SIX Read Online Free

safe and not being taken advantage of, I haven’t been there for a long time—haven’t been allowed to be.
    The only contact we’ve had were calls from prison, and now calls from wherever she is at any time. She still refuses to see me, even after all these years.
    I remind her too much of that day and what could have been our life.
    Setting up the workstation for a ten a.m. appointment, I check my watch to see how much time I have left before the client gets here and notice I forgot to put it on this morning.
    Just another thing to add to the shit pile today is becoming.
    I need to immerse myself in work.
    If I don’t, I’m going to fucking lose my shit today between the crap with Misty and now Haley.

 
    Looking around the shop, I breathe out a sigh.
    This is really my life now and torturing myself over the past isn’t going to change it.
    Ten transformed the life I could have had by giving me some stability and a livelihood, by allowing me to have more than just a need for revenge—have something to want to succeed at and not lose by being reckless and going after more of those fuckers straight after being released.
    He gave me options, choices…a chance at something more than I’ve ever had.
    I planned on setting a different course for myself after I made the rest of Haley’s attackers pay, if that didn’t land me straight back inside, but then I had this place to make home and I loved owning the bar and working in the shop.
    I never really fit in to the gang way of life.
    I was more of a lone wolf. I rarely formed bonds, and when I did, they became a part of me, like Haley, but I’d been born alone in the world and felt that emptiness my entire life.
    I was hollow, lost to what it felt like not to be lonely, and I was okay with that.
    Haley was the first person to penetrate the cold pit inside my chest. She was light and youthful, something I’d never really felt.
    I’d grown up fast and learned hard lessons about the world and people in it.
    When I was four, I had my first lesson on violence.
    I’d been taken to a new foster home after the one I was at became crowded when the couple got pregnant again.
    They weren’t bad people from what I can remember, but I didn’t really remember them as actual solid people.
    They were more a faded memory of a movie I watched once.
    Names and the faces of their kids evaded me now, but the house I was sent to after them will forever be etched into my mind. It shaped the man I became.
    Mr. Peters was the man of the house, and he had these deep pits for eyes.
    My young instincts knew he wasn’t the family doting kind of man.
    The were no signs of children in his home despite the social worker telling me he had three other foster kids staying there.
    I’d never questioned my life before him; I didn’t know any different.
    Cuddles and affection were not part of my youth—this is just how life was.
    I was given new rules at every house and I obeyed those rules because staying in one place for longer periods of time had always been appealing to me.
    Having to pack my suitcase and start over with new adults and kids was a chore.
    Mr. Peters didn’t give me time to settle in or learn his rules.
    The first night there, I woke up in my twin bed with the urge to piss.
    Not wanting to wake my sleeping roommate, a boy called Robbie, I slid out of bed and padded through the room quietly.
    When I passed Mr. Peters’ room, the door was cracked and flashing from the TV highlighted his figure.
    He was standing over the form of one of the other boys who lived there.
    The boy was on all fours, a gag in his mouth and a collar around his neck.
    My small mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening, but something inside me knew it wasn’t normal. It was all kinds of fucked up and the piss I needed to take leaked down my leg.
    He caught the noise of my feet creaking on the hard floor outside his room when I tried to escape the puddle soaking my feet.
    Running back to my room, I