CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Three Years, Three and a Half Months Ago
Cullen’s club is dark when I walk in, but I see him sitting at one of the tables, a glass of whiskey in front of him. There’s a seltzer water waiting for me. My whole body clenches like a fist as I sit down across from him.
“You said you’d keep your hands off of her. Will you?” My voice is hard with rage, even though he hasn’t tried anything. But I know what he’s capable of. Just because he let me get away with what I did doesn’t mean he’ll leave either of us alone for good. Her life—her body—he’ll spare that. But she needs to get out of town before he figures out anything else.
“Can’t see beyond the girl waiting back at your apartment, can you?” Cullen sits across from me, sipping one of the fucking vintage whiskies he’s collected. He smiles at me, much more collected than I thought he would be.
“She’s my wife.” I clutch my glass, just waiting for him to spew some evil bullshit.
“Ah, is she? All this time I couldn’t get in touch with you, I was trying to tell you to call off the hit. Bianca’s an old friend, after all. And she’s shared some information with me that enlightens this little situation.”
“You talked to Bianca? She was supposed to—”
“Supposed to get out of town. We know.” He snaps his fingers and looks to the back room. The gray door opens, and I expect one of his men to appear. Instead, I see a familiar face—almost like Summer’s. Green eyes, broad cheekbones, but with blond hair streaked gray. Her hands aren’t tied and her body is intact.
Cullen gives Bianca a nod, then gestures to me. “Ash here has gone and married your girl to protect her.”
“You told me.” She smirks at me, and something in her expression reminds me very much of Summer. The cut on her right cheek is fading into a scar. It’s jarring to know that Cullen did it—and here they are, talking to each other like they’re cozy. “She’s still going back to finish her residency, isn’t she? Tell me she is. She can’t be here. Not anymore. I asked too much of her...” Bianca walks up to the bar and pours herself a vodka with lime.
“Don’t look so shocked, Ash,” Cullen says. “Bianca is an old friend. She came by here after you told her to leave.” He finishes the last of his whiskey as he looks at me with his one eye, his face unreadable.
“I made a deal with Cullen,” Bianca says, her eyes flicking over to him. “Summer leaves, and she’s free of all this bullshit. That means Cullen’s merry gang of assholes—”
“They’re assholes, all right. But they aren’t very merry.” He laughs and then nods to her, and she pours him another whiskey, as automatically as if she were tending bar back at her pub. She brings it over to him and sits it down, wiping some condensation away from the glass with a napkin. She takes a seat in the chair next to Cullen’s and looks between the two of us, her face blank.
“You see, Jonny? Everyone’s safe as can be. The girl can go back home or wherever she wants, and my complaint with her aunt is completely done. No leverage needed.”
I look between them. Bianca cuts her eyes at Cullen, and the man shrugs like he never held a knife to her face or threatened her niece’s life if she didn’t pay fucking immediately.
“Is there money I don’t know about?” I ask.
“No,” Bianca says softly, her voice barely a whisper. Cullen puts his hand on top of hers and she nearly jumps to the ceiling. The look on her face changes rapidly, moving from fear to anger to something else entirely.
“It has to do with the fact that Bianca is an old friend of mine.”
“She was always an old friend of yours, Cullen. You’re telling me that she’s a better friend now—and that you’re somehow invested in her safety when you were talking about burning down her pub last week? Fucking shit, man.” I throw one arm up and slap my hand down on the table.
“Clever that you married the girl.” He raises the eyebrow that sits over his working eye. The other one hasn’t moved in the better part of twenty years. “It’s a rule I take seriously. You, on the other hand, well, Damian wanted to take a finger off. You know how he likes to do that.”
Damian, Cullen’s fucking nephew. Yes, I know what he likes to do in his spare time.
“But I came back to speak with you,” Bianca starts nervously, “And now everything is fine. You just need to convince her to leave.”
“Yes, she leaves,” Cullen echoes.
“Then I go with her.” I think of Summer’s words the other night and crack my knuckles, then bring my hand up to my beard, feeling the stubble. I’ve let it grow since the wedding, red and wiry. I can almost feel the dark circles under my eyes. This girl, she worries me. But there’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight, not when she’s been thinking about going to fucking Syria. “I’m her husband.”
“She’ll send divorce papers, and you’ll sign them,” Bianca says. “She needs to go. She’s had enough of this mess—and I’m sorry to say you’re part of it, sweetheart.”
