Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Asher
“C’mon, Adler, quit sulking and come out with us.
” LeBlanc is at my hotel room doorway, dressed for the club.
I showered off the plane smell, not thinking about the torture of the plane.
An hour and a half of watching them. Savannah studying too intently for her to notice the way Brayden was looking at her—like he never wanted to look anywhere else.
Except of course to occasionally shoot me a glare.
Now I figured I could just grab dinner and, I don’t know, forget about everything for a while.
Most especially the way Savannah looked and tasted and sounded, coming apart in her husband’s house.
You deserve better, I tried to tell her.
But that had clearly backfired. So I’m gonna spend four days on the road having to see them together.
Hear them together, if the thin hotel walls have anything to say about it.
LeBlanc bangs on my open doorframe with his meaty catcher’s palm. “C’mon,” he says, again. “Get your mind off whatever’s going on with you.”
“Nothing’s going on,” I lie.
“Sure, uh-huh.”
Catchers are always like this—unofficial team captains, part-time team therapists. Usually, I’m good enough at managing my own shit—or masking it, as my last therapist told me—that they leave me alone. “Okay,” I say finally, “I’ll come out.”
“Wearing that?”
I’m in a band T-shirt, a pair of jeans frayed at the knee. “Yeah.”
“Damn, dude, whoever she is, I promise there’ll be another.”
Not who I want. But I grab my stuff and let LeBlanc shoo me toward the elevator.
An hour later, I’m drinking alone. Or trying to.
We’re at a club, seated in a booth: me, LeBlanc, Crawford, a few other guys on the team.
For the past thirty minutes, LeBlanc has been corralling women toward me like this is a dating show, half of whom Crawford has swooped in to take once I’ve made it clear I’m not interested.
The woman sitting next to me—Clara, I’m pretty sure, but it’s hard to hear—has been trying to get me to talk for a while.
I’m being an asshole. I’m being like him.
Clara is statuesque and curvy, with dark hair and green eyes.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think LeBlanc thought I had a type.
Clara works for the public defender’s office.
Clara is half in my lap and entirely off my mind.
My thoughts keep cutting from her to flashes of Savannah, laid out on her bed.
To the teasing look in her eyes, the one she can’t quite suppress, even with Brayden around.
The one that makes me want to crawl over broken glass to reach her.
But right now I’m too much of a coward to even go next door to her hotel room.
“Hey,” I say to Clara, and she peers up at me with interest, “you can probably tell, but I’m kinda getting over a situation.”
Clara drapes her hand over my thigh. “You want some help with that?” she purrs.
I don’t want to get over it. The bar gets somehow louder.
Everything is clatters and noise and bright light, and I need to get the fuck out of here before I do something drastic, like tell anyone the truth.
I fucked someone else’s wife and rather than regretting it, all I can think about is how much I want to do it again. “Not really,” I say.
Clara laughs. “Oh, you’re down bad.”
“I—” I begin, trying to deny it, but Clara is right. “Yeah.”
“Well, what are you gonna do about it?”
Nothing. I took my shot and missed. Now I have to live with the consequences. “I don’t know.” All I know is that I can’t stay here. Savannah’s somewhere in this city, near enough to touch, too distant to have.
I check my texts to her. She still has her location on for some reason. I open the map and blink a few times at the address. Here. This building. The same one where I’m currently sitting.
I don’t believe in fate, really, but it feels like there’s a thread that connects us, everything in the universe pulling me toward her.
The same feeling I’ve gotten only one other time in my life—when I drove all night to try out for the only team who would return my calls.
I know what it’s like to work for something. To earn it.
So I tell Clara and LeBlanc good night and throw myself out of the booth, ready to find Savannah. To win her back—no matter the cost.