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

and looked so wrung out, but at the same time, she was on the mend. Her color better, the dark circles under her eyes still prominent, but her bright eyes, from beneath her pale lashes, were more alert than I’d seen them since I’d met her. Forget lucid, she was back from the hell the drugs had dragged her down into… which meant she was going to have to start clawing her way out of the pit of memory sooner rather than later.
    I was wondering how tough this talk was going to be. None of us were fuckin’ equipped for this kind of mental and emotional damage. Faith was gonna need help. Real help, from a professional equipped to deal with this level of trauma to a person’s psyche. I put out a hand and motioned for her to lead the way and she padded gracefully on her bare feet across the light, lush carpet.
    Hope had dropped off a few clothes the day before, quiet, pleading with her eyes for me to tell her that Faith had changed her mind and wanted her older sister, but Faith hadn’t said a word about her. At least not until now.
    “Do you think Hope will want to see me?” she asked and I cocked my head to the side and pulled out a chair at the dining room table. Faith drifted down into it and I looked her over. She wore soft looking heather gray leggings beneath an oversized white boat neck tee. At least I think that’s what they called the kind that hung artfully off her thin shoulder. She’d swept all that long blonde hair over her shoulder. Both of us thankfully lice free, so it would seem. My jacket and cut were in a plastic garbage sack and tied off in the garage where they had to sit for a few more days yet. Just to make sure.
    “Honey, I think I’m gonna have a tough time keeping her away much longer. You want I should call her here now?”
    She gazed out the back slider, out over the sun bleached beach, eyes distant as she took in the faraway lapping waves of the sea.
    “Tomorrow okay?” she asked.
    I sighed inwardly. She’d been programmed to go along with everyone else’s wants and desires so long it was going to be an uphill battle to get her to a place where she was comfortable expressing what she wanted. This was going to take patience. Something I both had and didn’t have depending on the situation.
    “I’ll call her and let her know.”
    I got something simple to eat started and called Hope and let her know that Faith was ready to see her. Then I spent the next ten minutes talking our President’s girl out of coming right then and there and holding off until tomorrow. The call ended with her tellin’ me we weren’t friends for at least the next five minutes before she huffed out a breath and thanked me for taking care of her girl. There was a reason we liked Hope. That would be one of them. It was like she was a female version of the Captain, only a little less sure of herself in some ways and feistier in others.
    “There we go,” I set down a steaming mug of a simple broth in front of her and some saltine crackers on a plate. If she could keep this down, I was under doctor’s orders to give her a supplement shake after a while.
    “Thank you,” she murmured and blew on the steaming liquid.
    I sat across from her, and kicked back in my chair. She wouldn’t look at me, but I kind of expected that.
    “Tell me something you like to do, or liked to do, before all this.” I said gently. I wanted to try and get a conversation started but half expected she wouldn’t tell me. She stared for long moments at the leather on her wrist before she spoke, haltingly.
    “I… I liked to party. I would go out to bars and clubs and drink and dance, just hang out with my friends. You know?”
    I chuckled, “I do.”
    “My sisters and I would go shopping. I liked to do my makeup…” she frowned, “Do you think that’s part of why she sold me?”
    My mouth went dry, she didn’t have to talk about any of this to me, but who was I to deny her? I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t have a truthful