Risk (Gentry Boys #2) Read online

  “I’m in the mood for burritos,” I said

  Cord was watching me. I thought he was going to say something about Truly but he stopped and smiled. “You got it.”

  Chase started ushering both of us out the door. “Your wallet’s gonna be significantly lighter when I’m done stuffing myself.”

  Cord rolled his eyes. “So be it.” He turned and touched me on the arm. “We’ll make it,” he said with confidence. “We always do.”

  “I know.” I held the front door open. “After you, brother.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Truly

  “You’re quiet,” Saylor said.

  I was sitting at a back table, poking at a chicken sandwich. Saylor paused at my side with a pitcher of water in her hand. She looked at me carefully.

  “It’s the heat,” I told her.

  She set the pitcher down and sat across from me. “You’re full of it. It’s always hot. Except for a few weeks in January when we all get to pull our jackets out from underneath the bed and pretend we live somewhere manageable. After that the blistering heat returns.”

  I cut the chicken sandwich in half. That didn’t make it look any more appetizing. It seemed the quality of Cluck This dining was on a downward spiral. Or else I was.

  “Perhaps the older I become the more easily I wilt.”

  My friend stared at me, her green eyes serious. She absently played with the silver ring on her left hand. Cord had given it to her; a symbol of their love and their future. We hadn’t spoken again about my crazy sex encounter with Creed Gentry. I didn’t ask about him and, mercifully, I hadn’t seen him around. I would have been utterly mortified if anyone besides Dolly knew that every night I was compelled to pick up Creed’s abandoned shirt and inhale the lingering scent of him as every important nerve in my body convulsed.

  Saylor had apparently decided not to press me. She tossed her head in the direction of the latest waitressing addition. Her name was Julie and she was tall, blonde and, from what I could tell, a vicious phony.

  “She’s making me look bad,” Saylor commented and we both turned to watch Julie as she brightly relayed the Cluck This specials to a troupe of middle aged businessmen who stared unabashedly at her tanned legs.

  “Well, sugar,” I sighed, “it ain’t that tough to make you look bad at this career.” Saylor was an awful waitress.

  “Screw you,” she said good-naturedly. “Just see if I invite you to my first book signing.”

  “Oh, you finished it?”

  “No quite,” she frowned. “I’m getting there though.”

  “I’d like to read it. Really.”

  She smiled faintly. “And so you shall the minute I’m finished.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Saylor looked suddenly distracted. She pulled at her hair and pursed her lips slightly. My heart skipped a little. I knew she was going to mention Creed.

  “He seemed almost cheerful there for a few days. Pretty remarkable for Creedence. Usually he’s nothing but grim and distant.”

  “Oh,” I said, only because I felt like I had to answer somehow.

  “Sorry,” she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have brought his name up.”

  “No, it’s okay. I mean he’s your future brother-in-law and he lives in the same apartment as you. I don’t plan on spending the rest of my days running from any mention of Creed Gentry.”

  She gave me a pitying smile. Sometimes I felt like Saylor could see through me. Aggie used to be able to do that, to call me on bullshit when she saw it. I couldn’t really put a finger on what was bothering me. I wasn’t even sure I liked Creed. How could I? The boy barely spoke. But holy shit was there a chemistry there. I couldn’t admit it to Saylor. I could barely admit it to myself. Creedence Gentry had made me forget everything I ever thought I knew about sex, passion and the way my own body worked. He had shaken me to the core.

  Saylor rose from the chair with a sigh. She tapped me on the shoulder with kindness. “Remember what I said, Truly. About screaming to the sky.”

  I did remember. Say had told me that if I ever needed someone to talk to, to stand there next to me as I screamed at the sky, then she was my girl. She’d said it to me as I stood primping in front of a mirror, not guessing that within an hour I’d take an inexcusable risk and be screaming all right, but from sheer ecstasy. Still, it was nice to think there was someone who actually cared about what was going on inside my head.

