13. Asher
13
ASHER
I woke up very grumpy.
I grinned at the text as I pushed the cart through the grocery store. I knew she wouldn’t like waking up alone, but if I had stayed, things would have heated up again, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself a second time. A man could only hold out so long. So, I kissed her on the lips, wishing I could see that beautiful smile one last time before I slipped out of bed, then locked up and headed home. It nearly killed me, but I’d done it.
Is there any particular reason?
I would think you would know the answer to that, considering you weren’t here this morning.
Yeah, I knew this might cause some issues. A woman didn’t like to feel like she was a booty call, but since I did all the giving last night, I figured she couldn’t be too upset with me. I rounded the corner and nearly bumped into a woman because I was too busy paying attention to the three dots bouncing on the screen.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, continuing on my way.
“It’s no problem. Hey, do I know you?”
I tore my gaze from my phone and glanced at the woman, then shook my head. “Nope.” Then my eyes went right back to my phone. As I stood in front of the cereal, I typed out a quick reply.
I want to see you tonight, Holly Bear.
“Are you sure we’ve never met?” the woman asked again, chuckling as she strolled up to me. “I’m sorry, it’s just that you look so familiar.”
“Sorry, you must be thinking of someone else.”
“No, I could never forget a face as handsome as yours.”
Great. That was just fucking perfect. I was here to do my grocery shopping and this woman was hitting on me. At the fucking grocery store. “Have a nice day,” I said, turning away from her.
I pushed my cart away, hoping she would take a hint. I didn’t want to be rude, but I wasn’t interested in her. Yes, she was beautiful, but there was only one woman I had eyes for, and she was currently replying to my message.
Holly Bear???
I smirked at her reply.
I think it suits you. Because you’re all growly this morning.
Is this where you think calling me a bear will win you points and get you to see me again tonight?
Definitely. Who doesn’t like a cute bear? So, tonight?
That depends.
On what?
“You know, I never do this.”
I stopped pushing the cart and gritted my teeth as I heard the woman laugh softly behind me. The old Asher would have taken this woman home in a heartbeat. He would have fucked her and then walked out without a care in the world. Yes, she would have been devastated, but he wouldn’t have cared. But I wasn’t that guy anymore. I didn’t want to be that prick. I wanted to let a woman down nicely and have it end on a good note. But she was making it fucking impossible.
“My name is Ashley. Maybe we could grab a drink sometime. I know this great place in the city.”
My phone buzzed again and I looked down, tuning out the woman as Holly texted me again.
Aww. Do you need a rescue?
My head snapped up and I looked through the crowd of people in the aisle until I spotted her. She stood at the end, blue hat and all, waving her fingers at me. It was Sunday and she knew I would be here, so she followed me like a little stalker to trap me because I walked out on her.
And I was never so fucking happy to see her.
“So, what do you think?” the woman asked.
“I think I see my girlfriend,” I said as my lips twitched in amusement.
“Girlfriend? But?—”
I didn’t stick around to listen to another word she said. I headed down the aisle and stopped beside her only long enough to pull her into my arms and lay one hell of a kiss on her. She giggled against me as I tugged on her braid. She was so fucking cute in this hat.
“So, you’re following me now?”
“Only when you sneak out of bed on me.”
“Yeah? Did you put a tracker on my phone or did you just take a wild guess I would be here at this time?”
“Well, I went to your house first and then to every grocery store within ten miles of your house until I found the right one.”
“You did not,” I grinned.
“Of course I didn’t. You’re so predictable. You like to do your grocery shopping at the same time every week.”
“You haven’t known me that long,” I retorted.
“I’ve known you long enough. Besides…”
I waited for her to say something else, and when she didn’t, I motioned her on. “Yes?”
“I have nothing else to say. I just thought it would sound better if I said besides. Like I had some other reason for knowing you so well. I thought maybe you would interrupt me and then I wouldn’t have to come up with a reason.”
“And I didn’t.”
