CHAPTER FOUR
Cord
I heard a scuffling noise underneath me and was cheered by the idea that Brayden might be home. There was something wholesome about hanging around Bray and Millie, his girl. Sometimes I got to feeling a little disconnected from the wider world apart from my brothers.
After climbing down to the second floor balcony it was an easy jump to the ground below and I pulled it off without a sound. But when I straightened out all I saw was a dark, hooded figure trying to pry open the lock on Brayden’s window. A skinny high school punk by the looks of him, he was just begging for a lesson in good manners.
I didn’t know if he was carrying anything more lethal than stupidity. I decided to chuck him to the ground and sort the rest of it out along the way. He fumbled too much, meaning he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Piece of cake to take him down. I didn’t really want to hurt the kid. I just wanted to scare the living crap out of him and send him on his way to think about being a better person. That’s all. And if he pissed his pants in the middle of it, so much the better.
He was a featherweight and went down with barely a nudge. It was a good thing I didn’t handle him harder because the yelp of pain and surprise knocked the wind out of me.
“Shit, you’re a girl,” I said, shaking my head. Okay, so the would-be intruder had a vagina. It didn’t mean she was off the hook. But still, I couldn’t ever justify hurting a female. That was the path to being as big a bastard as my old man.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I pulled her up. Her hood fell away and a cascade of wavy brown hair spilled onto her shoulders. She was sputtering somewhat indignantly, then gave me a hard look that stopped me cold. I think she was even more shocked, though she managed to gather her wits enough to speak first.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” she grumbled and glared at me hatefully. “Cord Gentry, what the hell are you doing here?”
I swallowed. “Hey, Saylor. Nice to see you too. What’s it been, four years?”
“Not long enough and I didn’t say it was nice to see you for god’s sake. I asked what the hell you’re doing lurking around Tempe like Jack the fucking Ripper.”
I just stared at her. Saylor McCann was one of the few things I’ve ever truly felt bad about. Sometimes I meant to ask Bray what she was up to now but I never had the guts. Wherever she was I was sure she hated the shit out of me.
“I was catching a prowler,” I muttered, then narrowed my eyes. “You know, you looked suspicious as fuck out here.” Saylor let out a hiss and turned her head, as if she were hoping I would just dissolve into the atmosphere. She pulled her sweatshirt off and I found myself noticing the soft curves of her body. She wore a tight shirt and no bra. Then I realized from the way she crossed her arms and shuffled dejectedly that she was trying not to cry.
“Hey,” I reached for her but then backed off. I could read her icy look well enough in the dark. “So what, you’re here to visit Brayden?”
“What the hell do you know about my cousin?”
“I know he’s not home.”
“Wow, you’re a real Sherlock goddamn Holmes.”
“Shit, stand down, okay? I don’t know where the hell he’s at but you’re welcome to come back to my place for a while if you don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She gaped at me in disbelief. “Your place?” she echoed. “Thanks Cord, but I think I’d rather run my tongue over some hot charcoal for a few hours.”
There was a flood lamp overhead. Her face was bathed in the brash yellow light and I looked at her more carefully. “Jesus, I didn’t do that to your face, did I?”
Her shoulders slumped. “No. His name’s Devin. He’s an asshole.”
“Obviously.” I began to simmer with a slow boil towards this unidentified Devin prick.
Saylor sighed and stared miserably at the ground. “You’re an asshole too,” she finally said.
I chuckled. “Never said I wasn’t. But you can still come hang out with me and the boys for a while, unless you prefer crawling around in the dark. You know, the next guy to come along might not be as nice as me.”
“The boys,” she frowned. “What boys?”
“Creed and Chase. You might remember them.”
“You Gentry brothers are fairly unforgettable,” she said witheringly.
I didn’t care for the sound of that. I was a mighty dick when I was sixteen and she had more than enough reason to despise me. But she was acting as if I should be squatting a step below the gutter. The fine folks of Emblem had always shaken their heads over the white trash Gentrys. We were violent, shiftless, hopeless. They even made up stories that we were inbred.
“Fine, I guess you don’t need a damn bit of help, Saylor, great judge of character that you are.” I was being mean, running a finger across her swollen jaw as she cringed. “You obviously know a good man when you see one.”
I’d hit her below the belt there. Her face collapsed and she leaned against the side of the building. “Just leave me the hell alone,” she muttered and I felt a jolt of remorse. She’d apparently been through the wringer tonight already. No need to make it any worse.
“Look,” I told her. “I made you an offer, one Emblem reject to another. You can stay here alone and nurse your old bitterness if you’d rather do that.”
