4. Asher
Asher
“Just tell me,” I said again through gritted teeth. Quinn laughed as she waved at the security guard at the door and walked into the club ahead of me.
“Sorry, Ash. Not my business to tell,” she replied as we made it to the VIP area where the music was quieter so I could actually hear her.
“Give it up, man. She didn’t tell you anything on the way here. I doubt she’ll change her mind now.” Noah slapped my shoulder as he walked past me.
I’d been trying to get Quinn to tell me why Sutton couldn’t come out tonight. She waggled her eyebrows at me in the car and when I asked if she knew the reason, she said yes but that she wouldn’t tell me, and it was pissing me off. And she knew it too.
If I solved the puzzle of Sutton’s clear exhaustion, maybe that would push her from my mind. And that was what I wanted. Needed, really. Because why the fuck was my body reacting?
Sure, her soft hair looked long enough to wrap around my hand, and her coconut scent went straight to my head. And yes, her hips looked just thick enough to grab a hold of. She was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen
But my body’s reaction was because she was a puzzle.
I’d thought about asking Jaxson to run a background check but every time I went to tell him to do it, I stopped myself. It felt like an invasion of privacy and this mystery was mine to solve, not Jaxson’s.
“Took you guys long enough.” Oli shot us a look as we walked up to the couch.
“Ash is harassing Q,” Noah said as we all took our seats. Oli already had our drinks waiting for us, thank God, because I fucking needed it.
“He’s not harassing me.” Quinn patted my back. I ignored them.
“What’s his problem?” Oli asked, tilting his chin toward me and earning a glare from me that didn’t even make him flinch. I missed the early days in our friendship when they were all a little uncertain about me.
Just as I picked up my drink, my phone went off. I looked down to see a message from Knight in our private chat that we almost never used.
Knight
Can you go somewhere quiet?
I held up my phone as the conversation went on around me. Someone was probably making fun of me. I went into the office, closing the door to muffle the music, and dialed his number.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the moment the ringing stopped.
“Nothing,” Knight answered. He knew I wasn’t good with phone etiquette; thankfully everyone was used to it now. “I just wanted you to know that I got the ring.”
“Okay.” I frowned, waiting for more.
I knew he was flying out to London to go see a jeweler.
It was the one his mum had commented on when they were looking through magazines at the hospital on one of her last days before she passed away from cancer.
As Knight had only been thirteen, I wasn’t sure how he even remembered the name, but he mentioned to me that he wanted to get a ring made there one day if he ever decided to get married.
It was another way he could honor his mum.
“For Quinn.” He waited but I didn’t say anything. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
“Of course you are,” I said after a moment.
Knight let out a laugh. “You’re supposed to say something more encouraging.”
“You’ve been obsessed with her since you met her, so this isn’t a surprise.”
“That’s true. It’s been the best year of my life.” He paused. “You don’t think it’s too fast?” He wasn’t doubting his connection with Quinn, but he probably just wanted to hear my thoughts, of which I had none.
“No.”
There was a pause. “Care to elaborate?”
“No. You haven’t stopped telling me how you just know that it’s her. We all love her. What else is there?”
“Thanks,” he said after a beat. We didn’t do this shit with each other. If we needed someone with emotional bandwidth, we called Noah. “Jane told me you need to call her.”
Jane, Noah’s mum, and really the only mother I’d ever known, liked to hear from us often.
It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last called her and I felt guilty about it.
I didn’t like being on the phone but she would talk for a few minutes before letting me go and that seemed to be enough for her.
“I will.”
“Good. Now I need help coordinating a few things for my proposal. We’re going back to Italy to visit her mum again and she knows all my passcodes so I can’t hide anything from her.”
“What do you need?”
He was well aware I thought of Quinn like a sister and so any help he asked for I was willing to give.
Knight spent the next ten minutes walking me through who I needed to contact, what I needed to send to her mum, and what I needed to book. I took notes on my phone, only offering the occasional grunt, my skin already crawling at how many phone calls I was going to have to make.
“Well, I think that’s it. Don’t text me anything. Only tell me updates in person or over the phone when you’re sure she’s not there,” Knight instructed firmly. I knew how important this was for him so I held in my eye roll—barely. “I’ve got to go.”
“Knight?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m happy for you,” I grumbled.
“I know.” I could practically hear his smile through the phone.
After I hung up, I looked down and saw all the missed notifications from our group chat.
