Steel My Soul (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Sons of Steel Motorcycle Club Book 4) by Vivian Lux Read Free Book Online Page A

was back to show it that it hadn't succeeded.
    The Morgan County Elder Care Facility was about a mile outside the town. It squatted near the highway overlooking a drainage pond choked with algae and pissed off looking ducks. I pulled my bike into a parking space and killed the engine, looking up at the faux gabled mask they'd erected to hide the desperation inside.
    Lenape was everything and nothing at the same time, a small town in a sea of small towns splintered and splattered by strip malls and interweaving highways.
    It was the type of place that was always changing; no history, no character, so I didn't feel quite so bad that I couldn't remember a single thing about the area. I just knew that this was where I was supposed to be from.  I could recall hazy scenes like  videos playing back in my brain. Two old people who lived with me, giving me all of the material things I required but none of the love or support. They called themselves my grandparents and seemed pissed that I had no feelings for them.  Eventually we all agreed to stop trying to force love where there was none.
    I think they were relieved.
    The old man had died about a year or so after I woke up. I went to the funeral, but the whole time I felt the pain of not feeling. The people there expected me to be grief-stricken over losing the man who had raised me, who had apparently taken me in after my parents were killed in a car crash.  But as I sat there in my leathers in the back of the church, I could conjure up no recollection from the priest's words.
    So I got the fuck out of Lenape.
    But now I was back.
    The receptionist seemed startled when she saw me, but then again most people did.  "I'm here to see Marion Hunt," I told the squirrely looking little lady.
    "Is she expecting you?" she squeaked.
    "Does she really expect anything?" I countered. The Alzheimer's took hold right after my grandfather died, like Marion just decided it was easier to check out of the world. She had the right idea as far as I was concerned.
    The receptionist blinked. "Fair enough. And you are?"
    I swallowed. It always took me a moment to remember the name I was born with. "My name is Ben Nelson. I'm her grandson."
    The receptionist didn't seem to notice the effort that cost me. Her eyes went soft and sappy. "Oh, she'll be so thrilled to see you. Marion doesn't get many visitors."
    "Yeah, I expect not," I nodded. If that was supposed to make me feel guilty, it wasn't working.
    "I'm going to need you to sign the visitor's log," she chirped, sliding a three ring binder over the counter.
    Fuck, I hated writing. I closed the pen in my fist, feeling like an awkward child. Everything had come back in physical therapy except my ability to write like a grown ass man. I gripped the pen hard and laboriously spelled out my name.
    Then I saw the line for my address and paused. I wasn't going back to Philly. I was done with that cesspool. On a whim, I scratched the address where I last laid my head. Gabi's.
    Not that it made a difference.
    The receptionist took the binder and smiled. "She's in room 503, Mr. Nelson. Up the elevators on the right."
    "Thanks," I nodded, rapping my knuckles on the countertop and making her jump.
    This place smells bad. If I had hair it would be standing on end. Smells like piss and bad food and the reek of unwashed bodies. Lovely.  I heard a cry, couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and it was the sound of loneliness. I recognized it intimately.
    Marion's room was right next to the elevator bank. I hoped she was too deaf to hear the ding of it all day. A million people coming and going but none of them coming to see her.
    Shit, maybe I was starting to feel a bit guilty.
    Feeling guilty pisses me off, so when I walked into Marion's room, I was already looking for something to hate. "It stinks to high hell in here," I muttered, fixing on that as the problem.
    There were two beds in this room and the TV was turned so loudly that I could barely hear myself