Chapter 24
Asher
The hotel room smells like industrial carpet cleaner and Nate’s cologne, and I'm at the little round table by the window, laptop open, the chair turned so my back's to the door.
A sock hangs off the outside handle. I checked it twice on my way back to the chair. Universal signal. Every guy on the team learned it in A-ball.
Nate's half of the room could pass inspection.
Bed squared, corners tucked, his bag zipped and standing upright on the rack, shoes lined toe-out by the closet like he's expecting a fire drill.
My half is made too. I made it twenty minutes ago, because there was nothing else to do but square the corners and watch the clock on her side of the country crawl toward bedtime.
The call rings. Eight seconds. Nine.
It cuts, and the screen fills with her. The picture's swinging.
"Hey." The word lands a half-beat behind her mouth, the way it always does on these calls.
She's walking, laptop balanced on one forearm, the camera tipping with her steps. The upstairs hallway slides past behind her, and I see a strip of nightlight glow, the edge of a kid's door. She’s wearing her hair down. I can see the collar of an old gray t-shirt gone soft at the neck.
Ten days of this. Ten days of a screen. My hand's already curled around the edge of my laptop like I could close the distance by holding on harder.
"Hey yourself." It comes out rougher than I mean it to.
She steps into her room. The picture tips up to the ceiling as she sets the laptop on her dresser, and for a second it's just popcorn texture and the top of her head. A door swings shut. I hear the small turn of a lock.
Then she lifts the laptop again, the room swinging, and drops onto the edge of the bed. She wedges a pillow under the base so the screen tips up at her and scoots back against the headboard, pulling her knees up.
"How was the shark cage?"
I smile, thinking of it.
"Insane. Knox stayed down there grinning at the thing like they were old buddies. Deckles took one look at a great white and decided he'd supervise from the boat." I chuckle. "He said he's in charge of trip planning for next year. I don’t think he trusts me anymore."
She laughs.
"Kids down?" I ask.
"Twenty minutes ago. Eli fought it the whole way up the stairs." She wraps her arms around her shins. "He's wrecked. We were out all afternoon."
"Yeah? Doing what?"
"I took them to Harlow." A smile starts at one corner. "Wren's Wood. We went on that hike we started that one night.”
I lean toward the screen without deciding to. Her on my trail. With the kids. Where I walked her in the dark.
"You did the loop?"
"We tried." She tips her head against her knees. "The bridge is still closed, so we had to go the whole way around. By the time we hit the far side, Eli was lying in the dirt telling me he’d weed the garden for a month if he didn't have to walk another step.”
A laugh bursts out of me. Then the rest of it catches up, and the laugh dies.
"Still closed." Not a question. I already know, and it still gets me every time.
"Yeah, still closed."
I lean in toward the screen. "You know they finally put it back in the budget this spring?
" I drag a hand down my face, feeling my jaw set tight under my palm.
"Then they called a special session in June and moved the money to repave the lot behind the municipal building.
New striping. A welcome sign at the town line. "
Her eyebrow climbs. "And you know this how?"
"The minutes are public. They post them every Thursday."
"You read the council minutes."
"They're online, Audrey. It takes four minutes.
" I'm hunched over the table now, elbows planted, unable to hold still.
"The detour's, what, half a mile out of the way? So nobody takes it. Kids pull the barricade open and walk the closed bridge cuz it’s easier.
On planks that have been rotting for four years.
I've read the engineering report. There's a support beam under there that’s one bad Saturday away from going. "
I stop. She's watching me through the lag, gone still.
"It could have been Sophie and Eli," I say, gripping the table’s edge.
"We took the long way."
"I know you did." The picture sits in me anyway. Sophie's sneakers. Eli's exhausted legs. Soft wood over moving water. My hand goes into a fist on the table. "I know you did."
She doesn't fill the quiet. She just looks at me, chin on her knees.
"So bring it up." She says it plainly, like it's the simplest thing in the world. "If you know all of it. The report, the budget cycle, the meeting days. Why don't you ever say anything?"
"To who?"
