“Yes.”
“You regret sending that text yet?”
Laurence took a long breath. “I’m scared, but it feels good. I’m too old to regret shit.”
“I’m not,” Violet said.
“Come on,” he said, “like you don’t want to get laid?”
“It’s not just about getting laid,” Violet said. “I want a lasting connection, someone really special! You know, not just some dude named Chad in a polo shirt who’s willing to sleep with a bigger girl like me for a night. Someone who is beautiful inside and outside. Someone—”
“Someone’s got a name,” Laurence said. “Who is he?”
“This guy I knew in high school...”
“High school! Shit, that was like ten years ago or what? Get over that.”
“Not quite ten.... Do I still have a year or two left to hold onto hope that I’ll run across him?”
“Shit, if he’s so great, just call him, or Facebook him, or send him your fancy-ass smiley face or whatever the fuck.”
“He joined the navy straight out of high school—SEALs I think—and trust me, I’ve searched him on Facebook way more than I’d care to admit. It’s like he disappeared. Maybe he joined, like, black ops or something super badass like that.”
Laurence gestured with his eyes and pressed his lips together. Violet spotted Lina bringing drinks over with three men in tow. How did she do that?
“Shit,” Laurence said, laughing. “Looks like the one for you is wearing a polo shirt. Wonder if his name’s Chad?”
Not just a polo shirt. A pink polo shirt. Violet was not totally up with the latest fashions, but weren’t pink polo shirts what the guys she totally wasn’t into wore ten years ago? Or had that style come all the way back around again?
“Hey!” Lina said. “So this is Chase. Chase, this is Violet.”
“Almost Chad,” Laurence whispered into her ear.
She shook Chase’s hand, and he slid onto the bench beside her. He smiled, and he looked cute, but also fairly drunk. He was swaying back and forth slowly, like an underwater plant.
“And this is David,” Lina said. “David, this is my single friend Laurence.”
Single friend? Jesus, what was she going to say about Violet?
A lanky man with totally Asher hair, glasses, and a trendy haircut smiled nervously at Laurence. The two men shook hands, and Laurence made room for David.
The third guy was also quite tall, and less drunk than Chase. He pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table.
“So,” Laurence said, “what are ya’ll doing at a gay club?”
“Well,” David said, pushing up his glasses, “I’m gay, so...”
Laurence smiled.
“And Chase and Darius here are in my writing group. They’re straight though, don’t worry.”
“Writing group?” Violet asked.
“We all write,” Darius said. “We give each other critiques, try to get published, that kind of thing. We come here after our writing group meets to unwind, mostly, and to try to get David laid.”
Laurence’s eyes bulged, and he looked down into his beer. David elbowed Darius and mouthed something.
“Cool,” Lina said. “So what do you guys write?”
“Well,” Darius said, “David and Chase write science fiction, and I write fantasy.”
“Fantasy?” Lina asked. “Like romance?”
“No,” Darius said. “I do more, like, epic fantasy. Like, um, you know Game of Thrones?”
Lina looked toward Violet and Laurence and smiled. “See!”
Violet laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Chase.
“Lina was just talking about the elves in Game of Thrones,” Violet said, snickering.
“There are no elves in Game of Thrones,” David and Darius said in unison.
From there, the conversations broke off into their own little clusters. Violet was not thrilled about this. Even with Chase right next to her, it had felt safe when everyone was talking together. Now that David and Laurence were getting friendly with each other, and Lina and Darius were dancing, Violet felt painfully alone with Chase.
“So,” he said, “the tent came with this waterproof sheet, but we totally forgot it, and it was in Oregon, so of course it was raining.” He laughed way louder than the anecdote warranted, and then he awkwardly touched her arm as he laughed.
Violet forced a bit of a laugh to try to kill some of the tension, but it totally didn’t work. His hand kind of lingered there, and it was sweaty and clammy, and she wondered when he’d let go.
He finally did let go, but in exchange, he looked at her with an expectant, wide-eyed stare. What was she supposed to do with that? She wasn’t going to touch him. She didn’t even know him.
Maybe she was supposed to just let loose and give him a chance instead of being so defensive...but he really didn’t seem like her type of guy.
He wasn’t Asher.
When Asher had disappeared, she’d been crushed. She’d been working up the confidence to talk to him for weeks. He lived right down the street from her, and always had, and that had made her think she’d always have time. When she finally went to go talk to him just after graduation, he’d already gone. After the crushing emptiness went away—and after she’d never heard from or seen him again, unable to find or contact him at all—he’d started to feel like a dream. Like he’d never really existed in the first place.
“So,” Chase said, “do you like camping?”
Violet couldn’t decide if hearing someone talk about camping was more boring or equally as boring as hearing someone talk about running.
“No,” Violet said. “I’m more of a...book person.”
“Well, I write, so I am too.”
“I’m more of a nonfiction book person,” Violet said.
“Oh,” Chase said, shoulders slumping.
Crap. She’d said that way too fast, and it had sounded way too much like a direct slight at him.
