Welcoming Marshall

The shrill trill of Lily's ringtone sliced through the predawn stillness, shattering the peaceful tranquility that had blanketed the Blackwood home. She was already awake and alert, having forgone sleep in favor of anxiously pacing the confines of her childhood bedroom in the dwindling hours before dawn.

"Blackwood," she answered, her voice laden with a combination of poorly masked exhaustion and wired anticipation.

"Well, good morning to you too, sunshine," Carter Wilkins' trademark gravelly baritone crackled through the tiny speaker, thick with undisguised sarcasm. "Though I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to find you're already up and raring to go. You always were a bit…over-eager."

Lily rolled her eyes at his gentle ribbing, silently grateful that some things never seemed to change. "You know me," she countered with a hint of forced nonchalance. "I like to be prepared."

"That's one word for it," Carter chuckled, the sound so achingly familiar that it plucked an errant string of nostalgia deep within her heart. "Listen up, kiddo – I'm calling with a bit of a heads up."

She stilled, every iota of her attention laser-focused on the impending words. Was this it? Was her new partner – this Marshall Pierce, the so-called "hotshot photog" – already hitting a snag before he'd even touched down in Ravenwood Hills?

"Our boy wonder just landed at the airport, safe and sound," Carter continued, as if reading the mounting trepidation in her silence. "He should be pulling up to your place within the hour, give or take."

Relief washed over Lily in an almost palpable wave, instantly giving way to a resurgence of that restless, anxious energy that had been her constant companion these past few weeks. Within the hour. Which meant she still had time to ensure everything was in order, to banish any lingering iota of uncertainty before being scrutinized through the discerning lens of this apparent "artistic genius" her mentor had so glowingly described.

"Don't you worry, Carter," she assured him, squaring her shoulders and affixing her expression into one of dogged determination. "I'll be ready to hit the ground running the second he arrives."

A throaty chuckle, tinged with what sounded suspiciously like smug satisfaction, hummed through the line. "I wouldn't expect anything less from you, kiddo. Just…try to take it easy on the guy, would you? He might be fresh out of the gate, but he's one hell of a talent from what I hear."

Lily scoffed, unable to resist the surge of competitiveness that welled up unbidden within her chest. So, he wanted to play mentor again, did he? Dolling out the pep talks and the puppy-dog eyes of poorly concealed favoritism in an attempt to coddle this fresh-faced protégé of his? Well, two could play at that game.

"You've got nothing to worry about, Carter," she purred, allowing just a faint hint of steel to bleed into her tone. "I'll be sure to show your little boy wonder here the royal treatment – roll out the red carpet and everything."

The full-bellied bark of laughter that crackled through the line proved that her thinly veiled dig had hit its mark. "That's my girl," Carter managed between wheezing guffaws. "Still swinging that infamous left hook of yours, I see."

Amid the rumbling chuckles that still occasionally punctuated the line, the grizzled newsman offered up one final parting remark, rich with genuine warmth. "I'm proud of you, Lily. Proud that you've still got that fire burning in your belly, even after all this time." A meaningful pause, then, "Now go get 'em, kiddo. And for God's sake, at least try not to scare off your new partner before he's had a chance to prove himself, eh?".

The line went dead, leaving Lily to stare at the silent phone in her hand, her expression an inscrutable mask of conflicting emotions. Deep down, she knew Carter's advice was sound – knew that buckling down and embracing a true partnership was her best shot at chasing this story to its inevitably shocking conclusion

And yet, a part of her – that irascible, stubbornly independent streak that had carried her so far in her journalistic pursuits – bristled at the prospect of having to surrender even a modicum of control. This was her story, her harrowing journey back from the precipice of self-destruction, and she'd be damned if she allowed some fresh-faced ingénue to try and wrestle away the reins.

With a resigned sigh, Lily tucked the phone into her back pocket and turned toward the mirror, her emerald-hued gaze roving over her tousled reflection in a silent moment of introspection. God, when had she last truly looked at herself, stripped away the pretenses and hang-ups and obsessive pursuit of her chosen vocation? Long enough, apparently, for those vibrant eyes to have grown shadowed by fatigue, her delicate features sharpened by an edge of desperate intensity.