“Nope. So, I guess I look like a fool once again.”
“I’ll take it?—”
“No!” a female voice cried out.
I jerked my head to the right and stepped back slightly from Holly. Noelle was standing not five feet from us, glaring at us with an intensity that made my balls think about crawling up inside me.
“No, what?” Holly asked.
“No, this is not happening. Look, you have control of the store and your house and his house. But this grocery store is off-limits. It’s mine. You can’t come in here and do your cutesy thing in here.”
“Our what?” I asked.
“You know what. That thing you were doing when I walked around the corner. Smooching and smiling at each other, all lovey-dovey. You make me want to gag. This is not the place for kissing and groping. This is a place for shopping. Okay? People buy groceries here. They do not come here to see you all happy and shit. No one needs that at…” She looked at her watch and sighed. “Eleven o’clock in the morning!”
“Is that too early for you?” I asked. “Should we come back around two? Would that be better for you?”
“Never would be better. I hereby declare this grocery store a kiss-free zone. There will be no hand-holding. No kissing. No public displays of affection of any kind here. I don’t even want to see you two smiling at each other!”
“What if he says something funny?” Holly asked.
Noelle raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh, suddenly he’s a funny man? He’s got all the jokes now? I thought he was sweet and kind and special. Would you like to change that?”
“Maybe he’s all those things and funny.”
“I can be funny,” I said.
Noelle slowly turned to me and her nostrils flared. “I still have my sewing kit.”
“And I have no doubt you will use it viciously on me, one evil stab at a time.”
“See?” Holly grinned. “He’s hilarious!”
I chuckled, wrapping my arm around Holly’s shoulder and pulling her to my side. “I’ve been known to have my moments.”
“I can’t take this. I’m going to have to find a new grocery store and probably a new gas station. Hell, I’m going to have to find a new place to get hot cocoa. You can’t be relied on for anything anymore!”
“Is PDA at a gas station a thing?” I asked Holly.
She shrugged. “Should we give it a shot?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“No, no!” Noelle muttered, pacing the grocery store aisle like a mad woman. “I can’t believe this. I can deal with you being happy, alright? I’m a normal, pretty well-adjusted person. I can be happy for other people. I know my limits. But this is not one of them. I don’t want to have to turn around and see you kissing face everywhere I go.”
“I think the phrase you’re looking for is sucking face,” I clarified.
She thrust her hand on her hip as her nostrils flared in anger. “Again, do I need to remind you about my sewing kit?”
“No, I’m well aware of it, but I’m willing to risk a thousand tiny needle wounds for this woman.”
“Aww, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Holly smiled up at me. “I think I might cry.”
“No. Don’t you dare!” Noelle jabbed her finger in Holly’s face. “This is not some Hallmark movie. You are not allowed to say gushy things or risk needle marks—like sewing needles, not drugs—” Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not a druggie, are you?”
“Last I checked, I have no drugs on me, but if you know someone good?—”
She tossed her hands up and walked back to her cart. “I give up. I’m going back to my day and pretending I didn’t see you here. And when I show up tomorrow morning, we’re not going to discuss this. You—” she pointed at Holly— “are going to tell me about your very boring Sunday. You stayed in bed and then cleaned your house all afternoon. And you— Well, I wouldn’t see you, so it doesn’t matter what you say.” She shoved her cart forward with a huff and continued past us, muttering to herself about how Sundays were not supposed to include Holly and her stupid boyfriend.
I turned to Holly with a grin. “Well, I think we played that rather well.”
“I’d say so. She’s thoroughly worked up for the day. You did a good job laying on the Hallmark fluff. I’m pretty sure she’ll never watch another sappy movie for as long as she lives.”
“Then our work is done.”
“All we need to do now is finish the grocery shopping, find a good cancer movie, cry in each other’s arms, and vow to take care of each other for the rest of all time.”
“For all eternity,” I clarified. “Sounds like a solid plan.”
“Hallmark would be so proud of us,” she smiled up at me.
