30. Asher
30
ASHER
I stepped out of my house and saw his truck idling across the street. It was too fucking early in the morning to deal with Chase or Patrick. As much as I wanted to get this shit with Jade taken care of, I still had a life here and obligations.
Not that Chase cared. He got out of his truck, slamming the door as he strode across the street. “Are you gonna ignore me forever?”
“I have work.”
“Right. At the auto body shop.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Go ahead. Mock me. I don’t give a shit.”
“Because you’re a new man?”
I tossed my shit in the truck and turned to him. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Asher, you’re the last fucking person on the planet who deserves this kind of shit, but Jade is back and you need to deal with that.”
I glanced away from him, shaking my head. “Where is she?”
“At the hotel.”
“Why didn’t she come?”
“Because she didn’t think you’d want to see her.”
“You mean after she ambushed me last night?” I asked, looking back at him. “That was a pretty shitty move.”
“She didn’t plan that. We tried calling you for weeks. As soon as we found out she was alive, I called you over and over again. But you never picked up the fucking phone. She said she needed to see you, so I said I would drive her out here.”
“How the hell did you even find me?”
His lips twitched in amusement. “Seriously? Rae would be so disappointed in that question.”
“How long has she known?”
“That you were out here or that you were posing as a mechanic?”
What a clusterfuck.
“We went out to dinner last night and the plan was for me to call you today. Then she saw you kissing your girlfriend and she fled for the bathroom, and…shit happened.”
“Shit happened,” I repeated.
“For what it’s worth, your girl seems really great.”
“She is,” I sighed. “But this might have ended it all.”
He had the decency to look remorseful about that. “You can’t put this off, man. Your wife just came back from the dead. You have to see her.”
“Did she tell you how?”
He shook his head with a laugh. “Rafe. Fucking Rafe.”
I slammed my fist against the side of the truck. “Of course, Rafe had something to do with it.”
“Apparently, she had a very low pulse and when we got her to the hospital, they didn’t think she was going to make it. Rafe had her transferred to a long-term care facility for treatment in case she woke up.”
“Then who the fuck did I bury?”
He shrugged. “I have no fucking clue.”
All this fucking time, I thought she was dead, and Rafe had taken her away, not giving me the opportunity to take care of my own wife. All that time I spent beating myself up over her death…I still would have felt that responsibility weighing on me, but at least I wouldn’t have fallen down the same path of destruction. What he did nearly wrecked my life.
“When did she wake up?”
“She doesn’t know exactly. She thinks it’s been about a year.”
“A year,” I repeated. “Where has she been all this time?”
“Recovering. Figuring shit out. Hell, I really don’t know. She hasn’t exactly been too forthcoming with information. She only wants to talk to you.”
I sighed heavily. “Nothing’s the same anymore. I’m not the man she married. I don’t?—”
“I know, man. But you have to talk to her. Whatever happens, you can’t just leave her hanging.”
“And in the meantime, my life is falling apart.”
“What do you think is happening to her? She woke up and thought she still had a husband. Then, last night, she saw you kissing another woman. Imagine what that must have felt like.”
“Yeah.” I slammed the truck door and grabbed my phone. “I need to call work. Give me a minute.”
“Sure.”
As he walked away, I called Wyatt, hoping he didn’t fire me for calling off. My life had turned into one disaster after another.
“Let me guess, you need the day off,” he said as soon as he picked up.
“Wyatt—”
“Don’t sweat it. I’d need the day off, too, if my wife came back from the dead.”
“I’m really sorry about this.”
“Hey, I’m just glad it’s not me.”
I bet he was. “Sorry about your night with Noelle.”
“Nah, don’t worry about us. We had fun discussing how this was going to play out for the two of you. Should be entertaining.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind as I go over and see my wife again today, all the while thinking about how it’s going to destroy the woman I love.”
“Wish I had some popcorn and a front row seat.”
“Maybe I could send you some footage.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“I’ll try to be in tomorrow.”
“Yep, let me know.”
I hung up and turned to Chase. He was leaning against his truck, waiting for me. There was no time like the present to get this over with. I was about to see my wife again, to step back into a life I didn’t want.
