Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(53)

A genuine smile flashed across Stone’s face. He was a really good-looking kid, especially when he wasn’t being all aloof and obnoxious. Then the smile disappeared and his eyes dimmed.

“I can’t,” he said. “Got some stuff to take care of around here.”

Creed was looking at me with some impatience. He’d already gotten the hint that the kid was trying to make a getaway. Maybe he had a girl stashed behind the door. Unless it was a fashion statement, the open button on his jeans meant he’d been in the middle of something when we knocked.

“All right then.” I started to back away. “You give me a call if you ever change your mind about the college track. Never too late.”

Stone let out a snort of laughter. “Told you that’s not my game, Cord.”

“I’m Chase.”

He grinned a mile wide. “I know. I was just f*cking with you.”

Cord and Creed had already bid farewell and reached the truck. When I glanced back I noticed that Stone was just standing there staring at us, like he was guarding whatever happened to be waiting behind that closed door. It made me wonder if he was doing something illegal. Lord knew drugs were sprinkled around Emblem like candy and there were more than a few petty dealers who would be happy to take a smart kid into their fold. I waved one more time and got into the truck.

“That was awkward,” Creed said as he pulled away from the curb.

“A little,” Cord agreed.

I was sitting in the back of the cab and couldn’t have said what prompted me to look back one more time. At any rate, Stone had company on the front stoop now. There was a girl next to him. She was furiously tucking in her shirt. Then she stopped and abruptly swung a fist at him. Stone grabbed her wrist and yelled something that made her instantly calm down. She put her arms around him and rested her cheek against his chest. The last thing I saw before we turned the corner was him opening the door and nudging her inside.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Cord swiveled around with raised eyebrows. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” I took a closer look at him. “You sure you’re okay?”

He shrugged. “As okay as any of us are.”

“What about you, Big C?”

“I’ve had better days,” Creed said slowly. “But I’m dealing.”

We drove out of The Hills, passing the quaint historic section of downtown Emblem. There was some historical society that scraped enough pennies together every few years to stick a plaque on something. Half the downtown had plaques on it. Shit like, “Here is where the first female doctor in the Arizona Territory sat down for ten minutes.”

“Creed,” I spoke up suddenly. “Take that right. Off the main road.”

Creed obeyed, turning down the rough gravel that meandered for a good half mile before stopping near the old railroad bridge.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Let’s hike the butte.”

“It’s a hundred degrees out.”

“We’ve got water bottles. We can go hang out at old Elmore’s house.”

“Let’s do it,” Cord agreed. “I need to sweat some of this tension out.”

Creed swung the truck onto the shoulder of the road in the shade of a broad mesquite tree. Climbing the butte was what passed for outdoor recreation in Emblem. The summit was less than a twenty-minute brisk hike and contained a strange monument to Elmore Emblem, the town’s namesake. He followed some unusual religion that had to do with worshipping the sun and supposedly he was buried up there. You could see the memorial from the ground. It was a tall triangle made of brick and a strangely crooked door was cut into the side. It was wide enough to fit three people comfortably and half a dozen uncomfortably. For some reason it was always cooler inside than it ought to be, considering it sat atop a hill in the blazing Arizona sun.

I would have been the first one to reach the top if Creedence didn’t suddenly decide to be a dick and sprint up the last few yards, kicking up a bunch of dust in my face in the process. Cord was right behind me. He let out a low whistle when we caught up to Creed.

“There it is,” he gestured. “All of metropolitan Emblem.”

It was a great view from where we stood, if you really wanted to see Emblem in the first place. The prison kind of dominated the skyline, a metropolis unto itself. There was Main Street and the high school, the slightly sloping grounds of The Hills. Houses were clustered together in tired-looking neighborhoods. What we couldn’t see, even if we squinted, was Gentry territory. It was just as well. There wasn’t anything pretty to look at there. Just dry, prickly land dotted with mostly neglected homes.

“Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?” mused Cord. He stood a few feet apart, gazing down over the valley with a pensive look on his face.

“It was a long time ago,” I agreed. It had been nearly eight years since we called Emblem home. We took off straight out of high school, figuring that a vibrant university town an hour’s drive away was our best bet for making it on our own. It was rough in the beginning and some days we’d wonder if we were destined to be Emblem Gentrys forever after all. But little by little we climbed our way to something better.

Creed must have been thinking the same thing.

“I’m proud of us,” he said.