Game (Gentry Boys, #3)(23)

My head wasn’t only full of fears and bad memories. No matter how much I didn’t want it to be true, Chase had gotten to me. I understood it was futile to think about him the way I was thinking about him. It would mean wishing he was different than he was, and wishing he considered me as something more than a challenging place to stick his dick. But briefly, when Chase had first circled his arms around me, before we were both overcome with lust, I had melted under his strength, his resolve. Now all I could remember was how good, and how safe, it had felt to be in his arms.





CHAPTER EIGHT


Chase



I was the only one around when Saylor and Cord arrived home from Las Vegas.

“Put me down,” she was laughing as they noisily burst through the front door.

“Hell no,” he answered and was still carrying her in his arms when they got to the living room.

“I take it the honeymoon was satisfactory,” I called from the kitchen before shoving another spoonful of cereal in my mouth.

Saylor flipped her hair over her shoulder and winked at me. “Your brother has insisted on carrying me over every threshold in the country.” She smiled up at Cord. “Seriously honey, you can put me down now.”

Cord set her on her feet but kept an arm around her waist.

“I missed you guys,” I said and meant it. It was the longest I’d ever gone without seeing Cordero. Plus the apartment was so unnaturally empty without them. I’d stayed in my room a lot and tried not to listen to Truly and Creed screwing in his room down the hall every night.

“Aw,” clucked Saylor and walked over to offer me a hug. “Missed you too, Chasyn.”

Cord sat down in the chair across from me. “I hope you didn’t kill Creedence without me here to run interference.”

“No, but I might have smacked him around a little. Pinned the big guy to the ground and made him scream like a woman a dozen times before I showed pity.”

“I’ll bet,” Cord snorted.

Saylor stretched. “Think I’ll go jump in the shower and wash this musty travel feeling away.”

Cord threw her a meaningful look. “Don’t finish until I get in there.”

Saylor brushed her hand briefly over his cheek. “Baby, I never finish without you.”

My brother shifted in his chair as he watched his wife walk down the hall.

I chuckled. “Pregnancy hormones are raging, huh?”

Cord shifted in his chair again. “Son, you have no idea.”

I grunted and returned to my cereal.

Cord kicked me under the table. “So how about you?”

I played dumb. “How about me?”

“You get together with Stephanie again?”

“No.”

Cord raised his eyebrows at my sharp tone. “Should I even ask?”

“No.” I threw my spoon in the bowl. “I haven’t seen her since Vegas. We have class together though, just about four hours from now.”

“Not like you’re counting the minutes.”

“Fuck you.”

Cord laughed. “You tell Creed yet?”

“Hell no. He still thinks it’s a crappy idea.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a crappy idea?”

I brought my bowl to the sink, feeling increasingly irritable. Whenever I thought about Stephanie, and I thought about her a lot, there were two vivid moments at the forefront. One was when I got on top of her in a Las Vegas hotel room and had her moaning and begging for me to get inside. The other moment was about ten minutes after the first one, when she tucked the blankets around herself and screamed at me to f*ck off.

“No,” I told my brother. “I’m not sure it isn’t a crappy idea.”

Cord was staring at me in a knowing way. He crossed his arms and a small smile played across his lips.

“I hate it when you do that,” I said. “You and Creed both.”

He smiled wider. “What?”

“Sit there and boldly evaluate me as if nothing in my head is a secret.”

My brother laughed. “You like her, this Stephanie weirdo. It’s okay to admit it. What’s wrong, she doesn’t like you back?”

“Yes she does,” I grumbled. “Except when she doesn’t. And by the way you’re as transparent to me as I am to you. Like when we were kids just learning what our dicks were for and you used to go behind the old shed to beat off every day. Why did you always bother to deny it, Cordero? Also I know that right now you’re hard as shit and all you want to do is nail your wife again.”

Cord laughed again and stood up. “Don’t be so touchy Chase. Just try and behave yourself, all right? Any girl worth having will appreciate the effort.” With that he started wandering in the direction of the bathroom where Saylor was already in the shower. I heard him unzipping his pants along the way.

Since I was tired of listening to people have sex when I wasn’t getting any myself, I took off for the library. I found a lonely table behind stacks of old books and sat, glumly pulling out my phone and staring at it. At least two dozen times this week I had started to call Stephanie, only to chicken out. Although I hadn’t spoken directly to Truly since the day we returned from Vegas, Creedence would have given me a face full of shit if he knew what had happened. Since he wasn’t giving me any more shit than usual I figured Stephanie must not have told Truly. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know if she was embarrassed, ashamed or just indifferent.