And I had no clue what the hell I was going to say or how I was going to handle it.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped out onto her floor. My palms were sweating and my heart was racing, but it wasn’t because I was excited to see her. Fuck, I was terrified of what this could mean for my relationship with Holly.
“You okay?” Chase asked as we stopped outside her door.
“Would you be okay if you found out your wife came back from the dead after five years?”
“Right,” he chuckled. “Probably not the best question to ask.”
I couldn’t just stand out here all day and wait for the sun to set. It was better to rip off the bandaid and get it over with. My fist came down harder on the door than I intended and I stepped back, trying to pull my shit together before she opened the door.
It didn’t work.
The door swung open and she smiled up at me like I was her everything—like she hadn’t tried to take her own fucking life and left me behind in the wreckage.
“Ash.” She was in my arms before I could stop her. My eyes closed without meaning to, and I inhaled her familiar scent that I’d almost forgotten about. It was strange how I’d missed it for so long, but now that I saw her, held her in my arms, and that familiar fragrance hit me, there was just nothing there any longer.
Carefully, I peeled her arms from around my neck and stepped back. The look of disappointment on her face was hard to take, but I pushed that down. I wasn’t here to make up with her and win her back.
“Come in,” she grinned, turning to go into her suite. For a woman who had been sleeping for damn near four years, she certainly had no problem throwing money around. At least, I assumed it was her money.
“Nice room.”
She smiled over her shoulder, sitting down on the couch with one foot tucked under her. “After that care center, I decided I would never stay in another bland room again.”
I nodded, taking a seat in one of the armchairs across from her. “I assume this all passed to you from your father.”
She shrugged. “Daddy had an account set up for me. When I woke up, it was all there waiting for me.”
Daddy. That was an interesting name for the man who had her beaten and nearly raped.
“Jade, what exactly do you remember?”
“All of it.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, sure she was just making shit up. “Everything?”
She nodded. “The funeral, the accident…well, I remember getting in the van. Not much about driving the van.”
“And before that?”
“I mean, there are fuzzy times. I was taking a lot of pills.”
My jaw clenched in irritation at how flippant she was being about the entire situation. “So, you remember stealing your mother’s pills and dosing yourself.”
She nodded, her facade slipping. “Yeah, not my best moment.”
“Jade, you tried to kill yourself. I thought you succeeded.”
She winced. “I’m really very sorry about that. The only thing I can say is that I wasn’t in my right mind. I never would have—it was a very dark time for me.”
“And you’re all better now?”
“Well, I’m not about to swallow any pills if that’s what you mean,” she joked. The smile on her face was bright and full of life, but I started to see through the cracks, how the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and she kept licking her lips nervously. She was playing it up, trying to pretend she was alright. But why?
I stood and walked over to her, sitting beside her. My hand found hers against my better judgment and I squeezed gently. “Jade, you need to be honest with me. How are you?”
She sucked in a shuddering breath and smiled, but this time, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m trying to be fine. I mean, I’m telling the truth when I said I’m not taking pills. That’s not a lie.”
“But?”
“But…I woke up and everything changed. You weren’t there. My parents were gone. I was…hooked up to machines and there were strange people all around me. I was completely terrified, and I kept having these dreams about my past, about what—what Marrick did to me.”
Marrick… a name I never wanted to hear again. He was the asshole who had whipped her in the cage and nearly raped her. I pulled her into my arms as she sucked in a ragged breath. Tears soaked my shirt as she gripped me tight. Fuck, this was bad.
“I was so alone, Asher. Everything was different and nobody would tell me what was going on.”
“How did you find out that Rafe put you there?”
She pulled back and sniffled, grabbing a tissue off the end table. “One of the nurses had a packet for me. I guess Rafe left it in case…”
“In case of what?”
She shrugged. “In case he couldn’t be there. In case he never returned. I have no idea. He left me a note saying he had planned to use me to end The Syndicate, but time ran out.”
Asshole.
“And then he left the nurses instructions for where to send me when I was better. I needed physical therapy and I had to pass a psych evaluation before I could be released. And then I didn’t want to leave.”
