Hope (The Virtues #1) Read Free Page A

had punished for losing his lunch on the way to school. He was the fifteen-year-old that I had yelled at for stealing. He was the seventeen-year-old that I had tried to scold for getting arrested for drinking.

    He turned to hide the tears, but I knew they were there. Nick was never a strong kid, especially when he was getting told hard truths. “All right. I have no other fucking idea what to do. The cops in this town know me, so there’s no way I can go to them. I know you don’t have the cash, and I can’t get out of here without them finding me, so who the fuck knows?

    “Hope, I don’t remember calling you, and I’m sorry I wasted your time, but...” Nick turned back to me, the tears sliding past his cheeks. “But unless you have a better idea, I think this is goodbye.”

    Casper whined and laid down beside Nick on the kitchen floor. My brother and I stood in the family trailer, drowning in the tension between us. His solution was to get high and wait for his untimely death. It may have been fitting, but I didn’t want to see my brother go that way. I had done my best to raise him after my mother ran out on us. I wanted to see him succeed and beat the odds. I wracked my brain for any other solution.

    When nothing else came to me, I groaned. Nick had come up with the only solution that had any chance of succeeding: Trask. I hadn’t talked to him in nine years, and things had ended under bad circumstances, just like everything in my life. I knew where he was, and I knew where I could find him. A friend of a friend kept me up to date on Facebook, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t forget it. Trask Rivers was with the Rising Sons Motorcycle Club, and their haunt was a bar near the western edge of Bakersfield.

    My high school boyfriend and I hadn’t seen each other since he left for basic training a few weeks after graduation. Splitting up was hard, but we knew it was the only way to try and make better lives for ourselves. Trask had helped me escape from my life in the trailer park every day after school; something I could never fully repay. As I stood across from my doomed brother, I realized I was about to get deeper in debt with my old flame.

“It’s a long shot—and I really mean that—but I could try and talk to Trask.” I thought I’d see some promise in his eyes.

    Instead, Nick gave me a maniacal laugh, “Perfect. Out of the frying pan. I guess I’d rather owe a renegade group of bikers than a renegade drug dealer?”

    Maybe the drugs really had fucked his brain up permanently. His stab in the dark idea was the best one, but even Nick could see how big of a long shot it was.

    “Hell, they might even be working together, I don’t know. Jesus, Hope. You think fucking him ten years ago is going to be enough for him to come to our rescue?”

    I made a conscious decision to un-ball my fists. My heart was racing. My father had hated Trask when I was in high school, and Nick had co-opted our dad’s feelings. Dad called him trash, the irony completely lost on him.

    My confusion over Nick’s comments couldn’t be contained, “It was your fucking idea! Want me to turn around and head back to school, then? Jesus, you’re a worthless junkie piece of shit, and you still think you’re better than Trask? He got his life together when you could barely string together a sentence! You don’t get to suggest someone and trash them at the same time.”

    “Calm down, Hope.” Nick stepped forward, but he must have seen the red in my eyes, because he backed away again. “I’m just saying, maybe he’s in on it, like… maybe he’s the muscle, or something. I haven’t heard good things about the Rising Sons, you know.”

    It was just like high school all over again. Sarcasm and disdain shot from my voice like a shotgun blast. “That’s what you heard?” I slowed my words down, trying to keep my blood pressure low. “Who’d you hear that from? Another junkie? Some dealer? If the