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

think. The bed closest to the door was empty and for a minute I thought I must have missed her. Maybe she was off playing bingo or some shit. Maybe a sewing circle or whatever the fuck old ladies do with their time. Perm their hair and make casseroles, or some shit.
    But then I saw her. She was slumped in a wheelchair near the window, half draped over the clanking radiator. Her eyes were focused right outside the dirty pane and I figured she must be watching the ducks down there in that drainage pond.
    I reached up and turned down the fucking TV. Then I sat down in the straight backed, uncomfortable chair, wedging my bulky body into the narrow space.
    "Marion," I said, loudly.
    She looked like a bird, or maybe even a newborn baby. Her skin looked fragile, hanging off of her bones like she had melted. Like a candle. What little was left of her hair was like a flyaway puff, no more substantial than the down of a late summer's dandelion. She was wrapped in a blanket that looked like she might have made herself, in better days.
    I stared at the blanket, thinking it might have looked familiar, but then decided that I didn't give a fuck. "Marion!" I repeated, "do you hear me?"
    She turned her head like it cost her some effort, her watery eyes landing  upon me with no recognition whatsoever.
    Perfect. She didn't remember me. I didn't remember her. Why the fuck was I here?
    She opened her mouth slightly, parting her lips like a baby reaching for a spoonful of mushy food. I thought she might have said something, but I couldn't hear it over the clacking noise of the radiator.
    "What?" I asked. I was starting to feel belligerent. I wanted to fight someone, something. There was a real problem with me being in her room. It made me feel like shit, and I didn't need any more reasons to feel like that.
    She opened her mouth in that baby bird posture again, and then I finally heard it, floating over my ears like a whisper. If I hadn't seen her lips open I wouldn't have even known to listen for it.
    "You're Ben."
    It wasn't a question, it was a statement.
    "I am." It was all I could say to her. There was no memory, nothing I could conjure of her, especially not like this. If I had any memories of her caring for me as a child, it wouldn't be this fragile baby bird who did it. There was a formidable woman in my brain, someone with iron gray hair, someone who doled out far more criticism than affection. I knew that she must be Marion and that I was remembering my grandmother, but there was no connection there.
    The two women floated side-by-side in my head, and never converged into one.
    "I don't like your hair," she croaked at me.
    I raised my hand and brushed it over my bald head. "What hair?" I felt myself smile.
    "I don't like it," she repeated, "you don't look like you."
    "What do I look like?" I asked. There was a strange excitement burning in my chest when she said that. I knew that every time I looked in the mirror I saw a stranger. Maybe she could tell me how I was supposed to be.
    But the recognition her eyes glazed over, like a lightbulb had been shut off behind them. She turned away, the vacant look returning, and her gaze fell back on the ducks far below us.
    "Well, this was a waste of my time," I said out loud. It made me feel better to say that, and it made me feel better to be slightly cruel. I stood up from the chair, and shoved my hands into the pocket of my dirty jeans. And that's when I felt it.
    My wallet was gone.

Chapter Eleven
     
    Declan
     
    "This is a bit of a shit show if you ask me," J. muttered.
    You could tell it was one of those things we weren't supposed to hear, a subtle little passive aggressive dig that we were supposed to ignore.
    So I did just that. Lord knows I had already said my piece.
    But Case, well, that big blond motherfucker had a different idea of how things were gonna go. "If you're telling me that we should just let that traitorous asshole waltz right back in here on his gimpy leg, then you and I