Edge (Gentry Boys #7) Read online

  EDGE

  (A Gentry Boys Story)

  By Cora Brent

  © 2016 All Rights Reserved

  COPYRIGHT

  Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarities to events or situations is also coincidental.

  The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.

  © 2016 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design: © L.J. Anderson, Mayhem Cover Creations

  Cover Photo: Shauna Kruse

  Models: Lance Jones and Aurora O’Brien

  To the reader:

  EDGE may be read as a stand alone.

  However, if you are interested in knowing the chronological order of the Gentry Boys series, here it is:

  DRAW

  RISK

  GAME

  FALL

  HOLD

  CROSS

  WALK

  EDGE

  AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

  Gentry Boys Series

  DRAW

  RISK

  GAME

  FALL

  HOLD

  CROSS (A Novella)

  WALK

  EDGE (August 2016)

  Stand Alones

  Unruly

  Reckless Point

  Hickey (Fall 2016)

  Savage Series

  Born Savage

  Book #2 (Fall 2016)

  Book #3 (Fall 2016)

  Defiant MC Series

  Know Me

  Promise Me

  Remember Me

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  I love to hear from readers! Contact me at [email protected].

  www.facebook.com/CoraBrentAuthor

  https://www.goodreads.com/CoraBrent

  Amazon Author Page

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CONWAY

  There’s an old story. I forget where I heard it and I probably have some of the details wrong but it haunts me anyway.

  The ending is not a happy one.

  This story is about a boy and a girl. They grow up together and become outrageously brilliant and good looking and everyone thinks the sun shines out of their dazzling asses. It seems like destiny when they fall in love, skip through the mythological flowers, and swear that they will hold hands until the end of time.

  Then out of nowhere the girl gets bitten by a poisonous snake. Or maybe she was crushed by a falling tree branch. I forget which.

  Anyway, that detail doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s gone and the guy can’t seem to think straight without her at his side. So he wanders around in a fog of bewildered grief; kicking puppies, knocking over straw bales and generally acting like an asshole until everyone hates his guts.

  But unlike other unhappy legends he’s not about to throw in the towel and swallow a thimble of green poison, not this guy. He comes up with a plan. If he can just find his way to the underworld he’ll seize his lost love and take her back to the land of the living so they can get back to their flower skipping, hand holding euphoria.

  Now this is the part that suspends belief somewhat and makes me think it’s probably one of those perverse old school fairy tales that was eventually transformed into something more cartoonish and happy.

  The guy finds this magic boat and rows through miles of spider webs and gnarly bones and rotting decay until he gets to the underworld. Once he’s there he finds the king or the devil or whatever the underworld president is called and gets down on his knees, begging for the girl’s return.

  The underworld king ignores him at first because the girl’s been sleeping in a brass cage under his bed and he kind of likes keeping her there. But he must have had a soft side because finally he agrees to return her to the heartbroken hero.

  There’s only one condition. The guy needs to climb this long, narrow stairway all the way to the earth’s surface without glancing backwards.

  That last part is really important. If he turns around, even once, all bets are off and his girlfriend has to go back to her underworld cage.

  It sounds like a stupidly simple demand and the guy sets off happily, girlfriend in tow. Well, it must have been a really long walk or else the guy was such a dingbat he totally forgot the only rule he had to follow. He’s only steps away from the surface when for some ungodly reason he turns around. All he sees is one fleeting glimpse at the beautiful face of his lost love before she vanishes forever in a puff of smoke.

  Next time no one pays attention to the guy’s crying and pleading. I guess you only get one shot at convincing the king of the underworld. The poor guy winds up stuck back on earth with no hope of ever being reunited with the girl he loves.

  All because he couldn’t follow fucking directions.

  How’s that for a kick in the ass?

  There was no reason for that morbid old tale to be running through my mind as I watched the sunrise from the hotel’s rooftop pool. The view from up here wasn’t anything special, not now. When this place was built back in the nineteen twenties it was the tallest structure in downtown Phoenix. Down in the lobby there are still some old photos in cracked frames that hang crookedly on the walls, depicting the hotel in its heyday. The city was young back then and the Hotel San Gabriel boasted the height of luxury for the traveling businessman.

  Now the hotel, along with many of the oldest city buildings, had crumbled under the weight of the decades, overshadowed by all the newer, shinier, taller versions in their midst. The place hadn’t operated as a real hotel in years and for the moment was owned by a ninety year old land baron who lives in Pasadena. As long as he keeps receiving a hefty check every month our landlord doesn’t seem to care who the fuck we are; gamblers, dealers, gang bangers. And we had all kinds here. In fact the Hotel San Gabriel has become sort of like a halfway house for the criminally enterprising.

