Game (Gentry Boys, #3)(31)

He glared at me. “You could do better.”

I bristled, feeling defensive of Stephanie. It was ironic, since she probably wouldn’t argue with anyone who sneered about what a lowlife I was.

“You don’t even know her.”

Creed sighed. “Look, I’ve seen enough of her to know she’s not as much of a sullen brat as she seems, but she comes with an airplane hangar full of baggage.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Like what? I mean, besides her role as a sports gambling overlord?”

“Chasyn, isn’t that enough?” he said quietly and I saw the earnest concern in his face. Creedence wasn’t trying to be a dick. It had been painful for him to watch me start down the path of self destruction. Addiction. Despair. It was what ruled our mother. When he and Cord had told me they would follow me into the darkness if they had to, my brothers were speaking the truth. They would sacrifice themselves before they would let me get swallowed up.

Truly abruptly poked her head outside. “Hey,” she called. “I’ve got to get going to work.”

Creed nodded, his eyes still on me. “I’ll come with you, babe.”

She smiled and then turned her attention to me. “Chase honey, where have you been keeping yourself the past few days? Seems like I haven’t seen you since Vegas.”

“I’ve been getting busy,” I told her with a slow grin. “Keeping busy, I mean,” I corrected myself when Creed threw me a hard glare.

“Will we see you at the show tonight?”

Creed had a gig tonight, singing at the country western bar where he’d first gotten together with Truly. It seemed like a lot of time had passed since the night he went out on the prowl to try and push away the terrible dread of his upcoming fight, but it had only been two months. Creed had been drinking way too much and I dragged him out to try and focus his attention elsewhere. I had just wanted him to find something to have a good time with. Instead he’d found Truly Lee, probably the one girl on earth who had the power to rock Creedence Gentry’s world.

“I’ll stop by,” I promised, and waved as they left together.

Saylor was alone in the kitchen. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was grimacing while scrubbing the sink with a soapy mound of steel wool.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked, holding my hand out. “Has Cordero’s passion for cleanliness overcome you or is this the nesting phase?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed, throwing the steel wool in the garbage and running her hands over her belly. “Just restless I guess. Place always seems like it’s filthy.”

“It is filthy,” I said, amused. “You live with three men, kiddo.”

Saylor smiled a little and shuffled over to the couch. She looked tired. I followed her.

I pointed to her stomach. “They kicking around in there yet?”

“No.” She rubbed her eyes. “They’re still too small. All of my copious internet research says it might be another month before I feel anything.”

Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that Cord was going to be a father. It wasn’t fair that he’d never had a role model to show him how it’s done. Our own father, Benton Gentry, was nothing short of vile. I tried not to think about him but when he did cross my mind it wasn’t usually the memory of sickening physical pain I thought of first. There were beatings. They were painful. They were frequent. They also weren’t the things that appalled me the most about our childhood in that rotten section of desert eighty miles away. No, it was the way he’d always made us feel like we were lower than low, beneath the status of even the bottom-feeding Gentrys. He’d never wanted the three of us and told us so every day.

“Don’t,” said Saylor, frowning at me from across the couch.

I raised my eyebrows and she sighed before explaining.

“You look just like Cordero when he starts dwelling on memories better left untouched. Don’t do it, Chase.” She paused and folded her hands together in her lap, across her swollen belly. “I know a thing or two about silencing the anger for the sake of your own sanity.”

She did know about it. One hot spring night Saylor had run from a man who had hurt her. She stumbled around in the dark until she ran into another man who had hurt her in a different way, a long time ago when he was only a boy, before he understood that a man ought to be something other than callous and awful. I had been a part of that history. Saylor McCann had forgiven me before she became Saylor Gentry. Still, I felt like I hadn’t come as far as my brother had. I worried that I would always have one foot stuck in Emblem.

“I’m not silencing my anger,” I yawned. “I’m embracing my inner torment so that I may appropriately channel it into a beneficial conclusion.”

“What the hell kind of double talk is that?”

“Rehab speak.”

“Oh yeah? Because it sounds like bullshit you made up on the spot.”

“It’s that too.”

Her mouth twitched. She was trying not to laugh. I could always make Saylor laugh. “Are you embracing Stephanie along with all of this inner torment?”

Even the sound of her name caused everything inside of me to tense. “I tried.”

“Not very hard,” she muttered.

“What? Did she pour her heart out to you?”