Whatever Will Be: Brother's Best Friend Romance Read online

  Whatever Will Be

  COMING HOME SERIES

  Cora Brent

  Contents

  Also By Cora Brent:

  Keep In Touch!

  THE COMING HOME SERIES

  Prologue

  1. Trent

  2. Trent

  3. Gretchen

  4. Trent

  5. Gretchen

  6. Trent

  7. Gretchen

  8. Gretchen

  9. Trent

  10. Gretchen

  11. Trent

  12. Gretchen

  13. Trent

  14. Gretchen

  15. Jules

  16. Trent

  17. Gretchen

  18. Trent

  Author Note

  THE COMING HOME SERIES

  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.

  © 2022 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Kari March Designs

  Photo: Shutterstock/2019769988

  Created with Vellum

  Also By Cora Brent:

  GENTRY BOYS (Books 1-4)

  Gentry Boys Series

  DRAW (Saylor and Cord)

  RISK (Creed and Truly)

  GAME (Chase and Stephanie)

  FALL (Deck and Jenny)

  HOLD

  CROSS (A Novella)

  WALK (Stone and Evie)

  EDGE (Conway and Roslyn)

  SNOW (A Christmas Story)

  Gentry Generations

  (A Gentry family spinoff series)

  STRIKE (Cami and Dalton)

  TURN (Cassie and Curtis)

  KEEP (A Novella)

  TEST (Derek and Paige)

  CLASH (Kellan and Taylor)

  WRECK (Thomas and Gracie)

  The Ruins of Emblem

  TRISTAN (Cadence and Tristan)

  JEDSON (Ryan and Leah)

  LANDON (Landon and Autumn)

  Worked Up

  FIRED

  NAILED

  Stand Alones

  UNRULY

  IN THIS LIFE

  HICKEY

  SYLER MCKNIGHT

  THE PRETENDER

  LONG LOST

  STRAYS

  TILL IT HURTS

  TILL NEXT TIME

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  THE COMING HOME SERIES

  THE COMING HOME SERIES

  The Coming Home Series … Let love guide you home.

  Each story in this series is crafted around the same premise—what does it mean to come home?

  Twelve standalone stories, one per month from a different author, will fill you with heat and heart.

  Welcome home.

  Click here for The Coming Home Series page: https://geni.us/ComingHomeSeries

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  Prologue

  Gretchen

  8 years ago

  My dad always says the summer people have changed and this is the reason why Lake Stuart has gone to shit.

  He doesn’t mean he’s worried about drugs or gangs or getting carjacked six steps from the front door.

  It’s his way of explaining his grudge against city money now that it’s everywhere, crowding out the charm of the commercial district and plopping modern architecture eyesores on every inch of the lakefront.

  Alex Aaronson chooses to take this trend personally.

  Being born in a tourist town means being eternally aware that people are divided into categories; one set permanent, one set temporary.

  In the winter, Lake Stuart is dull and rather ugly, just another anemic upstate town struggling through ordinary days until tripling in size once the calendar turns to June. Lake Stuart wouldn’t survive without the summer people and this is the way it’s always been, stretching back to the distant yesteryear when my great grandfather opened The Rosebriar Resort.

  My dad would sound like a broken record when he got in a certain kind of mood and in this mood he talked endlessly of Rosebriar, like it’s an alternative dimension or a fantasy land we are not allowed to visit. Then my mother would yell at him to forget about stupid Rosebriar and get a job before he drinks himself to death.

  But she doesn’t have a job either and she also drinks. They live as they’ve always lived, off the dwindling invested proceeds of the sale of Rosebriar.

  Or at least they used to live that way.

  The Rosebriar Resort no longer exists. And Lake Stuart has since been discovered by the Wall Street barons who scoop up all the scenic property to build twenty six room palaces with private docks and behave as if the locals are uninvited wild animals.

  My history is fused to Lake Stuart. We’ve always been told to take pride in being among the generational families but this seems like a silly thing to be proud of. It would be like being proud of my red hair. I did nothing to achieve either and anyway, I have no memory of Rosebriar. It was shuttered the year I was born and my father, the lone heir who was never prepped for a destiny other than that of a resort heir, sold off the land before the real estate in these parts skyrocketed. No one forced his hand and yet this is mostly why he blames the summer people with such bitterness.

  Maybe that’s why he killed one of them.

  “Your bag is already in the trunk, sweetie,” my sister says when she sees me looking around.

  Jules, only three years older, didn’t used to speak to me so gently. She talks like a parent now but I feel lucky to have her because I’m short on capable parents. Our mother has retreated into a useless ball of self pity and our father will be in prison forever.

