Test (A Gentry Generations Story) Read online

  TEST

  A Gentry Generations Story

  Cora Brent

  Contents

  TEST (A Gentry Generations Story)

  1. Paige

  2. Derek

  3. Paige

  4. Derek

  5. Paige

  6. Derek

  7. Paige

  8. Derek

  9. Paige

  10. Derek

  11. Paige

  12. Derek

  13. Paige

  14. Derek

  15. Paige

  16. Derek

  17. Paige

  18. Derek

  19. Paige

  20. Derek

  21. Paige

  22. Derek

  23. Paige

  24. Derek

  25. Paige

  26. Derek

  27. Paige

  Epilogue

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Newsletter and Contact Info

  Also by Cora Brent

  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 similarity 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.

  © 2018 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design: Sara Eirew

  Cover Photo: Sara Eirew

  Created with Vellum

  TEST (A Gentry Generations Story)

  PAIGE

  People say Derek Gentry is arrogant, perpetually drunk and good for only one thing. Even from a distance he’s like a neon sign that reads: ‘I AM THE WORST IDEA YOU EVER HAD.’

  And I’m not tempted, no matter how hot he is.

  I’ve heard the rumors. I know his story.

  But I’ve got my own scars. I don’t need his.

  Despite his muscled blue-eyed good looks, he’s definitely just heartbreak wrapped in a seductive package.

  However, I didn’t plan on falling into his arms on the worst night of my life.

  I didn’t plan on initiating a chain reaction of events that neither of us saw coming.

  And I didn’t plan on needing him so much I can hardly stand it…

  DEREK

  Everyone has a history.

  Mine’s a little worse than most.

  I’ve hurt my family. I’ve hurt people I never really knew. I’ve hurt myself.

  And I’ve been hiding at the bottom of a bottle for so long I’m not sure how to do things differently.

  At first Paige didn’t seem like the type who would ever be able to handle a guy like me. Little did I know what kind of mysteries she’s been keeping inside. Now I can’t get her out of my head.

  We could help each other.

  Or we could destroy each other.

  Right now it’s anyone’s guess.

  Chapter One

  Paige

  “Fail,” I muttered to the mirror with a grimace.

  As I stood there in my wrinkled polo work shirt enhanced with limp, garlic-scented hair and no makeup I knew that no one would consider me ready for prime time excitement. Unfortunately, I did not have time to do anything about it.

  Sam and Ric kept blowing up my phone to remind me they were waiting. And there was only so much to be gained by scowling at my waxy reflection in a pizzeria restroom while a pair of suntanned blondes wearing sorority tees elbowed me away from the sink.

  Melanie, half of the husband and wife team that owned the restaurant, was in the kitchen dealing with an emergency sausage shortage when I navigated all the dough-flinging, sauce-smearing action en route to the back door. But she looked up with a smile when I walked by. “Have a good night, Paige.”

  I stuffed my work apron into my purse. “You too, Mel.”

  It was a busy evening. Saturdays at college town eateries usually were busy anyway, but Esposito’s Pizzeria was a veritable icon in these parts so the line to grab a slice at the counter snaked out the door. I’d worked here since I was sixteen and I cast a fond look at the small building before proceeding to the parking lot.

  Staying at work and pounding dough in the kitchen sounded more entertaining than some chaotic booze-soaked bash packed with the university crowd where everyone would alternate between snapping duck-faced selfies and vaping their asses off. But I’d already promised Sam and Ric I’d emerge from hibernation mode and pretend to be an untroubled twenty-year-old college girl for one night.

  When I pulled into a spot in front of Sam and Ric’s apartment building I could see them silhouetted up on their second floor balcony. They waved but made no move to shift from their positions so I exited and stood on the sidewalk.

  “You guys coming down?” I called.

  “Come on up,” they laughed in unison.

  A smile overtook my face as I darted up the flight of stairs to their apartment. Samantha and Erica Malik were my oldest and dearest friends. Being around them was always a balm for my soul. The day the identical twins walked into my second grade classroom I didn’t take much notice of them. It was only three weeks after my mother had vanished and I was busy pretending to be invisible. All my other peers had been cooperating with my quest for isolation, perhaps fearful that misplacing one’s mother was somehow contagious. But one day Sam and Ric discovered me feeding fruit snacks to a colony of ants beneath the playground slide. They said nothing, crouching silently on either side of me and watching with fascination as the ants swarmed the colorful gelatin blobs until the bell rang to signal recess was over. They’d been my best friends ever since.

  Sam met me at the door. People who didn’t know the twins had trouble telling them apart but I knew right away this was Sam. She had a small mole on her left cheek, a sarcastic twist to her smile and her casual style of dress contrasted with her sister’s glamorous preferences. But even Sam and her no fuss ways had a problem with my chosen look.

