Risk (Gentry Boys #2)

by Cora Brent

  “I’m hungry as shit,” he said, turning to me. “Fucking Cord. Ate the rest of my cereal.”

  I rose from the couch and went to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I’d find there. I knew Saylor didn’t cook and I doubted the Gentry boys even knew how to boil water.

  “Want me to make you something?” I asked.

  Chase stared at me. “You’d do that?”

  “Sure. If there’s anything here I can use.” I started scanning the fridge. It held a nearly empty carton of milk, an avocado, a stick of butter, three slices of American cheese and a package of baloney. I took the butter, cheese, and baloney out before shutting the door. I was pleased to find a new loaf of bread on the counter and a griddle shoved underneath the sink.

  Chase sauntered over to the table and stared at me while I started to heat some butter on the griddle.

  “Is Saylor around?” I asked.

  “Nope. She had some writers’ group thing to go to this morning. And Cord’s at work already.”

  I removed three slices of baloney from the package and dropped them on the hot griddle. They sizzled and immediately sent out a heavenly aroma. After a few minutes I flipped them with a fork. As they were browning I laid out the bread, topped with cheese slices. When the baloney was done I put the whole thing together and melted it on the griddle for a minute before setting it on a paper plate.

  Chase stared at the food I put in front of him. “This is nice of you,” he said. He said it as if he was surprised.

  “I can be nice when I want to be.”

  Chase snorted. “Yeah, you’d have to be nearly a saint to put up with that sour gorilla who’s washing his ass off down the hall.”

  “He’s not so bad,” I smiled.

  Chase took a bite of his sandwich. He looked at me carefully while he chewed. There was nothing lewd about it though. It was a serious appraisal of the girl his brother had started spending a lot of time with.

  “You’ve got one too,” I said, pointing to the words inked on his chest. Chase, however, decided to abandon his manners. He looked pointedly down at his crotch and smiled broadly.

  “I’ve got the best one, Miss Truly. This is a fucking awesome sandwich by the way.”

  “I’m glad. By the way, my roommate Stephanie knows who you are. You guys share a class.”

  Chase looked interested. “Is that so? Tell her to come say hi sometime. I’m pretty friendly.”

  “Yeah, but she isn’t.” I tried to imagine Stephanie Bransky and Chasyn Gentry having a conversation. I didn’t think the occasion would go smoothly.

  Chase continued to eat his sandwich. He stared down at himself again and I wondered if he was going to say something else crude. He lightly touched a pink line of scar tissue running down the middle of his abdomen. I knew he’d suffered some internal injuries when he’d been jumped in a cowardly attack several months earlier. He had needed surgery. The scar marred the look of his otherwise perfectly tanned and muscled chest.

  “It’ll fade,” I said quietly. “They always do.”

  He glanced up at me. He seemed sad. I remembered the strange look he’d given me in the stadium after I caught him completing some furtive deal. The Gentry boys were all more complicated than they seemed.

  Chase clenched his fist and stared darkly at the table. “You have scars, Truly?”

  I hesitated. “Only one.”

  He smiled faintly. “Show me.”

  “Hell no. Finish your breakfast.”

  Creed walked into the kitchen. He was dressed, smelled strongly of soap and looked so damn hot my knees buckled. He scowled when he saw Chase sitting there in his underwear but apparently decided it wasn’t worth hollering about.

  Chase stretched and grinned as Creed sidled next to me.

  “Truly can cook,” Chase said cheerfully. “You should keep her.”

  I blushed and looked quickly at Creed. He had a funny look on his face.

  “I’ll try,” he said softly and then nodded to Chase. “Don’t you have class or something?”

  “No. I have no class. And neither do you. Are you guys going somewhere now?”

  “I don’t know.” I nudged Creed. “Are we?”

  “We could take a drive to the mountains,” said Chase.

  Creed hissed and glared at him. “Who the hell invited you?”

  “Truly did.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I did?”

  “Sure. Didn’t anyone explain to you how extraordinarily intelligent I am? I picked up on your sensory cues.”

  Creed crossed his arms. “You’re not coming, dipshit.”

  Chase was a chronic joker. Anyone could see that. But I thought his face fell a little when his brother growled at him.

  “Go get dressed,” I told Chase. “We’ll let you know what the plan is.”

  “Ha!” Chase clapped his hands together and pushed his finger in Creed’s face before darting down the hall.

  Creed was looking at me in disbelief.

  “I can’t help it,” I shrugged. “Rejecting him would be like stepping on a puppy.”

  “That’s the problem,” Creed sighed. “No one can refuse that guy anything.”

  “Does it really bother you if he comes along?”

  “No. You didn’t have to invite him. It was nice.”

  I hugged him around the waist. Creed seemed surprised but smiled and put his arm around me. I pushed my face into his chest and inhaled the musky, clean scent of him. He felt so goddamn good. I wanted to stay there forever.

  Creed rubbed the back of my neck and let out a contented sigh. “Hey? You still want to hear me sing?”

  I smiled into his shoulder. “If you want to sing for me, I’ll listen.”

  “Tonight,” he said softly. “I promise.”

