Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(71)

“I love it,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

She was talking about the sewing machine but also something else. The machine itself was a battered antique I’d scored for a hundred bucks. It certainly wasn’t the biggest luxury gift a guy ever gave his girl, but I knew it would make her happy. It showed that I listened and that I understood what mattered. It was the only thing I could think of to give her if the worst happened and I wasn’t around anymore to give her myself.

I refused to look at the time. It didn’t matter. When the sky began to lighten again then I would go. I would spent the last few hours before the fight getting my head to a place where I could accept what I needed to do in order to get back here.

As I rolled to my back I took Truly with me, settling her against my chest with my hands in her dark hair. A fierce possessive rush broke over me. I didn’t know what to call what we’d started here last month but I knew this beautiful girl belonged to me.

And I had every goddamn intention of returning to her.





CHAPTER TWENTY NINE


Truly



He was gone early but I knew he would be. The night was too short. Sometimes we slept lightly in each other’s arms. Other times we’d turn to one another half in a dream and make love in a sweet, unhurried way. Once I awoke to the feel of him entering me hard and then using me even harder. Still, he didn’t finish until he felt me come.

There was a desperate quality to it all and I had wanted so badly to tell him what was in my heart. But words weren’t what Creed needed from me just then. He needed my body. He needed my arms around him. He needed the silent reassurance that I would be waiting for his return.

Creedence held my hand one last time, bringing it to his lips before he turned and walked out. He didn’t say goodbye. I was glad he didn’t.

I’ve never been a praying sort. Mama certainly wasn’t interested in anything having to do with a church. My childhood was all over the place and the most basic thing we’d been taught was how to scrape by off the goodwill of others. All I knew of religion I’d learned back when that well meaning neighbor lugged the four of us to Sunday morning services. As I listened to the sound of my lover’s exit, I wished some of it had stuck with me. It would have been nice to have something to turn to in an hour of such grim uncertainty. I’d never had that, not from my earliest days of awareness. I’d always known Laura Lee wasn’t up to the task she’d brought upon herself.

I sat up in bed, frowning, thinking of something Carrie had said. My little sister told me that my own mother saw me as a rival from the minute I hit puberty. That had been true for all of us, on some level. But I was the oldest, the first to grow a woman’s body that just couldn’t be hidden.

Mason Montgomery.

The name was always there. I just refused to think about it most of the time. He wasn’t the only one of my mother’s many men who had given me a look I could already recognize as lust. By the time Mason came around I was halfway through my junior year of high school in a muggy rural nowhere and wondering what the hell was supposed to come next. Although I’d already been pawed by all kinds of boys who always turned out to be worse than they seemed, I’d never let one get between my legs. My reason was simple. I couldn’t tolerate ending up like my mother; carelessly pregnant as a teenager, shrugging over each mistake after that, and then dragging a line of children through a life she never wanted.

No, I was a hell of a lot smarter than Laura Lee had ever been. At least I was until Mason Montgomery got me on my back in the bed of his dirty pickup.

He’d had been around for about a month by that point, always showing up full of flattery and other lies. Mason figured out where I took my long walks and he was suddenly there too, pretending it was just chance. I knew it wasn’t but I was thrilled anyway. Mason wasn’t an acne-ridden boy. He was a man. He was ruggedly bearded, smelling of gasoline and tobacco.

Mason had a powerful sexuality. And I had just the right mix of willful naivety to believe him when he said he wasn’t screwing my mother. He said they were friends, that he picked Laura and her red heels up three nights a week for chaste fun like miniature golfing because he felt sorry for her.

At first we just kissed a lot. Then I took off my shirt and he pushed his hard organ into my hand until he came with an explosive groan. But Mason wasn’t satisfied with the games of boys for long. He wanted inside. May the devil help me, but that man had me under such a spell that I didn’t care about risks or consequences. I just wanted something done about the throbbing between my legs and he knew just how to solve that problem.

I never caught wind of how Laura found out. Mason was already gone, having skipped town not twenty four hours after I told him the penalty for our crazy gamble. I shouldn’t have been surprised but it stung anyway. Laura went into a tailspin and that was strange for her. Usually she moved on to a new man with ease. But after Mason abandoned her without a word she played sad country ballads and cried until her nose bled. That was how I understood Mason had lied to me as much as I’d lied to myself.

One early spring evening Laura came through the front door of our sagging rented bungalow and stalked right over to where I was crouched over homework. She backhanded me hard as my sisters gasped. The things she said to me were not things a mother ever ought to say to her child. I answered with things a daughter should never even think about her own mother. That night was the end of the Lee girls. Even though Mason had already taken the innocence of my body, it was right then I started to lose the innocence of my heart. It’s what needed to happen though. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to give a piece of myself away to the arms of strangers.