  “I thought you were getting ready,” she complained.

  I gestured with a flourish. “And you think there was no effort required to package all this up?”

  Sam wrinkled her nose. “I think that’s the same shirt that just suffered through eight hours of pizza production.”

  I couldn’t argue. “Luckily it’s black and sauce stains aren’t visible.” When Sam rolled her eyes I shrugged. “Look, I forgot to bring a change of clothes and I didn’t want to make you guys wait any longer.”

  By now Ric had come in from the balcony and was conducting her own critical examination. At first her lips pursed together with disapproval. Then she brightened. “Luckily I have plenty of clothes.” She grabbed my hand. “Time for a closet raid.”

  I allowed myself to be pulled along but when Ric selected a red strapless dress, one of her favorites, I felt compelled to point out a few anatomical realities.

  “I hate to be a downer but the hem will reach down to my calves and I’ll need a box of tissues to fill out the chest.”

  Ric inspected the dress. “I bet we can pin it.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best plan,” I objected, imagining the sheer number of pins that would be required and the inevitable discomfort of earning a straight pin in the ass when I took a seat.

  “I can make it work,” Ric insisted, ever the optimist.

  Sam snorted in the doorway. “Let it go, Ric. I’ll get her something.”

  While Ric continued to puzzle out a way to mold one of her dazzling dre
sses to my short, boob-deficient body, Sam disappeared and returned with a sleeveless chambray shirt. I was actually glad to remove my work polo that smelled like the ghosts of ten thousand pizzas and slip into something more recently laundered. Once I was buttoned up I was relocated to the bathroom for a hasty makeover consisting of lipstick that was far too dark for my complexion and a wispy updo that only highlighted my skinny neck.

  “Beautiful,” Ric declared and her reflection smiled at mine.

  Sam stood behind me, more than a head taller, and offered a wink. “You look good.”

  “Bound to be the hit of the party,” Ric declared.

  I doubted that but I didn’t have the heart to trample on their loving efforts.

  “Whose party is it?” I asked.

  Ric touched up her eyeliner. “Guy in our biochem class. He and his roommates are kicking off spring break in style before heading up to Lake Havasu. Speaking of which, when you drove up just now we were busily hatching a plot to kidnap you and cram you into our trunk if that’s what it takes to get you to join us.”

  I blotted my lipstick. It gave me an excuse to put off a response.

  “Come on, Paige,” Sam urged. “There are so many hot guys coming along and there’s plenty of room for you on the houseboat.”

  I finished blotting. “I can’t. I have to work.” That was true. It was also true that I could have easily received the time off if I’d asked.

  The twins exchanged glances over my head. They were disappointed and I hated disappointing them. Almost as much as I’d hate lurching around on a houseboat with a throng of attractive extroverts while trying to scrape together something normal to talk about.

  “Paigie girl, we love you,” Ric said, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing. “But it might do you some good to forget about that Frisbee thrower and just find some nice guy who’s DTF.”

  I was prepared to deny that I was hung up on ‘that Frisbee thrower’ but I had to straighten something out first.

  “Find some nice guy who’s what?”

  “DTF,” Ric repeated.

  “Down To Fuck,” Sam clarified.

  “Damn,” I drawled and made a show of sniffing my armpit. “Do I reek of desperation or something?”

  “We want you to be happy,” Ric said.

  “And orgasms make people happy,” Sam added. “It’s biology.”

  “So we would know,” Ric finished.

  I wasn’t going to argue about orgasms and happiness with two worldly premed students but I doubted bouncing around on a muscled hot body would solve anything. The ‘Frisbee thrower’ Ric referred to was named Barrett and he happened to be ranked as a national disc golf champion but he wasn’t the issue. I’d half forgotten about him by this point. We met through Sam and Ric last summer and didn’t hang out for very long. When he called me a killjoy because I didn’t feel like scarfing down Jello shots or skating at full speed down a six story parking garage that pretty much killed any romance. Anyway, although Barrett was kind of an asshole he wasn’t completely off base about my aptitude for fun. I had never figured out how to fake it, how to smile past the noise in my head. Some people could. I wished I could too. But since the age of seven I’d felt defined by a big mystery. And the painful question at its core.

  Why didn’t you ever come back?

  My thoughts must have been showing on my face because now my two friends were looking at me with faces of matching worry. So I removed the clip from my plain brown hair, shook it loose and tossed the lifeless waves melodramatically over one shoulder.

  “I’ll consider my options,” I promised the girls and leaned forward to plant a red kiss on the vanity mirror. “Now let’s go do this.”