“Well, we’d better follow through on this, or we’ll never get that movie deal.”
She sighed heavily. “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
I curled my arm around her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. I was in serious trouble of falling in love with this woman.
“So, this is the bachelor pad,” she said as she wandered around my house, checking out the very sparse living arrangements.
I chuckled as she examined it with a scrutinizing eye. Yeah, it wasn’t much to look at. In fact, to anyone else, it looked like a rental that anyone might move into at any moment.
“I know it’s not much.”
“It’s very…” She spun around, taking it all in. “It’s very plain.”
“I know,” I grinned, unloading the groceries. “I don’t exactly have a flair for decorating.”
“You don’t have a single picture on any of the walls,” she pointed out.
I glanced around, just realizing how right that was. “No, I guess I don’t.”
“I mean, there’s not even a mirror. There’s literally not a single hole in any of the walls.”
I cocked my head to the side, smirking at her. “Would it make you feel better if I put a hole in the wall?”
“Are you talking about punching a hole in the wall or hanging a picture?”
“Either one works for me.”
She pretended to think about it for a moment. “While punching a hole in the wall might feel more masculine, I think perhaps we should go with the second option.”
“Okay,” I said, snatching my keys off the counter.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Now?” Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline in surprise.
“Well, is there a better time to go?”
“I would think we should finish putting away the groceries first. And maybe we should get a sense of your…style.” She nearly laughed when she said the last part.
“Okay. I’ll put away the groceries and you wander around and figure out what my style is.”
“You’re not worried I’m going to find some deep, dark secret?”
“Not at all. Just don’t look in my closet.”
She hummed slightly, swaying closer to me. “Anywhere in particular?”
She was playing a dangerous game, but I was better at it. “On the shelf, left side.”
Her eyes widened comically. “Why? What’s there?”
I leaned against the counter, staring at her intently. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?”
I watched as her throat bobbed. “Okay, I won’t look.”
“I’ll know if you do.”
I had her now. I could feel the curiosity pouring off her in waves. She was dying to know what was there, and now that I threw the line out there, I had her hooked. She was going to look. She couldn’t resist.
“I would never invade your privacy.”
I paused for effect, then nodded. “Good, because I’d like to think I can trust you with my deepest secrets.”
She mimicked crossing her heart, then turned on her heel and walked away. A smile split my lips as I shook my head and turned to finish unloading the groceries. I gave her another minute before she had that closet open to uncover my deep, dark secrets.
After five minutes, I put the last bag in the pantry and went in search of my curious girlfriend. As I suspected, I found her digging through my closet, tearing it apart. I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed as I watched her sit cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the contents of my box of photos. They were from my family and early days in the military. Nothing of my life from OPS or Jade resided in that box, and that’s the way I wanted to keep it.
But she could have access to every other part of me.
“Find anything good?” I asked, smiling at her.
She jumped, scrambling to shove everything behind her and hide it, which was just impossible. The sheepish look on her face was too damn cute and the blush staining her cheeks made her all the more adorable. Fuck, I was going to have to find a different word to describe her. I was on the verge of becoming the biggest sap ever.
“Asher, I—this isn’t what it looks like.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “It looks like you went through my box of secrets. You know, the one I told you was hidden in the corner of my closet and told you not to go through. And it looks like you got so lost in it that you didn’t even hear me come in, and now you’re surrounded by all of my family photos.”
She looked all around her at the pictures spread all over the floor and then back up at me. “Okay, it’s exactly what it looks like, but I swear?—”
I chuckled as I strode over and sat down beside her on the floor. “Relax. Do you really think I would have told you where my big box of secrets was if I didn’t want you to look at it?”
Her jaw dropped, then she glared at me, taking me by surprise as she shoved me backward, making me fall on my back. “You ass. Why would you do that to me?”
“Because I like it when you get all flustered. Kind of like how you did the same thing this morning by showing up at the grocery store to call me out on leaving you in bed.”