What the fuck is going on here? A week ago, Cullen was telling me to take Summer and tie her to a furnace in the safe house. Now he’s palling around with the girl’s aunt and telling me to send her on her way without another word.
I decide I don’t need to know what’s going on in Cullen’s twisted brain, and I push my glass back to the center of the table. “I’ll send her on her way, but I’m fucking going with her.” Cullen cuts his eyes at Bianca and she shakes her head slightly.
“That’s not the deal. She goes alone,” Cullen says. “Bianca gave me some important information in exchange for the girl’s safety.”
“I’m not a danger to her safety. I’m her husband.”
“You’re not a danger to her safety,” Bianca says. She sighs heavily. “It’s more that you’re a danger to her in general. Anyone from up here is. Summer and my sister have a whole life down south that doesn’t involve me, and I never should have gotten her mixed up in my mess. She’ll be better off without me, and without you too.”
“She won’t be—” I think of her, sprawled out in my bed this morning, naked, beautiful. I think of the way my body craves hers. The way she craves me. In this moment, it seems more important than anything—that I stay with her just like she wants. That I become someone different.
“You’re not relieved from my service, Jonny,” Cullen says. “You have debts to pay before you can go. One of them is that you leave this girl alone for her tenure in that program or her internship or whatever she chooses. Or I’ll make sure you never see her again.”
“Cullen—”
“This is on me, Jonathan,” Bianca says. She takes my hand in hers, squeezing it a bit. Her fingers are delicate and covered with blond freckles. She catches my gaze and holds it. “You see, there’s a reason Cullen and I have history. It just happened that Summer made her way into this because she needed a place to live her last year of medical school. Otherwise, I’d still be borrowing money from Cullen, and he’d still be trying to scare me into paying him back with more interest than I have.” She cuts her eyes at him again, and he smiles. Like he’s not dangerous. Like this whole thing is a big misunderstanding. Just like Summer, Bianca rolls her eyes at him. Like he’s a cad, not a criminal.
“I don’t—” Before I can get the rest out, Bianca stops me.
“It’s a long story. And you can’t tell Summer. Not a word.”
I lean in, and she tells me.
Present Day
Summer told me we’re the worst at getting divorced, and I agree.
Wholeheartedly, and pretty much without any fucking regret. I never intended to divorce her, even though I told her I’d sign the papers.
It’s a betrayal, but it’s one I can live with.
Before her, I wasn’t a man who lived for anything, a man who thought about the future. I lived moment to moment, dirty paycheck to dirty paycheck, and the only things that mattered to me were women, gambling, and loyalty to the Flood family.
Summer doesn’t know it, but she changed that from day one. She came after I got clean, when I was figuring out that I had nothing to live for. But when that woman appeared, everything around me started to make sense. Even if we weren’t the same, even if we had come from different places and were going different places, everything in my life started to fall into place once Summer was mine.
We’re pretty much the most ill-matched couple I’ve ever known of. The only thing we have in common is that we grew up poor and got made fun of for it at school. I might have gone to college, once. And I might have studied sports medicine. But my family was all tied up with Cullen’s business, and I fell in with him after fighting didn’t work out.
I lied to her when I said I wasn’t waiting for her. That’s another betrayal I can live with.
I waited for her, and I pursued her once she was back, until she was too annoyed with me to ignore me, until she had to give in.
That’s the way you do it with a woman like Summer. Left to her own devices, she’d bury herself in her job and convince herself she never needed a man.
And now she’s here, in my condo, waking up and making fun of me for the standard level of cleanliness I keep around here. Just because I keep a certain order to things doesn’t mean I’m “OCD.”
When she bolts out of the shower this particular morning, her strawberry blond hair is still wet and plastered against her scrubs, creating snakelike patterns against the green fabric. She has on her ugly white sneakers and pulls on an oversized gray UNC hoodie, even though it’s already eighty degrees outside. I look up from my coffee and just watch her.
If I were younger, I’d be pretty bored at the idea of watching my wife at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, running around the apartment in her baggy doctor’s uniform, looking for her purse like a madwoman, and then grabbing coffee and spilling most of it on her white shoes when she’s trying to balance her purse in one hand and her doctor’s bag in another.
But it’s far from boring, because she’s radiant, even at this hour of the morning, even when she’s getting ready to go on shift and kill herself and her body for twelve hours at a time, or fourteen if they need her. I think back to that girl I first met, immaculate eyebrows and makeup, curled hair and tube dress. Back then she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Now, she’s something far more—a woman, and more than that too. She’s a little clumsy still, but she radiates wit and confidence even when she’s wiping coffee off her shoes.
