Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(21)

“What are their names again?”

“Mo and Curly. Can we go?”

“Sure. By the way I’m coming with you.”

Cord smiled. “We figured you would.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


CORD




I hadn’t eaten since this morning. Since it was always the plan to head out to dinner with the boys, Creed was agreeable to pulling into the drive thru of the nearest hamburger joint.

“Get me a double with cheese,” I said, trying to hand him a twenty.

He waved me off. “I got it. What’ll you have, Junior?” he asked Chase.

That was a lifelong joke between the three of us. Chase had been bunched up in our mother’s upper ribcage and was the last one to be surgically removed from the womb.

Chase chose not to get riled up. “I will have a salad,” he said mildly from the backseat, where he was thumbing through a National Geographic magazine he’d lifted from the lobby of Scratch.

We’d reached the colorful menu billboard attached to the outside speaker but instead of opening the window to order, Creed swiveled around and scowled. “What?”

“A salad,” Chase repeated. “With balsamic vinaigrette dressing. No cheese.”

“It’s Fab Burger, you *. There’s no balsamic salads on offer here.”

Chase looked up from his magazine. “Can we go somewhere else?”

“No.”

“But I’ve gone vegan.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am shunning the consumption of animal byproducts.”

“Huh? Why?”

“A myriad of reasons.”

Creed was getting mad. “What f*cking reasons?”

“I would elaborate but they would sail right over your fat head.”

“Dammit Chase, you have not gone vegan, whatever the hell that is.”

“Why are you so unsupportive of my dietary choices, Creedence?”

“Just get him a triple with bacon,” I interrupted. After twenty-six years Creed ought to be able to deal with Chase’s antics. “He’ll eat it.”

“I’ll eat it,” Chase agreed, shrugging.

Creed grunted and placed the order while Chase chuckled quietly.

When we pulled up to the window the girl leaned her head out and appraised us, her eyes widening. I was used to it, particularly when the three of us were together. We weren’t identical but we looked enough alike and took up enough muscular space to make quite an impression.

The girl was actively blushing as she dropped Creed’s change.

“Ohmygosh!” she exclaimed like it was one syllable. “I’m so sorry.”

“No big deal,” said Creed, not bothering to open up the door and pick up the scattered quarters. He grabbed the bags of food and tossed them right into my lap. The smell of fried greasiness made my stomach wake up and start grumbling. Saylor had been on a home cooking kick for a while, wanting the girls to have something better in their diet than fast food or cereal. Saylor wasn’t an instinctive cook so results had been mixed. I always grudgingly chewed whatever kind of organic stew she set in front of me but there was no taste on earth that could compare to the first hungry bite of a greasy hamburger.

Creed drove with one hand and shoved food into his mouth with the other. From the time he was a kid he could eat faster than humans were supposed to eat but I guess all that strength needed a lot of fuel. I tossed a bag back to Chase and he dug in cheerfully, like I knew he would.

As we reached the freeway heading east it really started to sink in that we were going back to Emblem.

Emblem.

The landscape of our childhood.

The place my nightmares lived.

Chase must have read my mind because he loudly crumpled up a bag. “We’re not going any further than Main Street.”

It wasn’t a question. We would visit the police station where Gaps presumably waited with all the paperwork. From there he would release those boys who were passing the hours in a neighboring jail. There was no reason whatsoever to venture south of the center of town, deeper into the desert, where the remnants of Gentrys gone bad still lived in their sordid shithouses. That was where we grew up. That was where our parents remained.

“Only Main Street,” Creed confirmed with a sidelong glance at me.

I sipped my soda and stared out the window at the pastel colors of the evening. My brothers had been through the same hell I had and it cemented a bond that was even thicker than biology. They knew some things about me that even my wife didn’t know and were likely attuned to the fact that a cold sweat had broken out on the back of my neck, a purely animal instinct connected to the word Emblem.

I hated him. My father. Our father.

I hadn’t spoken his name in years but the knowledge that he lived haunted me in small ways every day. My feelings for my mother were more complex. In a way I hated her too, for her weakness, for loving her drugs and her vicious tormenter more than she ever loved us.

I didn’t understand it as a child.

I still didn’t understand as an adult.

And now, as a parent myself, I felt a special kind of rage for the people who could give a child life and never cherish him.

The hand on my shoulder startled me. It was Chase. He gave me a reassuring pat and then sank back into his seat. I took a deep breath, temporarily banished thoughts of Benton and Maggie Gentry and turned to face my brother.