The Fall of Sky by Alexia Purdy Read Free Book Online Page A

charm again.”
    Audrey nodded, about to reach over to shake Saul up, but he was already stirring. He sat up and pulled on a shirt before reaching down to pull on his socks and shoes. That man was delish, like a refined wine. Even his blind eyes took nothing away from his chiseled looks. I smiled and turned away before I embarrassed Audrey by eyeing them both too long. She deserved a nice specimen of a man like that. I’d never be able to hold one like him. I always picked the wrong ones to hang with and pushed the right ones as far as I possibly could. Let’s just say, I didn’t want to settle down, now or ever, not after all the crap Audrey and I had to go through in our childhoods. I’d never put a kid through that. Family was my sister, and that was all I wanted. If she chose to have kids, that was up to her. I’d be there for her and the kids, but no man was going to anchor me down with kids ever.
    “Give me your pack. I’ll stuff it in the trunk.” I took the bag Audrey handed me and headed out the door. Pausing to peek around me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jonas did have his little bitches sniffing around, watching our every move. Sighing, I clicked the trunk open and tossed our stuff into the back, including my guitar. Somehow, after last night, my little safety net felt incredibly absent. I was naïve to think Ruben wouldn’t send someone like Jonas after us. We’d kept all our plans secret, never telling anyone in his vicinity where we were planning to go. Jonas was an entirely different kind of monster, and we were truly at his mercy—a fact I hated with every fiber of my body.
    How do I fix this? How do I twist it to our advantage? Reaching up, I touched the tender bruise that had blossomed around my eye. The swelling had come down, but it had left me feeling weak and shattered. Jonas was such a dangerous man. What could I do to quell his thirst for control over us? How could I swipe the reins of power from him willingly enough that he wouldn’t notice the loss of it? I slipped my sunglasses on, large bug-eyed ones which movie stars tended to favor because they covered so much of one’s face. Underneath the shades, I felt a bit better- less vulnerable, less broken. It was a partial mask to hide the fragility I always tried so hard to squash about myself.
    I’d pondered on this, especially since Audrey volunteered to drive down the coast. I could take a moment and think it over, finding the solution to this puzzle. I would, too. One thing I had acquired from years of taking care of just me and Audrey was I knew how to survive and figure out stuff no one else would even think about as a problem. She always told me I could’ve gone to Harvard, for I was a damned genius, but that wasn’t the road for me. I wasn’t the kind of girl who could sit in an institution and accept things as they told me they were. I’d lose my damn mind there, surrounded by mindless robots operating in the system they were told they had to maneuver to become the ‘it’ people of America. I’d rather do it the hard way, like actually get the street smarts to make it. I didn’t need corporate America to save me. I’d save myself.
    “What is tossing about in that head of yours, Sis?” Audrey’s voice broke through my cloud, and I shifted to face her. My feet were kicked up on the dashboard, so I slipped them down to stretch them out.
    “Nothing. Just thinking.”
    “You never just think, so cough it up.”
    I laughed, shaking my head at Audrey. “If I tell you what I’m thinking, you’ll institutionalize me immediately.”
    “I wouldn’t doubt that.” Audrey huffed, pointing at a McD’s for late breakfast. I shuddered at the thought of the greasy food, but she loved the stuff, so I agreed.
    “Look, about Jonas, I’m sorry we got caught up in this crap, so I’m going to fix it.”
    Audrey threw me an unconvinced glare before she pulled into the parking spot. “Like what, Liv? I don’t like the sound