Hold On by Kristen Ashley

And now he was free.

  “Good to know you’re doin’ okay,” Tanner said.

  “Yeah,” Garrett muttered.

  “Now, brother, CeeCee’s down, so Roc and me got about five seconds of alone time and, no offense, I wanna spend that time with my wife.”

  Garrett grinned into the night again and replied, “Then I’ll let you go. Later, Tanner.”

  “Later, Garrett.”

  They disconnected and Garrett stared into the parking lot, wondering what it would feel like to have an actual yard as he finished his smoke.

  He turned and bent low to the crappy-ass, cheap, white plastic table that sat between two crappy-ass, cheap, white plastic chairs in order to stub out his cigarette.

  He did this thinking back to if he’d ever smoked in front of Ethan.

  Friday night, Cher had come out with him twice as they were getting hammered so he could have a smoke, standing in front of him on her high-heeled shoes, shifting from foot to foot in the cold, while he told her to get her ass back inside and she gave him all kinds of shit for smoking.

  But Ethan? No. Garrett wouldn’t do that. He’d never smoke in front of any of his friends’ kids. Not when they were Ethan’s age. Not when they hadn’t already learned better.

  He turned, pulled the sliding glass door open, and shut it behind him, intending to go to the fridge and get a beer.

  He didn’t get a beer.

  He looked at the living room/dining room/kitchen part of his condo, all of it easy to see because it was condensed into as few square feet as a builder could design those three spaces.

  He had crappy-ass balcony furniture.

  The furniture inside was only a shade above crappy-ass, but it was still shit.

  Immediately, his mind filled with what he’d seen of Cher’s place.

  He was not surprised that she lived in a house that looked like it was decorated by Janis Joplin’s slightly more together sister. Stuffed full, dark at the same time bright with color, it had personality. It was unique. It held warmth that hit you the second you stepped foot over the threshold.

  It was Cher.

  The living room was good; her bedroom was better.

  Her bedroom said anything goes. Her bedroom said your wildest fantasy could come true. Her bedroom said you were safe to be what you were, think what you want, do what you like, eat like a pig, drink like a fish, fuck like an animal, sleep like the dead, no worries, leave life at the door and just be.

  And she’d delivered. They’d only had hours in that room, so she didn’t deliver on it all, but the instant they fell to her bed, tearing at each other’s clothes, she’d more than delivered.

  On this thought, Garrett moved to his refrigerator, pulled out a beer, twisted off the cap, and turned to rest his hips against the counter, looking into his shitty condo, the eclectic warmth of Cher’s pad not layering over what his eyes saw.

  The feel of her, the smell of her, the memory of being with her in her bed was what filled his mind.

  For years, he had stupidly tried to fuck Mia out of his head and his heart, knowing he was doing it and completely unable to stop himself.

  And to make that shit even shittier, he’d done it by actually fucking Mia any time after their divorce that she came around to get a dose of his cock.

  More often than not, though, when he sunk his dick into a woman who was not his ex-wife, Mia filled his head. Drunk or sober, it happened. It made him feel like an asshole. But he kept doing it.

  With Cher, it did not.

  With Cher, he was with Cher.

  On a night when he was trashed and that shit was sure to happen, it didn’t.

  On a night where he never expected he could do it, he’d laughed. Not a little, a lot. His gut clenching with it. His eyes watering with it.

  And he did that with Cher.

  No, he didn’t just do it with her, she gave him that.

  You came here to get me to go to Frank’s so you could tell me what went down with us was just a drunken fuck, no more. We don’t change. Am I right?

  She’d been right.

  Garrett looked to the clock on his microwave.

  It was just before nine thirty. Her shift that day was noon to eight thirty.

  She’d be home.

  He engaged his phone, opened his texts, and shot her one.

  Ethan got a sleepover this weekend?

  He took another pull from his beer, thinking Cher’s early shift was noon to eight thirty and her late shift was eight to three thirty. He knew that because he was a cop and he paid attention to everything, an occupational hazard, so he’d noted it just from being a regular at her place of business.

  Those shifts meant, either way, on school days, she didn’t have to rush Ethan to get ready. Even if she’d only had a few hours of sleep, she could make him breakfast, take him to school, not have to be anywhere but with him. Late shift, she could also go get him, get him home, make sure his schoolwork got done, make him dinner.

  But even if they had time together, either way, that time was still fucked.

  People did that kind of thing all the time, shift work that meant they had to get creative about who looked after their kids.

  But those people didn’t have Cher’s history and a kid with a stick-up-their-ass stepmom who decided the way of the world and that her way was the only way. Garrett knew that was the way Peggy whoever-she-was was the minute he saw the bitch. Cher didn’t need to lay that out. He knew she was trouble of one variety or the other before she opened her mouth.

  Before he knew she was bringing Cher trouble.

  Fuck, he hoped the junkie ex was dirty.

  He pushed away from the counter, took his beer to the couch, and grabbed the remote.

  He found a show right when his phone sounded.

  He grabbed it off his coffee table and his mouth curled up when he read, Kiss my ass, Merry.

  Using his thumb, he returned, You want that, brown eyes, I’ll work it in.

