34. Asher

I barely rememberedthe trip to Saratoga. I crossed into New Hampshire in the early evening and reached upstate New York when it was dark, well into the night. I'd barely stopped except for coffee and gas fill-ups. My body ached where I'd hurt it the day before. I just had to hope that the quick repair job that Cole's biker garage had done on my ride was sufficient, because tonight, I was testing the limits.

I pulled off the road near my destination. My phone told me that the address Alan had given Winter was a horse ranch, off the road, surrounded by countryside. I parked a few miles out. I wasn't about to go knocking on my father's door in the middle of the night. After exploring a little, I found a river and a fishing hut. It was small and cramped, but it had a portable heater in it. I hunkered down inside and got warm.

I couldn't sleep, though. Dawn crept across the horizon, and my mind went in endless circles. I was finally going to meet him. The man I had wondered about my entire life. Now, I was hours away from it, and I was having second thoughts. Maybe this was a mistake. What if he was a horrible person? Then I'd have to know that I shared blood with an asshole. What if he was great? Then I'd have to live with knowing what I'd missed out on in my life.

I left the hut as the sun popped its lazy head over the horizon and walked to the riverbank.

I felt strange, disconnected from my body. My mind was somewhere else, while my body continued on.

Did I really want to do this? After, there'd be no escape from reality. No chance to turn back the clock and comfort myself with fantasies about all the reasons why my father wasn't there for me and Eve. Why we had never been important enough to him.

I wished Winter was here. I'd been mad at her, betrayed, of all things, when she'd hidden the photo and address from me. It was sobering to realize how much I'd come to depend on her presence in my life. She wasn't some stranger anymore. She was a living, breathing obsession, and she'd worked her way under my skin like a poison arrow, infecting me with things I had no experience feeling. A longing I couldn't deny.

I couldn't resist the urge to check her location. I'd known that the rest of the crew had been on their way to the cabin. She wouldn't have been tied up for long.

I opened my phone and checked the app. The flashing dot of Winter's phone sucker punched me in the gut.

She wasn't far from here. Only a few miles, and she was moving fast. She'd followed me. That spoiled brat, Ice Queen, funny and smart and everything in between, had followed me. I was relieved. I wasn't alone. She was here. She'd come for me.

In the distance, a car door slammed. The silence changed form, becoming heavy with expectation. She was coming. It made me feel things I had no idea what the hell to do with.

I saw her before she saw me. I knew where the path through the woods at the edge of the road would come out. She appeared, still in her outfit from yesterday. She'd driven all night, for me.

She looked around, her hair almost white in the pale morning light. I felt the moment that her eyes met mine. A jolt of awareness. A slumbering fire rekindled. I wasn't just intrigued by Winter. I didn't just like her. This was something more.

She walked toward me, climbing over the odd fallen tree trunk and skirting rocks. I was sitting on the tiny deck of the fishing hut, the river running quietly below me.

"How did you know I'd pussied out?" I asked.

She folded her arms over her chest. "I saw your bike by the side of the road."

I simply nodded.

"You're not surprised to see me?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I told you I'm watching you, Ice Queen. That hasn't changed."

She didn't respond to that. If she thought it was odd that I was keeping tabs on her, and liked to know her whereabouts at all times, she didn't say anything. It was telling behavior, though. There had only been two women I'd ever cared enough about to need to know their whereabouts constantly — my sister and mom.

Now, there were three.

"So, did you already go?"

I shook my head. "I'm not sure it's a great idea after all."

"Nonsense, you didn't come this far and search for so long to give up now."

I rested my head back against the hut. "Maybe I did."

"Are you scared, is that it?" she challenged, maybe hoping that her barb would cause me to prove her wrong.

I simply nodded. "Yeah, I am. I really fucking am. I don't know what will happen when I see him. Will I be able to shake his hand, or will I hit him?"

She let out a long sigh. "I don't know, let's go and see. Do what feels right in the moment. If that's hitting him, you can do that. You came all this way. You need to do this."

Yes, you're right. But the fear remained. The feeling of standing at the precipice of huge change wasn't a comfortable one.

Then Winter held out her hand to me. Her elegant fingers looked sculpted from marble in the early morning light.

"Come on," she said softly, offering me her hand casually like it didn't mean the fucking world to me. "I'll go with you."