  “You’d be the one I’d call,” I assured her.

  Ed had emerged from his office and he was eyeing us. Saylor flounced past him and smiled. I still had ten minutes left of my break so I choked down a few more bites of chicken and then tossed the rest in the trash.

  The rest of the evening was uneventful drudgery. I took orders. I served chicken. Then I did it again.

  Cord came through the door about half an hour before close. Ed gave him a hard look but Cord held up his hands and grinned.

  “You said not to come in after hours. It’s not after hours.”

  Ed scowled. “Well you’ve still got to order something or leave.”

  “Fine.” Cord sat down at a table by the door. “Give me a Coke.”

  “I’m not a waiter!”

  “Truly,” Cord grinned at me sweetly. “Would you please take my order?”

  “It’ll be right out,” I told him, smiling in spite of myself.

  Saylor was in the kitchen trying to balance four plates loaded with food. It looked like a situation destined for disaster so I took several of them from her.

  “Cord’s here,” I said. “He’s expecting someone to bring him a Coke.”

  “Hmm,” she frowned. “He’s early.”

  I told her to go on ahead and that I would serve her table. She gave me a grateful smile and then retreated with Cord’s drink in hand. I brought the food out to a quartet of college guys. They tried to compliment me in a flirty, harmless way but I just wasn’t up for it. I asked them if they needed anymore ketchup and then moved on.

  The sight of Cord and Saylor sitting together stopped me. Cord looked upset. Say was across from him, her head bowed. Suddenly she rose and went to him, pulling his head to her breast. He circled his arms around her back and closed his eyes. She rocked back and forth gently, kissing the top of his head.

  After a few minutes Saylor returned to work and Cord remained at the front table, quietly waiting for her. When all the other customers had left and the sign on the front door changed to ‘Closed’ I caught up to Say by the bar.

  “Everything okay?”

  She tried to smile but I could tell she was a bit rattled. She glanced at Cord and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “No.” She quickly hugged me. “But thanks. It just really is a Gentry world, that’s all.”

  “You don’t need to remind me of that,” I muttered and Saylor looked at me with raised eyebrows. I nudged her. “Why don’t you get out of here? I’ll cover for you on cleanup.”

  “Thanks,” she said absently, staring at Cord. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She collected Cord and the two of them left with their arms securely around each other. I couldn’t help but wonder if whatever was going on had to do with Creed.

  The new waitress was apparently too good to help with cleanup. I glared at her back while she chatted with Griffin and tapped her pink polished talons on the surface of the bar.

  “Some folks are still working,” I said loudly.

  Julie turned to me with a frozen smile, looking me up and down. I wasn’t in spectacular shape just then. My hair was tied up in a sloppy ponytail and the jeans I was wearing had been a better fit several years and a couple hundred spin cycles ago.

  “Some people are better suited for hard labor than others,” she retorted in such a pointedly bitchy way I was tempted to shove a bottle of tabasco sauce up her little pug nose.

  After I wiped down the tables and straightened all the chairs I took my serving
apron off and stalked to the back. From the smug way Griffin glanced at me I could tell he thought he was in business with this Julie chick. I stuck my tongue out at him just because I could. His eyes widened and he returned to listening to Julie drone on about sorority hazing rituals.

  I grabbed my purse and popped my head into Ed’s office. “I’m takin’ off now, boss.”

  Ed looked at me. It seemed that before I walked in he’d been busy staring at his shoes.

  “Fine,” he sighed, then ran a hand across his pink scalp. A bottle of antacid sat on the edge of his disordered desk. I retreated quickly, needing to get away from that sad vision for fear my soul might shrivel.

  The air outside was humid. Usually when I left work for the night and got into my car I felt an overriding sense of freedom. I was on my own. I had everything I needed and I would keep working until I was able to climb higher. But tonight, as I remembered the way Cord and Saylor had looked together, so sweet and loving, I felt a little lonely.

