Battle Scars by Sheryl Nantus Read Free Book Online Page B

lips. “Only yours.”
    The soft kiss earned not just a sigh from me but from an assortment of female observers. Bran ignored them and winked at me, sending my pulse soaring again.
    I retrieved my hand and focused on finishing the coffee, fighting down the urge to drag him into the washroom for a quickie. “You really slept in a tree?”
    He winced. “Bad memories of back spasms.” He reached around to the small of his back with a pained expression. “Let’s say it was a learning experience and I did it the one time.” One eyebrow arched upward. “Just sleeping in the tree.” He leaned in. “But I am open to experimenting with different positions if you’re game later on.”
    I pressed my lips together, tamping down my desire. “Later. Right now we’ve got to find these two before they get into trouble.” I paused, my mind running over the possibilities. “More trouble, that is.”
    “Be able to cover more ground if we split up,” Bran said.
    I choked on the mouthful of coffee I’d just taken. “What?”
    He held up a hand. “Don’t get all upset. I’m not going to run off with Angie and drop you a postcard from Sault St. Marie.”
    I glared at him.
    “Or anyplace else,” he added. “I think it’d be a better use of our resources for us to split up. You take the streets and I’ll take the parks, the green patches these kids set up in for the night.”
    “It’s not dark yet.”
    “No,” Bran admitted. “So we’re not going to split up right now. But it’ll be dark in a few hours. I think our best plan of attack is for me to hit the old places I knew, see if the kids are still using them. You keep working the street, that’s your strong point.”
    “And if you run into Angie? I figure she’ll be out and about doing good deeds now that she knows you’re on the streets. Waiting to ambush you if and when you show in her sights.”
    Bran frowned. “I thought you trusted me.”
    I took a sip of scalding coffee before answering. “I do. I don’t trust her.”

Chapter Three
    I’d hoped it would be as simple as heading for the prime performance spots and tagging the two kids as they asked for cash—twice the fool me. In the next three hours we wandered halfway up Yonge Street, down and across both Queen and King Street and through alleyways that ruined a good pair of running shoes.
    There were plenty of performers banging on drums, strumming guitars, offering fast charcoal sketches and a handful playing human robots. One slender girl danced freestyle to her boyfriend’s drumming on a set of bongos, waving her see-through silk scarves back and forth. It garnered a few dollars as I watched, mostly from leering businessmen pausing for a break and pretending to like the music.
    I couldn’t begin to imagine what living like this would be like. I’d gone through my rebellious teenage phase, thought about running away from my foster home and making my way on the street with the usual romantic viewpoint of street life. I’d never followed through with it due to a kind and loving set of surrogate parents keeping me on the straight and narrow despite myself.
    Bran squeezed my hand. “I can guess what you’re thinking.” He lowered his voice. “These young men and women are looking for what we all want—a better life.”
    “This is a better life?”
    “For some of them, yes.” He glanced at the girl who now was busy hawking the same scarves she’d been dancing with. “Sexual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse from their parents, from their family and friends, from their community. This is the only place they can be accepted fully for who and what they are. Gay, straight, transgendered—there’s a lot of ways to be pushed into this world.”
    “Until they get victimized again by drug dealers, pimps and general criminals.” I wasn’t in a mood to sing the praises of independent living.
    He nodded. “For the most part, yep. Some make it, like Angie, and move on into a good life as an