Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(59)

The kid just shook his head. “She’ll be done with us. She said so.”

“Conway. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He frowned. “Didn’t I?” His voice was vague, like he honestly couldn’t remember.

His hand was sitting there useless on his knee. Even through the bandages I could tell it was horribly swollen. There are dozens of bones in the human hand and that raging assault on a street pole had likely shattered a few of them.

“At least let us take you to the hospital,” I said. “Get that hand taken care of.”

Conway looked at his hand. He lifted it, trying to flex the fingers and winced over the pain.

“It’s probably broken,” I said. “It won’t heal right if you don’t get it set.”

Cord and Creed were looking our way and I realized they were hanging back on purpose, figuring I had the best shot at getting through to him.

“Come on,” I tried again, trying to lift him up by the elbow.

Surprisingly, he allowed it. He kept his head down and his damaged hand close as he followed me to Creed’s truck.

“Emblem Medical Center?” Creed asked me once I’d loaded Conway into the passenger seat.

“I guess,” I shrugged. “We can try and track down his mom while we’re waiting.”

Cord sat beside me in the back and Creed started the truck, taking care to turn the stereo volume to mute before he did. This was not a moment that needed a soundtrack.

The medical center was still fairly new. It hadn’t been built until after we’d been out of Emblem for a few years. It was small, but a good addition to the town. Before it came along everyone had to drive a good thirty miles away just to get an infected hangnail treated.

Luckily the woman behind the front desk recognized Conway so she helped him get all the paperwork filled out. There were some insurance questions that none of us knew how to answer but when it looked like it was going to be a problem Cord grabbed the clipboard and signed it, agreeing to be the responsible party.

The waiting room was nearly empty. An unwashed drunk slept in a corner, exhaling eighty proof with every wheezing breath. I stayed close to Conway although he waved me off when the nurse arrived to bring him back for x-rays.

Reluctantly I sat down and watched him go, feeling protective and sad. There was no way to have a good outcome to this night. And a kid that age wouldn’t really know how to quiet all the raging conflicts tearing apart his soul. Once upon a time things went really dark for me. I had a ticket to the same terrible place that had captured my mother. But my brothers had put their arms around me and pulled me back.

“Don’t crawl into the hole, Chasyn,” Creed whispered. “But even if you do we’re coming in after you.”

“Every goddamn time,” Cord said, hugging me. “Always.”

If Conway Gentry found himself sinking, who was left to go after him?

Cord must have read my thoughts. “We’ll help him, Chase,” he said soberly. “We will.”

I sighed. “Maybe we can talk to Tracy. Ask her to let him spend a chunk of the summer with us. She might go for it. It’ll be tough for him to be here right now.”

“Yeah,” Creed nodded, stretching. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t remember the time I pissed in her ceramic birdbath.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I had to go. It was there.”

“Creedence logic at its finest.”

He was staring at me thoughtfully. “I got the feeling Con was all kinds of angry at his brother even before Gaps told him that Stone was the driver.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Creed continued to stare at me. It was like being on the receiving end of an alien mind probe. Creed always knew when something was up. He knew when I was using, when I was lying, and when I was hiding something.

“I saw them,” I said, lowering my voice to nearly a whisper since Emblem had busybodies in every crevice of the town limits. “As we were driving away from the house this afternoon I saw Erin come out of the house and ah, let’s just say she and Stone seemed to be inappropriately cozy in a ‘I hate you but I love you’ kind of way.”

Cord’s eyebrows shot up and let he let out a low whistle.

“You think he knew?” asked Creed, gesturing to the door Conway had disappeared behind.

“I don’t know. I’m not going to ask.”

Creed nodded. “Right.”

The drunk in the corner kept snoring and the minutes marched right on past.

When an hour went by without anything changing but the hands on the clock I got heavily to my feet and approached the front desk. The woman who’d helped Conway check in had been replaced by one who was decidedly less patient. She was making a mess by cutting out little squares and it took me a minute to realize they were coupons.

“Just go on back,” she scowled with a wave of her scissors when I asked her to check into Con’s status.

I hoped my brothers wouldn’t follow me and they didn’t. I found Conway lying down on a bed in the triage area. His eyes were closed and his hand had a fresh bandage. I grabbed a nearby metal folding chair and parked it next to the bed.

“You’re still here,” said Con. His eyes remained closed.