Charity For Nothing: The Virtues Book III Read Online Free Page B

she’d ever hit Ft. Royal, but sometimes we’d catch her slipping out and standing where the smokers could be found. A ‘fresh air’ break, she called it, but really, I think it was because she would get overwhelmed in close quarters; she was just too much of a badass to admit it.
    “I don’t,” I said.
    She smirked, “Liar.”
    “Whatever you say, Hope.” I started up the street, turning from her look of surprise. I’d never spoken to her like that, and I guess it was a mark of how far under my skin Radar had gotten.
    Or was it really Radar at all? The little voice in the back of my head asked me. I told it to shut the fuck up and kept pounding pavement. About twenty minutes into my walk, and about ten minutes from home I cursed myself out hard.
    Radar damn sure wasn’t the reason I’d noped right the fuck out of there. It was all Charity. It was all that fucking look in her eyes in the marina parking lot. I’d seen her hesitate, seen the dismay on her face, and when she’d looked up at me, it’d nailed my ass to the asphalt. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. Truthfully, I didn’t know if it had a name, but it was damn sure a look I remembered. One that Corrine and I had both shared once upon a time… back in the beginning.
    I was past soaked to the skin by the time I reached my door and let myself in to my lonely house far too big for just one. It’d been perfect for my little family of three, back before I’d let everything be taken away from us. I went straight to the kitchen and cracked the seal on the bottle of Canadian whiskey on the counter.
    I wasn’t numb enough for this. I wasn’t numb enough for tonight, and the storm, and everything that came along with the lightning and the rain. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see and hit the switch on the stereo on the kitchen counter filling my house with Stoker’s band’s angry fucking music. Something between hard rock and death metal blared from the speakers and I sank into it, grateful. I knelt down by my bike in the middle of my kitchen floor and wiped stray water off my face before picking up a socket wrench.
    She needed maintenance, and I may not be able to fix my broken, but I could at least keep her in fine running order. At least until I needed sleep. I wanted sleep, but tired as I was, if I fell into bed before full exhaustion set in, I would have to relive it. I needed a sleep away from nightmares tonight; so I worked on my bike instead. I may be nothing, but at least with my bike and my club I had something .
     

 
    Chapter 5
    Charity
     
    I laughed and dodged into the house off the front step, Faith, Hope, Marlin, and finally Cutter, dodging in right after me. The rain was coming down in sheets out there and I’d been grateful that Nothing had seen to it to put the top on my Jeep. We all stood dripping on the hardwood, just inside the entry way for a moment looking at each other, waiting awkwardly for someone to suggest a ‘what’s next.’ Cutter saved the day.
    “You should probably get settled in, Trouble,” he said to me and I grinned.
    “Thank you,” I said simply, kind of at a loss to say anything else. I mean, I was this weird mix of shy without being shy. I didn’t really know how to be around these two men that meant so much to my sisters, but the rest of the lot of them, I felt like I could just be myself.
    “Come on, Blossom, c’mon, Bubbles… you boys are on your own for a minute,” Hope declared. She linked her arms with mine and Faith’s and led us to the stairwell to the left as you came through the door. We followed her upstairs and she took us to, what was presumably, my room.
    “Oh!” My diploma was the first thing to see when you came through the door. Right smack in the middle of the white expanse of wall over the bed which was covered in a light comforter, a beautiful gradient sand to aqua fading into a deep blue at the bottom that reminded me of the beach dropping off into the waters