Nowhere But Here (Thunder Road #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

for Cyrus telling me to follow the long-lost daughter, I wouldn’t have had a clue that Emily has returned to Snowflake.
    Eli’s real secretive about Emily and this surprise visit must be his worst nightmare, especially with the shit going down with the Riot. The next few hours ought to be interesting.
    “Ahhh!” Two young kids race through the kitchen with their hands raised in the air. “Dead person. Dead person.”
    Chevy laughs, then chokes on the sandwich, coughing into his elbow. Now that’s some funny shit.
    While I should be concerned he’s choking to death, I’m more worried about the dark shadows under his eyes. The kid was up early running routes with his coach before the wake. Football and motorcycles are the boy’s life. Chevy’s an all-American boy with his dark brown hair, brown eyes and love of apple pie and football. That is, if Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a Harley.
    I slap his back much harder than needed and he nearly spits out the sandwich. Chevy drinks from a longneck he swiped from a cooler. “Guess Emily thought Olivia was dead.”
    “You think?”
    Sneakers scuffle against the linoleum floor and Chevy and I nod our heads in greeting to the fourteen-year-old standing red-faced flustered near the table. Brandon’s a tall kid, fire-red hair like his older sister and as lanky as they come. More feet and height than he is muscle and he gets uncomfortable around people. We don’t care how he acts because he’s part of our non-blood family.
    He blinks a lot then rubs his eyes.
    “Contacts, Stone?” I ask. Good guess since those big, black, thick-rimmed glasses are MIA.
    Chevy and I, along with another good friend of ours, Razor, nicknamed Brandon “Stone” when he turned fourteen last month. Some dickhead teenager who’s my age jumped Brandon as a birthday gift. Even though he was beat to hell, Brandon never shed a tear. That kid, he’s solid stone. The guy who gave Stone an ass-whipping—he cried after justice was served.
    Stone shoves his hands into his pockets and blinks hard twice. “Eli bought them for me last week. What do you think?”
    Chevy scans him as if he’s honestly mulling over an answer. Chevy and I, we dedicate every second with this kid to building him up. “I think Oz and I are going to have to give you the birds and bees talk sooner rather than later. Here’s the condensed version—cap it before you tap it.”
    The kid’s neck flushes pink and he scratches his chin twice in that fucked up way of his when he’s nervous, but grins. Stone’s dad was a member of the club and worked for the business. He died in a motorcycle accident and since then the club takes care of Stone, his mother and his older sister, Violet, even though Violet is determined to extricate the club from her family’s life.
    “You look good,” I confirm. Stone’s smile grows as he focuses on the ground. The kid is awkward as hell, but he’s one of ours. The club will always have his back. “You’re going to hang with us this summer, right? We need you on our team.”
    His eyes widen. “You’re going to let me play football? On your team?”
    The way Chevy eyeballs me asks the same question. Football on Sundays is the way we like it—blood-and-guts rough.
    “You’re fourteen,” I answer both of them. “You’re a man now, and, yeah, I want you on my team.”
    Chevy nods his understanding. He gets that I have the urge to protect and help people younger than me.
    “Cool.” Stone goes to readjust the glasses that always slid down his nose and his hand twitches when he discovers them missing. “Who’s the girl that freaked out?”
    Chevy and I share a glance. Family rule: no one outside a select few can discuss Emily. We don’t bring her up and no one else is allowed to know she exists. Because Olivia practically raised me for the first few years of my life, I’m part of the McKinley inner circle and know more than most when it comes to personal family business. But