  “Okay,” I reply to my sister even though I wasn’t looking for my bag at all.

  I was wondering when I will be back here again, in the only home I’ve ever known.

  We thought we would lose the house and have nowhere to go because lawyer fees were gobbling up every penny in sight, but my dad’s estate attorney, a lifelong friend, got creative. He found a loophole that allowed the title to transfer to Jules when she turned eighteen three months ago. He gave some complex lawyer reason on why this makes the house untouchable but nobody cares about the details. In a year that’s cost us almost everything, at least we still have a place to live.

  Jules is the one who decided that I needed to get out of here for a little while. She discovered the fancy behavioral health clinic outside Ithaca and found the courage to make a pleading phone call to Abigail Fisher. The aging singer who used to perform at Rosebriar every summer before she began headlining shows in Vegas felt some pity for the remnants of the family who were so good to her in he
r youth. She has offered her financial support. She is the reason why I feel like I’m able to breathe again.

  I’ve seen pictures of the place I’ll be staying at and even if there weren’t horses and tulip gardens I would still want to go. Since the night last summer when I discovered my father standing in the laundry room amid a pile of bloody clothes I’ve been drowning in slow motion on the inside while faking good behavior on the outside.

  Eventually, that takes a toll.

  Jules looks into my eyes now and moves a piece of wayward red hair away from my cheek. I’ve always wished my hair was a deep, lustrous brown, like hers. We both have our father’s green eyes. So does Danny, who stands by the staircase with his hands in his pockets and misery written on his face.

  The day I cracked up with no warning in the middle of trigonometry, Jules was already gone because her senior schedule allows her to leave after lunch. Danny was the first one who had to deal with the fact that I’d tucked myself into a screeching, hysterical knot underneath my desk. I remember him saying my name and touching my shoulder like he was afraid of me.

  Then he started to cry, and Danny doesn’t cry.

  Danny didn’t cry when Dad was arrested. Danny never sobs when he gets heckled on the baseball field for being a murderer’s kid and he didn’t shed a tear when he heard Dad would be locked away for twenty-five years. But although we don’t get along and probably won’t get along in the future, my brother sobbed his heart out when he found me beneath a desk, recoiling from human contact and screaming as if someone had set my hair on fire.

  I finally stopped screaming when my math teacher, Mrs. Reinholtz, jerked me to my feet and slapped my face hard. Danny yelled at her for doing that but I could see she took no pleasure in slapping me. The police were on the way and I might have been handled more roughly if I didn’t quit screaming. I hope Mrs. Reinholtz knows I’m not angry with her at all even though my cheek stung for the next three days.

  “Mom is in her bedroom,” Jules says. “She’s waiting for you to say goodbye.”

  I doubt that’s true. But for my sister’s sake I nod and say, “I’ll be right back.”

  The first floor bedroom where my mother now sleeps alone is dark and stuffy and reeks of a bad habit. She supposedly quit smoking when I was in grade school but now puffs through two packs a day in between crunching on butterscotch discs. When she’s not smoking or eating candy, she’s either sleeping or wailing that we’re all doomed.

  She’s sleeping now.

  I wait just inside the doorway for a few seconds and listen to the dry racket of her snoring before sliding out. I’ll tell Jules we enjoyed a nice farewell if she asks.

  She doesn’t ask.

  My sister, who should be getting ready for tonight’s prom and looking ahead to a carefree summer before she starts college at NYU, plasters a cheerful smile on her face.

  “This time away is going to be so good for you, Gretch. Don’t worry about your finals. I’ve already talked to the school and they’ve agreed to let you make them up at the end of the summer. Your math teacher waived your final exam completely because you already have a high A.”

  This news will probably mean more to me when I’m able to think clearly again. In normal times I’m obsessed with my grades. Perhaps in a few years I will manage to earn a scholarship to NYU like my sister, although lately she hasn’t said much about the fact she’ll be leaving in August.

  Danny tries to smile and make an awkward joke. “That’s right, loser. I have faith you’ll be back to geeking up the place in no time.”

  He’d like me to answer with some sarcastic remark so we can bicker back and forth as usual. I would if I had the energy but I don’t. I say nothing and walk outside behind Jules.

  Danny heaves a sigh before following.

  Last night I heard Jules tell him that he needs to come along for the ride today whether he wants to or not. Danny has never been in the habit of letting himself get ordered around but that was before. Lately when our big sister tells him to do something he tends to cooperate with no argument.

  Jules holds open the passenger door of the Prius that used to belong to Dad, who won’t be needing it anymore.

  Danny jumps into the backseat without a protest. He knows he can take the shotgun seat on the way home from Ithaca since I won’t be in the car.

