Game (Gentry Boys #3)

by Cora Brent

  My eyes closed. I couldn’t breathe. “What?”

  “The video, kid. It’s out and it’s everywhere.” Alonzo coughed. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

  The phone fell out of my hand. I stared at it as it began to make noise again. It wasn’t another call. It was a message. I clicked on the link even though I already knew what it would be. It was proof that the worst nightmares were real.

  “I fucking own you, bitch. You get up there and you take it off slow.”

  “Fuck you. No. I’m not doing it.”

  “Hey Xavier, how about if she doesn’t do it then we all do her?”

  “You hear that, Stephanie Bransky? You either take your lumps like a good little pussy or else get ready to open up for every cock in this room.”

  “Gutless shits, all of you! You think I don’t have any pull left? That I can’t still make a couple of phone calls?”

  “Not soon enough to save your skinny ass. Now I’ve made you a deal. Keep insulting me and my generosity will start to ebb away.”

  “No.”

  “She says no again, then you grab her, O’Shea. And don’t give it to her easy.”

  “Don’t you fucking touch me! Fine. If this is what it takes then this is what it takes.”

  “Wise choice. Now take it all off. Told you I own you, bitch. Now you make this shit look good because you’re not paid up until we get off on watching you.”

  None of that was heard on the video. Of course it wouldn’t be. It was all said before the filming began.

  The site it had been uploaded to was extremely popular. The views were in the six figures and climbing. Alonzo was right; it would be everywhere.

  Chase.

  Yes, Chase would see it. Everyone I’d ever known would see it.

  I felt myself rocking back and forth, a childish instinct to soothe the body when the mind was screaming. The blood roared in my head and I’d never known such loneliness. Last night I’d been thinking about how I knew what it was to fall into an abyss of anguish and treachery.

  In fact I didn’t yet know how deep the rabbit hole went. In reality, I was still falling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Chase

  I sat on the ledge of the fountain and stared at the flowing water. I wondered how long it took for an individual molecule to flow from the concrete ridge, only to get pulled by the pump to commence the same journey again before finally being recycled for another drop. The hour was somewhere between noon and one in the afternoon and the campus was busy. Since she wouldn’t know to find me here I wasn’t waiting for her. I wasn’t waiting for anyone.

  “Hey, buddy,” said a voice and I looked up into the friendly face of Brayden McCann, the boy who’d once valiantly tried to punch me to avenge his cousin’s honor. I struggled to smile at him.

  “What’s up, McCann?”

  Bray sat on the ledge next to me. “Seems like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “Well, I’m a popular guy.”

  Brayden must have heard the bite in my tone because he looked at me sharply. Hopefully he already knew it wasn’t directed at him because I didn’t have the energy to actually tell him so.

  “You okay, Chase? You need to talk?”

  “I’d like that. I would.” I stood up and he glanced up at me with a worried look. “But right now I have to go to class and stare at the girl who may or may not still love me.”

  “Ah,” he breathed, obviously understanding a little better.

  “How do you make it look so easy, Brayden? I mean, you and Millie. Whenever I see you guys you’re in perfect sync.”

  “Well, you don’t see everything,” he told me in a stern voice. “No one does, Chase. Millie and I love each other. We’re complete. But we’re not perfect, not in the idyllic Hollywood sense. But then, out here in reality there might be no such fucking thing.”

  It was probably only the second time I had ever heard Bray McCann drop an F bomb, the first occurring outside a girls’ bathroom in Emblem High School some six years earlier.

  “No such fucking thing,” I repeated. “You’re a wise man.”

  “And you’re not just living for today anymore.”

  “I concede the point. I’m not.”

  “So let it be a good thing.”

  “I’m trying, Bray. I’ll keep trying.”

  As I made my way to the class where I’d first laid eyes on Stephanie Bransky I removed my phone from my back pocket. I thought about texting her to ask if she was on her way but I didn’t. Again I was reminded about how similar some of her manners were to Creed’s. They both tended to be stubbornly distant to those around them and they both had the power to shred me with a few short words.

