Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(2)
But through the pain I just shook my head. The only thing worse than the pulpy mess which was now my nose would be telling a roomful of people about it. Besides, I knew he had no intention of allowing me to press charges against him. “No. But you’ll damn well never do that to me again, Devin. I mean it this time. That’s it.”
He’d started to cry. “No, shit, never. Saylor, I love you. You know I love you.”
The car rolled to a stop at the next light. Devin reached over and put his hand under my skirt, snaking between my legs. I didn’t stop him. I looked out the window. It wasn’t quite dark yet and the low rider beside us held a quartet of men who peered curiously at my bleeding face. They were rough men, gangbangers by the grim, tattooed look of them. I wondered if they hit their women too.
We lived in a posh beachfront condo financed by Devin’s father and by the time we got there he was fully immersed in the role of loving boyfriend. He cleaned me up, helped me into a robe and then let me know how hard he was. Even as I cursed the betrayal of my body I let it happen; I let him ease me onto the bed and spread my legs as he rolled on a condom. I watched his face as he grimaced through his orgasm and felt nothing. Finally, my heart had begun to harden. I welcomed the detachment.
The next day I peered soberly at the raccoon-like bruising under the garish light of the bathroom vanity and balled both hands into fists. Couples fought all the time. I remembered the howling battles between my parents. It was a vicious back and forth of verbal stabs which was painful to hear. It did not surprise me when they separated. But there were no sounds of fists hitting flesh. There were no bruises the next day.
My eyes narrowed in disgust at my own reflection. How the hell could I allow this and still look myself in the eye every day?
“Skateboarding,” I explained with a ridiculous laugh to anyone who asked. “Rolling full speed through a parking garage after four Jello shots.” Then I laughed again, a moronic giggle which sounded repulsive even to me. Then whoever had cared to ask in the first place would smile with polite doubt and turn away.
The truth was too humiliating. I worried more about what those bruises said about me than what they said about Devin. Only Brayden knew. But my cousin and lifelong best friend was nearly three hundred miles away in Arizona. He repeatedly threatened to drive out and confront Devin but that sounded like a nuclear-level disaster. Devin worked every day at being strong. Brayden hadn’t thrown a punch since he was pummeled on the school playground by one of the Gentry brothers. I begged my cousin not to come.
“Saylor,” he pleaded and I could hear it in his voice; the fear, the resignation, the disgust. I couldn’t blame him. No one was more disappointed in Saylor McCann than Saylor McCann. I made Brayden swear that he wouldn’t tell my parents. They knew nothing. They were still living their separate lives in Emblem and working at the prison.
“You deserve better,” he coughed. He ended the call before I could answer.
Really, I had no answer. Not for Brayden, not for myself. ‘Better’ had proven to be an elusive concept where the male factor was concerned, starting with the high school scumbag who’d sweet talked his way into my pants and through my virginity. There was a reason for it, a reason far worse than sixteen year old hormones. Cord Gentry had made a bet. And then what did that son of a bitch do? He laughed about it uproariously and all the people I’d known my whole life bent themselves in half trying to be first to sit on the gossip train.
I suppose everyone has a seminal story of painful adolescence and that was mine. I’d known what the Gentry brothers were. A set of fraternal triplets born to a depraved family, they were rough, sexy and wild as wolves. Together they comprised a powerful triumvirate which ruled the youth of Emblem. I tried not to be among the girls who fell unreservedly for their golden good looks and broad shoulders. Until Cord Gentry noticed me one day and crooked a finger with a sly smile. It didn’t take much at all for me to unlock my knees and lie down on the floor of a dirty garage for him. I’d felt awful enough about it two seconds after it was done. Then it got worse. It turned out to be all a game, some sort of sick Gentry boys challenge to see who could pop the nerdy McCann chick.
That was a bad time. Through it all I only had Brayden to hand me box after box of tissues as we hunkered down on the floor of my lilac bedroom and played grunge music from the early nineties with religious intensity. My cousin, a sweet kid who endured high school hells of his own, wiped away the snot-encrusted tendrils of my brown hair and gazed at me sadly. He said the same thing he would sigh into the phone six years later.
“You deserve better.”
As soon as Devin walked through the door tonight I knew he was drunk. I also knew the violence was in him again. He’d been tiptoeing around me since the Valentine’s Day punch but I often sensed he was biding his time, like a cat. I was graduating in two days and already looking for an apartment. It would have been nice to find a good job to go with it. Waitressing didn’t pay well and, shockingly, it turned out employers weren’t clamoring for English majors with a concentration in creative writing. But I knew I had to get out. Soon, before he pounced again. He would, I was sure of it.
When Devin spotted me sitting on the couch with my laptop he smiled. My heart stopped. Oh, that sounds so cliché, and I dearly loathe clichés but there is no more appropriate term. When you meet danger eye to eye, your heart really does stop. And then it resumes beating again, furiously.