Walk (Gentry Boys) (10 page)

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

Con scratched his chin.  “It means I just don’t have a war chest full of feelings to offer you, Stonewall.  We’re not gonna hug and cry and skip off into the sunset to go catch lizards in the canal like we’re ten fucking years old.”  He shook his head.  “It won’t work.  Best if you just keep your distance.” 

“I’m not asking anything from you.  I just want to be in your life.” 

He chewed on that for a moment.  “You’re on parole, Stone.”

“Yeah.  So what?”

“So certain kinds of trouble can send you right back to where you were.”

I froze.  He didn’t mean it.  He couldn’t.  “That sounds like a threat.” 

“No.”  He stood up and jammed his hands in his pockets.  “It’s the opposite of a threat.” 

The bitter taste in my mouth had nothing to do with the lemonade.  Somewhere deep in the back of my throat a sob threatened to escape.   The only words I had left for him came out in a whisper.  “I miss you, Con.” 

He shook his head once more.  “Don’t,” he said brusquely.  He was already walking away.  “Don’t miss me, Stone.” 

And then with a mocking wave he collected his women and was gone. 

Evie

Stone was quiet.  He’d been quiet since his brother stalked out of the Gentrys’ backyard.  His cousins had immediately surrounded surrounded him and stayed close but I watched the whole time.  If he’d given any hint that he was looking for someone to talk to I would have been at his side.  I didn’t hear everything that had happened between the two of them, but we’d all seen the awkward exchange and watched Conway storm out.  I was hurting for Stone.  I thought about telling him that I understood how it felt when a beloved brother broke your heart. 

We left when Stephanie and her husband Chase did.  The Gentrys were a nice family.  They all hugged Stone and told him they hoped to see him again real soon.  Even that stern fellow Creed offered a pat on the back and told Stone to give him a call if he wanted to pick up some extra work outside of the party supply business.  Apparently Creed had some connections at local clubs.  

I wound up carrying Stephanie’s little boy to the car.  Kellan had taken a liking to me and insisted on sitting on my lap for most of the afternoon.  He’d even briefly fallen asleep on my shoulder.  

“You sure you don’t want me to take him?” Chase offered.  “I know he’s heavier than he looks.” 

“It’s fine,” I said.  “He may be heavier than he looks but I’m actually stronger than I seem.” 

Growing up, I’d never spent much time around young children.  There were no younger siblings, only Macon.  No small cousins, no nieces or nephews.  The feel of a young child in my arms was both strange and comforting. 

“See you back at the grind tomorrow,” Stephanie said as Chase got the boys settled into their car seats.  She glanced over to where Stone was standing by the front bumper, deep in thought.  Then she raised an eyebrow and gave me a smile before climbing inside the family minivan. 

Chase shook Stone’s hand.  “I’ll call you this week, buddy.”  He nodded at me.  “Nice to see you again, Evie.” 

Stone watched quietly as the family departed.  He looked down in surprise when I took his arm. 

“Thanks again for inviting me today.  I had fun.” 

He managed to smile.  “Glad you came.  Pretty wild that Stephanie turned out to be your boss.” 

“It’s a small world after all.”  I sang the words. 

Stone snickered and led me over to his truck.  He opened up the passenger door and waited until I had my seatbelt on before closing it and walking around to the other side. 

“You hungry?” I asked as he started the engine and backed out. 

“We were just at a barbecue.” 

“I know.   But you didn’t eat anything.”

“Were you watching me?”

“Yes.  A lot.”

Stone laughed.  Then he lost his grin.  “Lost my appetite I guess.” 

I could understand that.  I remembered the look on his face as he watched Conway walk away from him. 

“I have a brother who hates me…” 

But estranged brother or not, the guy still needed to eat. 

“Remember that place I told you about?” I asked.  “The one with the best hamburgers?” 

He nodded.  “You mean the one that you described earlier?  The one that has the organic urban farm next door?”

“That’s it.  Let’s go.  I’ll buy you dinner.” 

“Are
you
hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”   

“We can go,” he agreed.  “But I’m buying.” 

“If you insist, caveman.” 

Stone looked at me.  “Do you always blurt out whatever comes into your head?”

“Sometimes.  Too often actually.  I was on my best behavior at your cousin’s house.  Here’s the freeway.  Get on and go east to Dobson.” 

