I'll Do Anything

by Danielle Bourdon

  “Good. I'm glad to hear it. Tell your friend Asia she can call any time to make an appointment. For now, I'm going to grab some sleep before my meetings at noon.” Ramsey bade us goodbye and disappeared through the employee door.

  “I'm glad to hear it, too. I filled Ramsey in on what happened with Asia,” I said to Jasper once Ramsey was gone. Jasper looked good despite the fact he only wore a pair of faded jeans and a white tee shirt.

  “Did you tell him we were married?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes. And before you blow your stack, I had to tell him. Because he knew I was upset when he invited me up and I wasn't going to lie.” I lifted my chin, half expecting Jasper to start another argument.

  “It's not something I want passed around. You know?”

  “I know. I think he'll be discreet. Adrian? I can't be sure. Even Ramsey thinks Adrian offered to help Asia because he had some other motivation. Just to get under our skin at another time, or use it against us, sort of like with the dancing. I can see him pulling out the 'favor' when he needs us to work extra shifts or something.” That sounded very much like an Adrian tactic.

  “I'd rather Adrian doesn't know, yeah.” Jasper blew a strand of hair away from his brow, watching me from under his lashes.

  “Did you sleep at the hospital?” I asked, refusing to point out the hypocrisy of his storming onto the scene if he'd done the same thing.

  “I haven't slept, actually. I was up the whole time, talking to Asia, watching over Kaia when she had to use the ladies room. Plus I'd had a couple drinks and knew I couldn't drive until they wore off.”

  I searched his eyes for the truth, and couldn't discern any lies in his reply. “It really pissed me off that you couldn't come get me. Drinks aside, I hope you would have decided to pick me up rather than sit with your wife while I took a bus home.” Instead of dance around the subject, I went straight for the jugular. Jasper and I hadn't built our friendship and following relationship on secrets and half-truths. At least I hadn't.

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “I didn't think you'd mind, actually. In fact, I half expected to see you show up at the hospital. But I know now and yes, if you're that insistent about not taking the bus in the future, I'll come get you.”

  “I shouldn't even have to ask. I've been really nice to Asia this whole time, but she is a woman from your past, someone you have a connection with, so there's every reason for me to worry that you'll suddenly change your mind and decide she's the one you want to be with. I mean, look at you. You were ready to get all up in Ramsey's face because you thought I'd slept with him. This isn't a one way street, Jasper. I'll only turn the other cheek so many times, and then I'm done being nice.”

  “I told you that I left her for you--”

  “Yes, and you could just as easily change your mind.”

  “Nothing about loving you is easy, Finley.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Nothing about loving you is easy. I thought about that all the way home. There was a tentative truce between Jasper and I, but our problems were not fixed. I didn't have the answers to too many important questions. And knowing Jasper found it tedious to love me didn't make me happy.

  “You know what? Relationships are as difficult and complicated as I thought they'd be,” I said to Jasper after he parked the Camaro in the garage.

  “Is anything in life easy? Jobs, social interaction, family? Maybe some circumstances, but if everything was so uncomplicated, kids would live at home longer, couples wouldn't argue, and world peace would abound.” Jasper cocked a querying look my way as he led us into the house.

  I closed the door, pausing as I noticed a blatant tire track on the otherwise clean kitchen floor. Frowning, I glanced ahead and noticed the track extended through the kitchen toward the hallway.

  “Did you ride your bike drunk through the house, Jasper Lowe?” I demanded, marching through the kitchen, following the track. Jasper had disappeared into the hallway already.

  “Maybe,” he called back.

  I was going to strangle him. Slowly. Huffing, indignant, I followed the track from tile to carpet...the carpet!...and into our bedroom. Ready to blast him for doing something so juvenile and ridiculous, I stopped when I realized the track ran all the way up the comforter to the top of the bed. Jasper had stripped his shirt off and flopped sideways on the mattress, one hand propping up his head. Surrounding him were boxes and boxes of Boston Baked Beans. A whole hill of Baked Beans.

