CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(4)

“MOTHERFUCKER!”

The shout came from next door. Sometimes I couldn’t tell Con’s voice from Stone’s.

I hopped off the bed and took two steps over to the only window in the small bedroom I’d lived in since I was born. Pushing the eyelet curtains away and sliding the window open, I had an instant view of the Gentry’s property.

The Gentry house had started to look somewhat shabby these past few years. My father commented on it often enough, even offering to help Tracy Gentry repaint the exterior and do something about the landscaping. She told him to piss off and mind his own f*cking business. Con’s mother was not my favorite person.

The shouting had come from Stone. His back was to me and he seemed to be yelling at a closed window. He wore nothing but a pair of loose boxers and growled another curse as he pulled a cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it against the stucco. If the sharp gravel covering the heavily weeded yard hurt his bare feet he gave no sign. Their house had the same exact layout as mine and the bedroom the brothers shared was the same one my two younger sisters occupied here. The boys shouldn’t have had to share a room; I knew there was an empty one, the same room that was mine. However it had been closed off and unused ever since their father died in it.

I watched in silence as Conway’s brother stalked over to the front door, tested the knob in vain, cussed another blue streak and then grabbed a cheap plastic lawn chair that had probably blown into his yard during last night’s storms. I recognized the chair. It belonged to us.

He paused there for a moment, leaning on the back of the chair as he shot a moody glare at the closed bedroom window. The brothers were closer than brothers usually were. Practically twins, they were only ten months apart and in the same class, but they were always hassling each other for some reason or another. I didn’t have any brothers, only sisters, so for all I knew that’s just what brothers did. In any case, Stone had likely jumped out the window to pollute his lungs in the yard and Conway had used the opportunity to lock him out.

Suddenly Stone yawned and stretched, causing his boxers to slip a few crucial inches and almost offer an x-rated view. Ordinarily I would have averted my eyes right away. Stone was my boyfriend’s brother. He was also a total dog. There was nothing tempting about him.

At least that’s what my heart said.

Apparently the rest of me wasn’t so sure because my eyes wouldn’t budge and my breath caught before a sharp inhale.

Maybe he’d heard me in the midst of the unusual silence or maybe the fluttering of my curtain caught his attention. Stone stopped in mid-stretch and zeroed right in. I saw his gaze travel south immediately. I didn’t have to look down to realize what he was staring at with unconcealed hunger. I never wore a bra to bed and my shirt – thin, white and the victim of laundry shrinkage – strained against my breasts.

It was an erotic, painfully taboo moment that ended an instant later when Stone’s head snapped up, the naked lust on his face replaced with the look of supreme boredom that he usually wore. He hiked up his boxers and pointedly turned away as if I wasn’t even there.

I closed the window. I shut the curtains. I leaned against the wall, feeling strange and awkward and somehow completely wrong. My skin tingled and somewhere in my head a hideous whisper reminded me that I knew how to force unwanted thoughts away.

No. I wouldn’t do that right now, not for this. Already the moment had gone stale and I started to wonder if it had even happened.

It had though. It had happened. Stone Gentry and I, for the briefest instant, had connected in a way that was unthinkable.

But that was all. It meant absolutely nothing. I loved Conway. I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I wouldn’t.





CHAPTER TWO


CONWAY



My brother could be such an *.

First he shook me awake before the crack of dawn just to extort some cigarettes. I wasn’t a regular smoker but there were two loose cigarettes in the drawer of my nightstand. I threw them in his direction just to shut him up and then kicked off the bed sheet because sometime in the night the power was knocked out, taking the air conditioning with it.

That’s when Stone decided to harass me about the morning boner that was making a tent in my boxers.

“That’s some serious frustration there,” he smirked, lighting up and blowing a cloud at the ceiling.

I threw a pillow at him. “Fuck you. Like you never wake up with wood?”

“Not like that, man. You see, I get my wood handled regularly. Unlike you.”

I rose up on my elbows. All I wanted was for Stone to close his mouth and go somewhere else so I could roll over and get off. But that comment was a deliberate shot and I couldn’t just let it go by.

“I get my shit handled plenty,” I protested and it was only half a lie.

Erin and I fooled around all the time and the fact that we hadn’t sealed the deal yet just proved that what was between us was real. She would have done it. She would have done it to make me happy. Yet when we had sex I couldn’t let the reason be because I’d pushed her into it. We’d get there when she was ready. In the meantime I was getting lots of mileage out of hand jobs and jerk offs.

Stone wouldn’t understand. He was always full speed when it came to f*cking around, like he might not live another day if he wasn’t being led around by a satisfied cock.