And the second the words are said, the moment my laugh falls flat, Asher grips my shirt tighter and yanks me down so that her mouth is on mine again.

  There are no thoughts but her.

  No questions except for how quickly can we be alone?

  And time is of the fucking essence.

  Ledger

  I can’t say that I saw much of the inside of Connor’s as we pushed our way toward the first open door and empty space we came to, but I’ll thank who the fuck ever Connor is for having clean bathrooms and plenty of sturdy counter spaces.

  Because the place doesn’t matter right now.

  Only the moment does.

  We’re on each other the minute the door slams at our backs, and I reach with one hand to lock it.

  Our lips and our hands are in a battle to prove which one of us can claim more.

  I’ve never felt like this before. The need. The want. The goddamn all-consuming desire. It owns me. It fuels me. It drowns me in everything that is Asher Wells.

  The faint trace of salt on her neck as I lick my tongue up its line. The sound of her mewls as I grab her ass and grind against her. The taste of her kiss—it’s wine and hunger and . . . everything I craved but never knew I needed.

  I pull her tank top up and one cup of her bra down, eager to feel her skin. Impatient to suck on the pink of her nipple and make her moan.

  And fuck does she taste good when I dip my head and do just that.

  “Ledger,” she begs between kisses.

  My cock aches in that painfully pleasureful way where the anticipation owns my every action and reaction.

  Her.

  I just need her.

  To be in her.

  To have her.

  To fucking claim her.

  And when I shove my pants down my hips and she wraps her hands around my cock, my eyes roll back in my head and a groan falls from my lips.

  Jesus.

  If her hand on my cock renders me momentarily incapacitated, what is the feel of her pussy wrapped around me going to do?

  “Asher.” A nip on her lips. Another step backward to the counter. “God, yes.” She strokes her hand up and over the crest of my dick, smearing the drop on the tip.

  I’ve never wanted somebody so goddamn bad in my life and, as much as my mind tells me to slow down—to revel in the softness of her body, the curve of her hips, the high everything about her gives me—my libido says fuck that.

  It focuses on the heat of her pussy as I slide my fingers under her skirt and between her thighs. Christ, she’s soaking.

  It fixates on her heavy-lidded eyes locked on mine as she takes a step back with her skirt hiked up around her hips and one breast still exposed and shoves those panties down and off one ankle.

  It obsesses over the scent of her—her flowery perfume mixed with her undeniable arousal—and I know from here on out, every time I smell roses, I’ll also smell her.

  It concentrates on the way she scoots her ass back on the ledge of the counter, braces her hands behind her, spreads her thighs, and gives me the most beautiful goddamn sight I’ve ever seen. Asher Wells, open, wet, and waiting for me.

  I slip the condom on without breaking stride, my gaze never leaving her—from her eyes firing with desire, to her lips bruised from my kisses, to the glistening pink of her pussy.

  She’s fucking perfection.

  And when she reaches out to grab my cock and guide it into her, I know I’m a lost goddamn cause.

  Because one push in, the first sensation of her squeezing around me, and I won’t be able to stop until I’m panting and emptied.

  “Now. Right now.” She writhes her hips against me so that my tip just enters her. “Please.”

  Done.

  With one hand on my cock and the other on the back of her neck, I hold her in place as I push my way into every glorious inch of her.

  Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

  “Ash.” It’s all I can manage before I brand my lips to hers in a piss-poor attempt to distract me momentarily.

  It doesn’t work.

  The taste of her.

  The feel of her.

  Simply put, her.

  I begin to move.

  Slowly at first.

  The sweet push in. God, yes. The pleasurable pull out. Don’t ever stop. A thrust back in. Harder. A grind against her. Ledger.

  Her mouth meets mine again. The frenzy of our kiss before has nothing on the violent desire this time. Her teeth nip and her nails scrape.

  And I’m lost.

  To the moment.

  To her.

  I dig my fingers into her hips to hold her still while I lose all control.

  The pace I set is punishing and yet her murmurs, her moans, her tightening of her muscles around me, egg me on in a way I’ve never known.

  My mind goes blank. My balls draw tight. My cock swells and hardens.

  And for a few seconds, I’m in that tumbling freefall of pleasure that hurts so good it edges on painful as I thrust into her over and over and empty every last ounce of myself into her.

  I’m exhausted. I’m exhilarated. I already want to do it all over again.

  She’s like that first hit of cocaine. One taste, and you’re addicted.

  That’s the only thing I can compare it to. Her to.

  My forehead is on her shoulder. Her legs are wrapped around my waist. Our hearts beat a violent staccato against one another’s.

  The rasp of our labored breathing fills the space, only second to the sounds of the bar filtering in through the locked door.

  Fucking Christ. I try and shake the fog of climax—the haze of Asher—from my head, but I have a feeling she’s always been there somehow, in some way.

  This wasn’t exactly how I wanted this to happen, a quick fuck in a bar bathroom. But I saw that asshole with his hands on her and then her anger toward me and . . . and then she kissed me.

