Five Years Ago: Part 1 1 page

BORN SAVAGES

By Cora Brent

© 2015

All rights reserved

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When you’re finished, check out the end of the book to find out how YOU can have a say in whose story comes next.

GENTRY BOYS

Draw

Risk

Game

Fall

Hold (Dec 2015)

Cross (Feb 2016)

DEFIANT MC Series

Know Me: A Novella

Promise Me

Remember Me

Reckless Point

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COPYRIGHT

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 similarities to events or situations are also coincidental.

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© 2015 by Cora Brent

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design: © L.J. Anderson, Mayhem Cover Creations

Cover Photo: istockphoto.com/portfolio/baytunc

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE - Ren

CHAPTER TWO - Oz

CHAPTER THREE - Ren

CHAPTER FOUR - Oz

CHAPTER FIVE - Five Years Ago

CHAPTER SIX - Ren

CHAPTER SEVEN - Oz

CHAPTER EIGHT - Ren

CHAPTER NINE - Oz

CHAPTER TEN - Ren

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Five Years Ago

CHAPTER TWELVE - Oz

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Ren

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Oz

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Five Years Ago

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Ren

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Oz

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Ren

CHAPTER NINETEEN - Five Years Ago

CHAPTER TWENTY - Oz

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Ren

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Oz

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Ren

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Oz

CHAPTER ONE

REN

Although I’m blinking and sitting upright in the dark bedroom of my Las Vegas apartment with a phone glued to my ear, my brain is still half inside of a dream.

It was a nice dream.

I miss it.

It starred a virile, highly bangable male body and the cage of a Ferris wheel.

The three of us – the body, the Ferris wheel and me – went up and down and up and down again. The cage rattled to the steady beat of thumping club music; a tribal pulse that went faster and faster until the world began to turn kaleidoscope colors and then…

BZZZBZZZBZZZ

The sheer symbolism borders on pathetic.

Plus, the more awake I am the easier it is to remember that I haven’t done anything that satisfying in real life lately.

But leave it to Brigitte to decide that two a.m. is a splendid time to make a phone call. My sister is not the type of person who allows minor hassles like sleep, empathy and common sense interfere with her goals. And recently her goal involves getting me to agree to do something outrageous.

I sigh into the air-conditioned darkness, sexually frustrated and trying to block out my sister’s metallic voice as my mind searches for the face of my dream prince. After all, the body seemed to be attached to a man and men usually have faces.

In a flash, I see him. I can almost name him. But then he is lost.

Inside my head I’m cursing fifteen furious variations of the word ‘FUCK!’ and mourning a squandered orgasm.

However, I am a good sister so I stay quiet. I even keep the phone propped against my ear and sort of listen to the words coming out of it.

“Ren! They are committing to ten.”

Brigitte has a breathless gasp in her voice, like she’s just finished sprinting back and forth across the floor of her crappy apartment in the most dismal quarter of Los Angeles. My sister reminds me of a twitchy rabbit sometimes, a twitchy rabbit that is highly imperious, very well accessorized and smells expensive.

“Ten?” I grumble. “Ten what?”

I know very well what she’s talking about. It’s also the last thing I feel like discussing in the middle of the night while a slow throb withers between my legs.

“Ten episodes.” She raises her voice. Maybe she believes she can shout her way through my reluctance. It wouldn’t be the first time. “And a second season if the first one grabs ratings.”

My little sister has lost her ever-loving mind.

But then again, whether she ever had one in the first place was always a question up for grabs.

I yawn and try to focus. “A moot point, isn’t it? Spence already said no.”

A celebratory giggle reaches across three hundred miles and pricks at my blossoming headache. She breaks into a singsong voice. “Oh no, sweet sister, Spencer said yes. Yes yes yes YES!”

If I were the gasping type of girl I would gasp at the news.

But I’m not and I don’t, especially because I don’t believe it. Spencer is the last one in the family who would sign on for this, a circus of cameras and lost siblings invading his home turf.

Spencer still lives down there on that godforsaken patch of Arizona desert where our father once dragged all of us in a quest for something opposite to the L.A. glare. These days, my younger brother is the only Savage still haunting the sage and the cacti. Whenever I picture him he’s got his nose halfway up a rusted carburetor and a shotgun slung across his back, daring any rattlesnake that crosses his path to coil up and fuck with him. That’s Spence.

Brigitte decides my dazed silence must be consent. She starts dropping names of agents and producers and all the tiresome litany of Hollywood bullshit that I wish I knew nothing about.

But I know too much.

