Chapter Two
I wasn’t that girl, I really wasn’t.
The girl who held a grudge against the guy who had broken her heart and left her all alone in a crying mess on the kitchen floor. But, in my defense, Asher Dawson hadn’t just broken my heart; he had done a complete number on me.
I had only lusted after him since we were kids and he had only totally and completely shut me down when I had finally gotten the nerve to tell him how I really felt about him.
And when I say I told him how I really felt about him, I mean I completely threw myself at him.
Now, I can’t speak for anyone else, but when you had lusted after someone for as long as I had lusted after Asher only to be rejected and turned away at a time when my fresh out of high school self-had images of the two of us riding off into the sunset together… well, let’s just say I had been a little bitter.
I had avoided him all summer and then promptly left for college on the other side of the country, determined to create a world where Asher Dawson didn’t exist and up until that very minute I had managed to convince myself it was true.
It was a little hard to keep the lie going when he was standing in front of me.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
Asher frowned and took a step toward me. “Bella?”
I backed away from him, shaking. He looked as good now as he had back then. The same intense creamy brown eyes and jet black hair. Same squared jaw lined with perfect white teeth. I let my eyes drift down to his huge bicep. Then, even lower to his tight black t-shirt I knew was covering a perfect set of six-pack abs.
Hello, Dolce and Gabbana.
Warmth crept into my legs
I snapped them shut immediately. What the hell was wrong with me? I wasn’t going to get my panties all soaked just because Asher had shown up out of nowhere, looking at me the way he used to.
Things were different now. This wasn’t high school; Asher wasn’t the most popular boy in school and I wasn’t his childhood sidekick who chased him around like a love struck puppy dog while he hooked up with every girl in sight.
I was in a different place now. I was a strong independent woman! With a career! Asher Dawson was old news. I cleared my throat loudly: as if this would prove my point.
Asher mistook my ironic behavior as fear and moved even closer to me, extending his large hand out to me. “Bella, it’s me, Asher. It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”
I inhaled deeply and bit down on my lip.
Jesus, Bella, pull it together.
I rolled my eyes lightly. “I know you aren’t going to hurt me, Asher.” I forced myself to reach up and take his hand, just to prove that I could. He pulled me up easily and I ignored the butterflies that sprung up in my stomach and the electricity that jolted through my most intimate areas.
He held my hand for a second too long and yanked me toward him, searching my eyes intensely with his. “Are you okay?” He reached up with his opposite hand and pushed a stray piece of hair away from my face, letting it rest on the back of my head. “You’re bleeding,” he crinkled his forehead.
I got lost in his touch for a second before pulling away.
“I’m fine, it was nothing,” I told him, turning away to look for my purse that I had somehow lost in all the commotion. I pushed back the tears that were still in my eyelids, not wanting to show any emotion around him.
“It wasn’t nothing, Bella,” Asher said slowly. “If I hadn’t of shown up that guy would have…”
“If you hadn’t of shown up I would have been just fine,” I informed him, spotting my bag on the sidewalk a few buildings over and taking off after it. I prayed silently he would go away but a second later I heard the heavy sound of his footsteps behind me.
Ugh.
“Oh, yeah, it looked like you really had it under control,” he chuckled.
I reached down and started digging through my purse, looking for my phone and trying to avoid having to look at him again. “Thanks, I’m glad you noticed.” I finally found my phone and clicked the screen to life, hitting the unlock code.
“What are you doing?” he asked casually.
“I’m calling the police.” Did he have to be so nosey?
“You’re WHAT?” he sounded startled.
“I’m calling the police,” I repeated, hitting the 9 on my phone.
“What the hell for?”
“That’s usually what you do when you’ve been attacked, Asher.” Did I have to explain everything to him? It wasn’t exactly rocket science, when you were in danger you called the cops.
“You can’t call the police,” he told me sternly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course, I can.” I pressed the phone to my ear.
Asher grabbed it out of my hand and threw it on the ground, stepping on it with the heel of his black boot and crushing it into a bunch of tiny pieces. The phone sizzled and smoked, frying up on the ground.
“What the hell did you do that for?” I yelled at him, crouching down to my knees. “Have you lost your damn mind?’
“Have you?” he challenged. “Calling 911, Bella?” He glanced at the guy who was a bloody mess down the street. Lance was crawling slowly away from us now, headed back down to the bar. “Are you trying to get me arrested?”
“Maybe.” I looked up at him and then sighed. “No one’s getting arrested, Asher, you were defending me.” I picked up the broken pieces of the phone in my hand and got to my feet slowly.
“I’m sure they won’t care about the almost dead man trying to hobble off down the street,” his tone was laced with sarcasm, the way it always had been when we were younger. “He’s not going to tell anyone, Bella, and he’s not going to try anything like that with anyone else after what I just did to him… just, just let it go? Please?”
The end of his sentence was almost desperate, pleading.
Asher didn’t want me to call the police for some reason, a reason deeper than the surface. I could feel it. There was something very familiar about his gaze and, once again, I forced myself to look away from him.
Whatever he had gotten himself into wasn’t my problem.
But still… I found myself caving in, the way I always used to.
“You didn’t have to break my phone over it,” I mumbled, turning the sharp pieces over in my touch. “What did it ever do you?” I could feel the crooked smirk that was playing on his lips without even looking up.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
I let my eyes drift upward and stopped when his bloody knuckles popped into my view. I reached out off impulse, causing more shocks to shoot up and down my body. “You’re hurt.”
He let out a small sigh and pulled away. “Says the girl who’s bleeding from the back of the head.” He took a step around me, trying to see the back of me again. “You should go get checked out.”
I inched out of his touch and shook my head. “I’m fine, I stopped bleeding, what you see is already starting to dry.” I grabbed his hand again. “You, on the other hand, you need stitches.” I frowned, turning his hand over so I could look at his cracked knuckles. “God, how hard did you hit him?”
“I don’t need stitches,” Asher said, annoyance in his voice. “I’m fine.”
His whole back and forth routine was starting to grow on my nerves. One minute he was being all moody and distant and the next he was being all charming and golden boy.
“Trust me, you do,” I assured him. “Unless you want it to get infected.”
“What are you a doctor now?”
“A nurse, actually,” I told him, happy to have something to shut him up.
Surprise crossed over his features for a split second but he recovered quickly, replacing it with a nod. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You always were smart, Bella.”
“Asher,” I said, trying to get him back on track. “You need to get it fixed up.”
“It’s cute of you to worry, really,” he told me in a tone that made me feel like I was six years old again. “But going to the hospital really isn’t an option for me.” And then to my absolute horror, he pulled his shirt over his head and scrunched it into a ball, wrapping it around his hand. “This outta do the trick.”
I tried to control my breathing as my pulse started to race. “What is wrong with you? It’s freezing out here!” It wasn’t really that cold but it was the only thing I could think of to make it seem like it wasn’t his rock hard abs that had such an effect on me.
I looked away, begging the dirty thoughts in my mind to go away.
A loud banging down the street and the sound of shouting broke me out of my trance. Or at least it tried to, my panties still felt too moist for comfort. Lance had reached his friends down at bar he had started out at and from the sounds of it, they weren’t too pleased.
Asher linked his arm through mine and started to pull me after him down the street. “Come on, we have to get out of here,” he said as the sound of footsteps on the concrete started somewhere in the distance. “Now.”