CHAPTER 2

Asher

THE DAY I DISCOVERED MY DOOM actually started off on a good note.

My plane landed in New Highland International on time for once. Sure, I was a zombie after dealing with the flurry of post-holidays shitstorms happening with my company. I hadn't shaved in days. The last thing I'd eaten was airplane food, and the day before that, a liter of Coke. I looked and felt like shit.

I stood curbside waiting for my ride, shivering in my stylish wool coat without scarf or hat, because I'll be damned if I'll let my sisters and mother rule my winter wear along with my sock drawer. (Thanks to the women in my family and their gifting habits, I now own a little over a gross, yes, I do mean 144, pairs of socks.)

But hey, at least I was back home. I was looking forward to dropping onto a warm bed with a warm, naked body curled up against my back. Or I could curl up against hers; that would work, too. The essence here was soft tits against my back or a round ass against my cock. And sleep. Let's not forget sleep.

And following sleep, fucking. And maybe I'd study for finals if I felt like it. Yes, things were looking up.

A group of teenage girls walked by. They eyed me, obviously having no objection to dudes that look like shit.

I dismissed them as too young. Also, of course, I was not available, being in a committed relationship. There was only one woman I'd consider lying naked with. I'm not one of those loser cheating boyfriends. If my cock rises for any woman other than my girlfriend, I ignore it as a general policy. I'm a fucking saint, if I do say so myself.

Speaking of Aura, where the hell was she?

I took out my phone. Eighteen messages and texts, but nothing from my girlfriend. Scrolling through names, I paused.

Charis Sloane.

Damn. I wanted to call her. She'd be here in forty minutes, guaranteed. No matter what she was doing, my bestie would drop everything to pick me up if she knew I could use the lift. Mental lift, I mean. I can Uber the hell out of this town or even call a limo service or just flag down the nearest taxi.

But it was Sloane I was missing.

That's very wrong, by the way. I should be wanting to call Aura. My girlfriend. Except fuck if I could handle a conversation with her right now.

But I was on a Sloane ban. Calling her was not an option. So I called Aura.

"Hi, you," she said in her seductive timbre. "I was just thinking of you."

I love Aura's voice. I also love her hair (natural redhead), and body (curves so delicious you could sink into them for hours). Once upon a time, I loved her, too.

I hoped in the future I would again. I'm a realist, but also an optimist.

"Well, I'm here," I said.

"Here?"

"Back in town." Silence from her end, so I added, "From Arizona."

"Arizona?" She sounded confused.

"Yes, Arizona. Work trip, remember? I left last Saturday? Due back the day before finals? You drove me to the airport?"

"Oh, right, right…."

Okay, this was disturbing. I'd wrung eight eye-rolling orgasms out of her, cooked diet food for her, made an extra set of keys to my place for her, all in preparation for this trip.

"I'm so glad you called, Ash. I'm starting to wonder if I'll even pass the Bar. This quarter has been so stressful. What if…"

I stared at the phone, listening to her words, which made no sense to me, going from grades to paralegal stuff to fashion and spring sales and rude checkout clerks and other crap I gave not a shit about ever, and closed my eyes. After a few minutes, I interrupted her.

"Look, Aura, I'm at the airport. You said you'd be picking me up. Can you swing by now, please?"

"Oh, Ash, I wish I didn't have a paper to finish. And after this I have to stop and pick up my smoothie. I discovered my skin likes the coconut milk better than the goat milk."

"Right. Are you coming or not?"

"Isn't there a shuttle you can get? Oh, come meet me at the gym later. You will not believe how firm my thighs have gotten in just a week of intensive…"

I shoved the handle down on my carry-on, sat on it, and rubbed my jaw, then my eyes. It was a job to keep them open. Shit. I was more tired than I realized, swaying just sitting here, and I hadn't even had any booze on the plane.

"Aura, get in a fucking car and—" I changed my mind. "Never mind. I'll get myself home. Over and out."

I was pissed enough to flag down a passing taxi, my least favorite means of transport, seeing as they were all grungy and unreliable around here. By the time I got to my place, my mood had sunk low enough that I knew I wasn't getting to bed anytime soon.