  Stephanie wasn’t home. That wasn’t a surprise. She was rarely home. My roommate was so furtive and tight-lipped that sometimes I wondered if she was in the mob.

  Dolly ran to greet me and I picked her up, kissing her between the ears. “I know. You’re always happy to see me.”

  I set her down and went to toss my purse in my bedroom. I was hoping there was ice cream left in the freezer. I planned to eat it sloppily and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand as I lounged on the futon to watch the most depraved reality television show I could find.

  Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

  But I did it. I did it anyway. I picked up Creed’s shirt and breathed through the fabric. The act made me feel so wanton and pathetic I had to sit down. Was this the direction I would always go, no matter how desperately I tried to turn myself into something better?

  “You want it, girl. Shit you’re the type who was born to it.”

  It wasn’t Creed’s voice I heard in my head. It had an Alabama backwater drawl and the memory of it made me feel slightly sick.

  I was aware my fingers were twisting the shirt fabric as my jaw locked. He hadn’t been the first man to put his hands all over me but he was the first one who managed to crack the barrier and get everything he was after.

  When Laura Lee found out her latest man had been screwing her daughter she lost what little mind she had left. At age thirty six she looked ten years older. The closer the four of us grew to womanhood the more she would watch us with incredulous misery. I didn’t know if my sisters suspected what I’d already figured out; our mother wasn’t longing for the babies we’d been. She was grieving for the youth we’d cost her.

  I’ll never know how things would have gone if I’d stayed. Maybe Laura Lee would have gotten over her wrath and I could have finished high school. There was no man to fight over, not anymore. He had taken off without a second glance like so many men before him. But there were still the things my mother and I said to each other.

  “Filthy fuckin’ whore.”

  “Goddamn crazy bitch.”

  There was still the sting of her hand on my cheek and the welts on my back from the hairbrush she’d beat me with. There was something else too; something she had never known about and would never know about.

  I didn’t even consider Laura Lee as one of the worst of my many losses. I could live without her. But it still stung to be without my sisters.

  Dolly seemed to sense my miserable mood. She rubbed against my legs and let out a little whine of commiseration.

  I didn’t let myself think about it. I just pulled out my phone and called a number.

  “Hi,” said my sister Augusta. She sounded breathless, as if she’d been in a rush to get somewhere quiet so she could answer her phone. I took that as a good sign.

  “Hey, Aggie.” My voice kind of died right there. For all those girlhood years, I’d taken for granted the easy way we talked to each other in a kind of secret language that came from navigating life together. Anger happened sometimes and was expected but it never lasted. It was a bump to be stepped over.

  If I’d known on a dark night four years ago that by leaving I would cut the invisible strings tying us all together I might not have been able to do it.

  My sister sighed from far away. She’d made good so far. Now a sophomore at Oklahoma State, she was studying veterinary medicine. I heard the steady drumbeat of rain coming from her end of the line and tried to picture the state of Oklahoma. I’d driven through it once and remembered a lot of flat land beneath an endless sky.

  “So how are you?” she finally asked.

  “I’m good. Still working at the same place. Saving up to go to school.”

  “That’s good, Truly. Really, that’s good. You designing at all?”

  “Not lately. I had to unload my Singer a while back.” Actually I’d had to sell my expensive sewing machine in order to scrape together rent money but I didn’t see the point in spilling every sad detail. “You hear from Mia lately? I left her a message about two months ago but never got a call back.”

  “She doesn’t have her phone anymore. She joined some kind of earthy movement that believes in farming beets by way of cow shit. She’s up there in the Oregon countryside getting rained on and sticking her hands in the mud. She sends a letter to me here every four weeks or so. She seems happy.”

  It was difficult for me to picture the fragile Meridian Lee with dirt in her blond hair and callouses on her soft hands.

  “Well, good for her I guess. And I know Carrie just started her senior year.”

