I winced too. “Yeah, and I know exactly how pathetic that makes me sound but, I mean, I guess I am.” That awful bereft feeling swept through me and I held back the flood just barely.
“You’re not pathetic!” Amber said sternly. “You’re just going through a lot. All at once. And it’s ridiculous.”
I nodded, at a loss for anything else to say and she finally prompted me, “So… Fenris?”
“Right, sorry, he’s the bouncer that took me home with him,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open. “Is he hot?” she asked. “Because he sounded hot.” She fixed me with a look and said, “I bet he’s hot.”
I blushed and said, “He’s definitely… different.” It took me a moment to settle on a word that didn’t sound judgy, rude, or whatnot, but I honestly didn’t know how to describe the man.
“Okay, dish,” she demanded. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, he’s a biker,” I said and Amber’s gray eyes widened and she swept her long auburn French braid over her shoulder and gripped it with both hands.
“Like an actual biker?” she asked.
“Like, a Sacred Heart biker.”
She froze and her eyes grew impossibly wider still and she asked, “Are you for real?”
“Serious as a heart attack,” I affirmed.
“Those guys are really bad news!” she said, and I nodded.
“They don’t have the best reputation, it’s true.”
“Okay, so what else? I mean, what’s he look like?”
“Well, he’s blond and has blue eyes. He had a beard, long, and he braids it and has these silver cylinder beads in it.”
“What, like a Viking?” she asked.
“Pretty much exactly like that. His hair is shaved underneath and long like a mohawk, but he has beads and tiny braids throughout that, too.”
“You were rescued at a bar by Ragnar Lodbrok from the TV show Vikings?” she asked. I paused to think about it and finally nodded.
“Except better looking than the actor.” I made a face. I couldn’t believe I’d just confessed that out loud. Amber’s face lit up, her nude-glossed lips splitting into a grin as she laughed.
“You like him,” she said and I couldn’t look at her.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said simply, my mind drifting back to the moment I’d broken down on this strange man’s stairs in the middle of his house wearing nothing but his shirt and how he’d helped me. How he’d gotten me through it. I don’t think I could express to anyone the depths of my gratitude for that alone, let alone that I had felt absolutely no judgment from him after the fact.
“Of course, it matters!” she cried. “My grandmother always said, the best way to get over a man is to get under a different one.”
“Amber!” I cried, blushing furiously, cheeks hot with… well, I don’t know what.
“What?” she cried. “It’s true!”
I shook my head and said, “I just don’t work like that.”
“Maybe,” she said sliding off the stool with a pointed look, “you should.”
I huffed out an aggravated breath, though I couldn’t tell if I was really annoyed with Amber or if I was really annoyed with myself. I wished Copper was here, that I could call him and talk to him. My older brother always knew what to say to make me feel better – no matter if I was fighting with Mom, Charles, or anything else was bothering me. He just always seemed to have the answers.
I finished up closing with Amber, hiding behind a mask of ‘everything’s fine’ all the while internally dreading going home to my mom’s house which was empty of any and all emotion and just chock-full of useless stuff. I was only one person, and I was drowning on every front. I didn’t know what to do with everything from the mishmash of mine and my mom’s things, to the divorce proceedings with Charles, to lawyers I couldn’t afford and my business barely breaking even at the moment and to my brother being gone and my mom being gone and just all of it…
I turned out the open sign and watched as Amber got into her car at the curb and sighed.
“Just keep going,” I reminded myself out loud. It was all I could do.
I drove back to my mom’s house. It didn’t really feel like home. I mean, I know I had a roof over my head and that I should be grateful for it, but I still felt like I had lost everything, was barely holding what I did have left together, and that the rest of me was just hanging by a thread.
I stepped over the pile of mail that’d been delivered through the front door’s slot and set down my briefcase and the box of ceramics I wanted to try and paint on my own time so that I could retrieve the letters and junk fliers to sort through them.
I paused a few pieces of mail down and drew in a deep steadying breath at my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s divorce attorney’s letterhead.
I opened the envelope, scanning the letter inside and felt the color drain from my face. He was going after half my business… Clayrity.
I shook my head, a jumble of emotions tumbling out of their hiding places like an overloaded closet when the door has finally been opened. I stood there with the shattered pieces all around me, twinkling in the dim light from the overhead light of the kitchen stove which I always kept on, and felt like this was it. That that was the last of it and there was nothing left.
I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my coat and tears welled.
I’d been so successfully isolated by my cheating ex-husband, my mother dead, my brother gone – his wife and I never any kind of close… I literally had no one to even call.
Or did I?
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
I went to my little black book on top of the boxes by the front door and flipped it open. Bringing up the keypad on my phone, I dialed and held my breath as the call connected and started ringing.
“Hello?”
I closed my eyes and took a desperate leap.
Chapter Six
Fenris…
My phone started buzzing across the table in front of me and I picked it up. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” The voice was soft, feminine and held a strained quality to it. I didn’t like it, but I was thrilled because I knew instantly who it was.
“Aspen?” I asked, and Dump Truck and Little Bird exchanged a look.
“Yeah, um,” her voice cracked, “I think I need help.”
I sat up straighter and asked, “You at home?”
“Yeah.” She sounded mournful.
“Say no more, I’m on my way.”
I ended the call and got up, reaching for my wallet.
“I got it, go,” Dump Truck said, and he fixed me with a look that said he absolutely understood. I looked at Little Bird and she gave me a sympathetic nod.
“Thank you, brother.”
I went for the door and got on my bike. I was a good forty-five or fifty minutes from her place and remembered exactly how to get there like I’d dropped her off just yesterday instead of a couple of weeks ago.
When I pulled up to the curb in front of her house, the windows were dark, but the front porch light glowed dimly. I pulled off my lid, smoothed a hand over the top of my hair to tame any random frizz and marched up the front walk to her door. I knocked twice and held my breath.