STRAYS Read online

  STRAYS

  Cora Brent

  Contents

  Stay In Touch!

  Also By Cora Brent:

  Prologue

  1. Izzy

  2. Rafe

  3. Izzy

  4. Rafe

  5. Rafe

  6. Izzy

  7. Izzy

  8. Rafe

  9. Izzy

  10. Rafe

  11. Izzy

  12. Izzy

  13. Rafe

  14. Izzy

  15. Rafe

  16. Izzy

  17. Rafe

  18. Izzy

  19. Rafe

  20. Izzy

  21. Rafe

  22. Izzy

  Epilogue

  THANK YOU for reading STRAYS!

  Stay In Touch!

  Also By Cora Brent:

  Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarity to events or situations is also coincidental.

  The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.

  © 2021 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover: Wicked by Design

  Photo: Eric Battershell

  Created with Vellum

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  Also By Cora Brent:

  GENTRY BOYS (Books 1-4)

  Gentry Boys Series

  DRAW (Saylor and Cord)

  RISK (Creed and Truly)

  GAME (Chase and Stephanie)

  FALL (Deck and Jenny)

  HOLD

  CROSS (A Novella)

  WALK (Stone and Evie)

  EDGE (Conway and Roslyn)

  SNOW (A Christmas Story)

  Gentry Generations

  (A Gentry family spinoff series)

  STRIKE (Cami and Dalton)

  TURN (Cassie and Curtis)

  KEEP (A Novella)

  TEST (Derek and Paige)

  CLASH (Kellan and Taylor)

  WRECK (Thomas and Gracie)

  The Ruins of Emblem

  TRISTAN (Cadence and Tristan)

  JEDSON (Ryan and Leah)

  LANDON (Coming Soon)

  Worked Up

  FIRED

  NAILED

  Stand Alones

  UNRULY

  IN THIS LIFE

  HICKEY

  SYLER MCKNIGHT

  LONG LOST

  THE PRETENDER

  Prologue

  Rafe

  5 years ago

  I’ve been free for less than twenty-four hours.

  Getting used to life on the other side of the bars takes time, whether I’ve been inside for a week or for five months. The noise and smells of the jailhouse rot stick to my senses like glue and nothing except the passing of days shakes them off. Right now I’m still in the stage where I keep my back to the wall, ball a fist at any loud sound and sink only halfway into my dreams in case someone goes nuts.

  I don’t know how it is for other men. I would never ask.

  Usually when I get out I’m in a hurry to use my dick and fuck up my head for a few hours. I’ll get to all that.

  First, I’ve got a situation to deal with.

  The truck I’m driving looks like it was assembled from rusted scrap pieces and duck taped together. I can’t sit here for long with the engine running while black exhaust clouds puff out of the tailpipe. This is the kind of neighborhood where people notice things like shitty trucks hanging out beside the curb for no particular reason. The truck’s not even mine. It belongs to a sad sack named Dempsey who still owes me two grand and is terrified that I’ll do something meaningful to extract it now that I’m out.

  “Sure, you can use my truck, Rafe. It’s got a full tank and hey, take your time.”

  Ha! I’ll do that. And maybe I’ll even bring it back in one piece before I start stepping on his nuts in order to squeeze some cash out of him.

  Before I walked into the cage to serve time for this latest piece of bullshit I had a truck of my own and it was a few sturdy notches above this junkyard carcass. But the garage where I’d arranged to park it for my five-month vacation went belly up and the owner is long gone. As for the truck, there’s no trace. Dempsey heard a rumor that the guy went way up north to one of the Dakotas and I’m thinking if he wants to keep his fingers attached then he’ll stay there. Of all the things I don’t have the patience for, being ripped off is at the top of the list.

  I need to just go knock on the motherfucking door and get this over with. The house is exactly what I expected, with infinite tall windows fronting its many rooms and boxy front yard hedges that someone spends a lot of time shaping. There’s even a damn balcony, a cup-shaped space jutting out above the entry, complete with fancy wrought iron scrollwork in front of double glass doors.

  As if those glass doors have felt me staring, they crack open. A second later a woman floats through them. She’s wearing a floor length purple robe and one hand holds a purple drink tumbler while the other scrolls through her phone. She steps over to the railing and it’s easy to see that this is really her natural habitat, but then again I knew that. I never even bothered to look for her at Spit, a rat trap of a country bar that serves an uneasy mix of hardcore criminal types, dumbass college pricks, and the occasional upper crust wife in search of a decent dick.

  Guess which category she falls into.

