Read Clear (Storm's Soldiers MC Book 3) for Free Online

wasn’t death either. “I can take that,” I said.
    “Good. Alright, then. I’ll talk to you later.”
    She clicked off. I stared at the phone as the light dimmed off. The night lay cracked open above, all those distant lights out of reach. There was a lot of places left for me to go, but there was nowhere I really wanted to be.
    I thrummed Viper to life and took off on a rambling ride. I roared up the freeway up past downtown, looped around to come back down, then did it again. I might have kept going north, maybe even out of Georgia, but my fucking gas light came on.
    I swore at first, but then checked the exits and started to laugh into the wind. I was smack dab in downtown Atlanta. And I knew just the place to fill up.
    The station lay empty when I rumbled in. Against the pitch black of the projects around, it shone like a lighthouse. The pump where my mom had died was back in service and I pulled up to it. I took a quick glance around and started to fuel.
    There were a couple packs of wild boys, but I met their gazes and made them see I wasn’t easy prey. It struck me that this was a power that Meagan would not have, even though they were her folk.
    In fact, I saw now that she and these boys weren’t that similar at all, once you got under the skin. Just like I wasn’t sure I was with the Soldiers under my colors.
    A scraping noise stuttered up behind me and I spun around. A tiny old black woman with grey hair and a gap toothed grimace stood at my back. She had a walking stick. I almost laughed.
    “Oh,” she said.
    “What?”
    “You ain’t that white boy.”
    “Which white boy?”
    She shook her head and started to head back to the gas station. “The one that keeps swinging ‘round every month or so on a bike like that.”
    Calix. I knew he came here for inspiration, but I couldn’t see what he’d have to do with this old woman.
    “That’s my brother,” I said.
    She creaked around, looked over her glasses at my jacket. “Hmph.”
    “How you know him?”
    “He came in to buy a pack of cigarettes once. I noticed he hadn’t bought gas so I asked him why he was here.”
    “And?”
    “You know the story, boy. You were here when it happened.”
    It took me a couple seconds to realize she was talking about the day my mother was shot. “So what?”
    “I was here that day too. The man that killed your momma shot me first.” She patted her hip and winced. Then she started to toddle back in.
    “I don’t get it,” I yelled at her. “What’d you come out to say?”
    Her body slumped. She swiveled back around. “I told your brother that I felt bad for his momma. You know what he said to me? He said it was too late for apologies. I’m not quick on my feet, but that sat with me, that he thought that I had any need to apologize.”
    Yeah, that sounded like Calix. Hell, that sounded like something I might even say not too long ago.
    “Anyway, you tell your brother then. Tell him I understand why he’s so angry. Tell him I forgive him.” She paused and gathered strength. “And tell him not to show his white ass around here anymore. Got enough trouble.”
    She went back into her store, leaving her words to echo in my head.
    It seemed like the sort of thing I might be hearing from other lips not too long from now.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    Meagan
    Saturday dawned way too beautiful to be filled with hate. I lay on my bed trying to be gloomy, but the damn songbirds were whistling just outside my window. They couldn’t wait to greet the morning.
    I wondered how simple a life it must be up in the air, with nothing to worry about than staying safe and finding the next thing to eat. There was no past, no future, heck, no mind to be occupied by any of it.
    All you had to do to find true love was follow the song that sounded the most beautiful. The male bird might reject you, but it wouldn’t keep you on a leash while he sang trash about birds with feathers like yours
    The clock only read 8 AM. I tried to stuff a