Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II Read Online Free

When I patched into the club, it stuck, been Marlin ever since.”
    “Club?” she asked hollowly.
    “Yeah, the motorcycle club. Your sister, Hope, she’s with our president, Cutter. We all came to get you.”
    “I know, Hope was there…” she scrubbed her face with her hands, “And another man, I remember him yelling and then there was you. You picked me up and then I was back in the van they took me in, and everything was awful and confusing…”
    Her terror back in the van when we’d got her out of there made some sense now. Being all fucked up on the opiates, she’d probably had a flashback. Past and present melding into one awful big tangle of line that was so snarled there wasn’t nothing for it but to cut it and start fresh. I sighed inwardly. Nothing could be done except explaining things some so they made sense for her now. Couldn’t take the fear or the pain away, the unpleasant memories, but maybe giving her the tools to properly process the truth of things now, would help the raw fear of a week ago and more scab over and heal quicker.
    “Think that was the drugs messin’ with your mind, Baby Girl. Can I tell you what happened? Maybe it’ll help some?” She stared me in the eye and finally nodded slowly, so I told her. About how her sister had gotten the call and how we’d gone looking. I skipped some of the gory details, leaving it at we’d found out about the house. Not how or why or what’d been done to get that information… She stared into the mound of bubbles around her, providing her the illusion of modesty as I spoke. She didn’t interrupt but I could just see her wheels turning. She was soaking up the story like a sponge.
    “Captain called me from out front, I came in and your sister had a hold of you. I’m the only one of our crew that’s had to deal with addiction, even second hand like I did with Danny, so I picked you up and took you out of there.”
    “The van…”
    “Set you off like a firework,” I nodded in agreement. “But that’s okay. You had a good reason for it, and that’s gonna happen. You been through a lot, Faith. We’re going to get you some help. One step at a time.”
    “I still don’t understand, you don’t know me… why are you helping me?”
    It was a valid question, but none of the answers I had were real satisfying… because I liked her sister, because my Captain had asked me to, because I was a nice guy, but mostly and most truthfully it was likely to fix past mistakes that could never be fixed. Because I’d fuckin’ failed and my brother was dead… Then the reality set in, the hard truth: because every time she looked at me with those beautiful eyes, the color of the waters around here that I loved so damn much, I was like a drowning man that didn’t want to come up for air. None of these explanations sounded real good. None of them sounded anything less than what they were, sort of creepy. So I simply pursed my lips and patted the top of the edge of the tub. Resisting the urge I had to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.
    She didn’t need me touching her. No matter how much I wanted to gather her up, hold her close and keep the horrors away from her, I couldn’t do that. I had to fight every instinct I had to do just that. It was basic human instinct. You saw someone hurting, you put your arms around them. You held them and soothed them, except what do you do in a case like this? When every touch she’d endured over the last couple of years was for someone else’s gratification?
    Her clear, bright eyes roved my face and something flashed in their depths. She closed them and turned away from me, laying her head on top of her knees. It killed me that there wasn’t anything I could do.
    She’d been sleeping more, after the initial hell of detox had passed, she’d finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. Over two days she’d been up in one form or another. The doc had left this morning with his crew to go back up north now that she