I was mad at Bianca for a long time. But I see the point of her words when I look at Summer now.
“Dammit,” she mutters. I raise an eyebrow at her and laugh.
“Having trouble, Sunshine?”
“Yes—dammit,” she repeats. “I’m trying to get there early so I can complete a biopsy, so I can make sure I’m the first resident Priya sees. She says I could be eligible for a fellowship...” Her voice trails off, and she avoids my eyes.
“I’m sure you’ll get it.”
“Maybe,” she says, pursing her lips together. She comes up to me and gives me a kiss, quick but passionate, fingers running through my hair. After that, she flits out of the door, nearly tripping over a fat white package on the porch. It has her name written on it, and I hold it up as she flies down the stairs to her car.
“Sunshine, this is for you,” I call out to her, feeling the heft of whatever’s inside.
“I’ll look at it later!” She rolls down the window and blows me another kiss, then peels out of the driveway and leaves me to my thoughts. The package is from somewhere in Florida. I shrug and toss it on the entry table where Summer frequently places her keys, and then loses them. It’s probably the new scrubs she ordered, certainly nothing important.
I forget about it when I realize—this is the day for another betrayal, maybe not betrayal exactly. But a secret. Four or five times, Summer has told me that she’s saving up a few hundred dollars at a time, and she can get her loans deferred until her mother is up to speed with her mortgage payments. She’s shrugged when I’ve offered to pay, telling me she has it handled.
These Colington women, they think they have everything handled. And in fact, it’s nothing of the damn sort. Her mother will be homeless, her failing business closed.
I peek out the window again and make sure that she’s gone, and my chest constricts. There are things left unsaid about what I’m about to do, and I have the feeling I’m going to make her spitting mad. But I learned a long time ago that the only things in life worth doing are the things that will cause the biggest stir.
I pick up my phone and dial the bank. They’ve told me this is an absolutely idiotic move on my part, that I shouldn’t be liquidating my savings and putting my hope into one fighter’s success. I shouldn’t be shitting on my future and depending on the idea that one gym will make it so that my wife and I will be comfortable while she pays off her loans. And I damn well know I shouldn’t be depending on Linda Collington to turn her business around. None of these women has a shred of business sense—I’m glad Summer turned out to be a doctor.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I dial Wells Fargo, heart beating fast. “That woman better not open a private practice, or I’ll be the one bailing her out in five years’ time.” I laugh as the phone starts to ring. When I hear the banker I spoke to yesterday on the other end of the line, my words all come out in a rush. “I want to transfer that money we talked about yesterday, no ifs, ands, or buts. To the little inn on the south side of the island, right across from the ice cream shop. Summerside, that’s what it’s called.”
While the bank processes the exchange, there’s silence on the other end of the line. I find myself wishing I could hear it—the thump of money being moved from one drawer to another, or maybe the satisfying clink of a cash register opening. But it’s all done on a computer screen, imaginary cash moved from one person to another, putting my jobless ass in deep, pathetic trouble.
“It’s all done, Sir. We’ll call to notify Ms. Collington of the money in her account tomorrow morning. This will take care of her outstanding mortgage balance,” the banker says, amazement in his voice. He takes a deep breath in. “Who shall we say it’s from? An anonymous benefactor?”
“Hell no. It’s from Jonathan Ash.”
I hang up the phone and rush out of the house, my heart beating fast like it does after a fight. I walk straight to the house where Josh is staying and drag his ass off of the couch that he’s been sleeping on for the past week. No matter his level of injury—and it would seem Frank got him good—this kid is training today. My phone buzzes in my pocket as I drag his sorry, injured ass to my decrepit gym that’s one step away from being condemned. I guess I don’t have any damn business sense either, so my wife and I will be depending on Linda Collington to get her shit together and run a business for once in her life.
After I finish beating the hell out of Josh and taking three or four punches I didn’t need to take, I look at my phone.
Six missed calls from New York, and no messages.
“Fucking spammers,” I mutter. I put my phone away. “I’ve got more important shit to worry about.”
“What was that?” Josh asks, clapping my shoulder where he got me with a fucking horrible elbow strike earlier.
I suck in my breath and push his sorry ass out of the door before the whole building collapses on us. “Just the ramblings of a poor man who’s done a very stupid thing,” I tell him.
“Sometimes a stupid thing is all you can do, man,” Josh says with a smile.