Game (Gentry Boys, #3)(42)

But I didn’t want to slow down. I knew Chase didn’t either.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Chase



I watched for her. We always met by the fountain after she was done with her finance class. I had finished my world mythology lecture a half hour ago but I didn’t mind waiting. People sifted around my periphery and some of them I knew. They called my name and I waved only half-heartedly because they didn’t matter to me.

When she came into view our eyes locked immediately. When Stephanie Bransky smiled, my f*cking heart stopped every time. Just yesterday Saylor had wistfully told Steph that she looked different these days. It was true. These past two weeks, since the night that sealed everything between us, Stephanie had a brilliantly sexy confidence about her. She was actually wearing clothes that fit her now instead of slack garments that hid everything.

“Baby.” I opened my arms and she jumped into them. I lifted her and kissed her deeply, knowing people were staring. Let them f*cking stare. Let them wish they had what we had.

It had always baffled me before, this rumor of true love. There was no other subject more heavily examined throughout history, literature and even legend. Lust was formidable but it was only a pale echo of the dominance of the heart. Love was as much inspiration as it was sweet insanity. I knew that now. I had told her so last night. I told her I loved her and felt the fissure break inside of me when she said it back. Then I possessed her, taking her body even harder than she’d taken my heart.

Stephanie finally untangled herself from me. I took her backpack from her shoulder and carried it as my arm went firmly around her and we walked together in the sunlight. Steph peeked up at me through her hair. Sometimes she still seemed surprised by the depth of my feelings, surprised to find me always there and wanting her. But I could admit when I’d been knocked on my ass. All the stories were true. Love was indomitable.

And sometimes ruinous.

I stopped walking.

“What’s wrong?” Steph asked and I felt a shiver even though the day was warm.

“Nothing,” I told her, kissing away her concern. “Let’s go get some lunch and then lay in your bed for the rest of the afternoon.”

She ran a hand down my chest. “I’ve got a paper to do.”

“You’ve got me to do.”

Steph faced me and slipped her arms around my waist. “And you come first,” she said.

“I’ll come first if you insist,” I teased and she laughed.

She asked if we could go for pizza and I agreed even though I wasn’t hungry anymore. I knew where that bad thought had come from. It came from the same place all bad things came from. It came from Emblem. It came from watching a woman who had once been a beautiful, gifted artist devolve into a ruined shell. It was the story I was born into; me, Cordero and Creedence. A long time ago, before he was spread out all over a highway, Uncle Chrome had told me part of it, the part that he knew anyway. My father was his younger brother. Apparently it had started sweetly when violent, troubled Benton Gentry tossed aside the rest of his admirers for a radiant girl who had suffered a shattering family loss and was deposited in the middle of a crappy prison town in the desert. Chrome said he never saw Benton get hit by a lightning bolt the way he did when he first laid eyes on Maggie Kendrick. Maybe he’d wanted to protect her at first. Maybe he’d even loved her, before it all turned into a nightmare.

From my earliest days I remembered always thinking that my father hated my mother. He hated her as much as he hated us, or maybe he hated her because of us. She’d given him three sons and every drop of her life’s blood but it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. And he took it.

“Chase.” Stephanie was suddenly worried, sliding around to my side of the booth and putting her arms around me. I felt a tremor in right leg and balled my fists as I tried to keep it at bay. Yesterday Creed asked me if I’d been to a meeting lately. I told him to go take his own f*cking inventory.

“What’s wrong?” Steph asked, stroking my cheek. “You looked like you were going to be sick there for a minute.”

The tremor of rage and weakness subsided. I unclenched my fists and touched her. I kept my voice light and easy. “Lust sickness, honey. Put me out of my misery, okay?”

Stephanie wasn’t deceived. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said, rubbing my arm and planting a kiss on my shoulder.

I put a napkin over my pizza, soaking up the grease. “Some demons are better left muzzled in their cages. Give them a voice and you give them too much.”

She nodded and bit her lip. “I know,” she whispered, looking away as I paused in the act of lifting the pizza slice. Steph didn’t say shit just to commiserate. She didn’t agree just for the sake of agreeing. When she said ‘I know’ it was because she really knew. I was sure there were things that troubled her, things that had nothing to do with me. Sometimes I had to suppress the urge to drag it out of her so I could fix it.

But I didn’t really have that power. I didn’t have it any more than she did.

“I love you,” I said suddenly and wondered how long it would take for the words to stop sounding so surprising. They needed to be said right now though. They brought light into darkness when they were true.

She gave me a happy smile. “I love you too, Chase.”