Her nose twitched slightly in humor. “Fine, you may have a point.”
“I definitely have a point. So, what did you discover about me?”
“Well, you definitely need a photo album. You have to be the most unorganized man I’ve ever seen. Haven’t you ever heard of scrapbooking?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Yes, in fact, I get together with my boss every Thursday night for a scrapbooking party. He brings the wine and I bring the scraps of sheet metal.”
“Haha. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know exactly what you meant,” I grumbled, sliding my hand around her neck. “It just so happens I have other plans for my nights than scrapbooking,”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm,” I murmured, sliding my lips over hers. “And if they included glue, it would be for things that didn’t have anything to do with pictures.”
Shock rippled across her face before she burst out laughing. “I don’t even want to know what you would do with glue in the bedroom. That sounds so…”
“Twisted?”
“Yes!”
“Good. I have no idea either.”
“Then why did you say it?”
I shrugged. “It sounded good at the time. So, what did you come up with? What kind of man am I?”
“Definitely not flowers.”
“I can agree with that.”
“And you shouldn’t have anything pink. That would be weird.”
I glanced around the gray walls of the house and tried to imagine anything pink in here and grimaced. “I think pink is definitely out.”
“Not that pink and gray don’t go well together,” she said suddenly. “Just not for a man like you.”
“I’m glad you think so much of my masculinity.”
“But you definitely need something on these walls. It’s so depressing.”
“I’ll let you lead the way.”
I started gathering up the photos and putting them back in the box, but noticed she was just watching. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye and caught that look on her face, the one women got when they were about to ask a question—one they weren’t sure they should ask, but they really wanted to.
“Go ahead,” I prompted.
She didn’t ask right away, but I knew it was coming. And I knew what she was going to ask.
“You don’t have any pictures of her.”
I shook my head. There wasn’t a single one. That probably didn’t ring true with what she had in her mind of a normal relationship, but how the hell was I supposed to explain that to her?
“That’s because I don’t have any of us together.”
I got the reaction I expected. The shock and disbelief almost made me feel like an ass. “How—I don’t—” She shook her head, trying to understand, but she never would.
“Our marriage wasn’t exactly conventional. It was complicated, and by the time I knew I loved her…things started falling apart. She was sick.”
Her face dropped.
“Mentally. I didn’t see the signs. Maybe I didn’t want to. I don’t know. Her mother had recently died and she was struggling with her death. What I didn’t know was that she was self-medicating with old prescriptions from her Mom.” I let that sink in for a moment. It didn’t hurt nearly as badly to say it out loud as it used to. “The coroner said that because she was using her mother’s prescriptions, it was possible that instead of treating her depression, she was worsening it.”
“She killed herself,” she whispered.
I nodded. “At her mother’s funeral. She was at her mother’s grave one minute, and the next, I was looking for her, trying to figure out where she was. And then I heard the van and I just knew.” Holly reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard. “The van slammed into a tree. She flew through the windshield and was killed instantly.”
“Asher…”
“And that’s why I don’t have any pictures of us,” I smiled. “Because it ended all too soon.” I grabbed the box and carried it over to the closet, replacing it on the shelf. When I closed the door, she was crying on the ground.
For me.
And I didn’t want that. I bent over and hauled her off her feet, pulling her into my arms. “Please don’t be sad. It’s in the past.”
“But—”
“But it’s over. It sucked for a long time, and it dragged me down for so long, but I moved on. That’s not who I am anymore.”
“She was part of you,” she argued.
“Yes, she was. And I learned a long time ago that if I was going to live for myself, I had to let her go. Because the man I was holding onto her had nothing left to live for. I drank way too much. I hated myself. There were days I didn’t want to live. And I won’t ever let myself be that man again. So, this is who I am. All of me.”
She swiped the tears from her face and took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“So, how about we go find some pictures to brighten up this place?”
“Fine, but I get the final say.”
“That hardly seems fair, but I’ll trust your judgment.”