  “Seatbelt,” Jules singsongs brightly as she starts the engine. She pats my leg like I’m four years old.

  I snap my seatbelt into place.

  It’s only when Jules begins backing out of the driveway that I remember I’ve never spent more than two days away from Lake Stuart. My eyes search for the flat green hill hugging the horizon. It is too shallow to be called a mountain. From here its lonely shape looks like someone began painting stage scenery and soon walked away in boredom.

  The Rosebriar Resort is there.

  What’s left of it, anyway. A moldering summer corpse that has changed hands four times since my father sold it and still awaits a different destiny.

  The local teens trespass up there all the time, drinking and partying and doing god knows what else. The rumors around school point to Danny as one of the ringleaders. Both him and his best friend, Trent Cassini. I’ve never been invited and don’t care to see for myself what my brother’s crowd does amid the bones of our family’s lost inheritance. Rosebriar gives me the creeps even without the mental image of teenage orgies.

  “FUCK!” shouts my brother, starling me into a gasp.

  Thoughts of things I’ve never seen vanish. There are flashing lights ahead and I remember things I did see and wish I hadn’t.

  “Damn.” Jules exhales heavily and slows the car so she doesn’t hit the crookedly parked police cruiser at the end of the street.

  Now I understand why everyone is upset.

  The house on the corner resembles a sleek collection of boxes outfitted with floor to ceiling windows. The design is modern to the point of ugliness but I’ve heard my father grumble that it’s worth twice what our house is worth. I’ve never been inside but Danny has. His best friend lives there and now his best friend is being led from the house in handcuffs by a pair of granite-faced cops.

  Danny rolls the window down. “TRENT!”

  Trent Cassini freezes. He’s barefoot, wearing only a pair of red plaid boxers and a gold cross on a chain. A savage bruise discolors the space beneath his left eye and the tattoo on the right side of his chest must be new. Trent loves to show off his chest and I haven’t seen that tattoo before. I can’t tell if the shape is supposed to be a dragon or a snake but this shouldn’t be a point of focus right now when Trent is clearly in the middle of being arrested.

  Trent’s eyes, dark and angrily impenetrable even in good times, are now downright blazing as they bore into me.

  Trent is Danny’s age, a year older than I am. I’ve known him nearly all my life and can’t recall sharing a single conversation worth remembering.

  We aren’t friends and we aren’t enemies.

  We’re nothing.

  He’s Danny’s sidekick. Or, more likely, Danny is his. They’re a pair of sports-obsessed, obscene and careless best friends used to wading through lesser mortals and always getting their way.

  In any case, I’ve known Trent for far too long to be intrigued by him. Since he’s never given a sign that he cares what I think one way or the other, this works out for everyone.

  Like Danny, Trent is good at sports, indifferent to academics. Girls go wild for his Italian good looks and shitty attitude. I used to think Trent’s crappy home life was no excuse for his bad behavior but now that I have my own crappy home life I’m not so sure. His mother died three years ago and his father is increasingly senile. He has one brother, Liam, who moved in about a year ago to assume management of the family brewery. I don’t know much about Liam. He’s much older than Trent and as the son of his father’s first wife, he grew up down in the city instead of up here in Lake Stuart.

  I do know Trent hates him.r />
  Judging by the look on Liam Cassini’s face as he stands in the front yard and watches his younger brother getting shoved into a police cruiser, the feeling must be mutual. Liam isn’t exactly grinning but he’s pretty close. Until now I never took notice of how much Liam and Trent look alike. Both of them are black-haired, dark-eyed and square-jawed. But Liam has had time to pack on a lot more muscle and while Trent is bigger and stronger than a lot of guys at school, he’s still only a sixteen-year-old boy. When I look at Liam Cassini I feel like I’m gazing into Trent’s future. I doubt Trent would be pleased by this observation.

  Danny is so distraught at the sight of his best friend getting hauled off in handcuffs that he jumps right out into the fray.

  Jules whirls around. “Shit! Danny, stop!”

  One of the cops stiffens and puffs out his broad chest before stepping up to block Danny’s path to the police car.

  My brother yells to Trent again but Trent is now closed inside the backseat of the cop car and gazes straight ahead with furious defiance.

  Before last summer I’ve never watched anyone get formally arrested. My father didn’t struggle at all when the cuffs were slapped on. He hunched his head down and lifted his shoulders up until he looked like a turtle trying to crawl into a shell. At least he wasn’t taken away in his underwear like Trent. After consulting with his lawyer via telephone, he dressed in a suit that had become far too tight and he waited on the front porch for the police to arrive.