  She kept me busy for a few months and it was all kinds of hot but we weren’t built for anything special. I’ve had better than her before and I could be having better right now.

  No, I’m here because of what she told me on my last night of freedom.

  When I get out of the truck I shut the door loudly enough to catch her attention. She looks down from her balcony perch. She freezes. Her lips form a soundless word that might be my name or it might be “Fuck.”

  She disappears and I wait right where I am. This is a risk. She could be calling 911 and saying anything she wants. With my record I’m not the one who will be believed.

  The front door is a mammoth iron monstrosity and it creaks open. Dana Walsh steps outside with the diamond Rock of Gibraltar on her left hand while her right hand cradles her swollen belly.

  “Rafe,” she says.

  Dana closes the door behind her but stays where she is. This is not a conversation to have from thirty feet away so I trample her lush front lawn to get closer. Along the way, my foot accidentally kicks a double-bowled dish filled with pet food and water. Everything spills. Not my problem.

  Her eyes are wide and she nervously tucks an escaped strand of artificially red hair back into place.

  The hand returns to guard her big belly. “I didn’t know you had been released.”

  “Just yesterday.” I gesture to the reason I’m here. “You look like you’re about ready to pop.”

  A smile flashes. “Eight more weeks.” The smile fades. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  My fingers itch to hold
a cigarette. Or a bottle. Something, anything, to shove away whatever emotion is bound to develop from this moment.

  “You tell me you’re having my kid but you didn’t think you’d see me again?”

  “Hush.” She waves her arms and looks behind her as if the closed door might get its feelings hurt. “Kevin’s inside.”

  I’m not keeping my voice down. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck.”

  Her brow furrows. “How on earth did you find me?”

  Either she thinks I’m as dumb as a dog or else she forgot that the Internet exists. Took all of sixty seconds of online searching to discover her address. Dana liked to run her mouth after getting her brains fucked out. When she wasn’t going on and on about her boring charity work that has something to do with stray animals she was blabbing about her husband’s law firm in the city’s pricy new business park and the custom, marble-floored McMansion she’d designed here in the land of Real Housewives Of Clueless Rich Bastards.

  Dana doesn’t await an answer to her question. “If you need money-“

  I cut her right off. “I don’t.”

  She nods. Another pat to the belly. She stares down at it fondly. “Look, Kevin knows about you. He’s been very understanding. We’re going to raise the baby together.”

  I feel like being mean. “It’s nice to hear I was able to give you something that your dickless wonder of a meal ticket couldn’t.”

  Her head snaps up. “Rafe, you understand nothing.” She’s about to say something else but then she sighs and deflates a little. “It’s not your fault. You’re a kid, haven’t even reached your twenty-first birthday. My god.” She sniffs. “I turned forty last week. Old enough to be your mother.”

  My laugh is as sharp as a bark. “You didn’t think I was a kid when you were choking my cock down your throat.”

  She can’t stop herself from flinching. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Truth hurts. Why’d you tell me you couldn’t get pregnant?”

  “That’s what I thought. I didn’t lie to you. We tried IVF. It didn’t work. Kevin refused to consider adoption and-“

  “I really don’t fucking care.”

  “Then why are you here? What do you want?”

  My eyes shift to her belly. There’s a quick ripple beneath the satin. I was careless about many things but I always wrapped up my dick before sticking it in new places. Then one time I didn’t and now here I am, staring at the consequences. If Dana had it to do over again I’m sure she would never have told me. She would have just waved farewell on the morning I needed to report to lockup in order to serve time for a fight that I didn’t even start. Life is less fair than it is on the grade school playground and judges don’t care who hit who first. I would have forgotten about her on the inside while the days passed with unbearable slowness and I would have just assumed she’d moved on too.

  But she did tell me.

  She’d pressed my hand to her stomach and her eyes misted as she said, “I’m pregnant, Rafe. It’s yours.”

  And for a hundred and fifty three days I had lots of time to think about that.

  “I don’t want anything,” I tell her, my eyes still on the ripple in her satin robe as the piece of me inside her belly shifts again. “I just needed to see if you were all right.”

  She relaxes slightly but she doesn’t quite believe me. She’s spent enough time in my company to understand I’m not made of tender feelings.

  Her nerves are betrayed by the shake in her voice. “Kevin will take care of me. He’ll take care of both of us.”

  Kevin Walsh’s photo is on his law firm’s About Us page. He’s even older than Dana, with a face like a pale weasel with bad hair plugs. One of his suits is likely worth more than I’ve ever owned at one time. Yeah, he would be the kind of man to take care of businesses and wives and even a kid that’s not his.