A wry half-smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she smoothed a hand over her unruly chestnut tresses, doing her best to tame their wild disarray into something resembling a semblance of order. "Well, Lily, you wanted back in the big leagues," she muttered to the wan reflection staring back at her. "Now's your chance to prove you've still got what it takes."

A glance at the bedside clock revealed that forty-five minutes had already ticked by, depleting her window of preparation. With a renewed sense of purpose thrumming through her veins, Lily got up on her heel and made for the stairs, the soft thud of her footsteps echoing through the hush that had momentarily descended over the Blackwood household.

She was halfway down the creaking staircase when a sudden, raucous clatter of pots and pans ricocheted from the kitchen, accompanied by a muffled string of curses that could only have been uttered by her father. Despite herself, despite the lead weight of portentous expectation that had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach, Lily felt the corners of her mouth quirk upwards in a grudging half-smile. Trust her dad to kick up a fuss at such an ungodly hour, send the entire culinary arsenal clattering to the ground in a cacophonous greeting for the day.

As she rounded the corner into the kitchen, the scene that awaited her was one of gleeful chaos – her father, Hugh Blackwood, standing in a veritable warzone of pots, pans, and what appeared to be the remnants of at least a dozen cracked eggs. The burly man spun toward his daughter, his ruddy face split by a sheepish grin that looked almost comically out of place beneath the bushy overhang of his graying mustache.

"Well, you're up bright and early, ain'tcha kiddo?" he boomed in that rumbling baritone of his, utterly unfazed by the wreckage surrounding him.

Lily gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, unable to suppress the grin that tugged stubbornly at her lips. "Jesus, Dad, what's got your britches in a twist at this hour? Thought maybe a herd of wild buffalo had made its way into the kitchen."

Her father snorted, those mischievous

Burble eyes of his twinkling with mirth as he gave an idle wave of the spatula clasped in his hand. "Well now, when a man's fixin' to welcome a guest into his humble abode, he wants to make sure he puts his best foot forward, don't he?"

Lily opened her mouth, a sardonic rejoinder already perched on the tip of her tongue, but her father steamrolled ahead, his words picking up speed like a runaway freight train.

"Make no mistake, I know this whole…journalism hoo-hah ain't exactly my strong suit," he continued with a dismissive scoff. "But if this big break of yours, this story you got comin' down the pike…if it means puttin' that spark back in your eyes, well then you can bet your sweet ass I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure you hit the ground runnin'."

The shrill peal of the doorbell sliced through the heavy silence that had descended upon the Blackwood residence, its insistent clamor shattering Lily's concentration. With an exasperated huff, she tossed aside the sheaf of papers she had been poring over, shoving away from the battered writing desk that served as her tactical command center.

This was it – the moment she had been both eagerly anticipating and lowkey dreading ever since Carter had dropped the bombshell about her new "partner." A tiny frisson of trepidation wormed its way into the recesses of her mind as she made her way toward the foyer. What if this hotshot photographer despised her brusque manner and single-minded determination? Or, worse yet, what if he ended up being one of those pampered prima donnas more concerned with artistic grandstanding than knuckling down to do the real work?

Lily grimaced at her own misgivings. Since when had she become so bloody insecure, so unsure of her own ability to bend any situation to her indomitable will? If this Marshall Pierce couldn't keep up with her pace, that was his own problem. She was Lily bloody Blackwood, after all – she would pursue this story with a zeal unmatched, whether he tagged along or not.

Squaring her shoulders and affixing her patented no-nonsense expression, she flung open the front door, her caustic greeting already perched on the tip of her tongue. The words, however, swiftly withered in her mouth, dissipating like a puff of smoke as her gaze landed upon the figure framed by the doorway.

Whatever she had been expecting – some scruffy hipster doofus toting an oversized camera with more lenses than common sense, most likely – it certainly wasn't the vision that greeted her.