Show business is coded into my goddamn DNA. It’s what made us. It’s what broke us. It’s what I want surgically cut from my identity, and what I will keep trying to outrun as long as this last name of mine keeps chasing.

My sister talks on and on. My heart hurts a little to hear the excitement in her voice because I know I’ll be the one to crush it. Even though Brigitte has a long history of giving me heartburn she is still my sister, still some part of the red-headed little girl who stubbornly clung to my waist to keep me from going anywhere without her.

Plus, she’s got Ava, my other sister, on her side. Ava, who was always so soft and adrift, who’s been frantic for anything that looks vaguely like love since we were children. Ava has one now herself, a child. A son who at the age of two is a physical reproduction of his gorgeous asshole of a father. Yet he did manage to inherit his mother’s wounded blue eyes. Saying no to Brigitte will sting a little; saying no to Ava feels like kicking a kitten.

My two sisters couldn’t be more different. There’s Brigitte, brash and tempestuous, ready to grab her birthright with both manicured claws. Then Ava, tender and forever bewildered by the awful things the years have done to her so far.

And finally there is me. Loren, or Ren. The brick wall. Stoic. Stalwart. Detached and cold-hearted.

“Do you feel nothing, Loren?” my own mother would howl while she grabbed her own throat with theatrical gusto. “Is there even blood beneath that pallid skin of yours?”

There’s no point in answering such questions. I always knew that.

“She likes to see me cry.

She’ll tell you that’s a terrible lie.”

Those words once found their way into a fourth grade poetry assignment for Mother’s Day. I swear I have memories of being pinched by her when I was too small to tell anyone about it. As soon as the tears showed up Lita Savage would always back off, a perverse smile lighting up her lips. She was, and is, a person who thrives off the agony of others. A person like that should never ever be a parent.

By now, Lita has nothing to do with me. Or with Ava or Brigitte for that matter.

The three of us, the Savage sisters, are like points of a triangle, all independent and lonely in our separate corners. Bouncing around somewhere in our orbit are my two brothers – rugged Spencer and arrogant Montgomery. They circle us as warily as they do one another.

Montgomery. Loren. Spencer. Ava. Brigitte.

Write all our names in one sentence and it’ll look like a grand mash up of an old silver screen marquee. That was probably what Lita had in mind to begin with when she married August Savage. She wasted no time delivering her first genetic insurance policy and kept them coming in quick order. Monty was born exactly nine months after the diamond landed on her finger and I came along exactly ten months after him. The twins, Ava and Spence, joined the crazy Savage cast a year later and the youngest, the one who has destroyed my peaceful night, came screaming into her own spotlight twelve months after that. I don’t know the specifics but Brigitte’s birth must have taken the gynecological cake for Lita because there were no more siblings afterwards.

In fact, ever since I could remember my parents had occupied separate bedrooms and barely spoke. There was never any question about any of us being Savages though. All five of us, in our distinct ways, manage to resemble dead movie stars.

I’m still half listening to my sister yammer on about production schedules and publicity shoots and other things that don’t interest me at all. I’m putting off the moment that I tell her I can’t do it. She thinks I don’t understand but I understand very well. It’s a tasteless reality television carnival that has nothing to do with reality. There are dozens just like it these days. I wouldn’t be on board even if they weren’t planning on filming down in the dusty hellhole that’s the last sad relic of the glittering Savage fortune.

“Ren, are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

My god, I can see it like it’s all already been filmed, already been broadcast, already the subject of ten thousand clumsily written blogs. It makes me a little sick that the producers are likely banking on that poignancy, on the ‘Look how far they’ve fallen!’ vibe of despair as they film the remnants of a glamorous family bickering over water usage and shuffling around in the derelict mess.

Who the hell would agree to that?

Then something Brigitte says catches my attention and it all makes sense. Now I know why my own sisters have shoved their dignity into a sock drawer.

Spencer too, apparently. My younger brother must be more desperate than I thought.

“How much?” I ask.

“Five grand. Each. Per episode, Ren. So that’s five grand times ten. Quick, do the math.” Her tone is jubilant. She knows she’s won. I never realized it was possible to hear someone smirk. “Think you can beat that as a cocktail waitress out there on the Vegas strip?”

Her words have a sharp edge. They taunt. They are supposed to.

I answer back just as sharply. “I’m not a cocktail waitress.”

“You’re not far off.”

“I deal blackjack to frat boys, party girls and sad sacks with deep pockets who sometimes get the mistaken impression that I’m for sale too. And you know damn well I can’t beat that take in six months.”

I pause and swallow, wishing I had something fiery at hand, something on the high end of the alcohol proof scale. I could use some fire right now. Whatever fight I had seems to be evaporating. Maybe a different tactic would work. I clear my throat and put on my best voice of reason.

