Angel by Jamie Canosa Read Free Book Online Page A

learn the truth and face the pain that came with knowing it. I told myself it was out of fear for them . That’s what I told myself.
    Kiernan stood on the sidewalk, watching as Jade crossed the lot and disappeared inside another building with his hands shoved deep in his pockets to keep from reaching out and pulling her back. I knew this because my hands were shoved in my pockets, too.
    Neither of us spoke as he slid behind the wheel and backed from the spot. Bathed in the unforgiving glare of our headlights, the crumbling foundation of the brick building looked even worse.
    I stared out the side window, taking in as much depressing detail as I could from the poorly lit grounds of the dump Jade lived in. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Her situation. Worse than I thought.”
    “Yeah.” Kiernan’s made a right out of the complex and slumped, exhausted, back into his seat. “It’s worse.”
    What a mess. I knew her mother was a grade-A bitch, but this girl had it coming at her from every angle. Her mom, her neighbor, some ex-boyfriend issues at school I didn’t know much about, other than it was enough to get Kiernan into a fight. Something he’d never done before.
    No wonder she was as timid as a field mouse half the time. Always hiding and shaking. The people who were supposed to protect her were the ones doing her the most harm. But she had a backbone in there somewhere. I’d caught a glimpse of it tonight. Everyone did. It was how we protected ourselves. But hers was buried so deep, I wondered if she even knew it was there. She reminded me, oddly, of a declawed cat. Deprived of her ability to defend herself and tossed out into the wild.
    “Dammit.”
    Kiernan flicked a glance in my direction. “Yeah.”
    I felt the pressure growing in my chest. The vice-like tightness, threatening to crush my rib cage. Not now. Not here. Not like this . I’d been hiding my panic attacks from everyone for over a year. I sure as hell wasn’t about to have one in Kiernan’s car.
    Anchoring my hand in the hair at the back of my head, pulling hard enough at the roots to ground me in the present, I bent my neck and stared at the floor boards, forcing a few deep breaths into my lungs. “What are we gonna do?”
    “What can we do? She’s seventeen. It’s not like we can kidnap her.” Kiernan kept his tone casual, but the glow from the dashboard gave away the white knuckled grip with which he was strangling the wheel.
    There had to be something I could do. For Jade. For Kiernan. For everyone. There were people in my life who needed me, counted on me. The number was only growing and I was failing them. All of them. Just as useless to help the new as the old. What good was I if I couldn’t protect the people that mattered most to me and my family?
    “We’ll find a way. There has to be something we can—”
    “We can’t get her out of there. Trust me, I’ve looked into it. Any legal avenues would take . . . Might as well just wait for her birthday. Besides, she wouldn’t leave. Her mother’s heaped on the guilt so heavily, it’s trapped her there. She’s buried alive, Cal. The best we can do is help her find a way to survive it.”
    That wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to help her weather the blows. I wanted to shield her from them. I knew my brother. He wanted the same. And yet there was one blow he could offer her some protection from, but he refused.
    “You want her to survive? Then you have to tell her the truth. I get that you’re afraid. I get that you have a lot to lose. But you want to do something for her? You want to protect her? That is where you start.”
    Most of Kiernan’s face was concealed in shadow, but in the silence of the car I could hear the acceleration in his breathing. “I know. I will.”
    The same answer I’d been getting for weeks. I wanted to push it, remind him how unfair he was being. The longer he waited the worse it would be. But it had been a long night and we were both exhausted.