The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks Read Free Book Online

don’t trust me.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You’ll talk to Blaze, but not me.”
    “I don’t even know you.”
    “You don’t know Blaze, either. You just met her.”
    Ronnie didn’t seem to appreciate his snappy comebacks. “I just didn’t want to talk to him, okay? And I don’t want to have
     to spend my summer here, either.”
    He pushed the hair out of his eyes. “So leave.”
    “Yeah, right. Where am I supposed to go?”
    “Let’s go to Florida.”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “I know a guy who’s got a place down there just outside of Tampa. If you want, I’ll bring you. We can stay there as long as
     you want. My car’s over there.”
    She stared at him as if in shock. “I can’t go to Florida with you. I… I just met you. And what about Blaze?”
    “What about her?”
    “You’re with her.”
    “So?” He kept his face neutral.
    “This is too weird.” She shook her head and stood. “I think I’ll go see how Blaze is doing.”
    Marcus reached into his pocket for a fireball. “You know I was kidding, right?”
    Actually, he hadn’t been kidding. He’d said it for the same reason he’d thrown the fireball at her. To see how far he could
     push her.
    “Yeah, okay. Fine. I’m still going over there to talk to her.”
    Marcus watched her stalk off. As much as he admired that dynamite little body, he wasn’t sure what to make of her. She dressed
     the part, but unlike Blaze, she didn’t smoke or show any interest in partying, and he got the sense that there was more to
     her than she was letting on. He wondered if she came from money. Made sense, right? Apartment in New York, house at the beach?
     Family had to have money to afford things like that. But… then again, there wasn’t a chance she’d fit in with people around
     here who had money, at least the ones he knew. So which one was it? And why did it matter?
    Because he didn’t like people with money, didn’t like the way they flaunted it, and didn’t like the way they thought they
     were better than other people because of it. Once, before he’d dropped out, he’d heard a rich kid at school talking about
     the new boat he got for his birthday. It wasn’t a piece-of-crap skiff; this was a twenty-one-foot Boston Whaler with GPS and
     sonar, and the kid kept bragging about how he was going to use it all summer and dock it at the slips at the country club.
    Three days later, Marcus set the boat on fire and watched it burn from behind the magnolia tree on the sixteenth green.
    He’d told no one what he’d done, of course. Tell one person, and you might as well have confessed to the cops. Teddy and Lance
     were cases in point: Put them in a holding cell and they’d crumple as soon as the door clanged shut. Which was why he insisted
     they do all the dirty work these days. Best way to keep them from talking was to make sure they were even more guilty than
     he was. Nowadays, they were the ones who stole the booze, the ones who beat the bald guy unconscious at the airport before
     taking his wallet, the ones who painted the swastikas on the synagogue. He didn’t necessarily trust them, didn’t even particularly
     like them, but they always went along with his plans. They served a purpose.
    Behind him, Teddy and Lance continued to act like the idiots they were, and with Ronnie gone, Marcus was antsy. He didn’t
     intend to sit here all night, doing nothing. After Blaze got back, after he ate his fries, he figured they’d go wandering.
     See what came up. Never knew what might happen in a place like this, on a night like this, in a crowd like this. One thing
     was certain: After a show, he always needed something…
more.
Whatever that meant.
    Glancing over to the food booth, he saw Blaze paying for the fries, Ronnie right behind her. He stared at Ronnie, again willing
     her to turn his way, and eventually, she did. Nothing much, just a quick peek, but that was enough to make him wonder again
     what she’d be like