  I lean back, brace my hands on the counter on either side of her thighs, and look up to find her staring at me, expression hidden by the dimness of the room. It’s as if the sexual tension has been temporarily sated, and now we’re left in that awkward space where the past may be the past, but it sure as hell can’t continue to be ignored.

  “Asher . . .” I don’t even know where to start. How to start.

  Her smile is soft, but her body language reads differently. Almost as if she’s uncertain. Almost as if she regrets what just happened.

  How do I move us forward?

  “I promise I’ll be better at it next time.”

  The flash of recognition in her eyes tells me she remembers. That line. That night. Standing by my truck under the moonlight.

  Her lips curl up in a bittersweet smile. There is a depth to the emotion in her eyes and, sure as hell, as I stare at her, I can see her guard go back up and lock into place.

  It’s in the quick avoidance of her eyes and the lowering of her legs so she can hop off the counter and put some physical distance between us. I study her as she moves about the small space, confused.

  She kissed me first.

  She initiated the events that led to this.

  “You take all the girls to bathrooms on the first date?” She tries to the sell the joke with a forced laugh as she shoves her panties in her purse and smooths down her skirt with her hands.

  “I apologize. This”—I point to the space around us—“isn’t exactly how I imagined this happening.”

  “Don’t apologize. We got it out of the way, right? Now we can move on.” Asher pulls her purse strap over her shoulder and heads toward the door.

  The high I’m on crashes.

  “What? Asher. Wait.” I have my hand on her arm and spin her so she’s forced to look at me. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving without saying goodbye.” She lifts a brow and tries to shrug out of my grasp. “Isn’t that what we do best when it comes to each other?”

  I do a double take, her words cutting deep.

  “We need to talk about what happened. That night.”

  “I told you I don’t want to.”

  “And I don’t give a flying fuck,” I shout at her, done with the cat and mouse game between us. “We need to talk.”

  “Why?” she asks, her voice low and even, her emotions so much more controlled than mine. “Do you really want to hear about it? Do you really want to know I cried for weeks and weeks after you left without saying a word? Do you want to know what it was like giving a person what I gave you and then to be treated like I never existed?”

  “Asher.” Her name is a plea. An apology. An . . . I don’t know, but every ounce of hurt woven in the thread of her voice is because of me. It’s my fault.

  I’d fight for her too.

  But I didn’t. Isn’t that the crux of this whole thing? I was scared and worried about myself. I was fearful of my father and the consequences of Pop’s threats. Sure, I worried about her and the pain I felt over losing her—our friendship, our plans—but my hands were tied.

  But she had to have known that.

  Had to have understood why I didn’t respond to her direct messages on social media.

  “What? Is that too hard to hear for you? To know how much leaving me devastated seventeen-year-old me?” Her shoulders shudder as she draws in a breath. “How about how your father crushed my self-esteem, shredded it to pieces along with everything I wanted to be in order to keep me away from you? Or what about how I was deemed the town’s slutty gold digger who was trying to get pregnant by you simply for a payday?” I stand before her staggered. Dumbfounded. And she must read my expression as something else because she gives a quick shake of her head as if she’s done with me. “You know what? Never mind. It’s not fucking worth it.” She tries to jerk her arm from my grip, but I only squeeze it tighter.

  The night you let me be humiliated.

  “My father?” I ask. I fear the answer will rock my world for the second time in a matter of seconds but in a completely different way than Asher just did.

  “He came to the farm that night out of the blue. Confronted Pop. They argued. I heard, and when I went out there to see what was going on, he told me . . .”

  “He told you what?” I demand, wanting to pull the words out of her. But I don’t because I fear what she’s going to say.

  “He said you got what you wanted from me and were already out with the next girl.” Her voice is barely a whisper as fury simmers inside of me in a way I’ve never felt before.

  “What else? What else did he say?” I yell, hating her flinch when my voice raises.

  “He must have seen our texts. He knew everything that had happened that night. About us. Knew what we had planned after . . .”

  Our blanket under the stars. How terrified I was, fearing I’d hurt her with it being her first time. The tears swimming in her eyes afterward as she told me she loved me. How we swore we’d find a way to be together soon.

  That moment with her is crystal clear, but everything that happened later that night, which has been a blur for so long, slowly comes into focus.

  “Wait a minute.” My head spins, and I walk away from her as I try to rationalize the exact opposite of everything I’ve been told. Of the things I thought to be true. Of the truths I’ve believed for years. My stomach turns and my heart races. “He told you I cheated on you and you believed it?”

  “I was seventeen and my world had just crashed down around me. I didn’t know what to believe,” she screeches, voice escalating and hands clenching. “What was I to do when an imposing figure like your father shows up and tells my Pop I better stay away from you. That I wasn’t good enough for you, nor would I ever be. That he wouldn’t stand for a girl like me to ruin the bright future he had planned for his perfectly pedigreed son. And then when I stood up to him, when I told him he was crazy, he dropped the second bomb. That you got what you wanted from me and had already moved on with someone else. That’s where you were at that moment.”