  With sudden clarity, I realized what this was supposed to replicate. Some men threw rose petals on the floor and gave their girlfriends boxes of chocolate.

  Jasper knew I didn't go in for the girly things, not usually, and used the tread of his bike instead. Leading me, like rose petals would have led some other, normal girl, straight to him. Or to the candy covered bed. I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud.

  Flabbergasted, I approached the bed to see if there were any other details I was missing. Sure enough, on closer inspection, I noticed Jasper had used Sharpie marker to write all over the boxes.

  I love you. I love you. I love you.

  “This is what I did from four in the morning until I decided to go to Olympus and see if you were there.”

  “You're crazy,” I said, more than a little overwhelmed. Leave it to Jasper to do something totally outrageous and different. He knew me almost too well.

  “Probably. But that's one of the things you like best about me, because you and I, Fins, we're the same.”

  I tapped a box of candy and met Jasper's eyes. “A very close match,” I agreed. “If this is your way of getting me back into your bed--”

  “I'm not after sex. I just want you to know that I know you, and I love you, and we'll get through this.” He widened his eyes.

  “...I was saying, if this is your way of getting me back into your bed...you did a damn good job.” I moved a few boxes of candy with one knee, and leaned over to brace my hands on the covers. “Now kiss me, before I make you clean up all the tire tracks.”

  Laughing, he snared me around the nape and pulled me down. Rolling me over, a box pressing into my hip, my ribs, and my shoulder blade, he hovered above me with a shank of hair hanging into his eyes.

  “You didn't say the magic words,” he said in a low voice.

  I skimmed my palms along his naked torso, enjoying the feel of warm skin and sinewy muscle. “Please.”

  “Nope. That's not right.”

  “Pretty please.”

  He shook his head.

  “Pretty please with a cherry on top.”

  His mouth twitched with disappointment.

  “What else is there to—oh.” I paused, feeling like a dolt when I realized the obvious answer. “I love you, too.”

  *

  For the first time since I found out Jasper had a wife, I gave myself to him. We connected bodies, minds, souls. He whispered my name with reverence; I shouted his to the ceiling. It was good to just let go, to put our worries and concerns and troubles aside. I didn't think for a second that sex fixed everything, no matter how good it felt, but at least it put us back on even footing if just for a little while.

  In the aftermath, limbs tangled, my cheek on his chest, I wished for simpler times. I wished for the weeks leading up to the move into the new house, when we both knew where we stood and there hadn't been any pressure other than working and saving for a business of our own. More than anything, I desperately wished for the time before the lie, when I had been so confident I knew all Jasper's deepest secrets.

  Staring at the far wall, listening to Jasper's even breathing, I wondered if we would ever reach that place again. That place of confidence and security and trust. It would have been so easy to try and put it all out of my mind, but I knew I'd be kidding myself and doing a disservice to our relationship. It wouldn't be honest, and I valued honesty now more than ever.

  “What are you thinking?” Jasper asked. He swirled his fingertips over the skin of my shoulder.

  “Wo
ndering if we'll ever get back to where we were before Asia,” I said, not bothering to hide my thoughts.

  “I thought this was a pretty good start,” he said.

  “You and I both know that gratification from sex is temporary. When we wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, we'll be back where we were before this. At least I will.”

  “You seem like you're doing pretty good with it all. I mean, you didn't leave, you didn't shut me totally out. It must not be as bad as you think it is.”

  “That's just how I am. You know this. The only reason I stayed is because we have history. Tell me—what would I have done if you had been any other man I've dated since high school?” I knew Jasper couldn't avoid the answer. He'd been witness to my aversion of commitment with other men, knew how much I didn't tolerate in terms of betrayal and lies.

  “You would have walked out, full of self-righteous indignation, and not looked back. Probably would have smirked while doing it, because you're great at keeping people at arms distance regarding matters of the heart.”

