Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(38)

Truly was grinning. “How come you hate my cat?”

“I don’t hate your cat. Your cat hates me. What did she ever do with the shirt I left here last week?”

She blushed furiously in a way that had nothing to do with sex. A second later I saw why. I picked my shirt up off her dresser. It had been folded with care.

“I washed it,” she stammered.

“All right,” I shrugged, not really understanding why she was so bent out of shape. “Thanks.” I saw a framed photo of four teenage girls on her dresser and picked it up. “Friends?”

“No,” she said quietly. “Those are my sisters.”

With the photo still in hand I sat down next to her on the bed. She pulled a blanket around herself. I didn’t understand why she always did that. We’d already f*cked multiple times on multiple nights. Obviously I’d gotten a real close look at everything there was to see. But I didn’t want to embarrass her so I didn’t say anything.

“I know,” she nodded, watching me stare at the picture. “None of us look anything alike and you’d never believe we were sisters if I didn’t tell you.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

Truly cocked her head. “What were you thinking then?”

In the picture a younger Truly was beaming radiantly. It was true that none of the other three looked anything like her or anything like each other, although they were all pretty girls. One was thin with pale blonde hair and eyebrows. Another had hair the color of strawberries but was noticeably more solid, muscular. The girl standing nearest to Truly had dark skin and very short hair. Truly’s arm was casually slung around that girl’s shoulder. From the way they stood together I would have guessed that they were very close even if I knew nothing else about them.

“I was thinking that you look happy here,” I finally said.

“I was,” she sighed. “That picture was taken on my seventeenth birthday, before all hell broke loose.”

Carefully I set the picture back on the dresser. “How did it break loose?”

She didn’t answer. She pulled her knees up to her chest and clammed up. She’d mentioned before that she didn’t see her family so whatever had happened had been bad. There was pain written on her face. It hurt me to see it there.

Truly saw me watching. “Now what are you thinking?”

I wasn’t sure I should tell her. “I was trying to imagine how I would feel if I were all alone, without Cord and Chase.” I cleared my throat. “I can’t.”

That made her smile a little. “You love them, your brothers.”

“Of course.”

Truly nodded. “I love my sisters too. I think Mia and Carrie forgive me but I don’t know about Aggie. It’s a little more complicated with her.”

I touched her knee. “Forgive you for what, honey?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “It’s not important right now. I’m just sitting here feeling sorry for myself when I shouldn’t be. There’s some regrets that you just can’t do anything about, you know? But that damn well doesn’t stop them from haunting you from time to time.”

She rested her head atop her knees, her black hair spilling around her. I touched her cheek and swallowed.

“I chose Chase.”

Those words came out of nowhere. I hadn’t planned on saying them. I’d just been thinking about what she said. Haunting regrets.

Truly looked at me strangely. “What?”

I exhaled raggedly and walked over to turn off the light. This could only be told in darkness.

“My father was one sick f*ck. He knew how much us boys loved each other and he used it against us. I’d broken a school window with a rock and they were demanding that my father pay for it. Of course that sent him into a tirade. But, instead of beating the shit out of me he grabbed Cord and Chase and told me to pick which one was gonna get the beating. I wouldn’t do it, not at first, but then he said he’d hurt both of them and it would be even worse than if I’d chosen. Cord had been sick with pneumonia a few weeks earlier and he still wasn’t right. So I picked Chase.”

It was the most I’d said in a while to anyone. It was terrible and it was all true.

I could barely see Truly in the darkness. It seemed like she might have stopped breathing. Then her arms went around me and we fell back on the bed together. We didn’t have sex again, not then anyway. We just kissed and touched and remained silent together. After she fell asleep in my arms my chest began to hurt.

Why now? Why f*cking now??

It had to be one goddamn sick universe that decided to bring us together just when everything might be lost.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Truly



Creed Gentry was more of a puzzle than I’d imagined. He could be gruff, standoffish, on an endless and unapologetic quest to satisfy his own needs. And then he would change direction so completely I wondered how I could have ever misjudged him.

More than anything, he was honest in a way that I couldn’t bring myself to be.

The sun was barely over the horizon when I woke up. I’d never been very good about sleeping in. It came from being the oldest, the one who had to get breakfast made and people dressed for the day when the only parent in the home couldn’t get out of bed.