9. Asher

9

ASHER

“ A bout time you showed up,” Johnny greets me at the entrance to his office at Undercover Lovers. He owns the nightclub in the city outside of Whispering Oaks, is married to his job and his life here. The same goes for Matthew and Luke. Both of their jobs require them to stay close to their buildings. It works for them and us others who live in the same town we all grew up in.

“Yeah, yeah. Everyone else here?” I ask.

“Nope, only Trent, Jagger, and myself tonight. The rest got called in, have a deadline, or whatever fucking else.” Jagger steps back as I walk through the doorway. Everything here is black and chrome. The same goes throughout the club, until you get downstairs. That area is closed off, and only VIP members of the exclusive type make their way down there.

“Fuck, well, I guess I’ll catch up with them next time,” I say, making my way to the small bar area Johnny has set up .

“Hear you got a new neighbor,” Trent says from across the room.

“Yep, Estelle’s niece.” I don’t elaborate. I’ll tell them when I’m damn good and ready.

“Heard she works at Luke’s office,” Jagger interjects. My head whips around at that little tidbit of information. Luke is an obstetrician/gynecologist here in Oakview.

“Do I even want to know how?” I ask. My friends are a bunch of gossip mongers.

“Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway.” Trent takes a sip of his bourbon. I opt for a beer. Jagger is probably drinking tequila, and Johnny, well, he’s more than likely not drinking. Whenever the club is open, he wants to stay sharp as a tack, saying he’s always gotta have his eyes and ears to the floor.

“Alright.” I take my seat at the round table. When all of us are here, there’s no way to fit, so we scatter across the room. Nine times out of ten, Johnny will be behind his desk, four of us will surround the table, and the rest will either stand or sit in the cushy chairs in front of his glass and chrome desk.

“Our girl Briar,” Jagger says with a snicker. Motherfucker. That means the whole damn friend group has been briefed, and I wouldn’t put it past them to shuffle her picture around, either.

“She didn’t even meet Lennon, only saw her from the driveway,” I groan, rubbing one hand down my face and taking a healthy sip of my beer. Maybe we should have had this little pow wow closer to my home. Something tells me I’m going to need more than the two beers I’ll allow myself when I’m driving .

“You know as well as we all do that the girl is a talker,” Trent cuts in.

“Can we get to the moral of the story before it’s past your bedtime?” I look toward Jagger. He’s the early bird of the group and also the grandpa.

“Fuck off. Trent has more information than I do. He saw Briar and Kenny at the park. She talked about Lennon, gave him the details, and he ran with it,” Johnny says from his perch overlooking the nightclub area even though it’s empty.

“I don’t want to know. Jesus, I do not want to know.” I close my eyes, tilt my head to the ceiling, and take a moment to breathe. This brotherhood we have, it means we look out for one another, and with Trent having access to the database he has, I already know he’s got Lennon’s full background check, the same thing he does for anyone we’re around.

“Well, then you don’t want to know she received legal guardianship of her sister at the age of eighteen. The sister who is nine years younger than her.” I’m trying to tune this shithead out. Except Trent knows what he’s doing, reeling me into his conversation. I sit up straighter, put the bottle of beer on a coaster, and settle in for the duration.

“She’s also newly divorced, had a different address than the ex-husband six months before the proceedings started. Other than that, she’s clean as a whistle, not so much as a parking or speeding ticket.”

“That’s enough,” I bark so he’ll stop delving deeper into what he found. This is just the tip of the iceberg. He’s good at detective work, can pick apart any damn case that comes his way .

“Well, I think you owe me fifty bucks.” Luke walks out of the bathroom at the tail end of the discussion.

“Jesus, seriously?” I ask, not having heard him. I shouldn’t be surprised it’s always something with this group.

“Asher, you know how word of mouth travels with this group,” Johnny cuts in, looking at the room instead of the nightclub.

“Fuck, yeah, I do. Thought you were on call at the hospital?” I ask.

“I finished about thirty minutes ago.” He shrugs his shoulders. It’s then I realize he’s still in a pair of scrubs and sneakers. “Too keyed up to go home after shift and sit around, it was either stop by here or work out for hours on end.” Luke is on rotation at the hospital, delivering babies, dealing with emergency surgeries, and even the harder stuff that nobody likes to talk about.

“Fuck, I should have known better than bet against you,” Trent states.