Saylor didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at me. I shook my head and started to walk away, no longer in the mood to deal with some cranky chick and her angst.
“Cord,” she called.
I turned around. She looked lost. She looked like she did when she was sixteen and found out the guy who had just popped her cherry was more of a shithead than she had imagined.
“Bray never told me you were here.”
I raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “I wonder why.”
She offered a vague little smile. “He didn’t know I was coming and I can’t get ahold of him.” She stared down at herself and made a face. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a shower.”
I waited. “Offer stands, Say.”
Saylor nodded tiredly and coughed once. “Okay. Look, I’m just going to grab my bag. I left it in my car.”
I joined her. “All right, I’ll go with you. Never know who or what is hiding out in the dark.”
Her sidelong glance had a wry quality. “No kidding.”
Saylor’s car was the same battered Civic she’d had in high school, except it had California plates now. She reached into the backseat and grabbed a purse and a dark duffel bag. I tried to take the bag myself but she waved me away.
“I got it,” she said tersely.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you do.”
The silence between us was painfully awkward as I led her back to the three bedroom apartment I shared with my brothers. When I held the door for her she hesitated at the threshold and looked up at me with uncertainty. I tried not to openly wince at the sight of her bruised and swollen face. It didn’t matter who she was; shit like that just turned me inside out.
I pointed to the first door on the left. “Bathroom’s right there. I cleaned it today so it’s not too disgusting. Help yourself to whatever you need.”
She nodded and said nothing, dragging her bag inside the room and closing the door behind her.
Creed was intensely playing Xbox, one of those militaristic games where everybody shoots everybody else in a drab post-apocalyptic setting. Chase was lounging on the couch as a slinky blonde climbed all over him.
“C’mon,” she purred as Chase put his hands on her tits and smiled. He noticed me standing there but didn’t take his hands from the girl’s tits as she squirmed impatiently.
“Did I hear you roll through the door with some company?” he asked.
I grabbed an apple from a bowl on the kitchen table and perched on an arm of the couch.
“Sort of,” I shrugged.
Creed tore his gaze away from the game and glanced around. “Where’d you put her?”
As if on cue the shower blasted to life.
“Aw shit,” said Chase, kneading the girl’s tits more enthusiastically. “You didn’t bring home another homeless dude did you?”
I took a bite of the apple and watched my brother’s date straddle him, moving back and forth over his crotch as if there was no one else even in the room. Chase reached under her halter top and she moaned.
“That guy was all right,” I said, staring at the girl’s face. Her lips were thin and she wore gobs of makeup. “He was a musician. Just needed a place to recharge.”
Creed didn’t agree. “He pissed in the shower. He stunk up the place for a fucking week.” He threw down the game controller and began to stalk down the hall. I could tell he was planning on barging right into the bathroom and hauling our guest out forcibly.
“Hey,” I grabbed his shirt. “Don’t, okay? It’s not what you think. It’s a girl.”
“A girl?” Chase asked with interest as the blonde threw her head back and began to move more urgently while making all kinds of noise about it. Maybe that was her thing, getting off in a room full of people. Chase had probably plucked her out of a nearby party and not bothered to ask her name.
“Not that kind of girl,” I said, pointing. Then I lowered my voice in case she could hear anything beyond the spray of the shower. “You’re not going to fucking believe this, but it’s Saylor McCann.”
Creed let out a low whistle and Chase laughed out loud.
“Yeah right,” he howled. “If you were dying in the street, bro, Saylor McCann would dig a heel into your neck to end you quicker. So really, who’s the chew toy you got in there?”
I threw the apple at his head. “Quiet, I’m serious. She was trying to get into Brayden’s apartment but he’s nowhere in sight.” I glanced down the hall where the shower was still running. “Look, don’t give her any shit, okay?”
Creed had backed off the notion of charging into the bathroom but he was frowning doubtfully. “Didn’t she hate your damn guts? Didn’t she hate all of us?”
I shrugged. “Probably still does. But I couldn’t just leave her there sniffling in the dark with nowhere else to go.”
Chase seemed to have lost interest in the subject. The girl had let him push her shirt up until her bobbing tits were shamelessly exposed. She continued to writhe in his lap and let out feline cries of ecstasy.
Creed returned to his video game, shooting up a bevy of digital people in an imaginary world. I looked down the hall again, suddenly wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself in the middle of.