  The neglected roof of the old building suited my mood so as the sun continued its climb I stuck around.

  Alone.

  An unlit cigarette dangling between my fingers.

  Thinking about death and life and the twin curses of loss and time.

  Shit. When did I become such a sullen fucker?

  I chuckled as I broke my cigarette in half and shoved it in my pocket until I could find a garbage can. There wasn’t anyone around to talk to this early, although I could hear the traffic starting to pick up on Central Avenue. The soft chuckle died in my throat as the answer to my own question flashed through my mind.

  Six years ago. That’s when.

  No, that was the last fucking thing I wanted to think about.

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket and usually I would have ignored it since no one
would be calling this early except for money or trouble. With a sigh I withdrew the phone and ran my thumb over the screen, squinting at the words in the text.

  I was wrong.

  The messenger was looking for neither money nor trouble. It was my brother, Stone.

  Tomorrow. Don’t forget.

  My thumb hovered over the screen for a moment. Stone wouldn’t be expecting me to be awake now. He was probably just heading out to begin a busy day of work followed by night classes and figured he’d drop a quick reminder about tomorrow’s party to his wayward brother.

  I pressed the green call button before I had a chance to think about it. I knew Stone was always happy when I called, no matter what was going on.

  “Con.” He answered after the first ring, the cheerful tone of his voice making me feel unworthy. “Didn’t really think you’d be up and about yet.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe it’s not too late for me to become an early bird.”

  There was no need to mention to him that I hadn’t quite made it to bed yet. Actually I couldn’t do that now even if I wanted to. Two of Eli’s girls had crashed on my bed last night after he locked them out of his room so he could get busy with some ditzy blonde butterface he’d picked up. He probably figured he was doing me a favor by shoving the girls my way. They were hot and young and clueless, just how I usually liked them.

  Something inside of me was off center these days. I was bored with that type and after a few minutes I realized they were more interested in each other anyway. They wouldn’t have minded if I’d hung around and beat off to the sight of them licking each other silly and but my heart wasn’t even in that.

  Not a word about any of this was said to my brother as we chatted lightly for a few more minutes before he said he needed to get on the road to work. I knew he ended the call regretfully. There was nothing Stone liked more than hearing from me and I made a guilty mental note to make more of an effort. We had never quite regained the close bond we shared as kids but we were trying and I missed him like hell every day.

  Stone had spent four years wrongly imprisoned and I guess he decided he’d seen enough of the seedy side of life. Since he’d gotten out almost two years ago he’d gone full citizen. Job. College. Girlfriend. Her name was Evie and now that he’d given her a ring we were all getting together this weekend to celebrate their engagement. I was happy for him because he seemed happy but seriously, next time I turned around I expected picket fences and fucking minivans to appear.

  That wouldn’t ever be the case for me. I’d had a chance at the good life once but it was long gone. She was long gone. There are people who would say it’s too cynical to be so wrecked over the loss of a teenage love but they’re probably the same ones who think first love is a fluke for poems and pop songs.

  With a sigh and a soft curse I hopped off the crumbling ledge I’d been sitting on. It was time to change scenery before my head started traveling in a bad direction. Sitting around and thinking never did tend to do me a whole lot of good.

  When I went indoors I found a guy sleeping in the hallway. His eyes fluttered at the invasion of sunlight and when he yawned he smelled like a moonshine barrel.

  “Gentry,” he croaked when he saw me.

  I crouched down at his side. I knew him; he was on the bleak side of thirty and years ago a bad habit had cost him his comfortable suburban existence. Now he was a petty dealer who rotated in and out of Tent City Jail.

  “Hey,” I said mildly and extended a hand. “Need some help?”

  He shook his head and gave me a crooked grin. “Nah, just taking a break,” he wheezed and closed his eyes. Seconds later he was snoring.

  I shrugged and moved on, my mind still percolating in spite of every effort to stifle it.

  Sometimes I try to fuck the past away and sometimes I try to muscle it away. Neither one is admirable or totally effective but the latter is less sleazy. Maybe it was my upstanding brother’s mature influence but lately I’ve been trying to be slightly less sleazy. That was why I headed down to the third floor gym instead of returning to my bed to try and interest the girls in some fun and games.

  The gym wasn’t much – just some free weights and a bench – but it would serve its purpose and get a sweat going. The room was empty, but then again it was not quite seven in the morning and the residents inhabiting the San Gabriel weren’t the briefcase and lunchbox crowd. No, we were the night owls and the creeps. We were the trouble that the clean world loses sleep over.

