Reading Papers Novels & Stories

Austin took out a few papers and came back to me with a triumphant smirk on his face. “Here you go! Look at these papers and tell me if it rings a bell,” He spoke with a victorious look on his face that irritated me to no particular extent. He handed me the papers and I looked through them. My eyes widened immediately as the papers looked all too familiar to me. I flipped the papers in my hand to read the content in it.

My eyes drifted around the living room in that unfocused way eyes move when the mind is elsewhere, taking in the familiar surroundings without really seeing them, until something on the center table caught my attention and pulled my gaze into sharp focus. A stack of papers sat on the table directly in front of me, positioned where they couldn't be missed by anyone sitting on the sofa, the official look of them incongruous with the usual surface of a table that normally held magazines and remote controls. I leaned forward, reaching out to pick up the documents, my fingers closing around the papers as I brought them into my lap and looked down at the top page with the disinterested attention o

I turned away before she could answer and found Jonathan at my shoulder, expression carefully neutral in the way of someone who had heard everything and was choosing not to have an opinion about it. "The briefing," he said. "I know," I said, and followed him out. I read all of Dr. Carter's published research again that night. I had read the methodology before, the trial summaries, the peer reviews, the independent verification reports. But I read the original papers this time from the beginning, without looking for anything specific.

I can see at a glance that they're old, the paper has a particular dryness, and the printer ink slightly faded in the way that happens over years. I start with the emails because they have timestamps. It takes me four minutes of reading to understand what I'm looking at. Then I go back to the beginning and read them again more slowly, making sure I'm not reaching for a meaning that isn't there. I'm not. It's exactly what it looks like on the first read. "Where did you get these?" I ask.

Elena Vale has spent her entire life sticking to the rules, until the night she's forced into an engagement she never wanted. Fleeing from her high-society cage, she ends up in a grimy bar, drinking with a brooding stranger who offers the one thing she never expected: freedom.  Jack Roman is the last man a woman like Elena Vale should marry. Tattooed, sharp-tongued, and hiding secrets behind his sea blue eyes. He's everything she's been taught to avoid. But when an impulsive drunken wedding turns into a full-blown scandal, Elena seizes the chaos. She makes him a deal — six months of pretending, then they part ways. To Elena, faking a marriage with a stranger is supposed to keep her

Since Miranda couldn't use her tablet, Paul printed out the most recent relevant papers and stapled them together neatly before putting them on her nightstand. Miranda found this kind of refreshing as she hadn't read a physical copy in a long time. Even though her eye inflammation had cleared up after using medication, she hadn't finished reading the stack of papers Paul had prepared for her. Miranda had no choice but to continue reading. Just as she picked up one of the research papers, a colorful card tucked in between them suddenly slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Miranda instinctively reached out for it, but her hand froze before she could pick it up. After a few seconds, she fina

Taking a deep breath, I turned and walked into the study. The room was dim, the only light coming from the desk lamp that cast long, dramatic shadows. Killian was hunched over a mountain of paperwork, his brow furrowed in a way that made my heart ache. But as I approached, my eyes snagged on something. A file. Left open. Right on top of the Vanguard papers. The name on the tab wasn't a client. It was Adam.

I placed the paper on his desk, the stack of pages looking both insignificant and monumental. "My final paper for the seminar," I said, my voice sounding thin and reedy in the quiet of his office. He picked it up, his eyes scanning the first page. I watched his face, searching for any sign of a reaction, a flicker of surprise, a hint of disapproval. There was nothing. He just kept reading, his expression perfectly, maddeningly neutral. He read for what felt like an eternity, the silence in the room thick with unspoken words.

He pulls the paper up on his screen again. Transgenerational Memory Patterns in Extended Bloodline Documentation — N. Reyes, Cambridge University Press, 2019. He read it last night as background research. Standard practice — he reads everything connected to anyone who gets extended access to Ashvale documentation. He expected dry academic work. Charts. Citation heavy. The kind of writing that is technically about human experience and emotionally about nothing. This isn't that. He scrolls to the section he stopped on last night and reads it again slowly.

I rushed to his desk drawers, throwing them all open as my eyes and hands scanned through numerous papers upon papers, my mind starting to go dizzy as I read and read. These weren't implicative papers, I thought to myself as I scanned through the last one from the last drawer. What I had just finished going through were work papers. I sighed in defeat as I packed up all the papers I had scattered on the floor earlier on, pushing them into the drawers as I felt it. A hollow drawer, a drawer with something inside of it. I dropped the papers back on to the ground and slid open the drawer, bringing out a black folder marked YX.