Charity For Nothing: The Virtues Book III (7 page)

“You’re done, bro. I ain’t going to watch you do this to yourself all over again.”

Fuck.

“Let me take you home?” she asked gently. I shook my head and ran a hand over my hair.

“I’m not ready to go home.”

“Okay, fine. Then I’ll sit right here until you are.”

“Fuck, really? Go find someone else to take care of,” she flinched at my tone but I didn’t apologize or back down. I was bad news; she didn’t need any of what I had to offer. She was a nice girl… Corrine had been a nice girl, too. Corrine and I had made the sweetest little girl together…
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck
.

“It’s the time of year, Honey. It’s not you,” Hossler said at my elbow.

“Fuck, Hoss, stay out of it!”

“You’re drunk and acting like an asshole; Charity’s a guest. Take your sorry ass home, Nothing. People are sick of your fucking pity party for one.”

I stood up abruptly and staggered, definitely unsteady on my feet. Charity reached out and put a hand on my arm but I jerked away from her.

“Just fucking stay out of it, all of you!” I barked and headed for the door.

I saw Radar get up out of the corner of my eye and I didn’t want to deal with him, or anyone, so before he could get to me I went out the door and into the pouring rain outside. He caught up to me, grabbed my elbow and I was in the mood to force the issue. I turned and raised my fist but was cold cocked by Charity’s glacial stare before I could swing.

“The fuck?” I asked.

“I could ask you the same thing, except I’m done asking. Get your ass in the Jeep.”

I blinked and opened my mouth to reject the notion but before I could, she was speaking again, tone full of consternation.

“You can either, get your ass in the Jeep and let me drive you home, or I can tell your leader how you almost cold cocked his woman’s sister in the face.” She arched a light brow, her face set in stone and I shut my gob and looked this way and that, striking out in the direction of her white Jeep Wrangler.

“Thank you,” she said, chirping the alarm, the locks unbolting themselves. I got in on the passenger side and she climbed in to drive. She started the engine and turned to me calmly, water dripping off the end of her nose.

“Where did you go?” she asked softly.

“Nowhere,” I said looking hard out the window.

“Well you went
somewhere.
I turned around after loading Thomas into the ambulance and you were just gone. One minute you were talking to the tall paramedic, the next you just vanished. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“Nothing is your
name,
not what happened back there. I didn’t know you had medical training, why didn’t you say something? You know I just graduated with a nursing degree.”

“I’m not a medic, not anymore… I just paint houses for a living.”

“What, why?” she asked and I could hear that I’d startled her. I couldn’t resist, I refocused my gaze from outside the dark window glass to her reflection in it. Her mouth hung open, her blue eyes livid with surprise.

“Doesn’t fucking matter, I’m not that guy anymore.”

She shut her mouth, “I call bullshit,” she said and I turned to look at her, “If you weren’t that man anymore you wouldn’t have seen them, you wouldn’t have gone running down the beach to help them.”

She had me there, and it irritated me, I didn’t want to answer anymore of her questions, didn’t need her peeling back any more layers. “Just take me home,” I grated and stared her down for a long time. The silence growing long and uncomfortable between us.

“Fine, where am I going?” she asked.

“Hit the boulevard, go right on Everglade Road.”

She put the Jeep in gear, did her checks, and pulled into a smooth u-turn, following my directions.

“I don’t get you,” she said after a moment.

“What’s not to get?” I muttered.

“You, your behavior, help me out here. You do nice things for me, but any time I try to talk to you, you get yourself drunk as fuck and are an ass about it. What gives?”

“It’s for your own good.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t hear me – ow!” She’d punched me in the arm and pulled the Jeep to a stop right there in the middle of the road.

“This isn’t fucking kindergarten, you ass! You don’t get to pull my hair and be a bully as a way to tell me you like me. All you’re doing is pissing me off.”

I shook my head and slicked my hair back off my face with one hand, “That’s not it,” I said shaking my head, laughing at myself in self-deprecation. I couldn’t argue her point, it was kind of what it looked like.

“Then what is? What gives, Nothing? What are you running from?”