  Living here wasn’t bad though. Rent was cheap and everyone was keen on staying underground so they tended to avoid pushing and shoving. I’d been here for nearly a year and it had been nice, just staying planted in one spot. I’d been a wanderer for so long and that wears you out after a while. I had a lot of friends around too; that is when they weren’t serving short bits in the county jail or taking a slightly longer vacation to State.

  Jackson, Kilt, and Eli were the core of my group, the boys I’d learned I could trust among all the garbage. I wouldn’t say anything cheesy and untrue like, ‘I love them like they’re my own brothers,’ because that’s not fucking true. I’d go to the mat for those guys but I didn’t think of them as brothers. I had enough damn brothers to worry about as it was.

  I worked out with the free weights until my arms ached and a sheen of sweat clung to my body. It helped force away the mind fuck that had started up there on that roof. I blamed the morning. There was something about the empty quiet of early morning that had made me remember. Perhaps that was why I usually avoided being conscious at this hour.

  In a way she’d been like the morning; fresh and hopeful and beautiful.

  “Conway, I love you!”

  Yes, she’d loved me and I’d loved her.

  If someone were determined to shrink my head and extract a reason to explain why I became this unruly nomad they wouldn’t have to dig too deeply.

  It’s simple.

  When I was seventeen I lost the girl I loved more than anything.

  And then everything fell apart at once.

  Erin was dead.

  Stone went to prison.

  My mother told me I was actually the son of a man she hated and then she gave me the boot.

  I couldn’t say how I would have ended up if my cousins hadn’t come along and scooped me up. One of my biggest regrets was the grief I’d caused them over the next few years as they tried to pull me towards a good life while I wrenched out of their grip and pulled the other way.

  There was still one thing I could be semi-proud of though. I’d never cracked and told them the truth about my mother’s confession. They never would have let me go if they’d known their father was actually my father too. They would have risked themselves to yank me from the razor’s edge. I couldn’t live with that.

  Somewhere in a distant part of the old hotel someone shrieked and then broke out into crazy laughter. I would bet money it was the tweakers, the burnouts. A colony of them lived on the second floor. Mostly they didn’t bother anyone; they just got high and ran around doing weird shit like arranging a thousand beer bottle caps in a mosaic pattern in the decrepit lobby.

  The hour was still early and besides the twitching addicts who never slept, I was probably the only one up and about. Like I said, Hotel San Gabriel wasn’t stocked with the nine to five crowd.

  When I was done with the free weights I moved over to the bench and started lifting rapidly. I was still bothered by the idea of morning. Not this particular morning. Another one.

  I’d watched the dawn with my brother on the day he finally dragged me to the cemetery where Erin was buried. It was an accident, a car accident. My girlfriend and my brother had been looking for me when it happened. They’d been looking for me because I’d gotten the wrong idea about their friendship. Witnesses said Stone, who was driving, was drag racing. He was treated to a four year vacation in the Central State Penitentiary, conveniently located down there in our hometown of Emblem.

  I hadn’t gon
e to Erin’s funeral. I hadn’t visited her grave until four years later, when my brother hauled me there. I knew why at the time and stopped fighting it. Stone was making a desperate bid to force me to face the past.

  And so I did.

  I dropped down before her headstone, screamed her name and wept until I couldn’t see. It seemed like only Stone’s strong arms kept me from sinking into the very earth.

  It was terrible. It was necessary. It was a moment that would haunt me forever.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” said a bemused, gravelly voice and Kilt’s broad face was suddenly looming over me as I pushed the barbell away from my chest.

  I’d loaded it with too much weight and I’d been pumping too hard as my brain warred over old torments. Now my arms were cramped and shaking.

  Kilt grinned and easily plucked the weight out of my hands to set it on the uprights. He watched while I sat up, panting and dripping with so much sweat it probably looked like I’d just gone swimming.

  “Thanks,” I managed to growl, pulling my damp shirt off to wipe my face with it.

  Kilt shrugged. “No big deal.”

  His real name wasn’t Kilt. It was Brian McCallum. He looked like a marauding pirate with his wild red beard and thick muscles coiled beneath a riot of colorful tattoos. Also, I was far from short but Kilt fucking towered over me. Wherever Kilt went men automatically got out of his way. I didn’t blame them. He looked like the walking wrath of god.

  I moved over to the exercise bike and watched as Kilt loaded the bench up with more weight than I’d be able to lift if there were two of me. That was really saying something because I wasn’t exactly a lightweight myself.

  “Can’t spot you for that,” I warned but Kilt just chuckled and slid his beefy body under the bar.

  “No need,” he grunted and then started lifting.

  I hung around until he’d finished his set, just in case he ran into trouble. I should have known better. The only trouble Kilt ever ran into was the kind he made himself. When he was done he set the barbell in place and casually stood, stretching. The asshole had barely broken a sweat.