Last Call (Bad Habits Book 3) by Staci Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

around. “Good, I think. That was way easier than I thought it would be, and kind of a rush. I thought it would take longer to find someone I wanted to go out with than four-point-two seconds.”
    “Well, no one would ever accuse you of being indecisive.”
    I raised my glass. “That, my friend, is very true.”

NEGATIVE SPACE

    Patrick
    I WASN’T SURE HOW LATE it was, only that it had been long enough that the voice in the back of my mind told me I should probably leave or go to bed before she came home. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, just recrossed my ankles with my eyes on my sketchbook, telling myself I was just comfortable. That the next time I got up, I’d go to sleep. That I definitely wasn’t waiting for her to come home so I could see her.
    Music played softly from her portable speaker, a beat to drive my hand as it guided the charcoal across the page in heavy strokes. A curve and a line for her lips. The swoop of her hair. The angle of her jaw. The smallest smile resting just in the corner of her mouth as she looked away.  
    I knew every detail of Rose’s face, every expression.
    I pictured her in moments permanently imprinted in my mind. As she lay in bed next to me on some otherwise unmemorable morning. After I kissed her for the first time. When I told her I wanted to end it, her face as flat and smooth as glass. I thought she didn’t care.  
    Wrong.
    It wasn’t her fault, what had happened between us. I just didn’t know how to handle what I felt for her. I didn’t even know what my feelings were. Not until it was too late.
    And now, after everything, I somehow found myself bunking with the girl I couldn’t let go. I pushed away the thought that this could be my chance, not wanting to hope. In my experience, hope led to disappointment. But if nothing else, maybe Rose and I could at least find a way to mend things on some level. I blew it up, so I figured it was up to me to figure out how it all fit back together, one piece at a time. Even just friends would be better than nothing, better than what we’d been over the last few months.
    I knew what nothing felt like, and I never wanted to go back to that.
    Life could have been so much harder than it had been for me. I never went hungry. I was never beaten or abused. I had a roof over my head and clothes on my back. But I couldn’t say I ever felt loved or wanted. Not that I could remember, anyway.
    My father — The Sergeant, we called him — was in the Army, and it suited him almost too well. I sometimes wondered if he could have survived in a civilian life, a civilian job, the quiet, hardened man I knew who valued structure and order over everything. I suppose it was why we never saw eye-to-eye — I had the rebellion gene, thanks to my mom.  
    Sometimes I think I remember what it was like when I was very young, though part of me thinks it’s just a recreation of an old photo, a retold story from someone else’s memory rather than one of my own. But I remember us happy, even though it’s a fleeting feeling — as soon as I touch the thought, it’s gone. I remember the three of us laughing, holding hands as we watched the giraffes with their long black tongues, necks stretched to reach the green leaves near the viewing platform.  
    I was nine when she left us, and I think she took the best part of him with her. Maybe she just normalized him somehow, or maybe she was a buffer that made everything feel like it was fine. Either way, he was never the same after she left. I don’t think he really knew what to do with me, and we never understood each other. Temperamentally, he and I were very much alike — stoic, avoiding what we didn’t know how to deal with, leaving things unsaid and unresolved. I stayed out of his way, and he stayed out of mine.
    Art was my only constant, the place — the only place — where I could be open and honest. Over the years, I filled sketchbook after book, never taking classes, never expecting it to