Highway Don't Care (Freebirds) Read Online Free Page A

step-father made sure to tell me every day that I wasn't good
enough. Or smart enough.  Or even halfway decent looking.  I
constantly heard from him that I was a mutt and would never amount to anything.
      Apparently, half-Brazilian and half white are considered a
mutt to him.
      My Brazilian father died when I was twelve of cancer. 
My mother couldn't afford to work and support us with also paying for medical
bills, so she married to make our life better.  Little did she know that
she was going to turn my life into a living hell all the while thinking she was
making everything better.  She married for all the wrong reasons. 
She never loved Patrick.  I never once heard her tell him she loved
him.  He used to say it all the time, but my mom would smile and go about
what she was doing. This was what made it so bad for me.
      I look a lot like my father.  Tall, at two and a half
inches over six feet, with a dark tan.  Jet-black hair and a muscular
build.  Not too bulky, but nothing to sneeze at either.  I was
literally the carbon copy of my dad.  I didn't have one ounce of my mom’s
features except for her cerulean blue eyes.  Which looked totally fucked
up with my dark features.  Nevertheless, what do I know?  He saw in
me the reason my mom would never love him like he loved her.  Therefore,
he took it out on me.
      He never hit me, but his words could be as cruel as a
whip.  I spent seven years living in an emotional hell, and my mom never
even knew.  I wouldn’t have told her though, and he knew that.
      I set out in life to prove that bastard wrong.  I kept
to myself and tried to make myself invisible.  I never spoke unless spoken
to; I kept my head on straight, worked thirty hours a week at a local
construction company after school and on weekends.  I studied my ass off
to graduate with honors at sixteen.  Then joined the military when I was
sixteen.  My mom wasn’t too happy about that, but she knew that I was
unhappy, and she’d do anything for me.
      I left my stepfather’s home and never looked back.  My
mom came to me every time I had leave.  She would spend the two weeks with
me, or sometimes even the rare month at the location where I was stationed.
      Her last visit I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw
her.  She waited to tell me until I was home that she had cancer. 
The same type of cancer that took my dad.  Lung cancer.  Besides,
what was ironic was that neither one of them smoked a day in their lives. 
They both were extremely healthy.  We ate right, and we were very active
outdoors.  My dad worked as the supervisor for a local construction
business, he was in peak shape at forty-two.  My mom was also
active.  She was a server at the local diner, on her feet for hours a day;
she was also in great shape at forty-eight.  It was just a cosmic joke that
they both died of the same thing, and were never exposed to it.  Just
another fucked up thing that happened to the people I loved most in this world.
      Ember shifting on top of me brought me back from my
wanderings.  A quick glance at the clock showed that it was now five in
the morning.  Good enough that I could workout.
      I slowly eased out from under Ember and stood. 
Adjusting myself in my god-awful pajama pants, I pulled the covers just to the
top of her hips so I didn't agitate the wound on her back.
      Spinning on my heels, I went to the closet and located my
tennis shoes on the floor, grabbed a pair of running shorts from the shelf
along with a pair of socks and exited the bedroom.  Something needed to be
worked out, and it was obvious to me that I wasn’t going to be getting what I
really wanted.  Treadmill here I come.
    Ω
      An hour and seven miles later, I was dripping sweat, and
just climbing off the treadmill when Ember came into the room.  She was
adorable.  Long hair tumbling down her shoulders, nearly to her
hips.  It looked like she just rolled out of bed, and didn’t