Chapter 25
Asher
The water in front of me sweats a slow ring into the bar top, ice worn down to slivers, and Nate still hasn't touched his.
We're side by side on stools at the bar, the room all soft shadows and gold reflections.
Low amber light pools off the bottles racked in front of us, glass shelves lit from underneath so the whole back wall glows.
Our reflections sit in the long mirror behind it, two men hunched over water like it's something stronger.
A piano plays somewhere I can't see it, soft, the kind nobody requested. The stools are leather. The floor under the brass rail is marble veined with gold. Across the lobby behind us, a fountain runs over black stone, and the bellhops move quietly in their gray uniforms.
It's the nicest room I've ever wanted to be anywhere but in.
Nate keeps a hand fixed on his glass. Doesn't drink. Just watches my reflection in the mirror with that flat, even patience he gets, the one that's worse than yelling.
"What did you do?"
He says it slowly, each word set down separate, deliberate, like he's got two strikes on me and all the time in the world.
"I know what it looks like, Nate." I drag a hand down my face. "But I swear, I never meant for any of this."
He raises a brow. Says nothing. Lets it sit.
"Okay." I exhale. "I never meant for any of this—at first. She came onto me."
His jaw works. "That's not what it looked like at the barbecue. After I told everyone—you, specifically—that she's a grieving widow. That she'd need space."
"You know I don't hook up with moms." My voice drops. "This is the last thing I saw coming, man. I sat down thinking I was doing a favor."
He doesn't move, doesn't help me. Just waits, one forearm on the bar now, turned half toward me, for me to fill the silence he's leaving open on purpose.
So I do.
"You saw how she was." I turn my glass, watching the light bend through it.
"Folded up into herself. White-knuckling that drink.
Staring at the water like she could disappear into it if she looked hard enough.
" I shake my head. "She was just—empty. Hollowed out.
I wanted to get her out of whatever funk she was drowning in for five minutes. That's it. That's all I wanted."
His eyes narrow.
"And then?"
"And then she saw me in the hallway." I meet his eyes in the mirror. "And she kissed me."
I don't tell him what happened after that.
The whole afternoon sits right there at the back of my throat—the lock turning, her back against the door—and I swallow it down and hold his gaze steady in the glass, feeling like a liar even though every word I just said is true.
He'd put me through this marble floor if he knew.
Good intentions or not. And he'd be right to.
He's reading my reflection like it's the back of a baseball card. I keep it still.
"We didn't see each other for weeks after that," I say. "Didn't talk, didn't text, nothing. I figured that was it. One bad idea on a hot afternoon, done." I turn the glass again. "Then one day I got a text from her. I still don't know how she got my number."
"You still don't know?"
"I didn’t think to ask. I have theories." I almost smile but don't.
“Me too,” Nate says wryly, sitting back. "And it's been what since then? Hooking up?"
"At first." I sit there and think about it.
Really think, because the word doesn't fit, and I'm not going to hand him a lie I can avoid.
"No. It's never been just that with her.
Not even the first time." I look down at the water and the dead ice.
"I don't know what's happened to me, Nate.
I don't. I've never felt anything like this in my life. "
He's quiet a long moment. The piano turns over into something slower.
"Do the kids know?"
"Yeah." My chest does something. "And I don't know if that makes it easier or harder."
"Asher."
"Kids always scared the heck out of me." A laugh comes out of me, short, surprised at itself.
"You know that. You've watched me hand babies back to people like they were on fire.
But these two—" I stop. Start over. "I don't feel scared around them.
I feel like I matter when I'm with them.
Like there's a version of me that's worth something without a bat in my hands. "
Nate's eyes narrow, slowly, something clicking into place.
"That explains it," he says.
"Explains what?"
"Your sudden change in vocabulary."
The laugh that gets out of me this time is real, and it surprises us both.
"Dude." I shake my head. "It's freaking hard. You have no idea. Anytime I slip, anytime something's about to come out of my mouth, I just hear her in my head going—"
"Language," Nate finishes with me.
We both crack up, just for a second. The marble, the warm water, and the whole impossible mess of it. And for one breath, we're just two guys at a bar laughing about a woman.
It feels good to finally tell someone. To set it down on the bar between us, where I'm not the only one carrying it.
Then Nate sighs, and the laugh leaves his face. His patience folds back into something harder.
"I probably don't need to say this. But I’m gonna say it anyway.
" He sets an elbow on the bar and turns to face me square.
"Audrey is like a sister to me. Has been since before you knew her name.
" His voice doesn't rise. That's what makes it land.
"If you hurt her—if you hurt Sophie or Eli in any way—I will protect her. Even from you, Ash."
He holds my eyes. Not in the mirror this time. Straight on.
"I will always choose Audrey. Every time. You understand me?"
I nod. Slow. I want him to see I'm not flinching from it.
"I know," I say. "I'd want you to." I breathe in. The thing I've never said to anyone is sitting right there, and for once I don't reach for the grin to cover it. "But I love her, Nate."
The words come out of me plain. No spin on them.
His face shifts. Not approval, not exactly.
Just the realization that this isn't me screwing around.
"I've never been in love before. Not even close." My throat tightens around it. "But I love Audrey."
It's the first time I've ever said it out loud. To anyone. And the room doesn't change, but I feel it leave my body and become real the second it hits the air.
Nate sits with it. Doesn’t say anything. The piano fills the space he's not talking into.
Something in his shoulders gives.
"Then—"
"What?"
The voice comes from behind us. Not Nate's.
I swivel on the stool.
Declan and Knox are a few steps off, just clear of the lobby's glow, and I don't know how long they've been close enough to hear. Knox is half a stride back, jaw set. Declan is the one in front, and his face has stopped doing anything at all.