I tried to keep the thing on mute, even though the last time they’d found out I’d done that, I’d got a stern talking-to from Will.
It was always going off, I could never keep up, and I fucking hated texting.
But the one time I tried to leave, I got added back immediately and yelled at.
Noah
Breaking news—Asher Lawson is acting strange. What could be the reason?
Noah
Stay tuned to find out.
Jaxson
Are you okay Noah?
Will
Strange ass way to start a conversation but okay…
Quinn
Did you want to be a news reporter when you were younger?
Knight
Aren’t you all sitting next to each other at the club right now? Why are you texting?
I smirked at Knight jumping in. Before Quinn, he responded only slightly more often than me, but now he was always paying attention to it.
Oli
He didn’t want those of us not here to feel left out.
Knight
I wouldn’t have felt left out.
Quinn
Yeah, because I would have filled you in later.
Noah
I can start a poll for us to bet on why Asher is in…a mood.
Jaxson
Isn’t he always grumpy?
Will
^second that question.
Oli
Yeah but he’s glaring way more intensely tonight.
Me
You know I’m in this message thread right, assholes?
Quinn
Ash…
I’m sorry.
But you are glaring more than normal tonight.
Noah
And I think I know why…
Will
Does it have something to do with Quinn’s new assistant perhaps…
I shoved my phone in my pocket and let out a sigh. It was going to be a fucking long night.
I stretched my neck, looking up from the puzzle spread out over the table to the snowy downtown landscape beyond. It was late March, and the city was still covered in snow but the sun was shining. I preferred it over the dark, dreary London winters.
Doing a puzzle put me in an almost meditative state that always helped calm my mind. Jane had been big into puzzles when we were growing up and I found they were a good way for me to shut things out. Plus, they helped keep my mind sharp and gave me a sense of accomplishment when I finished them.
It took the guys over an hour to stop bothering me last night. I just glared as they asked questions and poked at me, making jokes until Quinn stepped in and told them it was enough. We left the club not long after that.
Grabbing my phone, I dialed Jane knowing that if I didn’t, she might just show up here.
The woman was a saint, taking in Knight at thirteen when his mum died and then me not even a year later.
She never once complained, never made us feel like a burden, her husband Henry right there with her showing us what a good man looked like.
Jane answered with a laugh. “I knew guilt-tripping you through Theo would work.”
“Hi, Mum.” There was a small smile on my face. She was one of the only people who seemed to be able to pull them out of me.
“Good to hear you remember who I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
She let out a sigh. “You’re forgiven. Anything new in your world?”
“The same. Members club is coming along.”
“Theo showed me the architectural drawings. It looks incredible. Did he tell you about the ring?”
“Yes, and he’s put me in charge of coordination.”
“Well, better you than Noah. I love that boy but we all know he is terrible at keeping secrets,” she chuckled.
Without prompting from me, she launched into the updates on the community book club she was a part of and how she and Henry were thinking of a trip to Greece in the summer. She talked without much input from me. I’d never been much of a talker, but it got worse the shitter my home life became.
One afternoon when I was nine, I was sitting on the steps outside my school waiting for my mum.
She was supposed to be coming to get me like she did every other day between the two or three jobs she worked to keep the lights on and food in the fridge.
The school yard emptied out but I was just watching ants run across the pavement.
It wasn’t until a school administrator came to get me that I found out my mum had died in a car accident on the way to pick me up.
That left me with my father. Well, he didn’t even deserve that title—I tended to call him the sperm donor. He was an abusive, drunk asshole that decided to turn his anger to me when my mother was gone.
I was fourteen when I finally left. I couldn’t stay in the house any longer. He didn’t like that I was bigger than him, that I could fight back, even malnourished. I’d been sleeping in cars on the street for a week before Knight and Noah found me.
When we started growing Knight Enterprises and I was making money, I looked my sperm donor up, always ready for him to come out of the woodwork. But he was in prison for aggravated assault against some guy in a bar. I’d deleted the file and never looked back.
Jane and Henry Hutchinson had saved my life. They were my parents in every way that counted. So if Jane wanted to talk my ear off with updates on her life while I grunted or mumbled a “yeah,” then I would let her.
“Did I tell you about the new hobby Henry’s started?” Jane asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. She didn’t wait for me to answer before she dove into Henry’s new label maker and the organization projects he was starting while I listened with a small smile.