Marlin’s Faith (The Virtues Trilogy #2) by A.J. Downey

Faith. She’d managed to keep her namesake while in captivity, but now that she was free? The daunting task of rejoining society was in front of her and it seemed that Marlin had to keep it for her.

Marlin can’t help how he feels about Faith, she was remarkably easy to like. The only thing he could do for her was be there, and keep his damn hands to himself, which was the real challenge. Neither one of them knew if she would make it out of the darkness in tact; only time would tell about that.

During trying times, all you can do is hold on and have a little faith…

I was too warm and my mouth had a funny metallic taste in it. I was comfortable though, and I didn’t want to get up. Still, my bladder demanded I move, and eventually it won. It always did.

I sucked in a deep breath to chase back the cobwebs and opened my eyes. I nearly crossed them to see what it was crammed and blurry in my field of vision, all pink, white, and yellow.

I backed my head up on the pillow and frowned. A pink iPod with white headphones coiled neatly next to it, a creamy yellow mini post-it note clinging to the controls.

Play me, Faith was written in a spidery scrawl on the post-it in black ink. The writing unfamiliar to me. I sat up on the bed and looked around the darkened bedroom. No one was there, nothing stirred… I felt my forehead crush down in a frown.

I looked around the room again, just to be sure, before I plucked the headphones off the smooth cotton pillowcase. I spent far longer than was necessary uncoiling them and tucking them into my ears before I plugged them into the little player. I read and reread the note before plucking it from the front of the little clip and touching the little triangle button to make the thing play.

My breath caught, and stilled completely as the first leading strains of Hope Never Dies spilled from the earbuds. The person playing the guitar was masterful, the notes solemn and quiet, building and subsequently building me up, surrounding me, tucking around me like an old and familiar blanket, or really, bandaging some of the broken bits of me. Holding me together again, just enough to allow me to mend.

Marlin. It had to be. No one else knew what this song did to me, for me, in those darkened nights of desolation and ruin. I stared out of the floor to ceiling obsidian glass, at the faint glimmer of silver as the water lapped upon the shore and let the music soothe me some more. My nap had done me some good, calming some of the disquiet of earlier, and I was glad for it. I let my fingertips idly play with the band of leather and metal around my wrist and thought about what the boy said to me back in the rank dark of that awful storage unit.

There are still good people out there, Faith. You gotta believe me…

In The Series

Cutter had given up on finding a woman when Hope sauntered right into his bar. With her straight talk, toned figure, and military training, she can disarm a man in more ways than one. But the mission she's on will shake up Cutter's world.

Hope's lost her younger sister, but she hasn't lost her namesake. It's been almost two years since Faith vanished, but Hope hasn't given up the search. She'll either find her sister or some answers.

Can Cutter keep his club out of trouble and help the siren in his bar on her mission? One can only hope...

 A.J. Downey is a born and raised Seattle, WA Native. She finds inspiration from her surroundings, through the people she meets and likely as a byproduct of way too much caffeine.

She has lived many places and done many things though mostly through her own imagination… An avid reader all of her life it’s now her turn to try and give back a little, entertaining as she has been entertained.

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