  Chase was showered and ready within ten minutes.

  “So what did we decide?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Chase snapped his fingers. “We should go see the fountain.”

  “Aw hell,” Creed groaned. “Not another one of your nutty field trips.”

  I was curious. “What fountain, Chase?”

  “The Fountain Hills fountain. It used to be the tallest one in the world. Guiness Book shit. It shoots up over three hundred feet in the air, operates every hour on the hour and can be seen for miles around.”

  “Jesus,” grumbled Creed. “Did you memorize the entire Wikipedia entry?”

  “Yes and quit rolling your fucking eyes, Creedence. Come on, it’s less than an hour away and it’ll be fun.”

  “I’d like to see it,” I said.

  “You know,” complained Creed. “You’ve already got Saylor wrapped around your little finger and now you’re trying to get in good with my girl too.”

  My girl.

  Is that what I was? I looked at Creed but he was busy being irritated with his brother. It might have been nothing. An expression, a slip of the tongue.

  Creed nudged me on the way out the door. “Okay if I drive?”

  I nudged him back. “I thought you always did the driving.”

  “Are we being secretly vulgar?” asked Chase as he climbed into the backseat. “Don’t hold back on my account.”

  Chase was something of a chatterbox. On the drive to Fountain Hills he told a lot of jokes, most of which were in poor taste. Several times Creed twisted around and yelled at him to shut the fuck up. I enjoyed watching them together. I also wondered how much louder and more boisterous things became when Cord, their missing link, was added to the mix.

  “What’s wrong?” Creed asked me when I’d been quiet for a while.

  “Nothing.” I tried to smile. I took his hand and Chase made obnoxious kissing sounds from the backseat. Seeing the boys together had made me think about my sisters, about the easy camaraderie I’d once taken for granted.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Chase?” I asked as a way to change the subject.

  “No,” he laughed. “You want to make a recommendation?”

&nbs
p; “There’s the park,” pointed Creed, “so where the hell is this epic fountain?”

  “You don’t listen, Creedence. That’s one of your many shortcomings. I told you it operates every hour on the hour. It’s half past the hour right now.”

  Creed seemed irritated. “So we’ve got to sit here for a half hour and wait for the fountain to show up?”

  “Indeed. Now park the car and quit your pissing and moaning.”

  It was hot out but we found a bench with a fair amount of shade. A gigantic concrete disk sat in the middle of a small man made lake.

  “How many more minutes?” I asked.

  Chase checked his phone. “Twenty seven.” He seemed fretful. As the minutes ticked past he grew quiet. He kept shifting positions and looking over his shoulder. Then he ran a hand through his dark blonde hair and I saw he was sweating profusely. “I need some water.”

  Creed looked at him oddly. “There’s got to be a store nearby. Come on, we can get there and back before your fountain magic begins.”

  Chase was already standing. “I’m just gonna run to that gas station on the corner.”

  “Chase.”

  “I’ll be right back!”

  Creed and I stared after him as he jogged away.

  “Shit,” Creed swore softly.

  He was obviously upset. Throughout the colorful years of my life I’d learned quite a few things that I’d rather not know about. One of those things was the distinct ravenous look of someone who needed a fix. Just before he ran off, Chase had that look.

  Without saying a word I took Creed’s arm. I kissed the top of his shoulder and rested my head against him. For a while we just stayed like that, listening to one another breathe.

  “Truly,” he whispered, touching my face. It seemed he was getting ready to say more but a flicker of movement made us both turn our heads towards the lake.

  The fountain started small and then gradually built up to its full three hundred foot height. As the geyser reached for the sky I felt a shadow cross behind us. I leaned my head back and Chase grinned down.

  “Miss me?”

  He jumped over the back of the bench and landed at my side. The three of us sat there in silence and watched the fountain reach its peak before beginning to recede.

  Creed jerked when his phone rang. He withdrew it from his pocket and I saw a look on his face that I had not yet seen. It was pure dread. He looked straight at Chase, nodded slightly, and then jumped up from the bench. He walked away quickly as he brought the phone to his ear.

  “What was that?” I muttered.

  Chase was looking at the dying fountain. His mouth was set in a grim line. I didn’t think he was going to answer me.

  “He had to take that call,” he finally mumbled, almost as if he was talking to himself.

  “Everything okay?” I asked Creed when he returned a few moments later. I could tell from the look on his face that everything was definitely not okay. I wondered if it had something to do with another girl. It would explain why he’d felt like he couldn’t talk in front of me.

  Creed squinted out at the lake. “It’s over,” he said, nodding to the sputtering fountain. “We should go.”

  We stopped for lunch at a local burger joint but the mood seemed strained. Chase and Creed kept shooting tense looks at one another. I got the feeling they would have a lot to say if I wasn’t there.

  Chase jumped out of my car even before Creed had stopped it completely. He came around and tapped on my window. I rolled it down and leaned out.

  “Thanks for inviting me, Truly.” He tried valiantly to grin but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He shot another glance at Creed and then walked slowly to their apartment door.

  Creed turned off the ignition. “I’ve got some shit to take care of right now.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”

  He threw me a hard look. “It’s not another girl or any such bullshit. So don’t go thinking that.”

