Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(19)

If I’d known on a dark night four years ago that by leaving I would cut the invisible strings tying us all together I might not have been able to do it.

My sister sighed from far away. She’d made good so far. Now a sophomore at Oklahoma State, she was studying veterinary medicine. I heard the steady drumbeat of rain coming from her end of the line and tried to picture the state of Oklahoma. I’d driven through it once and remembered a lot of flat land beneath an endless sky.

“So how are you?” she finally asked.

“I’m good. Still working at the same place. Saving up to go to school.”

“That’s good, Truly. Really, that’s good. You designing at all?”

“Not lately. I had to unload my Singer a while back.” Actually I’d had to sell my expensive sewing machine in order to scrape together rent money but I didn’t see the point in spilling every sad detail. “You hear from Mia lately? I left her a message about two months ago but never got a call back.”

“She doesn’t have her phone anymore. She joined some kind of earthy movement that believes in farming beets by way of cow shit. She’s up there in the Oregon countryside getting rained on and sticking her hands in the mud. She sends a letter to me here every four weeks or so. She seems happy.”

It was difficult for me to picture the fragile Meridian Lee with dirt in her blond hair and callouses on her soft hands.

“Well, good for her I guess. And I know Carrie just started her senior year.”

“She did. She’s got several soccer scouts already tossing scholarships at her feet.”

I sat down on the bed. “So how are you, Ags?”

I could almost hear her shrugging. “I’m great. Maintaining my 4.0 and trying to stay out of trouble.”

“Any boys worth talking about?”

“I’m sure if there was he would fall into the category of ‘trouble’.”

I thought I detected an edge to her voice and remembered that Aggie had been horrified by what I’d done. Augusta Lee wasn’t a girl who would find herself melting under any man’s rehearsed lines. She also didn’t think there was ever a good reason to lie down with another woman’s man, particularly when the other woman was the one who had given you life. It didn’t matter how crappy a mother we were talking about or how young and stupid a girl was being. Aggie was likely right about that.

Will I be paying for that weakness forever?

My hand went to the nearly invisible line of scar tissue beneath my clothes and my heart lurched as my mind answered Yes. I would never really escape the choices I’d made. That was the risk endured when a piece of the heart was cleaved off and sent out into the world.

“I miss you, Augusta.”

My sister sighed. I thought I heard a soft curse escape her lips. “It’s not like I’ve been hiding from you, Truly.” Her voice was cold. In the year after I’d left her alone to see to the fates of the Lee women I hadn’t had much contact with any of them. I was in the hell of my own making and it was all I could do to keep breathing. But whenever I did resurface and pick up the phone, Aggie would beg for me to come back. She even cried a few times and Augusta Lee hadn’t cried since a nail went clean through her foot when she was ten. There were no tears in her voice now though. There was only weariness. And blame.

I answered haltingly. “I know, sweetie.” It used to be so easy for us to talk. Mia and Carrie would complain endlessly about how our late night chattering kept them awake.

Aggie coughed. “Look, I’ve got to go. My study group is waiting for me to get back inside. I am glad you called though.”

“We’ll talk more soon, right Ags?”

“Sure we will.”

My sister ended the call. I dropped my phone on the floor, feeling more wretched than I had earlier. How did it happen that people who shared such strong bonds became strangers? Maybe if I’d told Aggie everything back then it would have made a difference. She might have understood. Maybe they all would have. Or maybe not.

At some point as I sat there fretting I realized I was twisting Creed’s shirt in my hands again. I looked at it. The shirt was covered in cat hair and was vaguely stretched out of shape from all the ways I’d handled it. If Creed ever dropped by asking for it back I might have some explaining to do.





CHAPTER EIGHT


CREED



This shit was over before it started.

Three quick blows and the guy was already crawling around in the gravel with a string of bloody saliva running out of his mouth. As I waited for him to rejoin the fight I was aware of many things.

There was the vague sting of my knuckles and the howling blood lust of the crowd. There was the sight of Gabe Hernandez greedily watching on the sidelines with a handful of stoic men who smelled of money. There was the yawning blackness of a moonless sky over my head and the hot wind that had kicked up with sudden fury.

Finally and most importantly, there were my brothers standing nearby. I could feel the silent strength coming from them. It was this I chose to focus on.

The man at my feet was still struggling to rise. He coughed a few times and glanced sideways in fear, maybe believing I would do the coward’s thing and move in while he couldn’t catch his breath. I just waited, mulling over how to finish this. I knew it was better to make a show of it. I knew this was what Gabe wanted me to do. I also knew it was kinder to end it quickly.