Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) Read Free

banish breakfast, Wrack.”
    In Dystopian Conflict , the movie and the video game, that was the line that got Vox into big trouble, his galaxy ship impounded and his pirate queen, Umbria Starstarter, taken hostage. In the sequel he’d just finished recording, Dystopian Outlaw , the actress who voiced Umbria had taken a shine to him, offering to start his star anytime he liked. He’d spent an uncomfortable ten days declining the opportunity.
    Sam tried to wrestle him to his knees. “Filthy pirate scum.”
    He choked out, “From spew spawn like you, Wrack, that’s a compliment.”
    “He’s staying a while.” That was Taylor, and it had the effect of distracting Sam long enough that Damon got his arms around Sam’s knees and tipped him over. They both went down tangled with a couple of chairs, and Angus yelling at them to quit it.
    He sat on the floor and laughed. It was good to be home. Sam hauled him up and half an hour later he was singing U2’s Beautiful Day just to prove it.

2: Sound of Alone
    Georgia pulled the grimy wooden blinds closed and collapsed into the only chair not piled with boxes or other household guff. It would take hours to unpack and get sorted but she didn’t give a hoot that this tiny flat was grubby, messy and missing a connection to functioning electricity.
    It was her private space. If she never unpacked a box, washed a plate, scrubbed soap scum off the shower curtain she’d yet to hang, no one would care. She sprawled in the chair and breathed deeply of dust and musty smells and they were cleansing. This was freedom, this was her new life and it was joyful. She’d start over with her old name, in this new space where no one could make her feel responsible, guilty, frustrated or angry.
    She could wear all those emotions without judgement, without needing to cover them over with smiling patience and polite forbearance like cheeks that needed colour or eyes that didn’t pop.
    She could be grumpy and slobby, flippant and silly. She could sing off-key without worrying about anyone’s headache, or dance like she was having a fit without complaints she was being juvenile. She could eat junk food till she packed on the weight and exploded in oozing fatty lumps out the seams of her clothing. She could cultivate bad breath till the scent of it permeated the whole flat and seeped under the door into the street, making dogs howl and cats drop dead.
    Even better, she could lie in bed all weekend, or watch endless bad television, or play games on her phone all day, or take up a dorky hobby like scrapbooking. Or she could sit in this comfortable chair all day and read a book, if she could find one, and no one would need a meal, or a complaint heard, a pillow plumped, attention for their bitterness and misery, or an audience for their betrayal.
    She was done with the need for attention most of all. When it had been necessary vigilance she’d borne it better, with sucked up grief and determination, with a constant ache in her chest. With love. But once the fear wore off, once a reasonable recovery was imminent, it was the attention that wore her down most of all, because it was always so opinionated and unforgiving.
    And Hamish had never been that way before.
    But whose fault was that?
    She struggled upright and pushed a box of kitchen gear out of her way with her booted foot. There was enough space between the chair, the new old coffee table and the two suitcases to dance. She took her phone out of her hip pocket and thumbed through to her music, picked the Cyndi Lauper track Girls Just Want to Have Fun , and played it through the tinny phone speakers. It was her new anthem, except fun was taking this whole break free thing a little far. What she wanted was to be alone, to be uninvolved, careless and quiet. Not to be defined as a patient girlfriend, a caring wife, a nurse, a companion, a slave. Not to be the one who ruined it all.
    Cyndi sang and Georgia faked a dance step that was more a sideways old