  She didn’t make him wait and shot back, Go fuck yourself.

  Now, sweetheart, you know that’s not the way it works.

  Then came, We’re done.

  He ignored that and sent, Sleep tight. See you tomorrow.

  Tomorrow? she returned.

  Have good dreams.

  Tomorrow?

  Garrett didn’t reply.

  Merry? Tomorrow?

  Garrett again didn’t reply.

  Don’t fuck with me, Merry. I don’t need your shit.

  Garrett grinned, but he didn’t reply, and at that, Cher let it go.

  He trained his eyes to the TV, not watching it.

  He was thinking that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

  The only thing he knew was that he was going to do it. And right then, as much of a dick as it made him, it was because Cher Rivers was the best fuck he’d ever had, bar none, including Mia.

  After their showdown, where Cher showed him a different kind of fire than her normal—a fire he liked—and a vulnerability she’d never shown before—the kind as a cop and as a Merrick he couldn’t ignore—he wanted more.

  It was also because, when he was low, she took his back.

  So now that she had the possibility of trouble, he was going to take hers.

  If she wanted him to or not.

  Chapter Four

  Plotting My Murder

  Cher

  The next day, after I’d dropped Ethan at school, I was about to go out to the garage to get the storm windows when my phone rang.

  I moved to my purse in the bucket chair, pulled the phone out, and saw a number I did not know.

  I’d learned a long time ago never to answer those kinds of calls. I was careful to program in any numbers that I would need to know, including doctors, dentists, Ethan’s school. I’d learned to do this, because if it didn’t come up as programmed, they were either someone trying to sell me something or someone I absolutely did not want to talk to.

  This being someone I didn
’t want to talk to, I dropped the phone on top of my purse and headed to the garage.

  I had the windows out of the garage, stacked against the side of the house, the screen switched out in the front door, and was moving to the first window when I heard shrieked, “You think I won’t fuck with you?”

  I looked left and went still.

  My next-door neighbor was cool—Tilly, an old lady. She was quiet. She was also private but friendly and happy to look after Ethan on the rare occasion I needed her. She did this because she was a good woman and she liked us, not because Ethan or I mowed her lawn and shoveled her snow whenever we did ours (which we did).

  And she acted like the light of God shone down on her when her asshole son or her bitch-face daughter deigned to pay her a visit, bringing her grandchildren. I was not in my house 24/7, but I didn’t miss the fact that these pilgrimages back home to momma happened rarely. Ethan and I had lived there for over two years and those bastards had shown twice, collectively.

  But the house next to Tilly’s was a rental. Not one like mine, where my landlord gave a shit. One where the landlord didn’t, so it was in visible disrepair, which meant the rent was lower and the renters were of the same level.

  I’d seen the new tenants. They’d been around a few months. In that time, they’d had one party that was loud, which I’d had closed down.

  But they were around a lot, in and out a lot, and had a slew of visitors, so I had a variety of opportunities to see them.

  Being a person who was quickly judged, I was not judgmental.

  Still, the man had dickhead written all over him, and the woman was a sister in the way she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do much better, so she didn’t try.

  Now she was on the stoop, red in the face, still in her shapeless nightshirt, hair wild, clearly, even from a distance, pissed way the fuck off.

  He was in jeans and a jeans jacket, a few feet down the walk from her, his back to me, but his body language was easily read and he shared his woman’s mood.

  Since they were a house away, I didn’t hear what he said. I just knew he replied when she kept screeching.

  “Fuck you! You don’t change your mind, motherfucker. Carlito will learn all your shit!”

  At that, I knew it was time to go inside and do it quiet so neither of them would know I was outside and I’d heard what I’d heard.

  This was what I did.

  When I soundlessly closed my door behind me, I looked into my living room and hissed, “Shit.”

  I didn’t know Carlito.

  But I worked in a bar that served booze to cops, bikers, and bankers. Hairdressers and lady doctors. Farmers, plumbers, and lawyers.

  And at a bar, customers considered waitresses deaf to anything but drink orders.

  Also at a bar, customers considered bartenders their own personal shrinks.

  So I knew that the least of what a man called Carlito was was a low-life loan shark.

  But considering I’d heard his name murmured on more than one occasion by Colt, Sully, Mike, Drew, Sean, Merry, and a number of other cops in that ’burg, I suspected he was more.

  I did not need that shit on my block, but it was more.

  I did not need that shit on the block where my kid lived.

  I went to my kitchen to pour myself a travel mug, emptying the last cup of joe from the pot into the mug to take out with me when the coast was clear. I was standing in the living room, holding it in my hand and listening for my neighbors, when my phone sounded with a text.

  Excitement and annoyance chased its way through me as I looked to my phone on my purse, wondering if the text was from Merry.

  Last night, through texts, his games had begun.

  I was trying to ignore this.

  It was hard to ignore.

  I put the mug down on the coffee table, grabbed the phone, and saw it wasn’t from Merry. It was a text from Violet telling me she could pick Ethan up from school on Thursday when both Mom and I were working.

  When I texted her back to confirm and give thanks, I saw I had a voicemail.

  It was from that number I didn’t know.

