Chapter 8
Asher
The penthouse is too quiet again.
I've got the game on with the sound off, some West Coast thing I don't care about, and a beer I haven't touched sweating a ring onto the counter.
Copperside at night spreads out past the glass—all those lights, all those people making the most of their weekend—and I'm standing in the middle of it doing nothing.
This is my third night in a row doing nothing.
Knox keeps giving me the look. The one that says who are you and what did you do with Calloway?
Friday at The Quack, a redhead bought me a drink, and I said thank you and went home alone.
Again. Declan asked if I was all right, quietly, the way he does, like he already knows the answer and just wants me to say it out loud.
I didn’t joke with him that time. Just told him I was tired.
I've been tired for weeks.
I keep telling myself it's a phase, a weird stretch, off-season brain. Any day now I'll wake up and be myself again—the guy who knows exactly what to say and exactly what to do.
I've been telling myself that for weeks too.
My phone buzzes against the counter.
It’s an unknown number.
Hi, it's Audrey. Nora's sister.
My stomach does something it hasn't done in months. Drops and lifts at the same time, like the first big hill on a coaster, like the half-second before a ball leaves my hand and I already know it'll hit the glove.
I know exactly who she is, no explanation necessary. I think part of me has been waiting for this moment without admitting it, the way you wait for rain you can already smell coming.
I type something back. Delete it. Type again.
Hi Audrey.
It's a stupid response. It's nothing. But I genuinely don't know what the right thing to say is, and that's new, because I always know. I've got a script for every woman who's ever texted me a hi. I could run it in my sleep.
The script just isn't there anymore. A blank page where it used to be.
Three dots appear. Then:
I'm just going to ask. Did you tell anyone about what happened?
She doesn't name it. She doesn't have to. The bathroom, her back against the door, her hand fisted in my shirt like she was drowning and I was the buoy she clung to.
I smile. I know exactly what she means.
I don't kiss and tell, doll face.
I send it before I think through it. It's the closest thing to my old self I've managed in two months, and it feels good for about one full second.
Then I'm staring at the screen, waiting.
Three dots appear.
They disappear.
Then it's quiet.
Too quiet. The kind of silence that means she typed something and deleted it. Or worse. That means she's decided this was a mistake, and she's setting the phone face-down on whatever counter she's standing at an hour away from me.
And before I can think better of it—before the part of my brain that runs the old script can wake up and stop me—I call her.
It rings twice.
"Hello?"
Her voice.
Christ.
I've spent weeks unable to remember exactly what it sounds like, and there it is, low and careful, and my whole body goes still to listen.
"I promise I didn't tell anyone, sweetheart."
She's quiet for a beat. "Oh. Um. Okay."
"Did you tell anyone?"
"What? Of course not." She makes a small sound, almost a laugh but not quite. "And just so you know… I don't normally do that."
"Do what?"
I know what she means. I just want to hear her say it. I want anything other than the flat, blown-out stare she had when I first sat down next to her at that bar—the look of a woman who'd turned all the lights off inside her body. I want to make her flush. I'd do almost anything to make her flush.
"I don't normally throw myself at random men like that."
"So you're saying I'm special."
I grin at the empty kitchen like a fucking idiot.
"I wasn't—" she stumbles. "I don't—"
"Audrey." Her name feels good in my mouth. It always has. "I'm joking."
"Okay," she says. The word comes out thin and embarrassed.
"You can always throw yourself at me though. I don't mind."
"No. No, no, no." The words come out fast. "That was a one-time thing. We didn't even—we didn't even think about a condom, which—God. Don't worry. I'm not—I have one of those implants so we're good. But it was a mistake."
A mistake.
Hell no.
The word goes in clean, like a dagger between two ribs, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I've called a hundred nights a one-time thing. I've been the one-time thing for half the women in three counties. It has never once landed on me the way she just threw it.
"Come on, doll face." I keep my voice easy. At least, I hope it sounds easy. "You can't mean that."
She doesn't answer.
The silence stretches, and I should leave it alone. I know I should leave it alone. There's a version of me—the one I've been my whole adult life—who would laugh and say your loss, sweetheart, and hang up with my pride intact.
But I don't.
"Tell me you don't want to again."