  “All right, Creed. I won’t.”

  He leaned over and kissed me quickly on the lips. The he gently lifted my chin. “Good night, Truly Lee.”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

  He flashed a quick smile. “Always got to have the last word, don’t you?”

  I proved him wrong. I didn’t say anything else as he exited my car and walked slowly to his door, his hands jammed in his pockets.

  I did touch my fingers to my lips and blow him a kiss but his back was turned. He didn’t see me.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CREED

  Chase was standing in the front hallway, waiting.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “I’m gonna go watch a fight tonight.”

  He relaxed a little. “Watch? So it’s not your fight?”

  “Nope. This ain’t my fight.” I started to move past him.

  “Wait.” Chase tensed. “Whose fight is it then? And what the hell is Hernandez about by wanting you to see it?”

  I sighed. There was no point in dancing around this. “One of the guys, the one who is expected to win, is some kind of rising star. He’s the dipshit I’ll likely end up meeting in the ring soon.”

  “Fuck,” Chase swore. The he pulled back and punched the wall.

  I looked at the hole he had made. “Did that hurt?”

  Chase flexed his hand and grimaced. “No.”

  “You should ice it.” I couldn’t deal with him right now. This rare tantrum of his wasn’t going to be helped by anything I said. I also couldn’t handle whatever he’d gone to do or swallow out there in the park.

  “We’ll go with you,” he said defiantly but I shook my head.

  Chase tried to flex his hand again and winced. “We always go to fights together.”

  “This is different. I’m not even the one doing the fucking fighting tonight.”

  “Look, let’s call Cord and –“

  “I don’t want you there, Chase. Neither of you.”

  He sagged against the damaged wall. As I looked at my brother standing there red-faced and hurt it seemed like he was ten years old again. It seemed like we both were.

  I’m sorry, Chasyn.

  He pushed me hard on his way out the door. He paused in front of me for a second like he expected me to react. When I didn’t he just shook his head and left.

  Cord and Saylor were gone. The apartment was empty. I went to my room and collapsed on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I wished Truly was there with me. I wished I had my mouth on her tits and my dick in her body. I could go to her. I knew she’d be glad. She’d let me use her however I needed to and then I could sleep on her shoulder for a while.

  But shit was already starting to spill out of me that I hadn’t meant to say out loud. How could I pull her into this? I thought of the look in her dark eyes as she wondered if she could trust me, silently begging me not to be an asshole. I couldn’t stand the thought of being the rotten risk she was so afraid of, something causing her pain in the end.

  I couldn’t think of Truly without remembering the feel of her body. It made me hard as steel every damn time. I pulled my dick out and did something about it, jerking off as furiously as I could. I pretended my hand was her mouth as I went fast. And then with a groan I came all over the goddamn place.

  Time passed. Chase didn’t come home. Cord did.

  “I need the truck,” I shouted to him as he walked past my room.

  He poked his head inside. “What the hell are you doing sitting here in the dark?”

  “Meditating. Just wanted you to know I was taking it.”

  Cord looked around. “Where’s Chase?”

  “I have no fucking idea.”

  He frowned. “What the hell crawled up your ass?”

  “Nothing, man.” I brushed him aside on my way out. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a drive.”

  I closed the apartment door behind me before he could say anything else
.

  There were still hours left before the fight. It was going to be downtown, by the baseball stadium. I drove around the valley in aimless circles to kill time.

  Rush hour traffic began to lighten as darkness thickened. I navigated the one-way streets of downtown Phoenix and felt very tired. I thought about the men who were on their way to watch the fight. What kind of sick fucks bet on the blood of others? I’d already seen too much blood in my life and some of it had been mine. The only memory of blood that made me happy was when I’d smashed Benton Gentry’s face after he went after my mother for the millionth time. It had happened about six months before high school graduation. Benton’s nose was broken and he stayed quiet around us after that. My mother never gave a hint that she was thankful. She didn’t even seem to care when we left.

  I was passing right by the baseball stadium. There was a game going on and the roar of the crowd reached me. I thought about all those thousands of people eating nachos and staring down at the field. They were lucky. They were just watching a game.

  I didn’t head over to the place until I needed to. It was an office building but anyone with legitimate business had already left. I eased slowly into the neighboring garage where Gabe had told me to park. The guard at the gate leaned next to my window and eyed me suspiciously. I muttered the password Gabe had told me to use.

  “Achilles.”

  The guard nodded and waved me in. As I walked into the building I felt isolated, naked. I needed Cord and Chase. Even though I wanted to spare them whatever shit I could, it seemed wrong to be here without them.

  Another guard stood in the gleaming marble lobby. He kept a hand on his weapon as I approached.

  “Achilles,” I told him.

  “Top floor,” he answered in a deep smoker’s voice. “Then take the first stairwell on the left to the roof.”

  I rode the elevator alone. There was music playing, an instrumental version of a Bruce Springsteen song. I stared straight ahead and wondered if I was being watched somehow.

  The top floor looked empty. Lighting was minimal as I walked down a long corridor to where another guard waited by a closed door.