She patted him on the shoulder. It immediately felt awkward to do it, but she kept patting a few times because the alternative was to rest her hand there.
Chase perked up, and she withdrew her hand. God, this was awful. Where was Lina?
“So do you want to hear about this book I’m writing? I know it’s fiction...but since you’re into history, you’ll probably find it interesting. It’s about a generation ship, and...”
She listened to him ramble on about his book. Hearing people talk about a book they were writing was somehow worse than hearing about camping and running.
“Well,” Violet said when he finally finished, “that’s pretty cool. The drunk captain with an eye patch is a nice touch. I’m going to go check on Lina.”
She saw Lina leaning against the bar, chatting with the bartender.
“Lina!”
“Hey, Violet. Having fun?”
“No!”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “He can’t be that bad.”
“Where’s Darius?” Violet asked.
“Oh,” she said. “He was that bad. He started telling me the entire plot to his book. There’s an army of zombies and a grizzled king with an eye patch.”
She told her about Chase’s grizzled captain with an eye patch, and they both laughed.
“Check out Laurence though,” Lina said.
They looked over and saw David and Lawrence laughing at the corner table. David put his hand on Laurence’s knee, and it looked way less forced and awkward than Chase’s attempts.
“Nice,” Lina said. “Three of us came here and one found a good match. That’s a thirty-three percent success rate. Way above average.”
“Really?” Violet asked.
“Yeah,” Lina said. “We’re lucky we didn’t drink a lot, or we may have gone home with Chase and Darius before we realized they both had an eye patch fetish, and then you’d feel way more regret tomorrow morning. We had a really great night, Laurence might just come out of this with somethin
g real, and both of us got away from those other dudes before things went too far.”
“I guess that’s a good way to look at it,” Violet said, sighing.
“You’re wondering when you’ll find a good match? Well, come out with me more than once every six months and you’ll have a chance. And I don’t want to hear you say a thing about Asher.”
CHAPTER 3
ASHER
Asher was driving down the freeway on his Honda Valkyrie. He zoomed down the left lane, going way faster than he should have. He was pissed. He’d been dicking around with the tablet Morgan had given him all week, and he couldn’t even draw a straight line with it. It was not like he needed the money. When he’d finally convinced General Metin to let him out of SHIFT, it had come with an extremely generous severance package. He didn’t need to work another day in his life if he didn’t want to.
But he wanted to work. He wanted to create something rather than destroy. He wanted a real life. A wife, a job where he made something people loved, maybe kids someday. No more running through the mountains of Afghanistan as a bear with a minigun on his back. No more getting shot at by terrorists with AK-47s while a dragon dropped him and his squad into an occupied village.
He had done all that, and now he couldn’t draw a fucking straight line on a computer.
He looked down and saw he was pushing close to 100 mph. Shit. He braked and moved into the middle lane. The last thing he needed was having to take one of those ridiculous traffic courses. He could drive a tank for God’s sake.
Suddenly he heard a loud pop. He ducked down low on his motorcycle. Instinct. It wasn’t gunfire, but the car in front of him had a blown-out tire, and it swerved wildly in front of him. It swerved into the right lane, which was thankfully clear, and it quickly lost speed as it coasted into the median.
Asher turned on his hazard lights and got behind the car, as if he were some kind of police escort. He didn’t want someone to hit it and make things worse.
He slowed down as the car came to a stop right on the median. He got up behind the car and gestured to the right. It really should get totally off the median. He noticed the tire that had blown out was a spare, and anyone driving on the freeway at this speed with a spare tire likely didn’t know how to change a tire. If he was going to jack the car up on the freeway, he wanted it to be well off the road.
The acrid smell of burned rubber hit his nose through his helmet as the car sputtered farther over into the grass. Asher planted his kickstand, turned off his bike, and removed his helmet. He walked up to the car with his hands up. Old habit from when they had to pull over villagers in Syria and Afghanistan—to show that he was unarmed.
Let’s go home and sleep, his bear said. Helping cars is boring.
“It’s not a car I’m helping,” Asher muttered to himself. “I’m helping whoever is inside the car. A person.”
His bear yawned.
The door opened as he approached, and a woman stepped out.
The woman. Not just any woman, but a drop-dead gorgeous one with full curves and strawberry blond hair. A wave of nostalgia hit Asher as he saw her, but he couldn’t place her. It felt like he hadn’t quite come home yet, but as soon as he saw her, he was home.
We must help her, his bear said.
Yeah, no shit.
Her mouth hung open as he approached. Was she scared of him? He was a huge guy on a bike wearing a leather jacket. Was it weird that he’d followed her and forced her off the road?
“Asher?” she said.
She knew him? Where did he know her from?
He squinted.
Girl from the road! his bear said. She look even more beautifuller! Hairs are also longer!
Girl from the road? Not this road now. The road he’d grown up on.
“Violet?” Asher said, suddenly recognizing her. Jesus. She really had grown up since he’d last seen her. Should he hug her? Shake her hand? What was protocol here?
Fuck. He wasn’t in SHIFT anymore. There was no protocol. The real world was so unstructured.