“Bree, I can’t help but feel that you’re diving right into the dark water without any idea how deep it is. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Stop,” she scoffs. “I’m not asking for anything I’m not willing to do myself.”

I picture her waving a petite hand in the air and rolling her eyes. No one needs to tell Brigitte what is best. Complaints are unwelcome here. She’s never liked her nickname, Bree, and is in the habit of demanding that everyone draw out the second syllable of her full name with a chic, foreign-sounding lilt.

“This is a great opportunity,” insists Brijeeeet and she suddenly sounds whiny, agitated. Goddamn her, she’s probably thinking. Selfish jerk.

She really does need me to cooperate. The deal for the show only stands if all five of us sign on.

When I don’t answer she sighs with exasperation and her pitch escalates. Brigitte only has so much patience for playing nice.

“Dammit Ren! Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke? A punch line? An ‘Oh god, look what happened to those Savages!’ kind of sneering sympathy which isn’t really sympathy at all. They gloat. They laugh. We’re fucking funny to them. You know it’s true.”

I soften. Only a little. The permanent dent in our status hurts her the most. I’ve gotten used to it. A long time ago I figured out that no matter the circumstances I wouldn’t have chosen that insane life. It was never my fate. But Brigitte isn’t over it. She never will be.

“Bree,” I start to say but she’s on a roll. She hasn’t made her point yet.

“Down the rabbit hole we went,” she howls. “The Savages, in one sad scandalous lump. Took us only a generation to go from America’s sweethearts to American baggage. And I’m not talking about the boutique shit. I’m talking about a low end department store kind of baggage made of dog hide and imported from some part of the world where people are forced to live in six foot tin kennels and work in the goddamn baggage factory twenty-two hours a day.”

I’ve stopped listening somewhere in the middle of that garbled monologue. I don’t know where she comes up with this crap. It was probably vomited from the mines of some focus group stuffed with Armani suits.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke?”

“Hmm,” I grunt when she pauses for breath. I’m startled to find myself actually considering it. Mostly I’m considering how much I’d like to tell my florid-faced overseer at the casino that he’s rubbed his knobby hard-on across my ass for the last time.

Not that I’m destitute. Living in Vegas can be done cheaply and my single bedroom is comfortable enough for me and a semi-annual guest or two, which is about all I can brag about besides faceless bronzed muscle dreams. Any extra money I come across I immediately send Ava’s way, no matter how much she tries to argue that I shouldn’t.

The thing is, the world has largely forgotten about me and I’ve blended into the scenery here. Anonymity is comfortable. If you’ve never been attached to celebrities you wouldn’t understand. My sister’s demands would destroy that comfort. I know how it works. Even if the show is only marginally successful we’ll be stalked. We’ll be wild prey on the loose in America. They would find us as we tiptoe out of a steakhouse, slither into traffic court, and stumble from the dentist. The weapons would be anything capable of basic photography. We would return to being the curious oddities that the world would like to own.

We would be….Famous.

Brigitte’s voice grows small and uncertain. My silence is hurting her, deflating her ambitions. She begins to sound the opposite of confident. She sounds like a little girl begging her big sister to let her borrow an expensive dress.

“Please, Loren,” she wheedles. “I need this. We all do. Spence is barely hanging onto the ranch, Ava wants to give her boy something better than a slum life and I can’t even get a screen test for a B level slasher flick. People hear my name and they sneer for god’s sake. They do! You can tell what they’re thinking. ‘The Savages, aren’t they all dead yet?’ This is probably the only shot we’re going to get and I know it might be tacky and vulgar. I know that! I know they will edit the shit out of everything we say and make us look even more ridiculous than we are. But it will also put us on the map. Loren, we’ll be those faces who get showered with several grand just for showing up at some wannabe’s party in Malibu.”

I close my eyes. My sister is counting on the fact that I don’t have it in me to refuse her. She might be right. “Monty?”

She pauses. “Not yet.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t know or he’s refusing?”

My inscrutable big brother has been keeping himself out of reach since he took a ten-month tour of the California correctional facilities. Assault, complicated by cocaine possession in large enough quantities to be considered intent to distribute. But Montgomery Savage doesn’t tolerate being needled in a shoddy bar by some random asshole with a beer gut so he answered with his fists. Unbelievably stupid, considering what he had in his pockets. His sentence could easily have been much longer. And it would have been, except some big name ambulance-chasing celebrity attorney who’d gone to prep school with my father had taken the case pro bono. That was the last time a Savage had been newsworthy and Monty has been keeping quiet down in San Diego since his release. All the gossip says he’s shacked up with some has-been soap opera cougar. He refuses to confirm whether or not it’s true.