Of course I’d known Saylor since kindergarten because Emblem was like that. She was a snooty girl who stuck close to her cousin Brayden and was part of the smart crowd, the kids who were going to make it. Maybe that’s what made her such a tempting target. She wasn’t shy about her snub-nosed disdain for us, the dirty Gentry boys, and one night, drinking stolen wine coolers over a fire pit as we camped way out in the desert, her name came up.
“I could hit that,” Chase had said with confidence.
“Bullshit,” Creed sneered.
I tossed a bottle into the fire where it cracked and sent up a furious lick of flame. “I second the cry of bullshit.”
Chase reached over and shoved me hard. “I know a hungry chick when I see one. Now Say McCann might think she’s worlds above us, but I’ll telling you, any one of us could get in there.”
Creed was suddenly thoughtful. “Maybe.”
I smiled. “Should we make it interesting?”
Chase held up another bottle. “Two cases of these?”
“Come on,” I balked. “That’s a challenge worth at least five.”
“Done,” nodded Chase.
Saylor was suspicious when I hailed her in front of the library the next afternoon.
“What do you want?” she scowled, averting her pretty green eyes and nervously toying with the end of her long braid.
I gave her my most dashing Gentry smile and slyly ran my hand down her arm. “Just wanted to say hi, Saylor.”
After a reluctant moment she smiled back. She was thinner than the girls I usually liked. But she was cute in a repressed, geeky sort of way. Most of all, I could tell right off the bat that Chase was right. Her eyes wandered over me and she blushed. She was hungry as shit.
Saylor had never really been in my line of sight much. She wasn’t the party type and never hung around looking for a good time. Now and again I saw her with some of the upper crust assholes who I didn’t have much to do with.
I stowed her books under my arm and walked with her in the direction of her house. She lived in the close knit neighborhood between the high school and the prison, mostly populated by families of correctional officers. It was tree-lined, clean and the rank opposite of the shithole I lived in two miles away. On the walk I said all kinds of things I didn’t mean. Saylor giggled a lot.
We were passing an old bench where something historic had supposedly happened. No one knew exactly what though, since the plaque next to it had long ago faded into smoothness.
“Sit down,” I told her, pleased when she did so without question. We were in the shade of a towering mesquite tree. She looked at me a little nervously.
With a flourish I withdrew a sheet of notebook paper from her books and pulled a pen out of my back pocket. I felt her eyes on me as I sketched rapidly.
“Here,” I said, passing the paper over.
“Cord,” she breathed, her eyes wide. I knew I was a decent artist, especially when it came to people. I could take an okay looking girl and make her seem like a supermodel. It came in handy sometimes, particularly when you were trying to get behind a locked door. I watched her face as she stared at the sketch I’d made of her.
“It’s beautiful,” she frowned. “But it doesn’t look like me.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. I smiled instead. “It looks just like you, Saylor. You’re beautiful.” And then I leaned in.
I knew right away this was going to be easier than even Chase thought it would be. She was eager to be kissed and it was obvious she hadn’t been kissed much.
“Saylor,” I whispered, running my hands up and down her arms as she trembled. “I want to be alone with you.”
She chewed on her lip and looked away. I thought she was going to push me and tell me to fuck off. That would have been the smart thing for her to do and she was a smart girl. But she wasn’t being smart just then.
“Okay,” she said softly.
On our short walk she had mentioned something about her parents going through an ugly divorce. I wasn’t really listening to that though. As we reached her brick ranch-style house she got nervous and said that her dad was home. He was on third shift at the prison and slept during the day.
I pulled her to me and played my tongue across her lips, noting with satisfaction the impatient way she pressed her body against mine.
“You got a bedroom?” I asked, massaging her waist until she just about purred. Her pale cheeks were flushed and she was looking cuter by the minute. I couldn’t wait to climb underneath her clothes and get to business.
She hesitated. “Yeah, but…I mean my dad’s asleep and all but he wakes up easy.”
“Oh,” I frowned. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of some crazed father defending the virtue of his princess. I’d already been there, done that. Then I noticed the detached garage. “That thing empty?”
She understood and nodded. I grabbed her hand and pulled her through the service door into the dark interior. We kissed again and I felt her all over, getting myself really worked the hell up. She was getting hot too, I could tell, kissing me like she was starving and I was the only meal in sight. I smiled at the thought of how pissed Chase was going to be.
“What’s wrong?” Saylor asked, noticing my smile and getting confused.
“Nothin’,” I told her, reaching under her shirt. “Just happy to be here with you.”