She put the Jeep back in motion, headlights in her rearview cut a swath of light across her eyes and I was mesmerized until they were cast in shadow again.

“Nothing… nothing gives, I’m not running from anything.”

“If God went around hugging liars, he’d break every bone in your body,” she uttered disgustedly.

She made the turn onto Everglade and I blew out a breath, “Take the next right. It’s the third house on the left.”

She pulled into the driveway of my sad, lonely, boarded up house and killed the engine.

“Can we just start over?” she asked.

I eyed her warily, “Like how?”

“Like, ‘Hi my name is Charity, you know my sister, Hope.’” She stuck out her hand and waited, while I eyed it like it was going to snap out and bite me, like one of Hossler’s snakes.

“Nothing,” I said, reluctantly, I took her hand in mine and shook it. Her skin was so soft and smooth against mine. Some of the hardness I’d tried to put up around my soul melted a little bit, softening up.

“Pleasure to meet you, Nothing,” she said and I snorted. Her face crumbled into a frown and I reached out without thinking, moving a lank piece of her hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear.

Silence stretched between us, until finally, she said softly, “I don’t understand you.”

“That makes two of us,” I murmured. More silence, filled only by the sound of the driving rain pattering against the hard top on her Jeep. Someone must have put it on for her. I would have done it… but I didn’t know
why.
Why did I want to do things for this girl? Why did she do the things she did to me? Why couldn’t I be a better husband when I was around her?
Because you’re tired of being a miserable fuck and she’s a breath of fresh air,
that damn internal voice spat out of the dark corners of my mind. It was true, only problem was I didn’t deserve to be happy, and she didn’t deserve me making her miserable. Fuck.
Why did this have to be so complicated?

“Good night, Charity,” I said and she drew a breath to protest but it was too late. I’d opened the door and was out into the wet. I let myself through my front door and leaned against it. It was probably a full two minutes before I heard her Jeep start back up and back down the drive. It was the longest two minutes of my life.

Damn, but I fucked that one up good. It was probably for the best for her though. I turned and looked at the photographs on the walls of my smiling wife and our beautiful little girl.

No probably about it, it
was
for the best.

Chapter 9

Charity

“Okay, spill. What’s Nothing’s deal?” I stood just behind the couch, dripping on the hardwood floor of Cutter’s entryway. Hope leaned her head way back over Cutter’s thigh so she could see me, while Cutter just nonchalantly turned his head my direction. They were cute together, her lying out on the couch, head in his lap, but right now; there was no way I was going to admit it out loud.

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess,” Cutter drawled, “I’d say you struck a nerve in our boy, and given his feelings over his late wife and the like, I don’t imagine he quite knows how to handle that.”

“Charming,” I said, and felt my shoulders drop, “What happened anyways? All anyone will say is that it was some kind of accident.”

“Well that’s just not my place to tell, Darlin’. You’ll have to get that from the horse’s mouth.”

I looked to Hope for help and she snorted, shrugging her shoulders indelicately where she lay across Cutter’s lap, “Don’t look at me, I know as much about it as you do. Some things are just Nothing’s story to tell; it’s how it works with these guys. Can’t say I didn’t warn you about that.”

I looked at the ground and closed my eyes, placing the palm of my hand on the back of my neck and pulling to ease the tension from it.

“I’d like to help him if I can,” I admitted, “There’s something about him.”

“Well, see, that there’s your problem, Darlin’. There ain’t no one that can help Nothing but Nothing. You can’t help someone who isn’t willin’ to help themselves and he just ain’t there yet.”

I nodded, and thought about it, “Right, thanks… I’m going to bed.”

“So early?” Hope asked, searching my face.

“Yeah, I’m beat.”

“Okay, g’night Blossom.”

I went upstairs and changed out of my wet clothes and into dry, pulling down a towel from the top of my closet to dry my hair. It would turn into the soft waves that Faith’s hair held when it dried. I needed to straight iron my hair to keep it flat. I didn’t see a whole lot of keeping it straight if it rained all the time like this. Or with as much swimming as I planned to do when the sun finally came out to play for longer than an hour or two at a time. I plugged my phone in on the bedside table and sighed, picking up the picture frame Nothing had drunkenly fixed with my help.