  “She did. She’s got several soccer scouts already tossing scholarships at her feet.”

  I sat down on the bed. “So how are you, Ags?”

  I could almost hear her shrugging. “I’m great. Maintaining my 4.0 and trying to stay out of trouble.”

  “Any boys worth talking about?”

  “I’m sure if there was he would fall into the category of ‘trouble’.”

  I thought I detected an edge to her voice and remembered that Aggie had been horrified by what I’d done. Augusta Lee wasn’t a girl who would find herself melting under any man’s rehearsed lines. She also didn’t think there was ever a good reason to lie down with another woman’s man, particularly when the other woman was the one who had given you life. It didn’t matter how crappy a mother we were talking about or how young and stupid a girl was being. Aggie was likely right about that.

  Will I be paying for that weakness forever?

  My hand went to the nearly invisible line of scar tissue beneath my clothes and my heart lurched as my mind answered Yes. I would never really escape the choices I’d made. That was the risk endured when a piece of the heart was cleaved off and sent out into the world.

  “I miss you, Augusta.”

  My sister sighed. I thought I heard a soft curse escape her lips. “It’s not like I’ve been hiding from you, Truly.” Her voice was cold. In the year after I’d left her alone to see to the fates of the Lee women I hadn’t had much contact with any of them. I was in the hell of my own making and it was all I could do to keep breathing. But whenever I did resurface and pick up the phone, Aggie would beg for me to come back. She even cried a few times and Augusta Lee hadn’t cried since a nail went clean through her foot when she was ten. There were no tears in her voice now though. There was only weariness. And blame.

  I answered haltingly. “I know, sweetie.” It used to be so easy for us to talk. Mia and Carrie would complain endlessly about how our late night chattering kept them awake.

  Aggie coughed. “Look, I’ve got to go. My study group is waiting for me to get back inside. I am glad you called though.”

  “We’ll talk more soon, right Ags?”

  “Sure we will.”

  My sister ended the call. I dropped my phone on the floor, feeling more wretched than I had earlier. How did it happen that people who shared such strong bonds became strangers? Maybe if I’d told Aggie everything back then it would have made a difference.
She might have understood. Maybe they all would have. Or maybe not.

  At some point as I sat there fretting I realized I was twisting Creed’s shirt in my hands again. I looked at it. The shirt was covered in cat hair and was vaguely stretched out of shape from all the ways I’d handled it. If Creed ever dropped by asking for it back I might have some explaining to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CREED

  This shit was over before it started.

  Three quick blows and the guy was already crawling around in the gravel with a string of bloody saliva running out of his mouth. As I waited for him to rejoin the fight I was aware of many things.

  There was the vague sting of my knuckles and the howling blood lust of the crowd. There was the sight of Gabe Hernandez greedily watching on the sidelines with a handful of stoic men who smelled of money. There was the yawning blackness of a moonless sky over my head and the hot wind that had kicked up with sudden fury.

  Finally and most importantly, there were my brothers standing nearby. I could feel the silent strength coming from them. It was this I chose to focus on.

  The man at my feet was still struggling to rise. He coughed a few times and glanced sideways in fear, maybe believing I would do the coward’s thing and move in while he couldn’t catch his breath. I just waited, mulling over how to finish this. I knew it was better to make a show of it. I knew this was what Gabe wanted me to do. I also knew it was kinder to end it quickly.

  I looked to Chase and Cord. They understood my silent question and nodded together.

  When the man finally staggered to his feet I pulled back and landed a swift hook under his chin. His eyes rolled into his head and then he crumpled like tissue paper. The crowd erupted and I bent over at the waist, trying to dispel the sick feeling. It was the sensation that always overcame me when I inflicted pain on another human being; the fear that if I took even a little satisfaction from the act I would be traveling in the direction my violent blood always meant to take me. It was what drove me to the bottle and to the furious black surrender of old memories. It was fucking terrible.