Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II

by A. J. Downey

  I turned and went for the water. It was too much, just too intimate in front of so many witnesses. My, god. I was just so confused.

  “Hey, whoa! Easy!” I’d accidentally crashed into the same man from earlier, the one with the Frisbee.

  “I’m so sorry!” I cried.

  “Hey, it’s nothing. My name is Brent, what’s yours?”

  “I’m sorry?” I shook off the heavy moment before and focused on him in the light from their fire.

  “I could always call you ‘girl with the eyes’ but I was hoping for your name,” he said gently.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I laughed, “Faith. My name is Faith.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Faith. Now, where’s the fire at?” he smiled, and it was charming and normal and carried none of the so serious weight of Marlin’s gaze which for the first time felt oppressive rather than protective. I touched the band around my wrist and thought of the boy, back in New Orleans. Brent’s smile was a lot like his. Open and friendly, care free and innocent.

  Desperate to lighten my mood I laughed and waved out over the fires dotting the beach, “Take your pick…” He laughed too and we began to talk.

  “Now, you’re way too pretty to be apologizing for everything, what’s eating you?”

  “Oh, nothing… Where are you from?” I tried. He flashed a smile, teeth very straight and white in the shifting firelight.

  “Maryland originally, but I’m down here for spring break. I go to college in Indiana. It’s my last year and I’ve been in serious need of blowing off some steam. Some fun, sun and relaxation. What about you?”

  I scrambled around for an answer and Hope flashed into my mind, “Visiting my sister, she’s back that way.” I smiled and hoped he didn’t pry too deeply and as luck would have it, he didn’t.

  “She as pretty as you?” he asked and winked and I hugged myself and laughed.

  “Prettier, she’s also got a boyfriend… not that she’d need him to come to her defense.” I rolled my eyes. No, Hope was perfectly capable of taking care of herself and everyone around her. She always had been, even before our mom had gotten sick. I kept the sigh that wanted out under wraps and smiled with false brightness.

  Brent smiled, “Feel like hanging for a bit, Faith?” he asked and I smiled, nodding. I was maybe two fires down the beach, closer to the water. I looked back over my shoulder and could see Marlin, still plucking the strings of his guitar, his eyes seeking me out in the darkness. His gaze wrapped around me and even though I was still rattled, I felt that familiar sense that no matter what, if I fell that safety net was there to catch me.

  “Sure, I’d like that,” I murmured and my fingers went back to the leather wrist band the boy had given me. Dr. Shiendland had told me the boy’s last message to me was an important one not to give up on.

  Not everyone is a dick, you have to believe that there are some good people still out there. Even if I’m not one of the best, I try not to be one of the worst.

  “Great,” Brent was saying, “Let me get you a drink…” I smiled at him again and attempted to wear my knowledge like invisible armor. The knowledge that none of these people knew me from Adam, none of them knew what I had been or about the drugs, none of them figured me for anything but a normal girl here to visit my sister.

  “Sure,” I nodded and smiled, Brent was handsome in his own way. He carried none of the rugged look that Marlin did. Instead, he was a clean cut and athletic type of strong. It would have been appealing to the ‘me’ of three years ago, but now… I glanced back again to the gathering around the fire and strained my ears to catch some errant notes from Marlin’s guitar over the mini sound system that the college boys had set up.

  Brent returned with an iconic red Solo cup in each hand and handed me one of them. I smiled and sipped the cold drink in mine. It tasted strongly of pineapple and coconut with a slightly salty finish which was strange.

  I laughed a little, “Someone mix their rum up with Tequila?” Brent laughed and shook his head.

  “There’s no telling with these wise guys. So, tell me, where are you from originally?”

  “California. Sacramento to be exact.”

  “Ahhh, so east meets west, nice! So I guess you’re used to the weather here in sunny Florida. Isn’t California about the same?”

  “Sunny and warm, yes, the humidity, not so much, but yeah, I’m sort of used to the humidity by now. It can be awful, sometimes, but I guess that’s what air conditioning is for.”