“I miss you, Mom,” I murmured and kissed my fingertips, placing them over her image behind the glass.

I thought for a long time about Nothing and his odd behavior since I’d rolled into town and came up with zero conclusions, because truthfully? What could I conclude? I was missing pieces of the puzzle and couldn’t yet tell the whole picture from the pieces I had. The only thing I could do was wait for Nothing to hand the missing pieces over.

I blew out an explosive breath and crashed, only when I got up the next morning, instead of sunshine, it was just more of the steady pounding rain with the odd gust of wind. Apparently the storm was moving in for real now.

I got dressed and went downstairs and found Hope in the kitchen looking miserable, waiting for the coffee to brew; I laughed.

“Shut up,” she grumbled at me.

“Where is everyone?”

“Storm’s moving in quicker than anticipated, some of the guys are getting the
Reclaimer
out of the water and the rest are moving the bikes to a storage place sturdy enough to withstand the beating coming our way.

“Shouldn’t this place be boarded up?” My sister shook her head.

“It has rolling shutters.”

I jumped and let out a yip at the unexpected voice behind me, I turned around to see Faith wide eyed and jumpy just as much as I was at the dining room table. I laughed and she laughed with me, both of us nervous.

“I had no idea you were there,” I said.

“Sorry, we were expected to be seen and not heard, I guess I’m still working on some things.”

I frowned and shook my head, “Don’t be sorry, it’s not like Rome was built in a day.”

Faith smiled and I smiled back, going to my sister and hugging her tight when she got up to meet me. A strong gust of wind startled us and we turned just in time to see the sliding glass doors bow inwards with the force of it, the glass flexing in the frames.

“Holy shit,” I murmured.

“And on
that
note,” Hope said and went to a closet door at the far end of the dining room. She opened it up to a small electrical closet and turned a key in a panel. A light lit up green and she pressed a button holding it down. Metal storm doors slid down out of rolls that had been disguised by a trick of the architecture. I blinked noticing that the back patio had sandbags piled high at the top steps, even with the waist high rock walls surrounding the stone deck. The table, chairs, and barbecue had all been moved. Stashed away somewhere.

“Wow, this is really serious isn’t it?” I asked. Faith looked solemn… afraid. Hope just shrugged.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“How many people are supposed to come here?” I asked as we lost the daylight, the shutters closing everything off.

“Cutter, Marlin, Lightning, Pyro and his girl, Radar and his family typically weather storms here, I don’t know who all else.”

“Trike,” Faith supplied. I nodded, and hoped that Nothing would show; I was hoping to talk to him some more.

“What now?” I asked.

“The shitty part,” Hope said and Faith made a face. I raised my eyebrows and Faith twisted her lips into a look that was classically mom’s ‘I disapprove’ look.

“We wait.”

Lovely.

“They boys are cavemen at heart, Cutter wouldn’t even let
me
go out with them, not that I really wanted to head out in this.” Hope sighed.

“Fun, anybody got a Monopoly board or something?” I asked. We all exchanged a look and started laughing in the dim kitchen.

“Hit the light would you? I’m gonna die if I don’t get some caffeine,” Hope said.

“They’ll probably be hungry when they get in,” Faith murmured as the harsh overhead light filled the kitchen.

“Probably,” Hope conceded.

“Well alright then, something to do, at last!”

We set about fixing sandwiches and some soup for when the guys got back. I worked on a couple of salads while Faith crafted a platter stacked high with fruit slices. Hope had it easy; the soup was premade in a bag and from the freezer. She made sure sodas were within easy reach and when the front door blew open an hour or two in, it was to the boisterous noise of a bunch of the guys hurrying their way in.

“Go dry off and get in here! Food’s ready!” Hope called.

I went around the corner and stood in the hall, gaze roaming over face after familiar face but missing the face I was looking for. No dark hair, no gray eyes… no Nothing.

“Where’s Nothing?” I asked Lightning quietly.

“Riding it out at his place,” he said and he didn’t look happy about it.

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded and went back to serving some of the guys up as they came down in drier sweats toweling their hair.