She relaxed and didn’t stop me. She didn’t stop me at all. I found an ancient orange blanket and spread it on the grease-stained floor, easing her down that way. I had to show her what to do but she caught on quick. By then I wanted her pretty fucking bad. I pulled her soft panties away and slid my pants off as I took a condom from my back pocket, the last of a pack I’d stolen from Ace Market about a month earlier. I saw the way her green eyes widened when I settled between her legs. It gave me a moment of doubt.
“You sure you want to do this?” I asked her, ready to back off in a heartbeat while I was still able to.
But Saylor only nodded and slipped her arms around my neck. “I’m sure, Cord.”
I was kind of outside myself after that. I wasn’t gentle because I wasn’t thinking about Saylor. Suddenly what I was doing became a sick sort of payback. I was avenging every crappy thing anyone had ever said or thought about a Gentry even as I was proving what a piece of shit a Gentry could be.
White trash. Vicious. Heartless. Soulless. Lazy. No good. Fuck their own cousins.
Then, when it was over, I didn’t feel a shred of tenderness as Saylor shyly covered her body and tried to smile at me. I didn’t feel a goddamn thing at all. I casually lit a cigarette and said the most awful thing I could think of.
“Well that sucked,” I breathed coolly and watched the shock register on her face. “But it was still a bet worth winning.”
“A bet?” she squeaked.
I smiled. “Sure. You were as easy a fuck as the three of us figured you would be.”
I smoked and watched her go through the emotions of horror, grief and finally anger. Yeah, she should have known Cord Gentry wouldn’t have latched onto her out of nowhere. She stood up with tears of shame and rage already falling.
“Get out,” she muttered and then screamed it. “GET OUT!”
I took a big drag, blew smoke in her face and laughed. Then I ran all the way home to tell Chase he better pay up. And Chase, who couldn’t keep a secret for love or money, told everyone else.
For the next two years, until we all graduated and scattered, I could never look her in the eye again. I never thought I would have to. Until today.
Mercifully, Chase had taken himself and his blonde to his bedroom. I could still hear them going wild in there but at least it wasn’t happening in plain sight. I was relieved. Saylor was the type who might make a big deal out of shit like that.
“Hey,” said Creed, and I realized he’d been watching me.
“Yo,” I answered.
My brother nodded soberly. Sometimes he had some sort of supernatural triplet sense when either me or Chase was bugged by something. “It was a long time ago.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. “Gentrys have done worse I guess. Hell, I know they have.”
Creed didn’t blink. “Shit’s different now, Cord. We ain’t dirty, hopeless boys running around the desert, hoping to god no one’s conscious enough to break wood on us when we get home.”
“That was no excuse,” I grumbled. “I know it. She knows it.”
Creed dropped the game controller and stood. He looked at the closed door of the bathroom. The shower had squealed to a halt but there was still no sign Saylor was coming out soon.
“Well,” he finally yawned. “I’m hittin’ the sack.”
I stuck out a thumb towards Chase’s room where the sound of energetic bouncing reigned. “It’d be nice to hit it that hard.”
Creed smiled and stretched. “Nah, it’s a beat my own meat kind of night.”
I sank into the couch and waited. The noise of Chase and his lady friend eventually died down but Saylor hadn’t emerged from the bathroom. I hoped she wasn’t in there doing anything weird. She’d always been kind of an intense girl and whatever had happened to her tonight had obviously rattled her cage.
I crept to the door and listened but didn’t hear anything. When the door abruptly creaked open I had to jump back.
“Jesus,” she gasped, dropping a bunch of shit on the floor.
“Sorry,” I said, getting hit by a wave of steam from her long shower. “I started to worry you were in there cutting yourself up or something.”
“No,” she glared. “I wasn’t.” She gave me another hard look, as if she’d forgotten that I would even be around. She had combed out her wet hair and let it hang loose. Apart from her swollen jaw, her complexion was creamy and flawless, her green eyes luminous. She wore the same t-shirt as earlier but had changed to a pair of gym shorts. “Are you going to move so I can get out of the doorway?”
I hadn’t realized I was blocking her. I backed off and headed to the living room, hoping she would follow. “Chase and Creed headed in already but they said to tell you hi. You want a beer or something?”
“No,” Saylor said shortly, sitting delicately on the couch and cradling her purse in her lap. “I mean, no thank you, Cord.” She withdrew her phone and scowled at it, cursing lightly.
“He’s always losing the damn thing,” I commented. She looked at me questioningly. “Brayden and his phone.”
“Oh,” she nodded. “I know.” She looked around with obvious confusion. The place was a mismatch of whatever furniture could be conveniently carried away from Goodwill when we needed it. “You guys been living here long?”