  Brent laughed again, a little more nervously this time and I sipped my drink, “Wow, look at us, is all we really have to talk about the weather?”

  “Mm, safe enough topic as any,” I returned and it was. I closed my eyes a moment and opened them, the firelight beginning to swim. Brent reached out and took my arm and I jumped.

  “Hey, you alright? Maybe that drink was a little stronger than expected,” he tugged on me lightly and I resisted.

  “No, it’s not that…” I dropped the cup in the sand as I was swamped with a dizzy spell. Oh, God. Oh, God help me, there was something in it… this wasn’t right.

  “Maybe you should come and sit down.”

  I put my arm out and staggered slightly and opened my mouth, “Marlin!” I called but I didn’t know if it was loud enough to be heard over the music.

  “Marlin!” I shouted, at least I think I shouted louder.

  Suddenly arms wrapped around my waist and pulled; I was up in the air and panic seized me. I screamed, wordlessly and my mind screamed louder, no, no, no, no, no! Not again, not again!

  “Hope! Hope, help me! Marlin!”

  I kept screaming, everything’d gone blurry, the blood was rushing in my head. Male voices were shouting, an urgent voice near my ear, warm breath on my neck. I struggled, fighting like mad, but he had me, he was holding me and dragging me back, away, I was terrified, and just when I thought my heart was going to explode in my chest I was turned loose, pitching forward only to crash into leather and wall of muscle.

  Arms went around me, and I was enveloped in the comforting scent of cigarettes, alcohol and peach shampoo.

  “I’ve got you, Baby Girl. Arms up, around my neck; that’s it.” I was lifted, just like back in that house in New Orleans, and just like the house in New Orleans, I felt, deep down in my heart, what the true meaning of the word safe meant.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” I wailed.

  “Shhh, you’re good, Baby, I’ve got you. I promised you, no one would ever hurt you again; I meant it. You’re okay now.”

  I buried my face in the side of his neck and squeezed my eyes shut against the dizzy sensation threatening to overwhelm me, but I didn’t have long to think about it because as Marlin made strides to who knew where, I think I lost consciousness.

  Chapter 19

  Marlin

  I kept my eye on her, she’d made her way down the beach; head bowed. She had run almost head long into a guy and I closely watched their exchange. I waited, I didn’t want to jump in if it wasn’t needed; she had to do some things on her own, after all. If she needed me I would go, but the guy reached out and steadied her and they began talking, so I let it be. Keeping my silent guardianship from a distance, the same way I’d been doing for weeks now.

  Cutter got up and dragged Hope to her feet laughing a few moments later and I took my eyes off of Faith for a minute.

  “Well, it’s been swell, but the swelling’s –er, gone up and I need to go fuck my woman,” the Captain said to a round of rowdy cheers; Hope laughed and shook her head.

  “Marlin, you got Faith?” she asked; worry deepening her dark brown eyes to near black.

  “Hope, do you really need to even ask me that?”

  She smiled, an almost rueful turn of lips and laughed softly, “No. No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Go on, Captain. I’ll take Faith back to the house, later.”

  “We’ll be on the boat,” Cutter said slinging an arm across Hope’s shoulders and turning
her toward the Marina.

  “Call us if anything happens!” Hope called and I returned my eyes back to the blonde siren with the jewel bright eyes.

  “You know I will,” I muttered and played the opening chords of one of my old favorite Stones songs.

  Faith was still standing by the fire, around two down from ours, talking to the college pretty boy. I watched as she hugged herself, and laughed at something he’d said. A moment later he returned with a couple of cups. They talked, she occasionally sipped, and it all seemed like pretty normal stuff.

  I glanced down for half a second and when I looked up again, I could tell something was very wrong. Faith dropped her cup and had her arm out. She had looked down and away from the dude but her hand was out as if to ward him off. I was on my feet, passing my guitar into Hossler’s hands and striding around the fire before he could even reach for her. When his hand closed around her wrist and before her first indistinct shout, I had broken into a run, brothers falling in beside me and hot on my heels.