  When I sat on a bench and waited for the prior class to release I noticed a few people looking at me. At first I blew it off but then it kept happening. I recognized a few of them and the furtive glances they were throwing my way were getting on my nerves. I was sure I wasn’t sitting here with my dick flopping out so what the hell did they want?

  “Chase!” It wasn’t Stephanie. It was Robin, an old hookup who’d kept her distance since it became clear that I wasn’t going to look away from Stephanie. But now she approached me with a bright smile and a flushed look in her cheeks. She grabbed my arm. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her. I leaned back into the wall and closed my eyes but she kept talking.

  “Oh my god,” she was saying. “I saw the video. Oh my god. Is she okay? Oh my god, I would die if it were me and it was out there. But then I’ve never stripped for the cameras, haha.”

  This girl was speaking another language. I didn’t care to learn it. I grunted and kept my eyes closed.

  “Is that why she’s not with you today? Oh my god, did you even know?”

  I opened my eyes. “Robin. What the hell are you talking about?”

  She was jubilant. She had something to share and she couldn’t wait to share it. My stomach was starting to hurt for some reason.

  Robin stuck her face in her phone. She bit her lower lip in anticipation. The she turned the phone around so I could see the video that was already playing. A few other people nearby were also looking. I looked too. I blinked. Then I blinked again because the image was impossible.

  Robin pressed a button and the volume rose. Stephanie, my Stephanie, was dancing around on a crappy stage and shedding her clothes. She went about it slowly, seductively. She glanced over her shoulder and appeared to smile at the unseen men who bellowed for more. Then she gave it to them. I saw her do things that she’d never even done in front of me in our wildest moments of passion.

  My mouth was dry. My heart was shrieking. Calmly I handed Robin her phone back. “Send that link to me, please,” I said and then left everyone to their gossipy bullshit.

  When I got out of the building I walked quickly, taking wide, deliberate strides without any idea where I was going.

  What the actual fuck?

  Stephanie, who could barely bring herself to get naked for me when we first started fooling around, had been gyrating like a porn star in front of a room full of men. These were men who yelled out all the disgusting things they wanted her to do as she touched herself on camera on fucking camera so that everyone in creation could have something to jack off to. Had she been high? Drunk? She sure as shit hadn’t been acting like it. She’d been purposefully playing to the crowd, following filthy instructions and smiling the whole time like she was having fun.

  Acid bile rose in my throat and I had to cover my mouth with my forearm out of fear I’d be sick. A buzzing in my pocket announced the arrival of the link I’d asked Robin to send me. I couldn’t make a nickel of sense out of any of it. None.

  Abruptly I turned on my heel and returned to the psychology building. Class had already started. I flung open the door and quickly surveyed the crowd. Some of them looked at me curiously. Others nudged one another and laughed. Stephanie wasn’t in there so I left. Maybe she was embarrassed over how much attention the video w
as getting. Obviously the thing had gone fucking viral. But when she’d taken off her damn clothes in front of an audience with cameras she had to know what was likely to happen.

  Baby, did I ever know you at all?

  Even as some distant, nagging part of my brain insisted that something wasn’t right about all this, I was growing increasingly angry with every step. I’d done everything possible to romance her, to let her know she had my heart and to try to get access to hers. Stephanie Bransky damn well owed me an explanation for this shit and this time I wasn’t going to ask for it nicely.

  It took me less than fifteen minutes to reach her apartment. I threw my backpack on the ground and banged on the door. A minute went by and I banged again.

  “Stephanie!”

  I heard the click of the lock being released. The door was opening too slowly so I pushed it and barged right in.

  Every angry thought left my head immediately. I was suddenly, desperately ashamed as I faced her.

  She was destroyed.