I got a beer for myself. “About a year in this apartment. Before that we bounced around like pinballs for a while.” I took a drink, watching her rub her hands on her bare thighs. It was probably a nervous habit but it got me looking at her legs. They were nice. “So, how’s California?”
Her expression immediately darkened. She pushed her long hair behind her ears. It made her appear younger. “I loved it. Until I hated it. My graduation’s in two days. I’m not going.”
I was beginning to realize what she meant. “So this isn’t just a visit.” I pointed to her bag. “Those all your worldly possessions?”
Saylor stuck her chin out. “No, it was all I could grab. I had to get out of there quickly.”
“Because of him?” I pressed. “Dylan?”
“Devin,” she corrected me and then shuddered.
“Bastard. This the first time he did something like that?”
She took a full minute to answer. “No,” she said in a soft voice.
I stretched, feeling a twinge of soreness from the effects of the fight. “You know, Saylor, when a guy belts you in the mouth it doesn’t mean ‘I love you.’”
“Well thank you, Dr. Phil. But you know what? You can sit on your platitudes and rotate.”
“I might,” I considered. “If I knew what the fuck a platitude was.”
She glared but it wasn’t the furious kind. It was a look of hurt. “Think what you damn well like about me, Cord. Yeah, it happened more than once and I stayed and I took it. I told myself I would get out and then I didn’t. I know how that sounds. I know what it makes me. But it was the first time he…” Saylor couldn’t finish her sentence. She sank into the couch and buried her head in her arms.
I had to ask. “What?”
“He raped me,” she whispered, then raised her head. The look in her eyes was like a punch in my gut. “Okay? Now you know the whole ugly, sordid, disgusting truth.”
“Ah, shit,” I said softly, as it dawned on me that there was a painful reason she’d wanted to shower so badly. “Goddamn, I’m sorry, Saylor.” I handed her a napkin and she blew her nose into it while I downed the rest of that beer. Inwardly I was seething. For Saylor, for my mother, for every woman who’d ever suffered the harsh hand of a man who wasn’t worth two fucking cents. To my shock, she burst out laughing.
“Christ, I’m sitting here in the middle of the night pouring my heart out to Cord Gentry.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling a touch of the surreal with Saylor McCann blowing her nose in my living room.”
We eyed one another for a long, uncomfortable moment before I broke the silence.
“You know,” I said uneasily. “I was thinking about it and Bray mentioned something about going camping up at Four Peaks with his girl.”
“Oh,” Saylor exhaled, looking defeated. “That would explain why he’s not sitting in his apartment waiting for his basket case cousin to drop by unexpectedly.” She started to stand and shoulder her bag. “Listen, thanks for letting me hang out here for a while.”
“Well, where are you gonna go now? Emblem?”
She laughed hoarsely. “Hell no. I’ll just find a motel for the night and see how things look tomorrow.” She rubbed her eyes. “I think I can handle it all after a night of sleep.”
I made a decision. Creed might grumble but the hell with it.
“Stay here,” I said.
Her head jerked up and she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. “No,” she finally said in a soft voice, sighing tiredly. “No, I can’t, Cord.”
I stared down at my bruised hands. I didn’t want to be the asshole she thought I was. I may have been a lousy fuck once but Creed was right. Things were different. I’d done everything to best the curse of being a Gentry from Emblem. It seemed like a bad idea to let a beaten girl from my hometown go wandering around Tempe in the state she was in. “You can take my room. I swear no one will bug you in there. Really, it’s no big deal. I crash on the couch half the time anyway.”
“Cord,” she said and I heard some pain in her voice.
“Well, you take the couch then. It’s a comfortable couch. Look at it.”
She looked. “It is a comfortable couch.” She dropped her bag to the floor and managed a watery smile. “All right.”
By the time I returned with a thin blue quilt I’d ripped off my own bed, Saylor was already curling up.
“Thanks,” she whispered with soft gratitude as I covered her. She looked so sweet and vulnerable that an actual lump rose in my throat and I shook away the feeling. Saylor was just some chick crashing on my couch for the night. She didn’t mean a thing to me.
Then she propped herself up on one elbow. Her shirt slid carelessly off her shoulder and showed the top of her right breast, which caused something else, something a little harder, to rise.
“You’re welcome,” I said tersely, turning to leave.
“No, really, Cord. Thank you.”
I stared at her for a few more seconds as she pulled the blanket over her body and closed her eyes.
“Good night, Saylor.”
End of excerpt
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