  I was barely a few paces away when she opened her mouth a second time and cried out for me, “Marlin!”

  “Nothing!” I snapped out to the nearest brother beside me and he moved forward.

  “I got her, take care of him,” he said.

  “You’re mine, asshole!”

  Nothing pulled Faith away from the little cockbite trying to take her, and I was on him. His little fucking frat buddies started to move in, but all of ‘em were just as quick to step back when the rest of the club got there. I grabbed the little worm, cocked back and while his hands went around my wrist to keep me from choking the shit out of him, I let fly right into his smirking prettyboy face.

  I dropped his ass, grounded and pounded him, and didn’t let up until Faith’s panicked shrieking voice broke through the angry haze of red that’d fallen over my vision.

  “Help me! Marlin!”

  I got off the man-child, moaning and crying like a little bitch in the sand and went to her. Nothing let her go and she lurched forward and away from him right into my arms; her soft, lithe form folding in against me and fuck it all, she was meant to be there. I put my arms around her and held her close.

  “I’ve got you, Baby Girl. Arms up, around my neck; that’s it.”

  She complied, sweetly, and with complete and total, well, faith in me that I knew exactly what my next move needed to be. I was taking her home, my home, where I could watch her. Where I could be sure to protect her. She sobbed into the side of my neck as I made strides in the direction of the Marina.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” her words were slurred around the edges and my suspicions were pretty much confirmed. It happened out here all the time and I should have seen it coming; fuckin’ college spring breakers and their fuckin’ date rape shit. Drug a girl’s drink, get it on… motherfucker! I kept a lid on

  “Shhh, you’re good, Baby, I’ve got you. I promised you, no one would ever hurt you again; I meant it. You’re okay now.”

  I talked to her, all the way back to the Scarlett Ann. When I got to my boat, I let Nothing and Radar board ahead of me. Faith had become so much dead weight in my arms when I’d hit the steps up to the Marina’s lot, my anger about her having been drugged reached boiling point all over again. I stuffed it down, there weren’t nothing I could do about it except seethe but I could do that, so I did it well. Nothing reached down for her, and him being the closest thing to our resident medic, I handed her up to him before boarding myself.

  “Radar, let the Captain and Hope know what’s up,” I ordered.

  “On it,” the compact Hispanic man bolted up the dock and took the shortcut, hopping across moored boats, rather than going the long way around up and down the rows of docks separating mine and Cutter’s slips.

  Hossler handed me up my guitar and I set it aside and went where Nothing had gone, taking Faith to my quarters below decks. I entered my cabin which was sizeable enough you could walk around the queen sized bed with room to spare. He’d set her on it and was taking her pulse. Satisfied, he went about peeling back her eyelids and shining a pen light into them that had appeared from somewhere out of the inside of his cut.

  “What’s the word?”

  “If I had to guess its GHB or one of its siblings. Can’t know for sure without a blood draw and testing equipment I just don’t have the access to. That shit ain’t something the town, let alone me, has on hand. That’s why we got such a problem with these fuckers doin’ it here. Good news is, that the shit they use for this kind of thing is fast metabolizing. She’ll wake up thirsty, with a headache maybe… probably with some memory loss for sure.”

  “Damn, I hope this don’t set her back.”

  “Hard to say, Man. Hard to say.”

  “You might want to bail before Hope and the Captain get here.”

  “Cops are going to be on this for sure, Dude. You beat the brakes off that happy bastard in front of a lot of people, and you could smell the money.”

  “Fuck if I care.”

  “Yeah, me either, I’m sure the Captain’ll sort it out.”

  “What am I sorting out?” Cutter demanded.