“Why?”
She slowly looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. “Because of this. What I would find when I saw you again. My therapist prepared me for the fact that you might have moved on, but knowing it and having to witness it are two very different things.”
I would give almost anything to make this better for her, but it couldn’t be me. I wasn’t the man for her anymore. We were different people now. I could see the changes in her just from the ten minutes I’d been here.
“You’ve moved on,” she whispered.
“Jade—”
“Did you remarry?”
“No,” I answered hesitantly. “But I do love her very much.”
A strangled sob escaped her throat as she shoved to her feet and walked to the window. “Where does that leave me?”
“I don’t know. I—You weren’t even alive to me until last night. I guess we get a divorce and?—”
She spun around, her mouth open in dismay as she glared at me. “Divorce? You just found out I’m alive and your first response is to get a divorce?”
“Jade, you’ve been dead to me for five years.”
“But I’m alive. We made vows.”
“Under duress. Our marriage was never supposed to be anything more than a business arrangement.”
Her nostrils flared in anger. “You know it was more than that. We loved each other.”
“Yeah, we did,” I agreed. “I loved you very much, but it wasn’t a relationship built on a foundation of anything solid. We were shoved together and made it work. And then—” I stopped myself before I could go too far. I was pissed as hell right now, and my anger would only get me in trouble.
“And then what?” she snapped.
“Jade, I’m with Holly now,” I said calmly. “I love her. I have a life here with her. Everything about me is different. I’m not the man you fell in love with.”
“You could be?—”
“No, I can’t. That man is gone. Everything about who I used to be is gone.”
“You just changed,” she said incredulously. “You just threw it all away?”
“You did,” I snapped. “You got off the pills. You’re different than you used to be.”
“Yes, because I was in a coma!” she shouted. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. No one asked me what I wanted out of life. Everything that happened to me was pushed on me. From before I met you until the day of our marriage.” She laughed humorlessly, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You swore you would take care of me, and now you’re just walking away. You’re breaking every promise you ever made to me for her . For some woman who can give you a better life, right? Someone who’s not damaged. Not some pill-popping, abused and depressed woman. That’s who you want!”
“Jade, that is not what this is about.”
“Then tell me why her!” she cried.
I could hardly stand to see her like this, so sad and upset. I was terrified that if I said the wrong thing, I’d push her over the edge and send her right back to her pills and get her killed. I couldn’t be responsible for her death a second time.
“Tell me, Asher! Tell me!” she shouted, running at me and pounding her fists at my chest.
I grabbed them and held her to me, remembering what it was like when she broke down all those years ago. How I held her in my arms and made everything alright. Slowly, she melted into me, wrapping her arms around me as the tears flowed freely. I slumped down on the couch, cradling her in my arms and trying to come up with anything I could say to make this better.
“Jade, you have to calm down.” I ran my hand up and down her back until her sobs slowed and her tears dried. A half-hour passed with me rocking her in my arms. I didn’t know where to go from here. If anything, the situation felt even more fucked up than when I walked through the door.
When she sat up, she wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened her shoulders. “God, I’m sorry, Ash. That wasn’t fair.”
“Jade…let’s just take a break and?—”
“We should get out of here. Get some breakfast.” She popped up, happy as can be, with a smile on her face. The sudden change in her attitude caught me off guard, but anything was better than her sobbing on the couch.
“Let’s get the guys to come with us. We can talk about old times.”
Great. That was just what I wanted to do. “Sure.”
“You go tell them and I’ll freshen up.”
She whirled out of there like nothing had happened, letting the door to the bedroom snick quietly behind her. I was almost scared to leave her alone. What if she was in there right now popping pills? Could I really trust her?
I wanted to tell myself that she wasn’t my responsibility anymore, but she was. I was still her husband according to the law, and even if I didn’t wear the ring on my finger, that didn’t mean I could abandon her. But I couldn’t be with her all the time either. They let her out for a reason, and I had to trust that.
“So, this asshole appeared at my bedside, standing over me like some goon, and I thought I still had a fucking brain tumor,” Chase laughed.