But Brigitte evidently hasn’t run her plans past the eldest Savage sibling. She exhales dramatically. “Montgomery has expensive habits and a deep affection for his baby sister. Besides, Monty isn’t stupid. He’ll understand that it’s a better option than whoring himself out indefinitely to some withered, graying snatch and her dusty Emmy collection.”

I wince over the imagery. “Better we all whore ourselves out in prime time living rooms across the nation, huh?”

Brigitte lets out a little hiss. “Cut it out, Ren. Negativity etches permanent wrinkles you know.”

“Yes, Lita. I know.”

She ignores the insult, pretends I’m not mocking her by comparing her to our mother. “This is a legitimate business venture. An entire brand will be forged. The Savages. We can remake ourselves.”

“Those aren’t your words.”

“So? That doesn’t mean they are untrue.”

I’m out of bed now, pacing the room. It’s a small room so it only takes three short strides to get from one end to the other. My apartment is sparsely decorated in a sleek contemporary modern style, courtesy of Ikea. There is a bed, a dresser, a couch and a small dinette. It’s neat and clean and boring. It suits me well. After switching on the single overhead light I perch on the edge of the memory foam mattress, the last vestiges of sleep gone. There’s no use in pretending that I’ll be returning to my Ferris wheel fantasy nap after Brigitte finishes with me.

“Look, I need some assurance that Lita stays the fuck away. I won’t even talk about it unless that’s a sure thing. No maternal surprises for dramatic effect, like we’re sitting down to dinner and she rings the motherfucking doorbell. I don’t want to hear a word about her or I swear I’ll walk.”

Brigitte is ready with an answer. “Oh god, she knows nothing. She hung up the phone when the producers tried to call her. She doesn’t want anything to do with us. Apparently she’s still playing house with the stroke patient she married, probably busily researching the best way to make him choke on a pillow.”

“I’m serious, Bree. It better be written into the damn contract. No Lita.” My headache has grown. I scrabble around in my nightstand for the bottle of Excedrin and swallow two pills without any water.

“I swear it, Ren. On my honor as your sister. I’m not all that excited to see her ever again either.”

My mouth twitches. Brigitte sounds so earnest. Brigitte is a fantastic actress. “You might have spent a big chunk of your honor when you appropriated my sole pair of Manolo Blahnik’s and broke the left heel.”

“You’ve a memory like an elephant. That was years ago. I apologized. I swear I still have some honor remaining. Consider it yours.”

“Does it have a name?”

“What, you mean the show?”

“Yes, I mean the show. What do they plan on calling it?”

“Born Savages.”

I should have swallowed the pills with at least one mouthful of water. I can feel every centimeter of their slow slide. For a second they pause. I imagine they are caught somewhere close to my heart.

“Clever,” I cough. “Who spent years getting an expensive degree for the right to think that up?”

“I think it’s cute. It works. I told you who’s producing it, right? Gary Vogel. He’s behind all the classier projects, the ones broadcast on the Biz Network that are centered around real names, not these cheesy game shows that cast common folk nobodies. He’s got the Kingston sisters signed on to live on a goat farm in Vermont during shearing season. Stop laughing! It will be quite artistic from what I hear. And get this. Gary happens to the producer for Bastion Brats.”

I groan. “You shouldn’t have reminded me. That thing is a tawdry disaster.”

“It’s one of the highest rated shows in the country. Wait, didn’t you used to be friends with Bitty Bastion like a million years ago in grade school? Before her exotic journey into twelve rounds of rehab, that is. Anyway, Bitty and Becky already have their own talk shows and the rest are swimming in more offers than they can keep track of. If those moon-faced morons can get that far, think of what we can do.”

“I’ll bet Gary told you that.”

“Does it matter?” She sounds excited again.

When Brigitte was a little girl she used to bounce maniacally on her toes whenever she got nervous or excited. It was endearing then. I picture her doing the same thing in her dumpy apartment. It’s still endearing.

“So you’re in, right Ren? I knew you wouldn’t hang us out to dry. Ava’s such a pessimist. She was terrified to even ask you.”

Once I say it there’s no taking it back. “Just the five of us, right? No other Savages.”

I can hear the smile in her voice. “What other Savages could there possibly be? We’re the only ones anyone is interested in.”

“Okay.”

“Clarify that ‘okay’, please.”

“You know you’ve got me, Bree. I won’t help you with Monty though.”

“Monty will be easy.”

“Monty is the opposite of easy.”

“Trust me. I’ll have Monty signed and sealed before you can say the word Arizona.”