  “That’s not true, Ash. You have to believe—”

  “It doesn’t matter now. It might have back then . . . but it still wouldn’t have lessened the sting of me being a motherless, penniless girl who better stay away from you, or else.” A single tear slides down her cheek and effectively cuts through me too.

  Pedigree.

  That’s what she was referring to that night at Hank’s.

  That’s what has haunted her and what she’s harbored for years—and for good reason.

  I hate myself for the tears that spring in her eyes. For the hurt that fills them. For things I don’t even think I can begin to understand yet.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  There’s nothing I can say.

  The man I loved and respected more than anything in the world lied to me. Lied to her.

  I stare at Asher and see pieces of the girl I used to love. I also see the hurt my father caused reflected in the eyes of the woman she is now.

  Needing to touch her, to soothe her, simply for my own selfish reasons, I step into her, frame her face, and use my thumb to brush the tear away. Her eyelashes flutter at my touch, her breath hitches in response.

  “They were lies, Asher. All lies.” My chest hurts and emotion burns in my throat as I pull her against me and wrap my arms around her. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  A Sharpe man’s words hurt her before. Humiliated her. I only hope she’ll let another’s words comfort her now.

  She doesn’t move at first. She stands frozen as if she’s afraid to touch, afraid to believe me.

  Asher was always like that. Physical connection was easy for her. It was the emotional side of her that she held on to. The side she locked away from the world, too afraid to be hurt again, given her mother’s abandonment.

  Even I understood that at age eighteen, and I understand it even more now.

  At the same time, I hurt for her. I hurt for me. Have I believed a lie from the same man who manipulated her?

  I don’t want to believe it to be true.

  I don’t want to think my father purposely hurt me like that.

  Sometimes people do crazy things to protect the ones they love, son.

  Weren’t those his words that night? His explanation for what Pop threatened? Or was it his sick justification for what he was doing?

  Nothing makes sense right now.

  Fucking nothing.

  And just as I acknowledge that thought, Asher finally wraps her arms around me and simply holds on. She fits there perfectly, just like she used to. Just like I remember.

  I breathe in everything about her. The warmth of her breath against my chest. The subtle shudder of her shoulders. The coconut scent of her shampoo.

  We’re standing here together, yet I feel a world apart from her.

  Helpless.

  That’s how I feel in regards to the lies my father told Asher.

  Furious and confused.

  How I feel concerning the ones I’m pretty certain he told me too. Because after what Asher just said, I know there’s no way Pop threatened to press charges.

  None.

  She would have mentioned it. She would have said that Pop pushed back with that accusation.

  The part of me that needs an answer on this, pushes it down. She needs to feel validated, not overshadowed. She needs to be heard, not drowned out.

  Christ.

  What kind of man am I that I just went along with it? That I never questioned what my dad told me? That I walked away from Asher out of fear because of the blind trust I had in my father?

  The party goes on beyond the door. People shouting and laughing.

  But I feel lost.

  Like my footing, the foundation that I’ve built everything on—my father and our relationship—just shifted. And I haven’t even begun to process what her peers said about her after we rushed out of Cedar Falls.

  Asher’s spine slowly stiffens, her muscles tense, and she pushes back from me. Her jaw is set, her eyes guarded. “They may have been lies, Ledger, but you never got in touch with me. No texts. No emails. No letters. You knew exactly where I was, where I lived, and not once did you ever reach out. You can blame your father for the first part, but the second part is on you . . . and that’s almost worse.”

  “There’s more to it. There’s my side. There’s—”

  Bang.

  We both jump as a fist pounds on the door. “Come on, man. I’ve got to take a piss.”

  “Asher. Let’s get out of here. I need to explain why. Somewhere that’s . . . not a bathroom.”

  She shakes her head and wipes more tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, hurt and sorrow etched in the lines of her face.

  Another pound. “Open the fucking door.”

  I take a step toward her and she holds her hand up to stop me. “Don’t. Please.” Her voice breaks, and I swear the sound echoes through me.

  She’s shutting down.

  She’s putting walls up.

  “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t have to define this, us, seeing each other again. Right now—”

  “It defined me though.” She takes another step back and puts her hands up for me to stop. “Just . . . I need time, Ledger.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Seeing you again. Like this . . . I need to figure out how I feel about it all.”

  I nod. “So, is this about the past? About the present? About the future? I’m confused.”

  “Jesus, dude,” the voice on the other side of the door says. “I want whatever you took if you’re lasting this long.”

  “Give me a goddamn second, will you?” I turn back to Asher. There’s a sadness in her eyes that nearly undoes me.

  “This is about me sticking to a promise I made myself, Ledger. To never put myself in a situation to be hurt again. I’ve had a shitty couple of months. They’ve almost broken me. I need to figure out how this—you being here, this happening tonight—all fits in. How you fit into it. I won’t let you be the straw that breaks me again.”

  “Let me help you then. Let me be there for you. Let me . . . I don’t fucking know, but let me do something.” Exasperated and feeling desperate to what I feel is slowly slipping through my fingers, I run a hand through my hair and pace the small space, as uncertain about what to do as I am about how I feel.