Read Equilibrium (Marauders #4.5) for Free Online Page B

they didn’t even notice it anymore, and they’d mostly seemed pleased that I was smiling, talking, and giggling. It was a lot easier to fake things when I was a bit buzzed and had a filter to reality, and it was such a relief.
    Except Mom, of course, but there was just no goddamn pleasing her.
    The main problem had been that I couldn’t buy pot; there wasn’t a dealer in Greenville willing to sell it to me, and I wasn’t really prepared to go out to find them anyway. But then I’d realized the clubhouse was full of pot and other interesting things. Also, I knew most of the hiding places. I’d grown up in that clubhouse, I knew all the rooms, where the hiding places were, and getting a master key wasn’t hard—or getting a copy of it.
    I’d suggested to Dad that a small job might be good, just something to do to earn some money, ‘Maybe help cleaning the clubhouse?’ I’d suggested with a sweet smile. And Bob’s your uncle, I was in. He’d told me to stay the fuck away on the weekends when the worst parties happened, and I really didn’t mind that. It was more collecting laundry, empty the trash, stuff like that, and if the rooms were way too yucky, I left it to the sweetbutts—after searching them, obviously. It was what I was there for, after all, and with the job, I had a reason to be in the rooms, and I could do it when no one else was around. I wasn’t an idiot; I never completely emptied a hiding spot. I just took a few grams here and a pill there, all neatly collected in my small plastic bag of relaxation.
    So, that was what I was doing on a Wednesday in March—looking for stash holes under the guise of collecting laundry. I’d spent the morning cleaning the bar, to make it look like I was taking my job seriously, while I waited for people to get out. The calmest time at the clubhouse was after lunch, when most of the overnighters had woken up, but before the garage closed. I was in Roach’s room, and I was frustrated. I hadn’t been able to find a single one of his stashes, and it bugged me. Most of the guys had pretty elaborate hiding places, and more than once, I’d found a couple in each room, but fuck all in Roach’s. It had become a matter of pride—I was damn well going to find it.
    “You’re not going to find anything.”
    I took a deep breath and grabbed the sheets before standing up. Roach was standing in the doorway to the bathroom. I hadn’t heard him, and he must’ve been in there for a really long time, perfectly quiet. Fuck, fuckety, fuck.
    “Hi,” I said with a big smile. “I was just going to take your sheets.”
    “Oookay, whatever, just stop poking around in my shit while trying to find my stash. It pisses me off, and you’re not going to find anything anyway.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and with a firmer grip of the sheets, I tried to leave the room. But just as I passed him, I felt his hand at the back of my pants when he pulled out the bag. “What the fuck!”
    “This! I’m talking about this.” He leaned closer to me, and I felt trapped, in panic, and pissed off. “Those wide smiles and big baby blues aren’t fooling me, Princess, so don’t even try.”
    “So what?” I said and tried to take the bag from him, but he kept it out of reach. He was a lot taller than me, and I didn’t want to stand too close to him. “I’m eighteen, not a child, so what’s the big deal with me doing the same things as you guys do all the time?”
    “They’re doing it for a completely different reason than you are. That’s the big deal.”
    “Oh, please! Do you really wanna play the ‘who’s the more immoral’ game with me?”
    “Let’s!” he hissed, and I realized that when he wasn’t smiling he looked… mean. “You’re lying to your dad and are stealing drugs from your family to get away from what you think is a miserable existence. Your turn, Princess.”
    “Stop calling me that! And what the fuck do you know about my