"To the people in charge." She studies my face on her screen. "You've thought about that bridge more than the entire council put together, Asher. Have you—have you ever thought about running for something?"
The AC kicks on under the window. The laptop fan hums beneath my hands.
"Politics?" I make a sound that isn't quite a laugh. "Nobody takes me seriously, doll. I built a reputation that saw to that."
"That's because nobody really knows you." Gentle, no edge to it at all. "But you know the laws, the statutes. And you love Harlow. You're good with people." She gives a small shrug, one shoulder. "It's just a thought."
She lets it land, then leaves it there, out in the open, in a way that always gets to me.
I turn it over, running my thumb along the edge of the keyboard, back and forth, the plastic gone warm from the fan.
People have pointed me to a lot of things. A bat. A camera. A chair behind frosted glass with my father's name etched into it.
Nobody's ever looked at the part of me that reads council minutes on a Thursday night and said that one.
My throat tightens. Not the kind I get before a game. Something quieter.
On her screen she waits patiently, the lamp warm against her cheek, thousands of miles of dark country between us, and she just handed me a future I'd never even considered.
I let myself feel it for a second. Then I reach for higher ground before I go under.
"Was it my magnetism that got you dreaming up my political career, doe eyes?" I prop my chin on my fist. "Or the charm? Be honest."
She rolls her eyes so hard I catch it through the pixels.
"Well, it wasn't your humility." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "When do you have to go?"
"We've got a while. An hour, maybe more. The guys went hunting for a steakhouse. Knox thinks he’s a freaking carnivore tonight." I check the clock in the corner. "They'll be a bit."
"Sorry you missed dinner because of me."
"Don't be." I sink back into the chair. "We've been on top of each other for ten days straight. Same bus, same vacation rental, same guy snoring four feet from my head." I tip my chin at Nate's squared-off bed. "I'd rather look at you."
She smiles at that, soft, and I have to drop my eyes to the keyboard for a second because of how much I want to be in that room.
"I miss you," I say. "You and the girls."
Her brow pulls together. "Eli's not a girl."
"Not the kids, doll. I miss them too though." I drop my eyes, slow and deliberate, all the way to the bottom of the frame. "The girls. Down at the bottom of the camera."
She follows where I'm looking. Color climbs her neck into her cheeks.
"Please tell me you haven’t named them."
"Shh." I hold up a finger. "I'm listening. Pearl's got something to say." I wait a beat, head tilted, very serious. "Luna agrees with her. They want to come out and play."
She laughs, the speaker unable to keep up with the shape of it, and even busted up by a bad connection, it's the best sound I've heard in days.
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
She makes a face. "That is not the same, Asher."
"No?" I sit back. "Have you seen these pecs?"
I reach over my shoulder, grab a fistful of cotton, and drag the shirt up and off slowly. Let it catch on my jaw. Drop it over the back of the chair.
When I look back at the screen, her mouth's come open a little. She's stopped pretending. Her eyes drag down over my chest, my stomach, and the heat of it climbs the back of my neck. Like she reached through the glass and ran a hand there.
"Your turn."
She holds my eyes for a beat. Then she rises up onto her knees on the mattress and turns around, her back to the camera.
She crosses her arms in front of her, catches the hem, and pulls the gray shirt up over her head.
The line of her spine. The pale strap of a plain white bra.
The lamp catching the curve of one shoulder.
My hand tightens on the edge of the laptop.
A thousand miles, a sheet of glass, and I want my mouth on the back of her neck so badly my whole body's gone tight with it, the pressure of it building behind my zipper.
There's not one decent thing I can do about any of it. So I sit here and take it. For now.
She drops the shirt somewhere out of frame and turns back around. Bra still on. Watching me watch her.
"Hi, girls." Solemn. Hat in hand. My voice has dropped to gravel. "Don't you worry. I'll be home before you know it. Gonna take real good care of you."
She drops her forehead to her knee, shoulders shaking.
I lean in close enough to fog the screen. "The girls can't hear me over that bra, hun. You’ve gotta help them."