Jade’s eyes sparkled as she looked at me. “So he was daydreaming about you. That’s sweet.”
“Yeah, it should have been me,” Patrick spoke up. “I’m more handsome.”
“You were already there, asshole,” I said, tossing a napkin at him.
“But why weren’t you there?” Jade asked, making the table go quiet. She looked at each of us, confused as to why none of us would look at her. “Did you leave on a job or something?”
I shook my head, my eyes flicking to the guys. “No, I quit after the job with—the one with your dad.”
A small gasp left her lips as she looked at each of us again. “Wait, I’m confused. Why would you quit?”
“Because the job took too much.”
“But you loved your work,” she argued.
My head snapped up to meet her gaze. “I loved you, too.”
Her face flushed red and she shoved back from the table, excusing herself as she quickly ran to the bathroom.
“Nice job,” Patrick laughed. “If you wanted to make her uncomfortable, you’re doing a bang-up job of it.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped, sitting up. “ I’m making her uncomfortable? You showed up out of nowhere to return my dead wife to me. My girlfriend isn’t speaking to me.”
“She’s just trying to understand what happened,” Chase piped up.
“She fucking drove herself into a tree. That’s what happened,” I snapped. “She wasn’t thinking about me when she did that.”
“She wasn’t thinking about anything but ending the pain, Asher. She was hurting.”
“No, she was hopped up on pills. She didn’t ask for help.”
“Maybe the middle of a restaurant isn’t the best place to discuss your dead, not-dead wife’s mental problems,” Patrick said with a shrug. “But that’s just me. I could be way off base.”
“What do you want me to say? What the hell am I supposed to do here? I can’t go home with her. I can’t play the doting husband when I’m in love with someone else.”
“You have a wife,” Chase pointed out.
“Who I thought was dead,” I stressed. “You remember that, don’t you? You remember me nearly putting a bullet in my skull, right? Because I remember that night. I remember being so drunk off my ass that all I wanted was to do the same fucking thing she did to me. But I left that all behind, and now you want me to go down that road with her again?”
He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know, man. What do you want me to say?”
I didn’t know. I wanted to go back in time when I didn’t know she was alive. I wished she had died in that accident. I’d already mourned her and moved on. Now…now it was just fucked up and painful all over again. All those old wounds were being torn open, and I didn’t know how to get a handle on them.
Patrick cleared his throat, sitting up. “Incoming.”
Jade came back with a forced smile on her face, pretending everything was alright, but I could see the red stains on her cheeks from where she’d been crying. I didn’t want any of this for her. I wanted her to be happy, but that couldn’t be with me.
“Well, thank you for lunch, but I think it’s time to go back to the hotel,” Jade smiled. “Asher, could you bring me back?”
“Of course.”
I glared at the two fuckers sitting at the table and stood, waiting for Jade to join me. When she slid her hand through my arm, I did my best to extricate myself without being too much of an ass. No matter what I did, I was going to hurt her. But leading her on would be worse.
It felt wrong helping her up into my truck and driving her to the hotel. Only one woman belonged in my truck, and that was Holly. Noelle, on occasion, but she never tried to replace Holly. But Jade very much wanted to wiggle her way back into my life, and I had to find a way to get through to her that we were never going to happen. I needed a divorce, and the sooner, the better.
As soon as we were back to the hotel, I planned to drop her off and leave. I couldn’t hang around here with her. It wouldn’t work out well for either of us. I was so distracted by my own thoughts that I ignored her the entire drive over and most of the way up to her floor. It wasn’t until the elevator dinged that I finally acknowledged she was in the same space with me.
“Is there anything you need?”
“Oh, you care now?” she laughed.
“Jade…you have to understand how hard this is for me.”
She nodded, stepping off. “I do. It must be quite the shock to think your wife was dead and then have her show up out of the blue. You looked like you were about to pass out,” she smiled.
“The world did spin a little,” I grinned.
“Can we just…go in and talk about where we go from here?”
Going inside was dangerous, but we needed to hash this out. I couldn’t just ignore her and hope this would go away. “Sure.”
“Maybe you could tell me a little about your life since I’ve been gone,” she said as she opened the door. “I feel like I’ve missed so much.”
