Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) by Crystal Hubbard Read Free Book Online Page B

taunt, jeer and joke that Leland and others like him had subjected him to from kindergarten right up to this moment. Every derogatory comment hurled at him about his mother, every nasty comment about his father, even the pity from people like Travis was answered with a blow to Leland’s head and face.
    Oblivious to the people who had climbed the bleachers to watch the fight from above and those who had circled around them for an even closer look, Alex didn’t pause until he looked up and saw Faith at the front of the crowd.
    A different kind of humiliation gripped him, and he sat back on his heels, his chest heaving. Leland wriggled away from him, his forearms and elbows still protecting his face.
    “You had that coming, Leland, and you know it,” Travis admonished his friend. “Show’s over, folks. Did y’all come out for a game or a fight?”
    His eyes fixed on Faith, Alex couldn’t move until the murmuring started. Voices, all of them so low he couldn’t identify their owners, overlapped and drove him to his feet.
    “…such a shame…”
    “His daddy has a short fuse, too…”
    “…poor boy…”
    “…white trash…”
    Alex shouldered his way through the crowd and hurried to the parking lot.
    “Wait!”
    He recognized that voice, but he kept walking.
    “Alex, wait!”
    He hopped onto his Harley and turned the key in the ignition. The ferocious roar of the Harley’s rebuilt four-cylinder engine scared most people, but Faith showed no fear as she straddled the front wheel to stop him from leaving.
    “Don’t you ever make me chase you again!” she shouted over the bike’s growl.
    He tightened his hands on the handles, his only indication that he was leaving. With or without her. Faith understood him perfectly, because in the next instant she had mounted behind him. Once her hands had knotted themselves securely at his waist, he took off, the wheels of his bike spraying gravel behind him.
    He drove with no destination in mind, and it was all he could do not to keep going until he hit Interstate 64. He had everything he needed right there with him, and there was nothing to stop him from heading west and driving until the road ran out.
    His vision of escape vanished when Faith began to shiver behind him. His denim jeans and heavy leather jacket protected him from the wintry wind, but Faith was far more vulnerable. He couldn’t take her to his house, and he didn’t dare take her home, so Alex brought her to the one place he could call his favorite in Dorothy.
    The Harley climbed Kayford Mountain only as high as the trails that had been cut by the heavy machinery used by the Lady Emiline Coal Company. Alex parked the bike in the shelter of the boulders that had been cleared after a recent blast on the mountainside. He took off his jacket and wrapped Faith in it. Her teeth stopped chattering the instant he zipped it up around her. The jacket was big on him, so it all but swallowed Faith.
    Holding her hand, he helped her pick her way a bit higher on the mountain, to an area that hadn’t been deforested by her father’s strip mining operation. Most of the larger wildlife had been frightened off by previous explosions, but the smaller, friendlier animals could still be heard darting in and out of the underbrush. A white pine that had fallen because of weather or the concussion of a mining blast made a cozy bench for them, once Alex had brushed it free of leaves and smaller branches.
    “You come here a lot, don’t you?” Faith asked as she sat crosslegged on the log.
    “What gives you that idea?” he responded.
    “There’s no moss growing on top of this log and the brush is flattened in front of it.”
    “I like the way you notice things,” he said. He sat close to her, hoping to steal a little of her warmth.
    “I noticed Leland Birch provoking you into a fight.” She pushed back the sleeve of his jacket so she could take his hand in hers. She turned it over, wincing at the sight of his bruised