I'm playing with fire and I know it. And I do it anyway. Because it's been weeks and I can’t get this woman out of my system and some stupid, hopeful part of me needs to know if she's been carrying the same weight I've been carrying.
The pause goes on a beat too long.
"I should probably go." Her voice has gone careful, a door easing closed. "Good night, Asher."
The line clicks.
My face falls. I feel it happen, standing alone in my kitchen with the phone silent in my hand.
I run the other hand down my face.
Why did I say that?
Fucking idiot. I pushed too hard, read it wrong. Of course I read it wrong—she's a grieving widow with two kids and I'm the guy whose name follows with either a wink or an eye roll. She texted to make sure I'd keep my mouth shut—that's all—and I had to go and—
I'm a solid ten minutes into the spiral, pacing the length of the glass, when my phone buzzes.
It’s her.
An address in Millbrook. Nothing else.
I look at it for exactly four seconds.
Then I grab my keys and rush out the door.
The drive takes an hour, and the time does something strange.
It goes too fast and not nearly fast enough—the highway emptying out, the streetlights thinning, the houses spreading apart and getting older.
Porches and oak trees and basketball hoops over garage doors.
A whole life out here that has nothing to do with mine.
Her porch light is off.
She's already at the door when I come up the walk. Bare feet on the threshold, arms crossed against the cold, hair down—I've never seen her hair down—and the sight of her stops me for half a second as if I walked into a wall I forgot was there.
Then I'm moving.
I pick her up before second-guessing it, both arms around her, lifting her clean off her feet, spinning her in a tight circle right there in the doorway because I can’t physically hold still around her.
She makes a startled sound against my neck, a half-laugh, and it might be the best sound I've heard all year.
I set her down.
She puts one finger to her lips. Quiet.
I nod. I grab her hand, bringing it up to my lips, and kiss her knuckles—slow, savoring it—then thread my fingers through hers like it's the most natural thing in the world.
She pulls the door shut behind me. Turns the lock.
The click lands somewhere low in my gut.
I follow her up the stairs in the dark, matching my steps to hers, past closed doors—kids behind them, somewhere. The thought catches for a second. Then I let it go and keep walking.
Her room is at the end of the hall. She lets me in, closes the door, and locks that one too.
And then we're just standing there.
I wait.
I don't know how I know to wait, but I do.
Every nerve I've got is screaming to close the distance, and instead I stand still and let her have the room, because some part of me understands that this has to be hers.
Her move. Her choice. I'll give her every second she needs to change her mind, no matter how badly I don't want her to.
She comes up to me, shy about it, eyes flicking up and away.
Fuck it.
I pull her in, both arms, her chest against mine—but I don't do anything else. I just hold her and look down at her and watch her look back.
She studies my face for a long moment.
Then she kisses me.
Soft at first. A question. Testing whether this thing holds.
It holds.
Her hands come up to my sides and mine slide into all that loose hair, and we're both breathing harder when I start walking her backward toward the bed.
She sits when the backs of her knees hit it, reaching up to drag my shirt over my head before she goes down.
It drops onto the floor, and I come down after her, finding the hem of her shirt, and—
"Wait."
I stop. I pull back so fast it leaves a cold space between us.
She's shaking her head. Then her face is in her hands, and I hear it—a small, stifled, hitching sound she's trying to swallow.
Oh, hell.
She’s crying into her hands. Or, trying not to but failing.
She takes a shaky breath. "I'm s-s-sorry. I can't. I know you d-drove all the way out here—" A hiccup catches at the end of it.
God, I can’t stand how broken her voice sounds.
I'm on my knees in front of her before I realize I've moved.
"You don't have to apologize."
And I mean it. Something cracks open in my chest watching her come apart, something I don't have a name for and don't get to examine right away because she needs me. Some part of me recognizes that, and that's the only thing that matters. "Hey. Hey."
I nudge her chin up with one knuckle.
"Talk to me."
She lets me lift her face. Her eyes are wet, and it takes her a minute to find her voice.
"I just—I don't think—" She breaks off, trying to steady herself. "It just feels wrong doing this. Here." She takes another hitching breath. "In this bed."
And it clicks.
This is the bed she shared with him. For however many years. This is the bed, and I am a man who isn't him, and she's drowning in it.