She spent over a hundred dollars which stung, but it had to be done. In just a few short months, she had become a family finance Nazi who hated putting money out for anything. She would try to get a deal on dented cans at Piggily-Wiggily and ordered off the dollar menu whenever she went to McDonald's, which wasn't very often at all. She immediately put everything she made into a lockbox in hers and Lincoln's closet and deposited it into their joint bank account as soon as she could. Through hard work and frugality, she and Lincoln managed to get it up to 3,000 dollars...then the first of the month hit and it went down to 1,500.

Saving was a constant battle, and for every step forward they took, they took three steps back. They finally caught a break when their tax returns came in. They filed separately and got a thousand apiece, which went right into their account. That was March, which also happened to mark the annual tradition known as Bike Week. Bikers from one end of the country to the other rode into Daytona like a swarm of locust. Everywhere you looked, Harley-Davidsons and crotch rockets buzzed and rumbled down the streets and gangs of fat weekend warriors in leather and denim congregated. Both of Lynn's restaurants were busy every single day, and Lincoln worked overtime at the pizza place. For eight days, Lynn's shifts were a blur of activity. She rushed, ducked, dodged, pushed, and shoved her way through packed dining rooms and chaotic kitchens. She balanced three and four trays of food at a time, carried dozens of drinks on the same tray (without spilling a single one because she was awesome), and bussed tables when the bus boy got overwhelmed, which happened at least three times a shift. She was sore and exhausted when she got home from work, but she made so much money it was crazy.

A year after she and Lincoln left Royal Woods and their family, Lynn called the Royal County Courthouse to see if there was a warrant out for her arrest.

There was not.

Lincoln was listed as a runaway. When he turned eighteen, she decided that they would call Mom and Dad. Why and what she was hoping to accomplish, she didn't know. Deep down she wanted to smooth things over. She loved Florida and couldn't see herself going back to Royal Woods to live but she didn't want to go on cutting her family out of her life. She and Lincoln had deleted all of their social media accounts and changed their numbers. They hadn't spoken to Mom, Dad, or their sisters since they left. Lynn missed them all, even Dad. She didn't know if she and Lincoln could ever look back, but she needed to try.

A week after Lincoln's birthday, Lynn called her mother's cell. Her stomach rolled with anxiety and her palms were damp. Lincoln was at work and she was alone in the apartment. She hadn't told him she was going to make the call. If things went wrong, she didn't want him to know it ever happened.

Mom answered on the third ring, sounding winded. "Hello?"

It had been less than a year and half since Lynn heard the sound of her mother's voice, and hearing it now after so long brought a lump of emotion to her throat.

"Hey," Lynn said, "it's me."

She could almost hear the air being sucked out of whatever room her mother was in. "Lynn? Oh, my God, where are you? Where's your brother?"

"He's at work, Mom," Lynn said. "We're okay."

"Where are you?" Mom demanded.

There was no way Lynn was going to tell her that piece of information. She specifically bought this phone brand new and programmed it with a California number to throw Mom off in case she tried to come after them somehow. "We're in an apartment and we're doing well."

"Where?"

Lynn sighed. "I'm not telling you that. We'd like to not go to jail for loving each other."

"Lynn," Mom said miserably, "look...your father's sorry. He overreacted and he...shouldn't have done what he did."

"No, he shouldn't have."

"But he did walk in on his eighteen year old daughter having sex with his sixteen year old son. Anyone's bound to overreact in that situation."

Lynn rolled her eyes. "He was calling the police on us, Mom. I could understand him screaming or even hitting us, but trying to put us in jail? That's a little different."

Now it was Mom's turn to sigh. "I know. I told him that and he understands that. He misses you. I miss you. But...we just...he's your brother, Lynn. Why? That's disgusting."

Lynn bristled at her mother's remark. "We're in love," she said. "And nothing's going to change that."

"Oh, Lynn…"

"I get what everyone says about incest being gross -"

"It is. Even science says so."

"I don't care. We've already talked about it, and we're not going to have kids. We aren't going to pollute everyone's precious gene pool so you don't know to worry about that. I can't help loving him, Mom. Anymrore than Luna can help loving Sam. People used to say two girls having sex was icky but -"

Mom cut her off. "Lynn, honey, he is your brother. Your. Bro. Ther. What you're doing is wrong on so many levels. It -"

"I don't care," Lynn affirmed. "People said the same thing about gays and interracial marriage. That didn't stop people from loving each other."

"Lynn...there's a difference between two men falling in love and two siblings falling in love. It's not the same thing."

"It is to me."

Mom took a deep breath. She was likely beginning to see that nothing she could say would dissuade Lynn from loving Lincoln, and nothing she could say would. Lynn did not want to disown her parents and her siblings, but if that's what she had to do, she would do it in a heartbeat. Family was important, she fully believed that, but Lincoln was more important than anything else.

"Okay," Mom relented. "Will you come home?"

Lynn hesitated. Her eyes darted around the apartment, which had filled up nicely since they moved in all that time ago. The furniture was comfortable and familiar and being here made her feel good. Also...there was never any snow, which was a huge plus. "Well...this is home now. But maybe we can come visit."

"I'd like that very much," Mom said, "all of us would."

When Lincoln got home, she told him about the call and he frowned slightly. "I don't know," he said. "What if we go back and they call the cops on us?"

"They wouldn't do that," Lynn said.

But would they?

"We'll talk about it closer to Christmas," Lincoln said, and that was the end of it.

In early December, Lynn brought it up again. She had ben thinking long and hard about what Lincoln had said and now she wasn't sure they should do it. It was too risky.

He agreed.

"Maybe for Mom's birthday," he said.

That was February.

February came and went.

They didn't go home.

"Maybe Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving came and went.

They didn't go home.

At some point, Lynn figured, she and Lincoln would go back to Royal Woods, but not now. She was being truthful when she told Mom that they were not going to have kids, but she had been meditating a lot on the matter and realized she wanted them anyway. Soon, she would float the idea of adoption to Lincoln.

But that would come later. For right now, they had a life to build…

...and a life to live.