Read Online Creed by Trisha Leaver - Free Book Online Page A

we’ve seen, and I have some questions I want answered.”
    “I’m with Dee,” Luke said, lowering his voice to a nearly inaudible level. “You have no clue what she’s been through, Mike. None. Let me handle this.”
    I knew that’s all Luke would say. It was an agreement we’d made last year when he’d begged me to tell him why I still flinched sometimes when he touched me. It had taken some prodding on his part, but I finally told him about my dad, the group homes, and the three foster families I’d lived with before finding the Hoopers. That night, Luke promised me that he would keep my past a secret and keep me safe.
    Luke might have broken through my carefully fortified walls, but even now he still had to put up with a lot of my crap. He’d learned the hard way not to trap me against the lockers for a kiss and realized that tackling me on the bed to tickle me often landed him a knee to the balls instead of sex. But I was better now, or so everyone thought.
    I watched Mike’s expression darken as he processed Luke’s words. It must’ve been hard to always be around me yet have no clue why I was so guarded, why Luke was so protective.
    Luke took a step forward, a growl of warning rumbling from his chest.
    The boy stood his ground, and my eyes traveled the full length of his body. The broad expanse of his shoulders, his height, and the size of his hands all gave me pause. He was huge . Not huge as in one-too-many-pancakes-at-the-Waffle-House huge, but huge as in holy-crap-he’s-built-like-a-brick-wall huge.
    Plus, there were a lot of pockets in his coat. And I’d learned a long time ago that pockets could hide a lot of weapons.
    Luke scanned the horizon, no doubt looking for the boy’s friends. His family. The rest of this town.
    The kid nodded in understanding. “I’m alone.”
    “Who are you?” I asked.
    He gave me a passing glance before ignoring my question. “Did Mary send you?”
    “Who is Mary?”
    He shook his head, his shoulders shrinking at my words. “Nobody.”
    “You have a name?” Luke asked.
    “Joseph.”
    I knew that name. From the house. From the book. From the death certificate. “You’re not dead.”
    He flinched as if my words somehow stung. He tried hard to cover it up, but I saw the panic flash across his expression. “Nope, not dead. Not yet anyway.”

TEN
    I spun around and gestured to the house we’d just left. “It’s you. That’s your house, isn’t it? You’re that Joseph.”
    His attention flicked over to the house, then back to me. It was quick, and I doubted Luke or Mike caught it, but I recognized it immediately—the fear and anger behind his expression, the quick flash of sorrow in response to a memory the rest of us didn’t share. I recognized it because I’d mastered that same combination of emotions years ago.
    The Joseph in the margin of that book, the one who got locked in the closet for six hours because he’d broken a dinner plate, was the same one standing in front of me now. He didn’t need to admit it. The flat look in his eyes gave him away. And it was that look that worried me the most.
    “It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked again, desperate to prove I was right.
    When he didn’t answer, I inched forward, intent on screaming my question at him. But he held up his hand and pressed a finger to his lips in a silencing gesture. In the absence of any sound, of any real people except for him and us, his gesture seemed odd.
    “Why do we need to be quiet?” Mike asked, his head shaking in what seemed to be amusement. “In case you haven’t noticed , there’s nobody here.”
    “Oh, they’re here. Trust me, they’re here,” Joseph said as his eyes met mine. He looked serious, so serious. And scared.
    That makes two of us.
    “What do you mean, ‘they’?” I asked.
    He ignored my question and fixed his gaze back on the empty road. “Listen. You’ve probably got an hour, two tops, to get out of here. After that, well … ”
    “After