I grabbed a bag of potato chips and sprawled out at the kitchen table, unmotivated even to take off my coat.

I then proceeded to brood over A) why I'd gotten involved with Aura Renaldi in the first place, and B) why I was still involved with her three years later.

The answer to A) was easy.

When I'd met her, Aura had everything a college freshman could want—stunning beauty, a complete absence of sexual inhibitions, and her own apartment off campus.

She also had a serene way about her (fake, it turned out). And she happened to be ambitious about getting her law degree early—ambitious like me. That's something in common, right?

Somewhere in this funk, energized by salt and calories, I shrugged out of my clothes and hopped in the shower. Once I'd scrubbed away the travel dirt I just stood there under the stream of hot water, letting it work on my stiff muscles, which were bitching at me from hours sitting on my ass—business class and its comforts notwithstanding.

By now I was on B)—the question of why Aura was still in my life after three long years.

The answers were not encouraging.

In order of frequency:

1) I didn't want the headache of the breakup fight.

2) She fucked like a dream. We fucked well together even if we were fighting. Especially when we were fighting. And I love to fuck. I need to fuck.

Related to that, let's call it 2)a, is her submissiveness. She likes to take orders, in and out of the bedroom. I like to take charge. Dominating a situation when everybody else is being a chicken shit is how I keep my life going in the direction I want.

This was actually a big one. Our excellent dynamic is why years ago when my brothers said, She's a manipulator, just look how she got Mama to move Easter to June and my sisters said, She's a user, she runs you ragged, and my buddy Joel said, She's a one-week wonder, bet you three hundred bucks she won't stick it out, I said they didn't understand and to fuck off.

Anyway, you get the idea. Sex with the girlfriend. Thumbs up.

3) I actually thought we might be able to work it out. Like, Aura might acquire a sense of humor. She might stop harping on me to go to med school. She might learn to play a video game for more than fifteen minutes at a time. She might stop interrupting my work whenever she felt like it, forcing me to rent office space miles away. I might learn to deal with all her messed-up emotional shit. I might relent and let her decorate my house. And she might get therapy.

As I said, I'm an optimist.

With a towel wrapped around my hips, I grabbed a soda from the fridge, not much liking where my thoughts were headed. I was guzzling it, wondering where my all my idealism had gone—yeah, I actually am by nature a romantic, not that you'd know it these days—when the doorbell rang.

My first thought: Thank fuck it's Sloane, come to welcome me home.

Then: Where the hell had that thought come from? Of course it wasn't Sloane at the door. It couldn't be. I hadn't talked with, messaged, or in any way contacted Charis Sloane in a couple of months. She didn't even know I'd gone out of town.

That damn Sloane ban. It was killing me.

I forgot, you don't know about the ban.

Fuck, it's a long story. The gist is that I was trying to work things out with Aura. In the interests of that…no Sloane in my life. No anyone-but-Aura in fact. All my hanging-out time belonged to Aura.

Whatever else it did, the ban left me with one key takeaway. Aura Renaldi may be the woman I hoped to end up with eventually, but in no way, shape or form was she my other half.

All you have to do is tabulate the hours Charis Sloane and I have spent chilling together over the years and you'll see that honor goes to her.

Sloane isn't anything like Aura. She's on the level. What you see is what you get with that girl. A dose of her is like a cup of coffee. Essential to a good day. Without that daily dose of Sloan, I've been fucking lonely.

I missed my best friend—bad.

Damn. You know, I really thought that's all it was—missing my platonic best buddy. That, and maybe working too many long hours, was getting me down...

It just burns. When I think of all those years I went around without a clue, all because—

Shit. No excuses I can dream up can make up for wrecking the most important thing in my life. Pretty much any way you look at it, I'm a certified stupid fucking idiot.

But where was I? Oh, yeah, the doorbell. It rang while I was stewing over the fuckup that is my relationship with Aura.

I thought it was Sloane ringing my bell.

But it wasn't Sloane at my front door.

It was Aura.