  Stephanie had covered herself with a heavy sweatshirt and thick pants even though it was warm and her arms were crossed over her body as if she was trying to defend herself from physical blows. Her voice was a half sob, half wail. “You know, don’t you?”

  She sank to the floor and her despair was terrifying as she heaved with sobs. I didn’t have any other wish but to bring her back, to make her see it didn’t have to be as awful as all that.

  “Steph,” I whispered, coming to her side. I tried to put my arms around her but she crawled away, sobbing harder. “It’s okay, baby. Sweetheart, look at me. This kind of thing happens all the time. It’s a downside to living in the age of technology.” She cried on and on like she couldn’t hear a word. This was killing me. I swallowed and tried a different tactic, trying to keep my voice light. “So you got your freak on, honey. So what?”

  That stopped her. Slowly she lifted her head. I couldn’t see her face so I carefully pushed her hair aside. She looked at me in ruined disbelief, tears running freely.

  “You think I wanted it? Is that what you think? They made me do that. They forced me, Chase.”

  No. NO!!!!

  It hadn’t made sense before. Now it did. It all made terrible, devastating sense, no matter how much I wished otherwise.

  Steph didn’t push me away again when I tried to hold her. She clung to me like a frightened little girl as I carried her into the bedroom. I sat there with her for a long time in the darkness. Finally her gasping sobs lessened and as evening began to fall on the world outside she told me about what she’d been coerced into doing and why. Although I felt a rush of relief when she said they hadn’t physically touched her, her ordeal was still appalling. It hadn’t been about sex. They had wanted to degrade her and they did. She didn’t need to say what it had done to her; I already knew that.

  “Who are they, Steph?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, refusing to tell me. I could guess they were some slimy pieces of shit who operated behind the scenes, men she knew through the illegal gambling rings she’d dealt with. I’d seen enough of those types of bastards when my brothers and I were involved with fighting for money.

  She began to cry softly again. “Chase, I’m so sorry.”

  A single tear fell down my right cheek. More tears threatened and I willed the rest of them away. I couldn’t let her see how her admission had shattered me.

  “Settle down, honey. It’ll be all right. Come on, you’ll feel better if you clean up and get changed.”

  She obediently followed when I led her to the bathroom. I turned on the shower and waited until it was hot enough.

  I started to undress her gently but she resisted in horror. “No! I don’t want you to see me!”

  It was more excruciating than a punch to the gut. Another second and I wouldn’t be able to stand up anymore. “Steph.”

  She wouldn’t let me touch her. “Please, Chase.”

  “All right.” I kissed her forehead and carefully tipped her chin up. “I’m gonna fix this, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again. “You can’t. It’s done. It’s unfixable.”

  My heart was in pieces. Literal fucking pieces. I was fixing this if it killed me. “Shhh,” I soothed her. “No more tears for now, my beautiful brave girl. Just remember that I love you.”

  She calmed down but she still wouldn’t undress in front of me. I closed the bathroom door softly and retreated to the living room, feeling like I’d aged ten years since I walked in here this afternoon. I sat heavily on the couch and did the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

  I took out my phone and turned on the video.

  The whole thing was seven minutes and thirty eight seconds long. Titled ‘College Wild’ it had over half a million views already. I forced myself to scroll through the images of my girlfriend being abused. The place was obviously a bar or a club and it looked dark and old. Most of the buildings in Tempe were fairly new. This might have been somewhere in Phoenix, one of the old neglected neighborhoods close to downtown. I searched for other clues but couldn’t tell much of anything. The men were just out of sight of the camera and all I caught was an occasional waving arm. I didn’t know how the hell I was going to find them but I damn well was going to. There was no corner of the fucking earth they could run to in order to get away from me. The video only had a few seconds left when I heard the shower squeal to a stop. I paused the picture and backed up a little. Four seconds before the cutoff a man appeared next to the stage.