Outside a siren wails and then surges into the distance toward some unknown disaster. “Arizona.”

The word brings out strange feelings in me. Of a place, of a time, of a boy….

“What other Savages could there possibly be?”

The question has haunted me long before my sister ever casually uttered it.

CHAPTER TWO

OZ

In this group two, are beginners and two are not. The woman worries me. She blinks weirdly fast and chews on the inside of her mouth while casting quick glances at the man beside her. They’re a couple, plainly still in that early uncertain phase. She’s too freaking eager to please him. It’s obvious to me that she’s not the underground type of girl. She’s the kind that breaks a nail flipping the tab of a beer can. I can do that; sort women out with ease. I’m almost always right.

The other pair is a father/son set from Nashville who tell me they’ve been caving a handful of other times in these rich Smoky Mountains. They are fine. They are the eager, appreciative types that I love guiding through the caves.

The woman – Leah is her name – grunts as she struggles through the small break in the rock. We’re trying to reach a cavernous room filled with complex formations, a caver’s paradise. But we have to hold on a minute because Leah’s plentiful tits don’t like the narrow pass. She shimmies a few inches deeper into the rock and grunts again.

“Fuck,” she spits and immediately seems alarmed that such a foul syllable came from her mouth.

The father and son titter just inside the room but Leah’s boyfriend looks mad. He throws her a scornful glare.

Right then and there I know what he’s about and I don’t like him. He’s one of those self-righteous bastards. You know the type, hugging his moral superiority like a security blanket or his mother’s left nipple. Meanwhile I’d bet my last bag of trail mix that the guy has done eight times as much dirty shit as the rest of us combined.

Well, that is if I don’t count myself. There’s no way this dude with his oatmeal face and orangutan limbs could beat me in a matchup of belt notches.

But I’m starting to feel sorry for Leah and her squished boobs at this point so I offer her a hand. She grabs at it gratefully and I haul her the rest of the way out of the rock.

“You made it,” I say with token enthusiasm, trying not to sound too happy because she could get the wrong idea. Women do that a lot. If it’s not the right place and time I always try to head it off, big tits or not.

“Oh jeez, thanks Oz,” she gushes and pats her chest, making sure that the girls are still intact. Or else she’s trying to direct my attention to their glorious shape. But her biggest problem is that it’s tough to look sexy with a sweaty face and trapped in a full body yellow jumpsuit.

Anyway, I’ve always sworn off banging my customers. There’s enough hot ass waiting up above without having to shop for it down here. Plus there’s something sort of tasteless about guiding a girl through the dark like a trusting lamb and then getting her on her back. Seems predatory somehow.

That doesn’t mean I’ve never done it. I have. Once. You won’t catch me admitting it out loud though.

“Hot damn,” says the kid in awe as he adjusts his headlamp and gets a good look around the room.

I smile. This is the reaction I always hope for. I want them to feel enchanted, captivated, bowled right the fuck over that shit like this exists beneath their feet. It was how I felt the first time I ever stepped into a cave. I still feel that way every time I go underground and see things that the world above can never equal.

This place is called the Round Room and it’s at the very center of the honeycomb of underground passages that comprise the Guard Cave deep in the picturesque hills of Tennessee. I’ve been in and out of the whole labyrinth so often that I don’t even need a map. Despite the fact that I’ve been inside some of earth’s most stupendous caves I never tire of the sight of the Round Room.

As we edge our way in, I caution the group to take care because the rock formations can actually be quite fragile. The place is a wonder, a fantasyland of conical shapes that extend from the ceiling and bubble out of the ground. It’s such a strange sight that if you squint you might believe you are no longer on earth.

The kid’s dad is hunkered down and adjusting his headlamp as he examines one of the stalagmite cones. He lets out a low whistle. “How long did you say it would take for something like this to form?”

“A hundred and fifty years,” says his son, obviously proud that he remembered a few of the details of my long spiel before we started the tour.

I shine my light on the rigid, imperfect cylinder rising out of the ground. It looks like a gargoyle’s penis.

“Per inch,” I correct him. “Takes about a hundred and fifty years of constant drip for enough mineral residue to collect into an inch of stone.”

“Wow,” breathes Leah and she’s at my side with her arm brushing against mine. Her honorable semi-boyfriend who hates the word ‘fuck’ is somewhere in the darkness; discarded, rejected, at least temporarily.

The boy is full of questions. He’s a bright kid, maybe sixteen or so. He asks how many caves I’ve been in, how long I’ve been doing this, what’s the most awesome shit I’ve ever seen. He listens carefully when I answer.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 760