  Jasper nailed it. Maybe nailed it a little too close to home. Seeing myself through someone else's eyes could sometimes be a harsh reality. “Yes. Exactly. So I'm here, and I've stayed, but it's because you're Jasper and I'm Finley. Because there comes a time when we have to grow up and face the fact that not everything will always go according to plan. It hasn't been easy though. It hasn't been easy at all.”

  “I know. I can't say I'm sorry more than I have—well I can. But it's just me repeating what you know I've already said. You're either going to forgive me and get past it—or you're not.”

  “It's not as simple as that, Jasper. It's not as easy as flippantly ignoring the unease I feel when I wonder if there will ever be other things you deliberately withhold from me—and I'm not talking minor things. I mean serious, life changing events. Like last year, when you didn't tell me you'd been a victim of fraud and nearly lost your life because of it. That was huge. I'm past it, I'm over it, yeah. But between that and this, I'm wary.” It was difficult to say these things. “Part of me knows that I would do anything to keep you, and the other part argues about the sacrifices and pain I might have to endure if this happens again.”

  Jasper exhaled quietly and tucked his other arm behind his head. I lifted my cheek and turned enough to see him staring at the ceiling. From this angle, with his jaw tilted up, I had a perfect view of his throat. I traced his adam's apple with my finger, then cupped the side of his neck. Against my palm, his pulse blipped a steady rhythm.

  “All I can say is that I'll try not to withhold such important things from you.”

  “You'll try?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you don't get it, Fins, because you're not in my shoes. It's easy to be in your position and pass judgment, but what about me? Did you stop to consider that it was hard for me not to say anything? Did you ever think that the whole situation might be difficult on my end, too? I left her, I did. Without the consideration of a goodbye or even a note. I just couldn't take another day, another second of pretending. I wasn't just lying to her, I was lying to myself. The whole time, I knew you didn't want me, hadn't ever shown the slightest inclination toward romance or love, yet I couldn't force myself to stay with a woman because I couldn't have the one I really wanted. And once I was done, once I knew I had to break away, I didn't waste a second. I walked out the door and didn't look back. I'm not proud of it, but that was how I had to handle it at the time. I never even told my parents. No one knew about my secret life, my secret marriage. Now she's here and she's got a kid that might or might not be mine, and it's harder to deal with than I can express. I want to trust her when she says Kaia's not mine—and on the other hand, I can understand why she wouldn't want me in her life. Or her daughter's. Maybe, she's thinking I'll walk out again and this time, it'll affect more than Asia. It'll affect an innocent child who deserves better. So yeah, I think there's a good chance that Kaia could be mine and Asia's too hurt to say so. I still don't think it's like her, it's not the girl I knew from college, but...”

  I listened while Jasper talked. Chin propped on his chest, I studied the lean angles of his face, the dip of his eyelashes when he blinked. He was still looking at the ceiling. Objectively, I could see where he was coming from. I had made it known far and wide that I wasn't interested in relationships, and I hadn't been interested in Jasper beyond our close friendship. So he hadn't wanted to tell me that he'd married another girl and then left her...because of me. It would have thrown our friendship into a tailspin.

  “But it's an answer we need. You need. You can't go through the rest of your life not knowing the truth.” After a moment, I added, “I can sort of understand why you didn't tell me. It doesn't fix everything wholly—because there's still a sliver of wariness I can't erase. I can't obliterate it. Maybe if our friendship up to that point hadn't been based on us being so close, and on so much trust, it wouldn't have hit me so hard.”

  “Hey, I tell you a lot more than I tell anyone else. My parents, my buddies at work. Anyone. You know ninety-nine percent of me, Finley. I'm not sure I can give anyone one-hundred percent. I'm not sure anyone can give one-hundred percent of themselves.”

  I considered percentages. Had I given Jasper a hundred percent of me? Were there secrets that I kept? None that I could think of. None I could remember.

  “Maybe you're right,” I said grudgingly.

  He stroked his fingers through my hair, gently pulling the strands away from my scalp. “What I do know,” he said in a quiet voice, “is that I can't wait forever for you to decide. I can't torture myself wondering if I'll wake up one morning and you'll be gone.”