  Stone loosened up over hamburgers and fries.  The restaurant was quaint and simple with a limited menu and had been featured a few times on Food Network.  Usually it was crowded but it was past the dinner hour on Sunday evening, a time when most people were girding their loins for the week ahead.  We chose a table on the patio as the evening shadows deepened.  I was telling him about some of my romantic misadventures.  I had a few to choose from. 

He set down his drink.  “He said you hurt him?  Like in the heart?”

“No.  His injuries were purely physical.  Remember when I said I’m stronger than I look?  I have the capacity to inflict a lot of unintentional harm.”

“Such as…” he prodded. 

I shoved a French fry in my mouth and thought about Wesley.  ‘Wounded Wesley’, as Kendra had christened him, was an ambitious law school student I’d met my senior year at Arizona State.  He was good looking and worked out every day and spoke in exceptionally long sentences.  His sense of humor was rather absent but I figured we could work on that. Wesley had nice lips and good hair and a body that no one would complain about looking at.  But Wesley had a few quirks, and whenever we fooled around I managed to ‘hurt’ him somehow.

Like the time we were dry humping on a convenient sofa in an unused upper floor of the library.  I was in the middle of having my lady moment with all the gasping and quivering it entailed when the force toppled us right off the sofa.  We were only about eight inches from the floor and I landed on the bottom so it shouldn’t have been a big deal for Wesley.  However, he immediately started prodding his ribs and whining about how my elbow had caught him right in the solar plexus. He claimed to be unable to work out for the next week and even walked around with a limp that didn’t make any sense. 

And then there was the time I was giving him a blowjob in the kitchen of the expensive condo his parents had bought for him when he was an undergrad.  I thought I was doing some damn fine work and he seemed to be enjoying himself until he abruptly yelped and pushed me away. 

“What the hell?” he complained.

I was still on my knees.  Saliva on my chin.  Clueless as to why he was cupping his dick and gazing down at me with horror. 

“Evie,” he sputtered. “I have explained to you on multiple occasions that my terminus is unusually sensitive and requires a gentle tongue approach that
never ever
involves deep throating!”

Then he packaged up his offended member and retreated to the bathroom while I reluctantly rose from my knees and grabbed a beer. 

Poor Wesley.  The last I heard he was engaged to a massage therapist.  Best of luck to her. 

I tactfully left out the dirty details when describing Wounded Wesley to Stone but he got the picture.  He laughed and laughed.  It was good, hearing him laugh.  I got the feeling he didn’t do it very often. 

“Well,” Stone said when he stopped laughing, “I’m pretty sure you couldn’t hurt
me
even if you tried, Evie.” 

I swallowed hard because even though he probably didn’t mean it to sound that way, those were the sexiest words he could have uttered. 

“So what about you?” I asked.

“What about me?” 

“You have any war stories about the opposite sex?”

Shit.   

I realized my mistake even before Stone shifted awkwardly and stared at the table.  No, of course he didn’t have any stories about dating mishaps and outlandish exes.  Prison probably put a damper on such activities.   He’d told me as much the other night.  Four years he’d been locked away.  Since he’d already mentioned he was twenty-two that meant he’d been incarcerated since he was eighteen. 

I felt my face reddening.  “I’m an idiot.” 

“No.”  He shook his head with a smile.  “It’s okay.  I understand that it’s easy to forget.” 

“I’m sure it’s not easy for you.” 

Stone looked out across the parking lot.  It was nearly empty. 

“It’s too quiet at night,” he said softly.  “I was so used to falling asleep to noise.  Banging and shouting, sometimes screaming.   Kind of like camping out in the desert.”

I didn’t catch his meaning but it was interesting.  Everything he said was interesting.  “The desert?  How so?”

Stone drummed his knuckles on the table.  “People think of the desert as serene and mostly lifeless.  But any kid raised in Emblem can tell you how loud it can get at night.  If you’ve ever heard a pack of coyotes howling then you know it’s a sound you can’t sleep through.  It makes your hair stand on end.  It’s a sound you don’t forget. Conway and I used to camp out all the time.” 

The mention of his brother made him grim.  Stone ran a hand through his short hair and sighed. 

“He’s younger than you?” I asked. 