  The party was located in the same sprawling apartment complex and we could hear the pounding of the music when we were still around the corner. It would be a miracle if the cops weren’t called. Most of the residents were university students but some of them still probably liked to sleep at night.

  Walking into a room flanked by Sam and Ric was always an interesting experience. My best friends were absolute traffic stoppers, both six feet tall with killer figures and long black curly hair. The stunning features that had been inherited from their mother, an Indian-born thoracic surgeon, and their father, a former NBA superstar, could have easily produced supermodel contracts if they hadn’t chosen to be doctors instead.

  Greetings poured in from all directions but I didn’t know anyone here except Sam and Ric. Somehow I felt a little shy among all these confident college kids. Despite the best efforts of my high school guidance counselor I’d decided against a college path, at least for the time being. Since I’d already started working after school at Esposito’s in order to keep busy, my half hearted plan was to just stay there until I figured things out.

  These days I tried not to think about how the ‘time being’ had stretched into three years; three years spent working full time at Esposito’s and living alone in my grandparents’ house. I’d never been sold on the idea that college was the only option, although shaping pizza crusts for eternity wasn’t my ultimate ambition either. At some point I’d have to figure out where I wanted to be in life and how to get there but none of that was going to happen tonight.

  Sam and Ric urged me to carry around a beer even if I had no intention of drinking it and since I was here to escalate my social skills I cooperated. The apartment belonging to Mr. Biochem was exactly like Sam and Ric’s two bedroom place, except the walls were barren, the sparse furniture was frayed and every square foot was currently occupied by some form of humanity. I wound up pressed into a corner of the living room beside Sam. Ric stayed in the kitchen chatting with a guy who was head taller than she was. When I heard someone say he played for the basketball team I wasn’t surprised.

  Sam began having a conversation with a pair of girls who were also premed and although she tried valiantly to include me I had little to say about MCAT scores so I lifted my red Solo cup to my face and pretended to drink what was in it.

  People had been coming and going constantly so there was nothing amazing about the door opening and producing a pair of hot guys.

  Until I realized who they were and nearly dropped my cup.

  Sam noticed something was up so she turned way from her MCAT debate. “What is it?”

  I nodded at the pair of brothers who’d walked in. “Just a blast from the past, that’s all.”

  Sam looked at them. She seemed unimpressed. “Oh yeah. I’ve seen them around here before.”

  “They live here?” I asked, somehow unable to wrestle my eyes away from the sight of Derek Gentry and his brother Kellan accepting an obnoxious number of hugs from girls who rushed the door. Some things never changed I guess.

  “I think so,” Sam shrugged. Then she frowned as she remembered something. “That one, Derek, he was the one who…”

  “Went to jail for drunk driving,” I finished. “Yeah.”

  Her frown deepened. “He had an accident, right? A guy died.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I heard.”

  Everyone knew who the Gentry brothers were. Their high school was only a few miles down the road from ours and their reputations probably traveled a lot farther. They were wild and hot and fun and astonishingly popular. I’d never talked to them and I didn’t know whether there was any truth to the rumor that they were brainless players. I just knew that they managed to pull people into their orbit without even trying. Their looks had something to do with it. Tall and blondish and broad-shouldered as Viking marauders, they could turn heads without saying a word. I knew Derek was a year older than me while Kellan was a year younger. They had another brother too but I forgot his name because he’d been too young to run around with his brothers.

  I couldn’t remember how long ago I’d heard about Derek’s accident. Maybe a year, maybe two. It was definitely after I graduated from high school. I searched my memory for the details but I might not have ever known them. He was drunk when he cras
hed his car. Somebody died. He’d gone to jail for a little while. And I probably hadn’t thought of him once since hearing that last piece of information.

  Sam caught me staring and assumed she could read my mind. “Oh, sweetie, no.” She shook her head and tried to cover my eyes, presumably so they could no longer focus on Derek Gentry. “That’s not the kind of DTF you need.”

  “Oh come on,” I groaned, pushing her hand away. “My mind wasn’t even going there.”

  That was true. And it was also true that Derek Gentry would probably no more look at me than he would covet one of the Golden Girls but there were limits to even my self deprecating humor so I didn’t say that out loud.

  “Good,” Sam said with a relieved smile. “Trust me, he’s nothing but trouble.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

  She elbowed me. “No, wiseass. That’s more trouble than I’m willing to undertake. Anyway I tend to avoid boys who are prettier than me. They’re bad for my self esteem.”

  I snorted. “As if anyone is prettier than you and Ric.”

  Sam considered. “I think those two might qualify.”

  I watched as Derek was handed a beer. He paused to stare at the way it looked in his hand but he made no move to get rid of it.

  “Looks like maybe he hasn’t learned his lesson,” Sam observed. Then she scrutinized me. “Why do you keep checking your phone?”