He heard it. The last part. Maybe all of it.
Declan looks at me one second longer. Then he turns and walks out toward the lobby, fast, head down, hands going into his pockets.
Knox watches him go. Then looks back at the two of us turned around on our stools, the crease between his brows cutting deep.
"The hell is going on?" No humor in it anywhere.
Nate's already looking at me. "Go," he says. "I've got Knox."
I'm off the stool before he finishes the sentence.
The lobby air hits cool, the fountain louder out here, water running over black stone, and I catch Declan pushing through the tall glass doors into the night. I go after him.
It's mild outside, the darkness soft, salt riding in on the air off the water a few blocks down. The valet lane sits empty. Declan's already past it, out across the lot, walking. Not toward anything, just away—head down, hands jammed in his pockets.
"Deck." I cut between two parked cars. "Deck! Talk to me, man."
He slows. Doesn't stop right off. Stands there at the edge of the lamplight, looking out toward the dark line of the water, the lot lit blue-white above him.
"I'm just surprised, Ash." His voice is level. Careful. Steady the way a man gets when it’s the only thing keeping him upright. "She never said anything to me."
He looks up into the sky.
"I kept thinking maybe she'd give me a chance if I gave it enough time."
"I know." I come up short of him, leaving him space. "She didn't want anyone to know. It was the only way." I shove my hands into my pockets. "I'm not exactly the guy women want to bring home to their parents."
His head turns. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"That." He looks at me straight on now. "You're a good guy, Ash."
"Maybe." Something cracks small in my chest. "But you're the best, Deck."
He shakes his head, slow, and looks back out toward the water.
"We had coffee one time." He says it quietly. "That's it. One coffee." He takes a breath. "I think a part of me already knew, walking into it. After the barbecue. After watching the two of you in the yard."
"We didn't really talk that day."
"No." The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. "But she was looking for you. At you. Across the yard." He pauses. "When you weren't looking back."
The fountain runs faint behind the glass.
Somewhere down toward the water a gull calls once and goes quiet.
He stands there with that held stillness on his face, and I understand it cost him to say it out loud.
I understand he said it anyway, and there’s nothing I can put in the space he's left, because the only thing I can say is sorry, and I'm not.
I'm not sorry. Not really. It would have gutted me to watch her walk out of that coffee shop on his arm.
To watch her smile at him the way she smiles at me when she forgets herself.
To become the guy Eli asks to throw a ball in the yard.
To watch Sophie hand him one of her drawings instead. It would have ruined me.
That doesn't make standing here easy.
"I think I knew it before you did," he says.
I don't answer. There's no answer that isn't a lie or a wound.
"Are we okay, Deck?"
He's quiet. Looks down the road toward the darkness and the sound of the water.
"We're okay." He lets it sit. "I just need a minute, though."
"Okay." I step back, giving it to him. "Yeah. Okay."
He goes. On foot, down the slope toward the water—head down, hands in his pockets—until the lamplight gives him up, and he's just a shadow moving away.
I stand there for a while after.
The salt air. The blue-white lamps. The fountain faint behind the glass. He didn't have to say any of that. He could have nodded and walked and let me wonder. Instead, he handed me the truth with his own hands and went off carrying whatever it cost.
I'm not going to forget the thing his face did in that unguarded second. The first thing, before the rest of him caught up and smoothed it over.
But the friendship holds. I know that much. He made sure of it before he left.
I head back in.
Nate and Knox are on their stools when I come through the glass—Knox sunk low over a fresh drink, Nate beside him, his water still full and warm.
One look at Knox's face and I know Nate's already told him the gist of it. He doesn’t ask anything.
He's just sitting there with the crease set deep, the one that lives between his brows.
I climb back onto my stool.
"So that's why you been bailing." Knox doesn't lift it into a question. His drawl drags every word out slow, like he's in no hurry to land it. "Avoiding the club like a goddamn monk."
"Something like that."
"You coulda said."
"Wasn't mine to say."
He grunts. Drinks. That's all he's putting toward it.
I reach over and steal a pull off his glass because my hands need a job and some habits don't quit. He lets me, barely.
Then I do the thing my face does when a room goes too heavy. I give him the smile, the one that's done half my talking for me in rooms exactly like this one.
Knox stares at me, flat as a Sunday sermon. "Don't aim that shit at me."
"It's not fair, you know." I set his glass back. "I'm the one who gets the reputation. The Harlow Heartbreaker. Meanwhile, you're the worst of any of us. By a mile. And nobody's throwing your name into a tabloid."
Knox gives me the finger without looking up from his drink.
I grin wider because it's true, and we both know it. The open one and the quiet one beside him doing twice the damage with half the noise.
Nate waits a beat. Then he turns to me, lower.
"How is he?"
He doesn't have to say who. Knox goes still over his glass.
"He says we're good." I turn the warm glass in my hands. The ice is long gone. "He needs a minute… but I think we'll be okay."
I hope it's true. I want it to be true so badly it sits behind my ribs like a held breath.
Knox grunts into his drink. "He's a better man than both of us put together." It's the most he's said all night, and he means every word.
Nate watches me for a second longer. Then he reaches over and claps a hand on my shoulder, heavy, and leaves it there.
"Well." He squeezes once. "It's out now, Ash."
He waits until I look at him.
"Don't fuck it up."
Nate leaves his hand on my shoulder for another second before letting go.
I think about Audrey. About Sophie. About Eli. About the life waiting a thousand miles from this bar that I'd burn this whole season down to protect.
"Yeah," I say quietly.
The secret's out to the four of us now. But Nora still doesn't know. Her church doesn't know. And I'm starting to understand that out isn't the same as safe.