He nodded.  “Ten months.  We kind of grew up like twins though.  What’s wrong?”

I’d flinched at the word ‘twins’. I shook it off.  “Nothing.  You guys were close I guess.” 

“Yeah, we were close.”  He rocked back on his chair a little, a wistful look on his face.  “Con and I were more than brothers.  We were best friends.  He was everything to me.  Still is.”  Stone paused and took a drink of soda.  He swallowed, grimacing.  “She was his girlfriend.  Erin.  The girl who died in the accident.  She lived next door and you never saw two kids so in love.  I used to give him shit about it but I was only kidding.”

I heard the grief in his voice.  “You were friends?  You and Erin?”

His blue eyes met mine.  His were full of heartbreak. “I like to think we were, at the end anyway.  She had her problems, but she would have come out of them all right.  Somehow Con got the idea we’d betrayed him. It was ugly.  We were looking for him that evening.  I didn’t mean to steal the car, her father’s car.  She’d grabbed the keys while he slept because we needed to look for Con.  We were looking everywhere, driving down Main Street, hoping for some hint as to where we could find him.  Then this other kid pulled up and tried to goad me into a race.  I wasn’t racing when we crashed.  I was just trying to get away from him, trying to find my brother.  It was all an accident.  All of it.  But by that time I’d used up all the patience of everyone in town.  They had a different story to tell.  It was the one that stuck.”  

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. 

No one could fake the kind of grief that came through in Stone’s voice.  A tear slid down my cheek.  It was such a terrible story.  Why were so many stories terrible?

“Hey.”  Stone touched my hand.  “Evie.  It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”  I sniffed and wiped the tears away with a napkin.  “It’s not okay.  He won’t forgive you, right?”

“No,” Stone whispered and I thought he might cry too.  “I wrote him so many letters.  I wished for him every day.  But no, he can’t forgive me.” 

“I know.  Macon can’t forgive me either.”  

Stone looked confused so I explained before he could ask. 

“My brother.  We’re twins.  Only children.  We grew up in among the ponderosa pines up north, loved and indulged our entire lives.  It was the kind of childhood that you see in a movie and wonder how anyone could be so lucky.  I know what it is to have a brother who’s also your best friend, your other half.  Macon was mine.  He was brilliant and loyal and loving.” 

I paused.  I didn’t want to say the next words, but hiding from words didn’t make them disappear.  “Macon was a heroin addict. 
Is
a heroin addict.  Senior year of high school someone gave him some pills at a party.  That was the night we started to lose him. He graduated to more pills and then moved on to heroin. He stole and he lied and he hurt everyone and he didn’t care.  He would disappear for months at a time and my parents would panic every time the phone rang, thinking the worst.  It seemed like overnight that we went from being best friends to being unable to have a conversation.  We screamed at each other.  I usually started it.  I thought if I screamed loud enough I could get him to come back. I wanted him back.” 

I had to stop and take a drink of water.  Stone waited patiently. 

“The strain on my parents was horrible.  My dad was such a gentle man, a lifelong academic who couldn’t understand how strong some devils could be.  Eventually Macon hit rock bottom and moved back in with them, promising he would get help.  Of course he didn’t.  He just did what he’d done before.  He lied and used and stole and hurt them.  It all fell apart for good when I was home that year for Christmas break.  I remember looking at him across the dinner table, the boy who’d been my other half since we became people, and all I saw was a stranger.  Those of us who loved him, we couldn’t make him want to get help.  In the bathroom that night I found a box underneath the sink.  There were needles and disgusting things and I went to him and threw the box in his face.  I told him it was fine if he wanted to kill himself but he wasn’t going to take us with him.  My mother was crying.  My father was trying to get me to calm down.  Macon was crawling around on the floor, calmly picking up his needles.   When I kicked the box out of his hands again he stood up and I guess my dad thought that Macon might hit me or something because he got between us, pushed Macon away from me.  I couldn’t handle it.  I ran to my room and called the police.  And then the next morning, Christmas morning, the morning after we watched my brother get hauled away in cuffs, my father suffered a fatal heart attack.” 

Stone was listening intently the entire time.  He took my small hand in his large one and waited for me to finish.  To finish crying or to finish talking.  I wasn’t sure I could do either one.