Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II (3 page)

“Yeah, man. I know,” my Pres supplied.

“Thanks,” I nodded and sighed, took two more drags and put out my cig.

“You need to talk, you can reach out.” Cutter called as I slid the back slider open.

I nodded and went back inside. I was jumpy being this far from Faith. Didn’t want or need her waking up in her fucked up state and me not be there. Hell, I couldn’t be sure if she was with it enough to know that I’d gone.

I went back into the room to a flurry of activity. Nothing was moving things around, tossing pillows and peeling back blankets. The doc was capping her IV.

“Shit, she sick?”

“Yeah,” Nothing affirmed, “Get her cleaned up, we got this.” I nodded and it was back to the bathroom. I drew a tub full of water this time. Shower just wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t hold herself up. She felt so small and so delicate in my arms. She was way too thin and needed at the
very
least ten to fifteen pounds put on her just to make her look healthy again. I think it would take even more than that for her to actually
be
healthy though. I would ask the doc before he took off back up north to be sure.

She roused a bit when I put her in the bath and she reached for me, scrabbling at me to keep her out of the water.

“Faith, Faith! Easy, Darlin’, I got you. Just take it easy,” she focused on me for a moment and whatever it was, this thin and tenuous bond we had going on, it was there and she settled, whimpering, into the warm bathwater.

“You good, Brother?” Nothing called from out in the bedroom.

“Yeah! I got this.” I held Faith against me, so she wouldn’t slip under and I took care of her.

Chapter 4

Faith

I felt like I was dying. If there was ever any mystery surrounding what dying felt like, it was certainly dispelled… this had to be what death felt like. I was suddenly afraid that maybe I was already dead. That maybe I had already passed through the gates of Hell and I was burning. Maybe this would never end. Maybe this was what it was going to be for all of eternity. This fiery burning ache. This feeling like fire ants had gotten beneath my skin and were eating me alive, one nerve ending at a time.

I whimpered and hot tears leaked across my skin at the corners of my eyes and even
that
hurt. I opened my eyes and he was there. I blinked and tried to focus and when I did, he was still there. He was good. So very good to me. He took care of me, and was so careful with me; like the boy had been my last working night. My last night as one of their whores. I felt for the wrist band and cried out. It was gone.

“Oh hey, hey, it’s okay!”

Leather and metal were pressed into my fingertips, beneath the wristband his hand felt warm and alive. I grasped it and blinked and tried to focus on him again. Summer skies smiled out from his blue eyes and his other hand wrapped around my one. He cradled my hand and the wristband between the both of his own, as he squatted down beside the bed.

“Am… am I dying?” I asked, and fresh hot tears slipped free.

“No. No, Darlin’, it just feels that way…”

“Promise.”

“Promise you what, Baby Girl?”

“Promise me I’m not dying, I don’t want to die.” I sobbed. It was true. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to see my sisters again. I wanted to live and do so many things, something;
anything
, with the rest of my life. I wanted so badly to know this man who selflessly took care of me and made me feel safe again.

“Shh, you’re not dying. You’re not gonna die. You’re okay, Baby Girl. This is normal for day three.”

I closed my eyes…
what had happened to days one and two?

Chapter 5

Marlin

“What’s your name?” she asked softly and I reached back and pushed her hair off her face so I could see her better.

“My name?” I asked, surprised, “Didn’t I ever tell you?” I immediately internally chastised myself for the casual touching. It was tough to remember not to do it when all I wanted to do was comfort her.

“If you did, I don’t remember…” She looked up at me, huddled small and in on herself. She’d tucked herself into the corner of the large, triangular bath, next to the wall closest to the outside edge. I was sitting on the outside, back against the side of the step and short tiled wall leading up into the large bath that was big enough for three. I twisted so I could see her. My fatigued body didn’t like the position so I adjusted so I was sitting alongside the tub, leaning against it. I propped my chin in my hand and kept my eyes on her face.

“Boys call me Marlin,” I said finally when she kept staring, waiting for an answer. She frowned slightly.

“Like the fish?” she asked and I smiled. She was finally lucid again. Looked like Faith had pulled through and was one with the rest of the world, for the most part.

“Yeah, exactly like the fish. It’s what I do. I run a sport fishing operation with my other brother, caught one of the biggest Marlin’s on record about six years back. When I patched into the club, it stuck, been Marlin ever since.”

“Club?” she asked hollowly.

“Yeah, the motorcycle club. Your sister, Hope, she’s with our president, Cutter. We all came to get you.”

“I know, Hope was there…” she scrubbed her face with her hands, “And another man, I remember him yelling and then there was you. You picked me up and then I was back in the van they took me in, and everything was awful and confusing…”

Her terror back in the van when we’d got her out of there made some sense now. Being all fucked up on the opiates, she’d probably had a flashback. Past and present melding into one awful big tangle of line that was so snarled there wasn’t nothing for it but to cut it and start fresh. I sighed inwardly. Nothing could be done except explaining things some so they made sense for her now. Couldn’t take the fear or the pain away, the unpleasant memories, but maybe giving her the tools to properly process the truth of things now, would help the raw fear of a week ago and more scab over and heal quicker.