The last thing I wanted to do was chat with her about what my life had been like since she drove herself into a tree.
“Water?”
“Sure,” I said, taking a seat.
She grabbed one out of the mini fridge and handed it to me, curling up on the sofa across from me. “You know, I figured you’d move on, but I never considered you’d leave your job.”
“What did the guys tell you?”
“Not much of anything. Just…things like we’ll take you to him soon. I had no idea you had left your job.”
“Yeah, well…when I lost you, it felt like the job had taken pretty much everything from me.”
“But I’m back now. You could get your job back, and we could?—”
I shook my head, stopping her before she went too far. “Jade, there is no we. I can’t go back there. I need you to understand that.”
“Because of her.”
“Holly,” I corrected. “Not just because of her. Jade, look back on our relationship. It started with your father threatening both our lives if I didn’t marry you. Nothing about our relationship was normal.”
“No, you’re right,” she chuckled. “But there was something there. I know you felt it.”
“Yeah, I did. But, Jade, you can’t build a relationship on intense situations. There has to be more to it. We were thrust together and did the best we could.”
She flinched back as hurt spread across her face. “Wait, are you saying you only loved me because I was the only one there?”
“No, I’m saying I loved you, but…but in the long run, would it have really worked out? We didn’t choose to be together. We didn’t date first. I didn’t ask you to be my wife. You never planned your perfect wedding. Hell, you didn’t even know who I really was. You still don’t. That guy—the one I told you about when you finally discovered I wasn’t Asher Black—he was not who I am today. He’s a version of me. But I’ve changed. I can’t be who you need me to be.”
“Because of your job?” she asked incredulously. “That’s easy enough. Chase said you’re working as a mechanic. You’re way too good for that. So, quit and join OPS again. You can have the life you had before.”
“You never would have cared before if I was a mechanic or a protection agent. Suddenly, my profession matters to you?”
“I don’t want to see you wasting your life doing a job that wastes your talents.”
I gritted my teeth, irritated that she wasn’t getting it. “You’re not listening to me, Jade. That’s not me, anymore.”
“You’re running away because you’re scared. You don’t know who you are anymore. You need to be reminded of what kind of man you are.”
“Actually, I’m well aware of who I am and who I want to be,” I snapped. “What I did to you—what your father turned me into—is something I never want again. That job twisted me into something I hated. I left that life behind and I became the man I wanted to be. This is me. Accept that or don’t, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“Because you don’t want me anymore,” she huffed.
“Because we don’t belong together,” I said calmly. “Jade, this is over. I can’t stay with you.”
She blinked back the tears, wiping them away with a nod. “I guess we’ve both changed.”
I sighed, grateful she wasn’t arguing with me anymore.
“So…a mechanic,” she chuckled. “I really didn’t see that coming. You don’t even carry a gun anymore?”
“Nope.”
She studied me…really studied me, then nodded slightly. “I see it. The change. You’re…lighter.”
“Lighter?”
“When I saw you in the restaurant…” She pressed her hand to her mouth, closing her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and continuing. “When I saw you, there was this big smile on your face and you looked so happy. I’d never seen you like that before.”
“Jade—”
“It’s okay, Asher,” she shot me a teary smile. “So, what’s Holly like?”
I really didn’t want to talk to her about Holly. “Jade, let’s not do this.”
“Sorry.”
I pushed to my feet, ready to end this uncomfortable visit. All I wanted was to see Holly and hold her in my arms. If only she would take me back. I just had to beg and plead that this wasn’t over between us.
“Can I see you again before I leave?”
“We’ll need to figure out how to proceed with the divorce.”
She shoved her hands in her back pockets and nodded. “Yeah. Just tell me when and where.”
“Okay. You have my number, right?”
“I’ll get it from Chase.”
I nodded, unsure how to end this. “You look good, Jade.”
“You too.”
I stepped forward and pressed a kiss to her cheek, then turned and walked out. When the door shut, I leaned back against it and closed my eyes. My heart was breaking for the woman inside. I didn’t want to hurt her, but there was no way I could give her what she needed. This was the way it had to end.