  Nothing sighed, and gestured that Cutter had probably best follow him and get the full meal deal, because right on the Captain’s heels was his woman. Hope burst into the room like a hurricane, the energy rolling off her, the air crackling with her rage.

  “What happened?” she demanded and went for the side of the bed Faith was laying on. Nothing had put her on her side, in the recovery position in case whatever was in her system caused her stomach to heave. Hope stood by the raised bed and took her sister’s had between her own.

  “I was watching her, she was talkin’ to one of the college boys and he brought her a drink. The second she showed anything was wrong I was on it.”

  “Jesus, Faith!” Hope sounded incredulous, but luckily her sister was out, and didn’t have to hear it.

  “Hope, don’t blame her for tryin’. She was on the beach with all of us right fuckin’ there. Nothing happened, she’s gonna be fine. I swear to Christ, though… if Faith didn’t have bad luck she wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

  “We’ll take her back to the house –”

  I scoffed, “She’s stayin’ right here, where I can take care of her, besides, where you gonna get a cage to take her in? Not like she’s fit to ride and I’m damn sure not gonna carry her all the way to the house.”

  Hope looked at me, her expression fractured and haunted, tears starting to well up.

  “I am like the worst fucking parent ever at this point, aren’t I?” she asked and sniffed.

  “Naw, Sweetheart,” Cutter answered from the doorway.

  “She was all grown up when she was eighteen,” I added, “Besides, come tomorrow, we can go back over the lessons about taking candy, or in this case drinks, from strangers. She’s good. I’ve got her, and I promise I’m takin’ care of her.”

  Hope nodded, and Cutter held out his hand to her, “C’mon, Sweetheart. I’ve gotta go be the President for a minute, we need to talk to our people and get the full Monty from all sides.”

  “We have an early set of customers tomorrow,” I said.

  “It’s best just to let her sleep until whatever it is wears off,” Nothing counseled.

  “Fine, that settles that then, she can come out with me and my brother. Ain’t no place safer for her.”

  “I’ll try to be here for that,” Hope said.

  I nodded, “Johnny can suck it.”

  Plans made, Hope and the Captain left, Nothing gave me some instructions on what to check on throughout the night and he left soon after. I debated, for a time, what to do. I finally settled on leaving her as is, as much as I wanted to get her changed into something more comfortable than her cut offs and such, I figured preserving her modesty was more important this time around.

  I smoothed some of her bright blonde beach waved locks out of her face; slack with her drug induced sleep and asked her, “Why di
dn’t you just come back to me, Baby Girl? Why do you keep runnin’, huh?”

  I wouldn’t be getting an answer to the question tonight, there wasn’t no way, so instead, I got myself ready for bed. I grabbed a quick shower and some clean boxers. I usually didn’t bother with actual sleepwear, so it was the best I had. Usually, I crashed out one of two ways, nude or fully clothed.

  I climbed up onto the bed and settled onto my side behind my girl and pulled her gently back into the protective curve of my body. We had a lot to talk about she and I, and needed to come to some kind of understanding quick, because this? What we been doing? It wasn’t working for me anymore and it damn sure wasn’t working for her. I’d given her space. Tomorrow, I was going to be up close and personal, and push some of her limits. I just hoped like hell it weren’t too soon.

  Chapter 20

  Faith

  I woke slowly; my head full of cotton and dragged open my eyes half expecting that it had all been a dream. My sister, Marlin, and the daring rescue, no more than a drug induced hallucination… I pushed myself up in the comfortable bed and nearly wept when I realized I was in a room that looked awfully expensive. I’d been in high priced suites before and this looked to be one of them, only strangely compact. Not at all like a full sized hotel room, and there was no bathroom that I could see, just one door which was presumably the exit.

  I groaned softly and covered my face with my hands at the sense of vertigo, as if the room were tipping. It took me several moments to realize that it actually was. I swallowed my stomach contents which were threatening to rebel and looked down. I felt myself frown in confusion. I was clothed. Not only was I clothed, I was clothed in the same thing as my dream.