CHAPTER THIRTY
Nova
ILACED MY FINGERS IN FRONT OF ME AS THE MUSICIANS onstage played a cover of a Steve Miller Band song. They were good. Really good. But I wasn’t sure I could exactly enjoy it.
I hadn’t been around this many people since … I didn’t know when. I tried to think back, through the patchy memories of my time in captivity, to before and the woman I barely knew anymore. I’d liked music and dancing.
Brae hadn’t been able to go out often because of Owen, but I would occasionally go see some live music with friends from the yoga studio or the coffee shop. I tried to remember the last concert I’d been to.
Memories came in flashes. A jam band on the water. The smell of the sea and a hint of pot in the air. So much laughter. I wanted that again. To let loose.
“You say the word. Anytime,” Aster offered, moving toward my side.
We’d found a corner where I wouldn’t get bumped, but there were so many people that I wasn’t sure it would last. I swallowed hard. I didn’t know how I’d do if anyone but Kol touched me.
“I’m good,” I said with a solidness to my words. I didn’t try to fake a smile, not with Aster. She saw too much. “I want to try. If I don’t stretch myself now and then, I won’t ever move past where I am right now.”
Aster sent me a soft smile full of reassurance. “The only thing we can do. Gentle challenges on the days we feel up for them.”
“I like thinking of it that way—gentle challenges.”
Her fingers wrapped around her club soda and lime, showing off her pale-purple nail polish. “Me, too.”
“So,” I asked, moving into new, normal territory. “Any of these fools tearing up the floor exes?”
Aster choked on a laugh, patting her chest. “Warn a girl before you ask things like that.”
I grinned, but her reaction had me curious. Aster was stunningly beautiful, with pale-blond hair and the lightest blue eyes I’d ever seen in real life. It was clear that fashion was a form of expression for her. Even now, everything she wore read artful ease.
Wide-leg, dark jeans were cinched with a chestnut-colored belt featuring an ornate—yet aged—golden buckle, paired with a tucked-in, sleeveless white top.
Peeking out from under the flared legs of her pants were red boots, the one piece of flashy flair she wore.
And around her neck were several delicate gold chains.
I had a feeling that the majority of the men in this place would be happy to take Aster to dinner and do a heck of a lot more than that. But she seemed shocked that I thought she’d dated anyone.
My gaze swept over her face, trying to pull the pieces together. “Dating not your thing?”
She searched the crowd as if in answer. “It’s not that. I just … my family’s a mess. I’m not sure I’d want to bring anyone into that.”
I frowned. “I thought you and your grandfather were close.”
Aster lived on his ranch. And I got the sense from Brae and the Archers that she was pretty intricately involved with the operations over there when she wasn’t working at her psychology practice.
Aster’s whole face lightened. “He is the best. Very much not a mess. Everyone else … not so much.”
“I know a little something about messy families.”
She arched a brow in question and invitation. This was friendship. A give and take. Opening up.
My fingers tightened around each other as if that would help.
“My parents are alcoholics. Have been for as long as I can remember. I’ve got an older brother, Benji.
He looked out for me until he was about twelve and I was ten.
Then he got mixed up with a bad crowd. He’s doing time for armed robbery now. ”
Aster looked at me for a long moment. “That’s hard.”
I liked that she didn’t say she was sorry. This was somehow more real.
I shrugged. “I had Brae. She and I got through what we did because we had each other. Everyone has their stuff. You just have to find someone to lean on to help you through.”
For the briefest of moments, I saw genuine grief on Aster’s face.
The deep, raw, brutal kind. But then she covered it like a master artist, layering a new painting over an old one.
“We do all have our stuff. My parents think children are pawns. My sister rarely thinks about how her actions will impact anyone but her, not even her son.”
“Eli, right? The one who comes out to stay with you in the summers?” I asked. Brae had told me about him. He was a couple of years older than Owen, but they’d hung out on Aster’s ranch a couple of times.
A real smile stretched across Aster’s face now. “He is the best kid ever. And amazing with animals. Says he wants to be a vet or a horse trainer. And he could do it. There’s a tenderness to his spirit. I just hope it doesn’t get stomped out by the rest of our family.”
That was a hell of a load to carry, worrying about a nephew you only got to see for a couple of months out of the year. And feeling like you didn’t fit in with your own family. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if Benji had a son or daughter.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t two of the most beautiful ladies in Starlight Grove,” a familiar voice greeted.
I looked up to see Maverick grinning at us with what looked like a whiskey in his hand.
“Hey, Mav,” I greeted. “You look very handsome as well.”
He gave a slight bow, his worn Starlight Grove Fire Department tee looking more like a vintage band shirt. “Why thank you.”
Aster’s expression had gone perfectly blank as she took a sip of her club soda.
“Not going to say hello, Ice Queen?” Maverick challenged, nothing but mischief in his eyes.
“Hello, Satan,” she said in a deadpan voice.
My gaze ping-ponged between the two of them.
Mav gave an exaggerated shiver. “Nothing like frostbitten greetings to keep a fella warm. I can see why your dance card is so full.”
A scowl tipped Aster’s lips. “I don’t see the usual gaggle of women you’re leading on. Or did you leave them crying in the bathroom?”
A hint of annoyance flickered over Maverick’s expression. “Free as a bird over here.” His gaze flicked to a redhead who was making her way to the bar. “But that might be about to change.”
He strode away and followed in the woman’s wake, leaning in and clearly offering to buy her a drink.
Aster let out a derisive sound. “Disgusting.”
I turned away from the bar and back to her. “What is the deal between you two? I asked Mav the day we ran into you on the trails, and he dodged my question.”
“I bet he did,” she mumbled.
“So?” I pressed.
Aster let out a breath that sounded like it carried the weight of the world. “It’s a long story. But I guess what it comes down to is that we weren’t as good of friends as I thought. Or maybe he wasn’t who I thought he was. And that’s on me as much as him.”
She glanced over my shoulder toward the bar, and pain flickered over her face before she could hide it.
Brae had shared that the two had been friends growing up, after the Archer brothers moved to Starlight Grove, but I was starting to wonder if there’d been something more than friendship between them.
I opened my mouth to ask something else when a man in a cowboy hat and boots stepped up to our huddle. His gaze roamed over me, not in a lascivious way but in an appreciative one. He gave a little dip of his head that would’ve made me giggle if my palms hadn’t already been sweating.
“Ma’am. Would you do me the honor of letting me buy you a drink?” he asked.
My mouth opened and closed as a wave of dizziness hit—the telltale sign that panic was setting in. I thought for sure I might have to run for the door when a low, gravelly voice cut in. One I knew all too well. One I played over and over in my mind in moments of panic.
“She already has one.”
Kol.