ACTIVATE MATING PROTOCOL, his bear said. INSERT PENIS INTO—
“Your tire,” Asher said, “is done for.”
No shit. Was that the best thing he could say?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “I guess I should have gotten a new one.”
“I’m assuming that was your only spare?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Her face turned bright red.
Jesus, she looked good when she blushed.
He was close to her now. He could really smell her. It was nearly impossible for him to not take a deep whiff of her scent, but he summoned all his discipline and resisted the urge.
“All right,” he said, glancing down at her body. “You have a jack at least?”
“Is it bad if I say I don’t know?”
“No,” he said. “Let’s check. Can you pop the trunk?”
“Yeah,” she said, turning and bending down to the driver’s side door.
He knew it was bad form to check out her ass. He knew it, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone, and her ass was just too damn good to not check out. It was just right up in his face, and she’d never know he was looking. His eyes widened, and he didn’t blink until he heard a thump sound from the trunk.
He quickly looked up before she could catch him.
“Asher,” she said, “how long have you been, uh, back?”
“Just a month or so,” he said. “Do you still live on the old—”
“No,” she said. “My parents do though. I...heard about yours. Sorry.”
Asher nodded. “Thanks, but don’t worry. It was a long time ago now. What are you doing?”
“I work in the museum. Restoration, some research...boring stuff.”
“No,” Asher said, “it sounds really cool. Maybe you can show me what you do sometime?”
Is that the sex innuendo? his bear asked.
CHAPTER 4
VIOLET
Violet hated driving. Why did she even have a car? She’d bought it for less than two grand back when she’d thought she wanted a car, but she guessed the thing was worth less than $500 by now. Every little piece of the old beater was about to fall apart. The windows didn’t work, the A/C and heat was busted, and she had a spare tire on the thing. She had no clue when she had last changed the oil. This car had a death wish.
She was driving way too fast for this car. She knew she should pull into the right lane and slow down, but she wanted to beat the rush.
Going to Costco was the only thing she ever used the car for, and she loved buying stuff in bulk so much that it nearly justified owning the car. Buying giant packs of fifty toilet paper rolls and three gallon jugs of orange juice was so convenient: It meant she had to go out less often.
Laurence and Lina would scold you for that, she thought. Well, they weren’t here.
Bang! Before she even heard the pop, she felt the grinding vibrations shaking into her bones through the seat and steering wheel. She felt the car swerving and had enough presence of mind to not slam on the brakes.
Slamming on the brakes make you drift, and then you can’t steer.
She started turning the wheel, but the car was still spinning despite her gentle tap-tapping on the brakes.
If there’s ice, look twice! Turn the wheel...into or away from the spin?
There wasn’t ice though—useless rhyme. She turned the wheel right because she wanted to go right and get off the fucking road. Her teeth were clattering, and some asshole on a loud-ass motorcycle was tailgating her. The car finally righted itself, and she eased it off the side of the road. When she felt the tires thudding over the rough median, she slowed to a near halt.
The damn motorcycle was still on her ass though.
“Just pass me! Dickhead!” she shouted as the car ground to a halt.
She could still feel her skin vibrating even though everything had come to a halt. The motorcycle engine was loud and obnoxious even through her closed windows.
; The dude was probably going to lecture her about proper auto maintenance, but as long as he helped her figure out what to do with the car, it might be worth the lecture.
She eyed him in the rear and side mirrors. If he looked dangerous, she’d just lock the doors and call the police.
He stepped off his motorcycle, and his head disappeared over the top of the mirror. Damn, he was a tall guy. Broad-shouldered too. He cut quite the attractive silhouette, but Violet was a bit too worried about what he might do to her to gaze too long at his body.
She leaned her head down and looked into the side mirror. As his head lowered, she could see his whole body again, helmeted head and all.
He grabbed hold of the helmet and removed it, and she saw something she never thought she’d see again. Something everyone had told her to let go of.
She saw Asher.
His hair was black. It was cut short, but it was a fair amount longer than she thought the Navy would allow. Was he out of the super-secret black ops SEAL team, or was he just on leave? Did it matter? No. All that mattered was that he was behind her! And walking right toward her.
“Get out of the car, idiot,” she said to herself, clutching the steering wheel. “Make a badass first impression...stand up and meet him. Don’t cower in the car and have him have to stick his head into the window and see your dirty-ass car.”
There were Arizona iced tea cans rolling around on the floor of the passenger side door. If she got out of the car, he may never see them.
She took a deep breath, grabbed the handle, and pressed the door open as if it were an airlock to the surface of Mars.
Asher was massive, and his leather jacket was undone, showing off his irresistible fucking chest. His posture was perfect, which made her feel like some kind of slouched-over troll or ogre. She immediately tried to fix her posture, but she realized with embarrassment it would just look like she was sticking her tits out.
But she should stick her tits out! This was Asher Pines. How many times in her life would she have a second chance to make a first impression on him?
“Asher...” she said, mouth dropping open. She was simply astonished that he really existed.
Unbearable Arms (The Grizzly Next Door 4) Page 2