Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(10)

I turned around. She looked lost. She looked like she did when she was sixteen and found out the guy who had just popped her cherry was more of a shithead than she had imagined.

“Bray never told me you were here.”

I raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “I wonder why.”

She offered a vague little smile. “He didn’t know I was coming and I can’t get ahold of him.” She stared down at herself and made a face. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a shower.”

I waited. “Offer stands, Say.”

Saylor nodded tiredly and coughed once. “Okay. Look, I’m just going to grab my bag. I left it in my car.”

I joined her. “All right, I’ll go with you. Never know who or what is hiding out in the dark.”

Her sidelong glance had a wry quality. “No kidding.”

Saylor’s car was the same battered Civic she’d had in high school, except it had California plates now. She reached into the backseat and grabbed a purse and a dark duffel bag. I tried to take the bag myself but she waved me away.

“I got it,” she said tersely.

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you do.”

The silence between us was painfully awkward as I led her back to the three bedroom apartment I shared with my brothers. When I held the door for her she hesitated at the threshold and looked up at me with uncertainty. I tried not to openly wince at the sight of her bruised and swollen face. It didn’t matter who she was; shit like that just turned me inside out.

I pointed to the first door on the left. “Bathroom’s right there. I cleaned it today so it’s not too disgusting. Help yourself to whatever you need.”

She nodded and said nothing, dragging her bag inside the room and closing the door behind her.

Creed was intensely playing Xbox, one of those militaristic games where everybody shoots everybody else in a drab post-apocalyptic setting. Chase was lounging on the couch as a slinky blonde climbed all over him.

“C’mon,” she purred as Chase put his hands on her tits and smiled. He noticed me standing there but didn’t take his hands from the girl’s tits as she squirmed impatiently.

“Did I hear you roll through the door with some company?” he asked.

I grabbed an apple from a bowl on the kitchen table and perched on an arm of the couch. “Sort of,” I shrugged.

Creed tore his gaze away from the game and glanced around. “Where’d you put her?”

As if on cue the shower blasted to life.

“Aw shit,” said Chase, kneading the girl’s tits more enthusiastically. “You didn’t bring home another homeless dude did you?”

I took a bite of the apple and watched my brother’s date straddle him, moving back and forth over his crotch as if there was no one else even in the room. Chase reached under her halter top and she moaned.

“That guy was all right,” I said, staring at the girl’s face. Her lips were thin and she wore gobs of makeup. “He was a musician. Just needed a place to recharge.”

Creed didn’t agree. “He pissed in the shower. He stunk up the place for a f*cking week.” He threw down the game controller and began to stalk down the hall. I could tell he was planning on barging right into the bathroom and hauling our guest out forcibly.

“Hey,” I grabbed his shirt. “Don’t, okay? It’s not what you think. It’s a girl.”

“A girl?” Chase asked with interest as the blonde threw her head back and began to move more urgently while making all kinds of noise about it. Maybe that was her thing, getting off in a room full of people. Chase had probably plucked her out of a nearby party and not bothered to ask her name.

“Not that kind of girl,” I said, pointing. Then I lowered my voice in case she could hear anything beyond the spray of the shower. “You’re not going to f*cking believe this, but it’s Saylor McCann.”

Creed let out a low whistle and Chase laughed out loud.

“Yeah right,” he howled. “If you were dying in the street, bro, Saylor McCann would dig a heel into your neck to end you quicker. So really, who’s the chew toy you got in there?”

I threw the apple at his head. “Quiet, I’m serious. She was trying to get into Brayden’s apartment but he’s nowhere in sight.” I glanced down the hall where the shower was still running. “Look, don’t give her any shit, okay?”

Creed had backed off the notion of charging into the bathroom but he was frowning doubtfully. “Didn’t she hate your f*cking guts? Didn’t she hate all of us?”

I shrugged. “Probably still does. But I couldn’t just leave her there sniffling in the dark with nowhere else to go.”

Chase seemed to have lost interest in the subject. The girl had let him push her shirt up until her bobbing tits were shamelessly exposed. She continued to writhe in his lap and let out feline cries of ecstasy.

Creed returned to his video game, shooting up a bevy of digital people in an imaginary world. I looked down the hall again, suddenly wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself in the middle of.

Of course I’d known Saylor since kindergarten because Emblem was like that. She was a snooty girl who stuck close to her cousin Brayden and was part of the smart crowd, the kids who were going to make it. Maybe that’s what made her such a tempting target. She wasn’t shy about her snub-nosed disdain for us, the dirty Gentry boys, and one night, drinking stolen wine coolers over a fire pit as we camped way out in the desert, her name came up.