All the Sky Read Online Free PDF

figure it out, okay? We always make it to the next day, and we’ll keep doing that. Okay?” He nodded, his face tucked against her neck.
    Running her fingers through his mop of hair, she whispered, “You want to tell me about your day? I’ve got two ears and two shoulders, and they’re all yours.”
    Nolan nodded and then pushed back to lean against the headboard. Cory repositioned herself to sit next to him.
    “Got a D+ on my English paper. When I asked Ms. Geralds why, she said I didn’t read the poem right. I told her I didn’t read it like she did, but I thought I proved my point, and I asked her where I didn’t. She said I was arrogant because I thought I knew so much I could make up anything I wanted. I was so mad, but I was really trying to be cool, Mom, really I was. But then she told me to sit down before she changed my grade to an F. That’s when I called her a stupid cunt. I kinda yelled it.”
    “Well, I’m not gonna tell you that you shouldn’t have called her a name, because you know that. I’m glad you stuck up for yourself, though. Just do your ISS, because that’s an appropriate consequence for what you said. And then the school year will be over, and we’ll figure out the next thing. What happened with Uncle Alex?”
    Now Nolan started to get agitated. “God, Mom! He’s just such a dick . He tries to come off all fatherly or whatever—and that sucks anyway, because I have a father and I don’t need Mr. Suit Guy trying to step in. I know he doesn’t like me and it’s all just an act, like it’s getting him points on some kind of scorecard to lecture me about respect and responsibility. And then he goes back into his office with Aunt Linz and they talk about how I’m already a loser just like Dad, and how it’s all he can do not to smack me, and then he goes at Aunt Linz because we’re her family and she should get us under control.”
    His voice broke then, and he stopped. After a pause, he sniffed and carried on. “I just hate it here so much. I’d like living in the Beast better. That’s the next thing, isn’t it?”
    It chilled Cory’s heart to contemplate it, but she didn’t know how she’d get the money for a place in the next three weeks. “I don’t know, kiddo. Maybe. For now, let’s just get to the next day and see what we see, okay?”
    “Yeah. I love you, Mom. I’m sorry I fucked this up.”
    “You didn’t, Nolan. Don’t pummel yourself over it. We stick together, we’ll be okay.” Sweeping his hair back, she kissed his forehead. “We’ll be okay. You have your first exciting day of in-school suspension tomorrow. So you’d better use these last couple of hours to rest up.”
    When she stood, he scooted back down to lay his head on the pillows. With a kiss to his cheek, Cory whispered, “I love you, little cub.”
    He smiled at the name she’d had for him when he was small, and then he closed his eyes.
    When Cory was settled on the sleeper in the scrapbooking room, she sat staring into the dark. She didn’t cry. She rarely cried anymore. But she worried.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    When Havoc roared down the drive to his family home, his father was riding the massive mower out of the equipment barn. He cut the engine as Havoc dismounted the Softail and set his helmet on the seat.
    Don Mariano was dark, burly, and hairy, robust and fearsome even now in his sixties. He wasn’t born a farm boy, had instead been raised on The Hill in St. Louis, but he’d married a woman with no brothers, and he’d taken over the Anker family farm when Havoc’s maternal grandfather fell ill. He’d taken to the country life immediately and now bore almost no lingering trace of city breeding. The A/M Farm was one of the strongest independent farms left anywhere near Signal Bend. They’d weathered the bleak times because he’d put everything into the farm, leaving only enough for essentials for his wife or children, or himself.
    Havoc and his baby sister had grown up in a