  I didn’t want to listen to it, but just in case the school got a new extension or some teacher was calling me from their own phone for some reason, I went to it, hit play, hit speaker, and heard, “Ms. Sheckle. This is Walter Jones. I would appreciate it if you could phone me back when you have a moment. Just so you know, I’ll make it worth your while. I was a profiler with the FBI, currently freelance, and am researching a book I’m writing on serial killers of the last twenty—”

  I set my teeth and hit delete.

  Fucking motherfucker.

  I jumped and turned when a knock came at my door.

  I had a shit door that, even wearing my daintiest high-heeled sandal, I could kick through. It was two layers of thin, cheap wood with a small diamond window at eye level so you could look out.

  And in that diamond window, I saw Merry.

  Fucking motherfucker.

  He’d texted tomorrow.

  And it was tomorrow.

  I stared at him through the window, but he did not stare at me.

  He opened the door and walked right through.

  Mental note: lock the damned door, no matter if you’re inside just to pour a cup of coffee.

  “Well, come on in, Officer,” I greeted sarcastically, throwing out my hand with the phone in it. “Something I can get you? Cup of coffee? Late breakfast? Quick blowjob?”

  He did not look amused. He did not look annoyed.

  He looked ticked.

  “You puttin’ in your own storms?” he asked.

  With the crap coming from my neighbors, Walter Jones getting my cell phone number and having no problem calling me, thinking he could ever in a million fucking years make it “worth my while” to talk about Dennis Lowe, and Merry waltzing into my living room, all in the expanse of ten minutes, I wasn’t following.

  “What?”

  “Windows, Cher.” He jerked his head toward the side of the house where the storm windows were stacked. “You puttin’ in your own storm windows?”

  I had no idea why he would care, but there was only one answer to that question, so I gave it to him.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Why doesn’t your landlord do it?” Merry asked.

  “Because he’s seven hundred and twelve years old and my CPR skills are a little rusty, so I don’t want him giving himself a heart attack switching screens out for storms when I can do it myself.”

  “It’s his responsibility,” Merry returned.

  “I’d have to study my rental agreement, but I think routine maintenance is my responsibility, Merry.”

  “You study that agreement, you’d find you’re wrong.”

  It had been a while since I read it, but I had a feeling Merry was correct.

  I didn’t share this feeling.

  I said, “Then, considering the screens pop out, the storms pop in, and the doors only require little ole me to be able to turn a screwdriver, I’d rather just do it instead of calling him, waiting for him to come over, suffer a stroke while winterizing my house, thus scarring me mentally for life.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You this much of a smartass before I made you come for me five times?”

  I waited for my head to swivel around on my shoulders while fire shot out of my eye sockets.

  When that didn’t happen, I snapped, “Uh…yeah.”

  “Leave ’em,” he ordered. “I’m done with my shift, I’ll come over and put ’em in.”

  I didn’t know how to react to that except allow my mouth to drop open, which I did.

  Before I recovered, he asked, “You know Riverside Baptist Church?”

  “Oh God. First you give me five orgasms, now you’re gonna save my soul?” I asked back.

  He crossed his arms on his chest. “Rein in the smartass, Cher. Don’t got time to get you sweet, which means get you hot, so you’ll give me what I want instead of
bein’ a pain in my ass. Answer the question: Do you know Riverside Baptist Church?”

  That was when my eyes narrowed. “Get me sweet, which means get me hot?”

  Merry became visibly impatient. “Babe, focus.”

  “You want me focused, tell me why you’re here, injecting cheer into my day,” I demanded.

  “Peggy Schott belongs to Riverside Baptist Church.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  Merry didn’t.

  “She talk about that? Trent talk about it? Ethan come from them to you and talk about it?”

  I felt my heart beating hard in my chest. “What I wanna know is why you’re talking about it, and how do you even know that? How’d you even find out Peg’s last name?”

  “I told you I was gonna take your back and that’s what I’m doin’,” he returned.

  That was what he was doing?

  We’d had our previous fun-loving chat at four o’clock yesterday afternoon.

  It wasn’t even ten o’clock the next morning and he’d already learned about a church Peggy belonged to.

  I had a bad feeling about this because I knew Merry, and once he got his teeth into something, he didn’t let go.

  And he had his teeth into Trent and Peggy, so my chances at stopping him from getting right up in my shit were minimizing by the second.

  These thoughts made me throw up both hands in exasperation and snap, “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours!”

  “Someone gives you a heads up they’re thinkin’ of fuckin’ with you, you don’t offer them a head start,” he replied, then kept going. “Margaret Schott is the volunteer assistant director of a program run by Riverside Baptist Church called Faith Saves. The mission of this program is to send members to hang outside AA, NA, and Al-Anon meetings, as well as methadone clinics, approaching people who leave to seek recovery or guidance through the word of God.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  “Considering those programs are already significantly faith-based, the folks at Riverside either aren’t that bright or not real good at hiding their recruitment tactics. Google Peg Schott’s name; she’s all over the church’s website, tied to this program. Might be a jump, but doubtful—this is how she met your ex. You know anything about that?”

  I shook my head.