She lifts her head. The laugh's still in her face, but something underneath it has shifted, gone darker, gone slow. She holds my eyes, reaches up to one shoulder and hooks a finger under the strap, dragging it down her arm. Watching what it does to me.
It does plenty.
"There she is." My voice has gone to nothing. My pulse is going in my throat, in my wrists. "Other one."
She does the other strap. Both of them loose now, sliding off her arms, the cups barely doing their job. Her chest rises and falls quicker than it did a minute ago. She isn't laughing anymore.
"If I were there—" The rest sticks. I let it. "If I were in that bed right now, I'd have my mouth on you before you got that thing halfway off."
Her lips part. "Asher."
"Tell me where."
She doesn't answer with words. She sits up on her knees, reaches both arms behind her, and I watch her shoulders work, watch her fingers find the clasp, and the whole thousand miles of dark country between us snaps tight.
Her fingers hook the clasp.
I lean closer to the screen, like I can meet her halfway.
There’s a beep, and the door swings open.
"Hey, they were out of the porterhouse so I grabbed—"
Nate's voice dies. I twist around in the chair.
He's three feet inside the room and gone rigid, because the laptop's pointed straight at him, and so is Audrey, up on her knees, arms still back, bra half-undone.
I start moving a beat too late—like I can somehow block the screen—
"What the hell?!" He drops a plastic bag onto the floor. Hands fly up over his face. "What the hell, man!"
"DUDE!" I snatch a shoe off the floor and throw it at him. It bounces off his shoulder. "How'd you miss the sock on the door?!"
He keeps his eyes covered and turns a slow circle toward the wall.
"There was no sock, dipshit." Muffled, behind his hand. "The handle was bare. Somebody must've knocked it off."
Nobody says anything. The AC hums. On the screen Audrey unfreezes in a blur, dropping back onto her heels to fix her straps, and yanks the gray shirt down over her head.
It’s the longest twenty seconds of my life.
Nate’s the one to break it.
"Audrey?" Nate asks the wall.
Her voice comes out small through the speaker. "Hi, Nate."
He stays facing the wall, one hand still clamped over his eyes. "Audrey. Are you decent?"
"Yes."
He turns around. Looks from me, to the screen, back to me. Drags a hand down from his face and pinches the bridge of his nose.
He inhales sharp.
"How. Long."
I don't make him ask twice. I look back at Audrey. "Since the barbecue. Last summer."
His head drops back, and he says something filthy to the ceiling.
"This whole time?"
"No," Audrey says, too quickly. "No, Nate. We didn't see each other for a while after that."
He stands there shaking his head, working it through, doing the math the way he reads a 3-2 count.
"What the fu—" He catches it. Glances at the laptop, at her face on it, and brings his voice down. "What am I supposed to say to Nora?"
"Nate." Audrey leans into her camera, close, until her face fills the frame. "Please. You can't tell Nora. You just—you can't."
"Audrey." He scrubs a hand over his jaw. "I don't keep things from her. You know I don’t. I can't."
"I know. I know you don't." Her words tumble out faster. "I'm not asking you to do it forever. Just… let me be the one to tell her. Please, Nate. She's my sister. She should hear it from me, not—" Her voice snags. "Not like this."
Nate closes his eyes and drags a hand over his face again, longer this time.
The room holds still. I keep my mouth shut. There's nothing I can say that makes this better, and I know it.
He lets out a breath through his nose and gives one quick nod at the screen.
Then he turns to me, pointing. One finger, dead level.
"You," he says. "This isn’t finished."
I hold his eyes and nod. Whatever's coming, I've had it coming for a while.
He sets the takeout bag on the bed, takes one last look at the ceiling like it personally let him down, and walks out. The door clicks shut behind him.
I turn back to the laptop. Audrey's still close to her camera, eyes huge, the shirt sitting crooked on her shoulder, one hand pressed flat over her mouth.
The lamplight looks like it's trembling. It takes me a second to realize it's her.
I find my best grin and put it on for her. There's not much behind it.
"Well," I say. "It was nice knowing you, doll face.”