I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

around forty-plus hits of Ecstasy, but dealers do.
    I say nothing one way or the other to dispel their myth, I rat no one out. I just stay quiet and accept my fate.
    My math lesson continues…
    Ten pills are equal to one gram, and I’ve been caught with over forty pills. Forty pills equal four grams, which is more than enough to be charged with possession with intent to sell. But I already knew that part, right?
    My lesson isn’t over though. It’s only just beginning.
    I learn in Pennsylvania, the state in which I’ve been apprehended, four grams can easily earn you a prison sentence. This is especially true when you don’t have enough money to hire a good attorney. Add to that, your public defender isn’t getting paid enough to care. Not that you’re doing much to help the overworked, underpaid man do his job. And, oh yeah, don’t forget that one prior arrest for fighting last fall. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but it sure haunts your ass now.
    Are you keeping up?
    Some final math…
    Four grams buys you a six-year sentence at a state correctional institute when you have no resources, and, really, no heart to fight it.
    Twenty years of age feels like ninety when your freedom is stripped away.
    It takes one hundred and forty-three steps to walk down a long, noisy corridor to reach cell block seventy-two.
    And when they turn the key, you hear one life—the only one you’ve ever known up until now—ending.
    “It’s all about the numbers, man,” as Tate would say.
    It sure is, my friend. It sure is.

Four years later…
     

Chapter One
    Chase
    Seventy-two push-ups on the cold hardwood floor, seventy-two sit-ups. It’s still all about the numbers, Tate, four years later. But Tate is dead, overdosed at twenty-two. He never went to prison, never spent four years of his life in cell block seventy-two like I did. Yet he threw his life away all the same.
    Seventy-two pull-ups at a bar I installed in the doorway of a room long forgotten in a house I don’t deserve. Fuck, no, make that forty-nine. My ass is tired today, which is why I overslept. Damn Missy Metzger and her glitter-coated lips. Damn my lack of self-control.
    Father Maridale would kick my ass all the way back across the state line if he knew what I’d done with the head of the bake committee. Head. I can’t help but laugh, because that sure does sum it up. Oh, if only the congregation of Holy Trinity Catholic Church knew how Missy spent her Saturday night. In an alley behind the Anchor Inn bar, down on her knees, worshipping my cock.
    I shed the gray sweatpants I’m wearing, toss them into an overflowing laundry basket in the bathroom. Laundry, yet another thing I’ve neglected since getting out of prison. A whole month back in Harmony Creek, and I’m still adjusting to the little things a guy living alone needs to stay on top of.
    Speaking of which…11:15… shit.
    Mass started fifteen minutes ago. Guess I am not going to make it today. A part of me feels shame for my indiscretion with Missy last night, but that part also feels relief. I don’t have to face Missy—or her mom—both of whom sit perched every week in the front pew.
    I step into the tub and adjust the shower head; turn it on full blast. The pulsing water feels good and cleansing, I just wish it had the power to wash away my latest sin. I didn’t go out looking for trouble, I truly didn’t. I’d like to think my worst days are behind me. I’m determined to lead a better life, which includes staying clean. Sure, I drink a beer or two some evenings, usually while relaxing out on the porch swing in the back, watching the day fade into night while the frogs sing to each other down at the creek. But drinking is my only vice these days.
    Okay, and maybe swearing. No, definitely swearing. But that’s it. Just drinking and swearing. And the drinking I keep to a minimum. Drugs? I’ve given them up completely. And I can’t remember the last time I got into a fight.
    No, wait,