  Incredibly, he was someone I knew. He was someone I could find.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Stephanie

  Chase was gone when I finally emerged from the bathroom.

  This thing had broken his heart, no matter how he tried to hide it from me. As I stood there inhaling the steam in the shower and trying to feel normal again I was haunted by his devastation.

  By the time I towel dried my hair and dressed in clean clothes all I wanted to do was let him hold me. The only safe place in the world was in his arms.

  I was confused when I couldn’t find him. He wouldn’t have left without a good reason. My phone was blinking and there were scores of messages, filthy awful messages from people who had seen the video and assumed they knew the story behind it. Chase’s message was among them.

  “I love you, Steph.”

  I texted him back. “Where are you?”

  I waited. I paced restlessly and kept staring at the clock. Ten minutes went by and he didn’t answer. The vaguely uneasy feeling in my stomach grew stronger every second.

  Why didn’t he answer?

  Chase didn’t blame me. I knew that much. His face had been full of grief and he’d quickly wiped away a tear he didn’t want me to see. But he had asked me, again and again, to tell him who had done this.

  I stopped pacing. He couldn’t have been able to tell a thing from watching the video. I was the only one who was on full display. The men stayed carefully in the background. But Chase was smart. If he was hell bent on finding Xavier and Dustin and every man who’d cheered my degradation then he would figure it out. His impulsive nature and a desire for vengeance would lead him to run recklessly into the orbit of extremely dangerous men. Dammit. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Five minutes later I was beating on the door of the apartment Chase shared with his brothers and Saylor. Of course it wasn’t Saylor who answered. It wasn’t Cord either. It was Creed. His shirt was off and he was all sweaty, like he’d just been working out.

  He raised his eyebrows and stayed in the doorway. “Yeah?”

  I matched him glare for glare. “Saylor around?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. How about Cord?”

  He let out a hiss. “No. And Truly isn’t here. And neither is Chase but I’m guessing you knew that. I’m here.”

  Nothing could come of this. I started to walk away, figuring I’d head to the tattoo place where Cord worked.

&nb
sp; “Stephanie.”

  I turned around. Creedence Gentry was peering at me with a mix of suspicion and irritation. He sighed.

  “What do you want?” he asked and his tone had softened. I figured it must have been an effort for him.

  I kicked at the gravel lining the sidewalk. “You need to call Chase. He won’t answer me.”

  I could feel Creed’s sudden tension from ten feet away. “Why? What’s going on?”

  I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. He wasn’t hostile any longer. He was worried. I opened my mouth to tell him why but I couldn’t say the words. I took my phone out of my pocket and clicked on the video. I’d have to let it do my talking for me. After all, what the hell did it matter if Creed saw it? Everyone had fucking seen it.

  He grabbed the phone away from me and began playing it. He became immediately confused. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s me-“ I started to say but he interrupted.

  “Shit, I can see that much. So what, you’re a stripper? Wouldn’t have guessed it, that’s all. What the hell does this have to do with my brother?”

  “I’m not a stripper!” I shouted.

  He glanced down at the phone. The video was still playing. Creed clucked his tongue. “Survey says otherwise.”

  “Creed, I fucking swear to god I am NOT a stripper!” Now I’d done it. I’d gotten hysterical again. I stood there in the doorway sobbing like a five year old.

  To his credit, Creed decided to stop being a dickhead. “Hey,” he said softly. “Come on, Stephanie. Come inside.”

  I blindly stumbled into the apartment. Creed handed me the phone back, closed the door and led me to the couch. He stood close by for a moment, watching as I tried to control myself. He disappeared for a few seconds and returned with a box of tissues. I used them.

  Creed sat next to me on the couch and waited. Haltingly, I told him everything, pausing only to wipe my eyes and breathe deeply. Without mentioning names I told him about Xavier and what happened the night the video was made. I told him about how I’d sobbed in Chase’s arms this afternoon and what he’d said to me before he left.