  “Like Asia woke up to find you gone?”

  “...yeah. Like that.”

  “Are you giving me a time limit, Jasper?”

  “I'm telling you I can't wait forever to know if my indiscretion will be the end of us.”

  “So you're giving me a time limit.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  Chapter Twelve

  True to Ramsey's word, he got me out of the showgirl line up and back into my old job as an Usher. The evening after my heart to heart with Jasper, I showed up for work to find a note taped to my locker from Ramsey.

  No more heels and hellish routines for me.

  Small mercies.

  I happily donned my slacks and jacket and performed my Usher duties, distracted the entire time by thoughts of a timeline and what I would do about my relationship. Jasper had delivered what amounted to an ultimatum and I needed to sort out my feelings. I needed to come to some concrete decisions. I imagined Jasper doing the same thing back when he'd been with Asia, when he realized he couldn't stay with her. I would have bet a whole paycheck that he hadn't made the decision in one night. It had been a slow build of emotion and doubt. Once he'd decided, though, he'd not wasted time getting out. Every time I thought about leaving Jasper for good, my chest got tight and a knot formed in the back of my throat. I didn't want this to be the end. But how did a person obliterate the wariness? I couldn't deny it existed, probably waiting to rear its ugly head should Jasper and I ever find ourselves in this predicament again.

  At one in the morning, dressed in street clothes with my tips tucked into a pocket, I pulled out my keys to Jasper's Camaro and exited the casino for the parking lot. Since he had the day off, I'd opted to drive myself. Sometimes I preferred it that way, so I didn't have to wait for him to make the trip from our house. It wasn't far, but if I could spare myself the extra twenty minutes, then I did.

  Asia had called earlier in the day to let us know the doctors were releasing Kaia around noon. And I had been happy to hear it. Jasper and I had exchanged long looks over the news, and I knew he was probably more relieved than he let on. While I crossed the parking lot to the car, I considered inviting Asia to the house tomorrow to have a serious conversation. All three of us. Besides the issues Jasper and I were having, the doubts over Kaia needed to be resolved. It was only fair,
I thought, as I approached the driver's door, that Jasper had an answer he could believe in.

  Just as I slid the key into the lock, a strong arm pushed my shoulders forward, shoving my collarbones against metal. The force knocked the breath out of me. Immediately I kicked a booted foot back and opened my mouth to shout. It was painful to pull in a deep breath of air. The arm banded across my back pushed upward, trapping my head and pulling my hair, forcing my cheek against the Camaro. The action muffled my shout, but my boot connected with part of the attacker's leg. If the bastard thought I would be a passive victim, he had a surprise in store. Twisting my hips, I tried to get a better angle while a rough hand jammed into my back pockets first, then my front. My next kick missed. The keys fell out of my hand when I tried to use one to stab the assailant in the thigh.

  Yanked away from the car, the man—and it was a man, foretold by his gruff snarl—threw me to the ground. My cheek hit the asphalt and debris scudded across my skin when the assailant dug a knee into my back.

  Oh, that hurt.

  But not enough to make me docile while the man tried again to rob me. Skin would heal, bones would mend. I reached back and clawed at the air, at the space I judged the man's face to be. Going for his eyes. Going for any kind of grip that might give me some kind of advantage.

  “Stop fighting or I'll knock you out,” the stranger hissed. He applied pressure with his knee. A rush of air pushed past my lips, making it impossible to shout or make any noise above a whisper. I wasn't a screamer, but I could still get someone's attention with a loud enough shout. Security roamed the building in shifts and it was only a matter of time before the next wave made their rounds.

  The pressure on my diaphragm eased with the sudden cessation of weight on my back. I heard the attacker land to the side, followed by what sounded like someone kicking a sack of rice. Two dull thuds penetrated the thrum of blood through my ears.

  Gasping for air, I rolled onto my side and up onto a hip, ready to resume the fight. Another man had the attacker on the ground, fists flying, both figures grappling and struggling for control.