  I’m only good at looking after myself and even on that count the results are kind of sketchy. I was a rotten kid, a hellacious teenager and by most standards I’m on my way to becoming a shitty man. Quick tempered, in and out of prison, making money through less than legal means and then blowing it all on nonsense before I’ve finished counting it. I have nothing to offer that kid in her belly. I was even the worst of big brothers, always lashing out with misplaced fury at a scrawny boy who didn’t even know how to fight back. There aren’t many memories that really bother me but the ones that do always involve Jonathan. Wherever he is I hope he doesn’t think of me too often. Since I could never even treat my little brother right then I have no business trying to be a father.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask and it makes no difference. I just want to know.

  Dana hesitates, afraid the answer will mean something to me. “It’s a boy.”

  A boy.

  A boy who might have my eyes and enjoy playing football just like I used to.

  A boy who won’t grow up with the stink of the Hempstead name following him around.

  A boy who will be raised here, amid sparkling affluence, instead of the grimy landscape of the small town trailer park where I grew up.

  A boy who will likely never even know that I exist.

  “Take good care of him,” I say and then I turn my back. There’s no point in emptying out the few crumbs in my wallet or making promises that I’ll give things I don’t have. She knows that, just like she knows our son will be much better off without me.

  And I know it too.

  This is why I won’t think twice about climbing into Dempsey’s truck and driving away without looking back.

  1

  Izzy

  My dad operates under a clear set of life rules.

  One of the cardinal bullet points is: Look a man in the eye and tell him you won’t accept his bullshit.

  That’s undoubtedly good advice.

  But when the bullshitter in question is staring somewhere south of your eyes then it’s difficult to apply.

  “I find this completely unacceptable.” I snap my fingers in the hope that his eyes get startled away from my tits. “We had a verbal agreement, Lou.”

  Lou, the pink-faced, thin-haired landlord who might require a power tool to pry him from his undersized desk chair, scratches an itch on the right side of the broad belly that threatens to split through his red polo shirt. His nasal wheeze of a voice follows. “You didn’t give me a deposit.”

  Another of my dad’s rules: Keep your temper in check. Unless you have no choice.

  I’m rapidly reaching the summit of no choice. I’ve been driving for two days, I smell like cheap roadside motel soap and all of my treasured belongings are currently stored in the trunk of my car. Granted, the car is a gleaming new Escalade, a gift from the devoted father whose advice follows me everywhere. But still. I’d much rather have a roof over my head tonight in a place that doesn’t offer to charge by the hour. Right now Landlord Lou is interfering with my plans.

  Alas, I am not my father. Deck Gentry could lean in and utter a few meaningful words that would give Landlord Lou an anxiety attack. I suspect the effect would not be the same coming from a five foot two redheaded female.

  So instead of blowing a fuse and knocking Lou’s pencil jar over, I sit up straighter and offer him a smile.

  “Lou, you told me to give you the deposit when I arrived. Well, here I am. And in my purse is the cashier’s check for the one bedroom apartment I had reserved online and then confirmed with a direct call to you. Do you recall our conversation? It was eight days ago. You chewed on potato chips the entire time. Or perhaps it was crackers. I can’t be sure. You did belch twice and failed to excuse yourself but I didn’t complain. Then you promised that my apartment was located close to the pool. You said the keys were in your hand. I’d like to know what happened to them since then.”

  Lou’s eyes are the color of limp spinach and they blink. “Hey, it’s nothing personal. I got an offer to pay more rent.”

  “I could have paid more rent.”

  He shrugs and
his fat fingers play with a ballpoint pen. “Eh, it’s just the way it works. There’s never enough apartments in Hutton to deal with all the damn college kids coming back.”

  “Fascinating summary of the local real estate market. Technically I’m one of those college kids. Except I’m not a kid. And I’m enrolled in grad school for speech pathology. But that doesn’t matter. I need a place to live. I drove all the way here from Arizona with the expectation that one awaited me. I could sue you, you know.”

  My understanding of the legal system is dim. But Lou’s limp spinach eyes bug out.

  “There’s no need for that kind of talk, Isabel.”

  “It’s Isabella. My friends call me Izzy. But you can’t. You haven’t even apologized yet.”

  He loses his alarmed expression, perhaps realizing that I am not about to mount a legal challenge. “I am sorry.”

  “I don’t forgive you.”

  The man sighs. He shifts in his chair and a fart-like noise follows. “You ought to check out the HSU online forums. Sometimes people post there in search of roommates. Good looking girl like you should have no trouble finding a place.”