Last True Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

tightly as I can. I want to scream into it, but I don’t want Drake to have to come running back to my rescue.
    I save myself. I always have.
    These nightmares will not break me.
    My thoughts are just turning to wild, straw-colored curls and a goddess’s face when my phone jangles on the nightstand.
    I check the screen; a Florida number.
    “Hello?”
    Chase’s voice is strained. “Dare.”
    I sigh. I’ve known Chase since we were eleven and living in the same foster home. Other than Drake, he’s the closest thing I will ever have to a real brother.
    “What’s wrong, Chase?” I’m instantly alert and wary.
    Trouble has a way of finding Chase, and Chase has a way of finding me to help get him out of it.
    “Look, Dare, I swear to God I’ll pay you back. I need a little green to pay back these dudes I got in with. If I don’t pay ’em…I gotta pay ’em. You got me?”
    An angry, frustrated growl leaves me as I stare at my phone. I want to hurl it across the room, but again, Drake.
    “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, Chase! I can’t keep doing this shit. At some point, you gotta grow up. Get your shit together, man.”
    I can picture him nodding his head. “Yeah, man. I know. Spot me this, I swear I won’t ask again. I’ll get it together.”
    I don’t believe him for a second. I give him this, and he’ll ask again and again. But he’s my brother. And I love him. He’s had my back in some tough times as well, so our relationship goes two ways. But since I entered the army at eighteen, I haven’t needed to ask Chase for help once.
    I scrub my hands over my hair and then across my face. Sighing, I try to hold him off.
    “Let me move some shit around, Chase. I’ll get back to you.”
    “Don’t take too long, Dare. You gotta come through for me.”
    I end the call, and roll over in my bed. It’s only four in the morning, but this is already turning out to be a shit day.

4
Berkeley
    B erkeley Jane Holtz.” My mother’s voice sounds too weary to yell. So she just states my name, like she’s rattling off the wine selection at dinner.
    “Momma, I’m going to work.”
    “But why ? Your father and I enjoy paying for everything you may need. And one day, you’ll be married, and then your husband—”
    I throw up a hand in aggravated frustration. Is that really all my mother thinks life is about? Having your parents pay for everything, and then moving right along to having your husband pay for everything?
    I’m a woman who needs a sense of accomplishment in my life. She’s never understood it. She doesn’t even bother to pretend.
    The door slams shut behind me, and I know I’ll hear a lecture about respect from the Admiral at some point in the near future.
    My bosses at work are an enormously generous and giving middle-aged couple that treat me like I share their blood. It amazes me every day. The moment I turned up in their lobby as a lost and confused seventeen-year-old, they took me in as more than just an employee, and I’ll never be able to repay them.
    “You’re late,” says Lenny as she breezes by me on her way into the kitchen.
    “I’m never late,” I protest.
    It’s not true. I’m nearly always late. I always have the best intentions, thinking I’m leaving myself plenty of time to get ready for an event or appointment. But then when I check the clock, hours have slipped away as if they were mere minutes, and I’m left scrambling to arrive with some semblance of respect for the other person’s time. I can’t seem to help it.
    It’s a thing.
    Lenny ties on her apron as she prepares for the first tables of the evening shift, grinning at me from the drink machine.
    “But I made you check the time, didn’t I?”
    I throw a lemon wedge at her.
    “Leave her alone, babe!” Boozer, her husband, ambles over to squeeze me in a one-armed hug. His other hand is wielding a butcher knife that he’s using to chop off the tails and heads of pounds and pounds of fish.
    Our evening