“Shit never gets old. You win some, you lose some.” Jagger shrugs.

“I take it you’re going after Lennon?” Johnny asks. I take a moment to think about a life with and without the possibility of her in it. I’ve only been in her presence a few minutes, and I can already tell she’s coming to mean something to me. I wake up and am looking out the window to search for her, I go to sleep thinking about her, and now that I’m off for a few days, I’ll be seeing her a hell of a lot more. The small glimpses I got from her are not enough; they’re never enough.

“She’s mine,” I tell the room .

“Damn, didn’t see that coming,” Luke says with a chuckle.

“Gotta ask, what makes her different?” Trent wonders. It’s been well over ten years since shit blew up in my face. I swore off women, relationships, closed myself off, and didn’t think about settling down ever.

“Wish I could tell you the exact reason or what does it for me. Maybe it’s the way I can tell she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, or when she smiles, it may seem like her whole face lights up, but you can still read the sadness in their depths. Fuck, it could be anything. What I do know is when I’m around her, she makes me think life could be a fuck of a lot better.”

“Seen her, brother, think there’s a lot more to the story,” Luke says. He’s at the bar. The clinking of the ice in the glass gives him away without me having to turn around.

“Well, there is that, too,” Johnny replies.

“Do I even want to know?” Yesterday, I worked a long-as-fuck shift, got off, and headed home. All I wanted was sleep and not scroll through all the messages that went off to play catch-up. I asked for the Cliff Notes and got exactly that, minus a few important details.

“Trent included a picture when Tysen brought it up.” Trent shrugs his shoulders when I look his way after Jagger drops the bombshell.

“Damn, you don’t play around. Well, this has been fun. Since we’re going to dissect my life and not talk about work, I’m heading home. Gotta deal with the Randalls and make sure shit isn’t going sideways again.” I’m not pissed at them; this is what my brothers do. We all look out for one another, and this is how they do it.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get this shit done and get down to brass tacks.” Jagger beats on the table with his fingers.

“Yeah, yeah,” Trent agrees. Johnny grunts, Luke sits down, and finally, we discuss business.

--

A fter a few hours of talking shop, shooting the shit, and catching up with one another, I tapped out. I’ve got to go into the fire station tomorrow. Briar’s teacher stopped me when I picked her up the other day asking if we could bring the truck to school and do a couple of demonstrations with the class and a few others. After a couple of calls between the captain and the elementary school principal, shit got taken care of. The only deal that’s kicking me in my ass is I’m coming in on my day off.

Shit, I’d do anything for my niece, which is why I agreed without a second thought. Still, means I need to get some sleep in order to be on my A-game tomorrow around what I’m sure will be nearly a hundred kids. We’ve got a system: they’re allowed to use the hose, get on the truck, we do fire safety, and then give them a few mementos. The plastic hats and coloring books are always a hit, plus the teacher takes their pictures for their parents. It wears me out as much as being out on call after call .

When I pull into my driveway, my gaze immediately goes to Lennon’s. My cock thickens beneath my jeans as I think about the curvy woman. I don’t stay idling for long, nothing like the first time I saw Lennon walking up the front porch steps. My truck is parked, and the engine is off in twenty seconds flat. After another few seconds, I reach for the handle, pull it up, and slide out. I’m a man on a mission, and going to Lennon’s is exactly where my feet are taking me.

She has what seems like every light in the house on, and as I start to head toward her place, I notice she is walking through the rooms, closing curtains, turning off lights, and moving away.

“Goddamn it, Fontaine.” I’ve missed my fucking chance to have a moment with her. I stayed away too damn long, and now I’ll have to wait till tomorrow evening until I see her again. Instead of standing like a fool on the edge of the property line, it’s time I head into the house. The way Luke talked at Undercover Lovers told me tomorrow is her first day of work. He mentioned his last receptionist retired rather suddenly after her husband went through a bad patch of luck with his health. The ad for a new hire didn’t last long. Lennon swooped in, knocked him on his ass, and his office manager loved her, too. He said she’s probably overqualified, but he sees room in the future for her to move up. I’ve got no idea how that will work, but I’m not surprised, either.

Lennon Sinclair has it going on, in beauty and brains. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough, but for now, I’ll use my hand and play out another fantasy. This time, I think it’ll be of her bouncing on my cock, her back to me, my hand gripping her hair, the other spreading her cheeks apart to watch as I slide in and out of her.