The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) Read Online Free Page B

pulled close to the railing overlooking the river and, in a sudden gloom, she plopped down on it. She kicked up her feet and wondered how she would fill the rest of her afternoon, since a rendezvous with her new favorite person seemed unlikely.
    ‘Oh, poo,” she mimicked Louis, in wholehearted agreement with his earlier sentiment. “Sam, where are you?”
    She met him earlier that summer, not long after the last day of school; he was part of the crew hired by her Grandma Catherine for refurbishments on the old McBride homestead. Sam was one of the painters. Candy wandered into her grandma’s kitchen one afternoon and found him lying on his side, one elbow on the floor, his head turned nearly upside down. A silver earring lay against his five o’clock shadow and one arm was arched over his head to pull out a delicate, unwavering corner edge of paint. She fell in love right there. Or, at least she fell in love with his painter’s hands, and his biceps were hard not to notice. He was concentrating hard, chomping gum and rocking out to his iPod, so he didn’t know she was there. She made sure to hang around pretending to be busy, though, hoping he would notice her at the close of the workday.
    He did, and that’s when she noticed his eyes. Green. So green and they darted away from hers whenever green locked with black. She worked up her courage in Grandma Catherine’s downstairs bathroom, pinched her cheeks and rubbed her lips to make them cherry red. When she finally sidled over and casually asked Sam if he ever painted anything else, besides walls, he had turned adorably awkward, admitting to drawing: “mostly weird stuff from my imagination.” Candy recognized a budding artist when she saw one and she encouraged him to talk about his drawings. He just smiled and asked her for her phone number. She was confused, yet happy to supply it.
    Later that night, she got his text, “some of my stuff”.
    She gasped as she clicked through the attached files; there were half a dozen photos of his bedroom wall, adorned with some of the most passionate, honest, horribly beautiful drawings she had ever seen.
    When she saw Sam the next day, she presented him with a gift box of charcoals and asked him to meet her at the gas station; there was only one in town and it happened to also be her dad’s mechanic shop. About a twenty-minute walk, in the mountains south of the shop, there was an ancient rotting one-room cabin. Her twin brothers, Simon and David, had discovered it their sophomore year of high school, one day when they skipped class, and they used it as a party hideout until they graduated. When they left for college, they passed on the secret location to their younger brother Max. Max told Candy about it the previous summer, right before he took off himself. She had been using it for a place to get away and write poetry, or read, preferring solitude over a party. She had a feeling Sam might like it, too.
    She had led Sam in through the sagging doorway, sweeping her arm wide and grinning, “I would be honored if you’d decorate my walls in the artistic tradition of your bedroom.”
    He had stepped in behind her, ducking under the low arch and investigating the moldering room with a wry smile. “This palace is all yours?”
    “Honestly, I think it belongs to the forest now.” There was a tree branch growing through a gaping hole in the ceiling. “But they let me stay here a lot.”
    Sam sat down on the old resident loveseat and leaned back, crossing his ankles in front of him and watching her, his eyes glinting with mischief. “You know what that’s gonna cost you? Hiring a master artist like myself?”
    “I’ll be happy to pay it.”
    Her brothers always called the hideout The Shack but she and Sam called it The Palace. They started meeting there to make art, trading walls back and forth in collaborative paintings. Candy loved what she called, “battling with paint.” Especially with Sam.
    She sighed and glanced