Bex glanced up. “Yeah, it’s not the alcohol that makes you feel bad the next day, it’s the absence of it. Which is why we keep drinking,” she told me cheerfully.
It was safe to say Bex was wholeheartedly on board with this new lifestyle I’d decided to adopt. The strip club where she worked had given her a few days off also. Begrudgingly. Her boss treated her like crap, but she was their main earner so he didn’t have much choice but to give her the time off. She’d been a party girl since before I met her, but I knew even she didn’t drink as much as we had been since … since it happened. I guessed she was running too.
My heart did a skip when the sound of my phone jolted me out of my thoughts. I scrambled to snatch it off our counter, hoping it was him. I felt butterflies in the pit of my stomach at the name flashing on the screen.
“When the oven beeps you get up, take the fries out of the oven,” I instructed Bex quickly. “If you don’t, we both starve and die a fiery death when the oven catches fire,” I warned quickly. Bex was not a cook.
She waved her free hand above her head. “Yeah, yeah, go and have your chat with your biker.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
“Asher,” I greeted softly as I closed the door to my room, sinking onto my bed.
“Flower,” his raspy voice mumbling the name only he called me, and it was the best sound in the world. “You busy?” he continued.
“No,” I answered quickly. I may not know why he wanted to call me, to talk to me, but I knew I didn’t want it to stop. I knew it was unhealthy. Becoming this attached to someone who wouldn’t be in my life for long, but I couldn’t help myself. Calls with Asher went hand in hand with the fried food and alcoholic drinks, only they were unhealthy for my emotional wellbeing.
“Are you?” I asked.
There was a chuckle at the end of the phone. “Not right now, Lily. That’s why I called you.”
I felt my face flame. “Oh, right,” I muttered. I was even awkward on the phone. Great.
“Even if I was busy, there’s nothing that will stop me from speaking to my flower,” he told me as if I wasn’t an awkward dork. As if I was special.
I swallowed. He was so candid. So free with his feelings. It was unnerving.
“Aren’t guys like you meant to be mysterious and hide their feelings underneath a thick wall of muscle and testosterone?” I blurted, staring at my ceiling.
There was another throaty chuckle at the other end of the phone. “Guys like me?” he questioned.
I fiddled with my comforter. “Hot guys. Bad ass biker types that leave feminine jaws dropping in their wake,” I explained.
This time there wasn’t a chuckle, there was a full out roar of laughter.
Usually, this would have me wanting to hang up the phone and hide underneath the comforter I was playing with. But he wasn’t laughing at me. Not in that way.
“Flower, I’m not sure how I’m meant to act, or how mysterious I’m meant to be since I’ve never been in this situation,” he replied.
“Situation?” I repeated.
“A situation where I’ve been unable to get a beautiful blonde out of my head for going on three years,” he explained, his voice serious. “One where I’ve never wanted anything more than I want that particular blonde. I don’t know what’s going on in that beautiful head, I know she’s going through shit, I know she’s shy and oblivious to the effect she has on me….” he paused, and my stomach did somersaults, “so I’m trying to make it explicitly clear just how serious I am about her without scaring her off. Without her letting doubt corrupt that head. How am I doing?” he asked quietly.
I stared at the wall for a long moment. “You’re doing pretty good,” I whispered finally.
“Good,” he said firmly.
He didn’t let the conversation continue down this dangerous road. He moved on to topics mundane and decidedly less serious.
It didn’t mean I didn’t let those words rotate in my mind, and that I didn’t think of it long after we’d said our goodbyes. I thought about it until I didn’t think of much at all. Until I welcomed the blissful oblivion.
“What made you want to patch into the Sons?” I asked shyly the next day, tired of him asking all the questions, desperate to know more about the man I’d loved for three years.
Asher paused. “I was a fucked up kid, shit at home wasn’t good and I sought escape as soon it was offered. For a start, that escape took me down a bad road….” he paused again as if he was measuring his words, figuring out what to tell me, “I got out of that shit, joined the Navy, found discipline, order. Family. I got my shit together. I was good at it. The problem was I started to question the shit they asked me to do. Told me to do. I met Brock, he was serving the same time as me. He didn’t like being told what to do either. So we got out. I followed him back to Amber, patched in as soon as I saw the club for what it was. A brotherhood. Family. The rest, as they say, is history,” he explained.