“Think that was the drugs messin’ with your mind, Baby Girl. Can I tell you what happened? Maybe it’ll help some?” She stared me in the eye and finally nodded slowly, so I told her. About how her sister had gotten the call and how we’d gone looking. I skipped some of the gory details, leaving it at we’d found out about the house. Not how or why or what’d been done to get that information… She stared into the mound of bubbles around her, providing her the illusion of modesty as I spoke. She didn’t interrupt but I could just
see
her wheels turning. She was soaking up the story like a sponge.

“Captain called me from out front, I came in and your sister had a hold of you. I’m the only one of our crew that’s had to deal with addiction, even second hand like I did with Danny, so I picked you up and took you out of there.”

“The van…”

“Set you off like a firework,” I nodded in agreement. “But that’s okay. You had a good reason for it, and that’s gonna happen. You been through a lot, Faith. We’re going to get you some help. One step at a time.”

“I still don’t understand, you don’t know me… why are you helping me?”

It was a valid question, but none of the answers I had were real satisfying… because I liked her sister, because my Captain had asked me to, because I was a nice guy, but mostly and most truthfully it was likely to fix past mistakes that could never
be
fixed. Because I’d fuckin’ failed and my brother was dead… Then the reality set in, the hard truth: because every time she looked at me with those beautiful eyes, the color of the waters around here that I loved so damn much, I was like a drowning man that didn’t
want
to come up for air. None of these explanations sounded real good. None of them sounded anything less than what they were, sort of creepy. So I simply pursed my lips and patted the top of the edge of the tub. Resisting the urge I had to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.

She didn’t need me touching her. No matter how much I
wanted
to gather her up, hold her close and keep the horrors away from her, I couldn’t do that. I had to fight every instinct I had
to
do just that. It was basic human instinct. You saw someone hurting, you put your arms around them. You held them and soothed them, except what do you do in a case like this? When every touch she’d endured over the last couple of years was for someone else’s gratification?

Her clear, bright eyes roved my face and something flashed in their depths. She closed them and turned away from me, laying her head on top of her knees. It killed me that there wasn’t anything I could do.

She’d been sleeping more, after the initial hell of detox had passed, she’d finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. Over two days she’d been up in one form or another. The doc had left this morning with his crew to go back up north now that she was out of the woods. Not like I’d let him do much. Nothing either, for that matter. He’d been forced to put antibiotics through her IV a time or two when it was clear she couldn’t keep any of the pills he’d brought with him down. The anti-nausea medicine, for whatever reason, didn’t work for shit on her. The pediatric popsicles Doc had me give her to help keep her hydrated only stayed down some of the time. Of course, the red ones were her favorite, and of course, they stained like a motherfucker. Didn’t it figure? As soon as she could keep some broth and crackers in her, maybe some pudding, she’d have to start the antibiotic pills again.

I sat with her while she soaked in her sorely needed bath, and counted the knobs of her spine and every rib, where they stood out prominently against her back. She was so
thin
… It’d killed me when the doc had said she was lucky, that the sexually transmitted infections she had were all fixable with a course of a couple of weeks’ worth of pills. She had three, apparently… Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and some shit I ain’t never heard of called Trichomoniasis.

She would need regular bloodwork for a while to keep checking for HIV or any of the Hepatitis’, but he said the initial tests had come back clear, which was a real good sign. All I could keep thinking was there weren’t no good here. None at all.

“You cool for a minute?” I asked her softly and she nodded without looking. I pulled myself up, pushing off the edge of the tub to get to my feet and felt like I was getting too old for sitting on the floor like that, which was a bitch seeing as I was only thirty-six. I went out into the main bedroom and stretched for a second before I changed the bedding. It needed it. She’d been sweating hard. That done I went back in to check on her and found her crying quietly. It broke my fucking heart that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except for what I’d been doing all this time. I sat back down on the floor and just hung around near her. Just there, for whatever she might need.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered and raised her hands from the bath, scrubbing her tears away with her damp fingers. She held her breath and splashed water onto her face and I turned my head away, staring at the glassed in shower, trying hard not to study her reflection and to give her both support and privacy in equal measure. I mean, what else could I fucking do?

“Thank you, Marlin,” she said and I jumped slightly.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“I ain’t done nothin’ really.”

She finished her bath in silence and I let her, standing and waiting out in the room for her to dry off and get dressed. She was unsteady on her feet when she slipped out into the room and blinked up at me owlishly when I turned around and looked down at her from where I stood sentinel.

Wordlessly she held up that leather wrist band with the old fashioned key plate set into it and I smiled and nodded. She slipped it over her hand and held it in place, turning up the delicate underside of her wrist so that I could tug the laces tight and tie it off for her. Silently we stood while I carefully tied the thin leather cording off in a bow.

“Someday you gonna tell me what it means? Why it’s so important?” I asked quietly.

“Maybe.”

“You ain’t gotta tell me anything you don’t want to, Darlin’, but I sure would like to get to know you.”

She looked thoughtful at that and with a halting step, took one out into the room, but stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want to sound rude, but I’m sick of it in here… can we go someplace else in the house?” I smiled.

“Yeah, you’re not a prisoner, Baby Girl. You’re a guest, you can go wherever you want. You good to make it downstairs? Sit in the kitchen while I make you something to eat, see if you can keep something down?”

“I think so,” she nodded but wouldn’t look at me. She hugged herself around the middle 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.