Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(55)
“For good?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
“All right, then,” he nodded, looking wistful. “All right, she’s welcome here if you’re sure she’s what you want.”
“She is,” I answered.
“Damn,” my brother shook his head with a grin. “Must be nice.”
I had a lot of energy and nothing constructive to do with it. I lifted a little out on the patio but the heat was f*cking ridiculous. Ten minutes out there and I was soaked with sweat so I jumped in the shower.
When I got back to my bedroom I looked around. I didn’t have much. I might never have much in the way of money and shiny stuff. I knew Say wasn’t real keen on the idea of me fighting and suddenly it seemed like a crappy way to earn a little green. Last night when we’d climbed to the top of the university art museum, she’d said some things which got me to thinking. I wasn’t at all convinced that I belonged in a classroom like Saylor suggested. But once upon a time, drawing used to give me a fair amount of peace when I needed it. It was something like how I imagined Saylor’s writing was to her. My cousin, Declan, bounced around doing ink for a living. He was the one who’d gotten the three of us done a few years back when he’d dropped in out of nowhere and stayed with us a while. He’d been impressed by my centaur sketch and suggested that I give him a call if I ever wanted to take up the trade, saying he would show me the ropes. I might do that now. I just might. I’d heard he was somewhere around the way of Emblem. Maybe when I headed down there this weekend with Saylor I ought to look him up.
I felt a little sick over the sudden memory of my hometown. My mind’s eye saw the high fences of the prison, the desolation of the outlying desert where I’d once scrounged out a childhood. I hated going back there. But I didn’t have it in me to turn Saylor down, especially not after she’d looked at me with such earnest shyness and said what it meant to have me by her side. It was time to put away the past and maybe in an odd way that meant revisiting it. I could handle it.
With nothing else to do at the moment I got to cleaning the hell out of the apartment. Dirt was a thing with me. Chase liked to tell me I was ‘OCD on a stick’ and that might be true, but I couldn’t handle filth, mostly because for so many years that was all I saw when I looked around.
After a few hours of solid elbow grease I was pretty pleased with the results. I’d heard Creed wander out some time earlier, mumbling about going downtown for some sheet music. If any one of us had real talent for anything, it was Creed. I hadn’t been bullshitting when I told Saylor he could be famous with that voice of his, if only he’d scrape the rusty paint off his heart and let people hear a thing or two.
My stomach growled and I realized it had been a while since I’d eaten. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen and felt myself smiling as I unpeeled it, thinking of Saylor’s mouth on my dick. It was a nice thought. As I chewed I considered heading down to Cluck This and coaxing Say into a few stolen moments somewhere quiet. I knew she would. Saylor might act a little shy sometimes but there was a whole lot of dirty in that girl. It made me love her even more.
Love.
Now there was a word which hadn’t crossed my mind a whole lot over the past twenty two years. Of course I loved my brothers. But we didn’t exactly run around squawking about it all the time.
Creed banged his way through the front door as I was scrubbing the kitchen floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” he bellowed.
“Using your toothbrush to clean dirt out of the grout,” I answered with glee.
Creed dropped the bag he was carrying and made like he was going to knock me on my back. I rolled out of the way, laughing.
“I’m just screwing with you.”
He glared at me and opened the fridge. “So that’s not my toothbrush?”
“No,” I smiled. “It’s Chase’s.”
Creed didn’t find anything worth scavenging in the fridge. He closed the door. “I guess he hasn’t noticed yet.”
“He hasn’t been home.”
Creed glanced at his phone. “It’s almost six. Wasn’t he supposed to be back by now?”
I was on the verge of issuing some flippant remark about our brother’s unending quest for * when a wave of disquiet washed over me. Creed was looking at me curiously.
“What?”
“Nothin’. He tell you about those shitheads giving him a hard time at the gym yesterday?”
“I heard you guys talking about it. He would have called if he ran into trouble.” Creed was beginning to sound uneasy though. There were scientists out there who have devoted a lot of energy trying to prove there was some sort of sensory connection between siblings who began life together. Once, when Creed busted his wrist falling through the rotted floor of an old barn, I swear I felt a flash of pain in that instant even though I was three blocks away and knew nothing about what happened for a good hour.
Creed was already calling Chase’s phone. He seemed unsurprised when it went straight to voicemail. My brother looked at me for a long, silent moment.
“Yeah,” I nodded, already heading out the door. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SAYLOR
If I had any friends they might have said I was crazy. It wasn’t too long ago I’d crawled over the state line bruised and violated by a man who’d said he loved me. Those friends I didn’t actually have might have argued that it was too soon, that I hadn’t really dealt with the trauma I’d experienced, or that I was mistaking sex for love. Finally, these imaginary friends might have thrown up their pretend hands and scolded me for choosing to overlook a damaging afternoon which ended in a dirty garage six years ago.