Too Late

She wanted me to drive back, so I’ve been looking for a restaurant for the last five miles.

“I don’t care,” she says. “Anything but Greek.”

“You don’t like Greek food?”

She shrugs. “It’s okay. There’s just not a Greek restaurant until the next town and I’m hungry. If you wanted Greek, I’d have to wait too long to eat.”

I laugh. She’s so goddamn adorable. I reach over to take her hand, but receive an incoming text. I normally wouldn’t text and drive, especially with Sloan in the car, but Dalton said he’d warn me if they decided to come back early.

And sure enough, the text is from Dalton.



Dalton: Time for you to head back. Asa’s not in good shape.



Oh, shit. Did my death wish curse him earlier?



Me: Were you guys in a car wreck?

Dalton: No. He just beat the shit out of his father and he’s having a major fucking breakdown.

Dalton: He keeps rambling about how Sloan better be there by the time he gets back. Never seen him like this, man.



I delete the texts and then set my phone back in the cup holder. I grip the steering wheel. “Sorry, but we can’t stop and eat. Dalton says Asa had a breakdown and they’re on their way back.”

“A breakdown?” Sloan says.

“Yeah, something about his father? Apparently he beat him up at the casino.”

Sloan looks out the window. “His father is alive?”

I glance over at her. She doesn’t know about his father being charged for murder? I guess it makes sense that Asa wouldn’t tell her. That’s not really something you would want your girlfriend to know.

“He doesn’t know you’re with me. We don’t have to get back before them. I’m hungry,” she says.

I hate that I’m forcing her to go back home when she needs to stay the hell away from there. “Dalton says he’s adamant that you be there. Apparently he’s in pretty bad shape.”

She sighs. “That’s not my problem. Why does Dalton know you’re with me, anyway? I don’t trust Dalton. Or Jon. Or Kevin.”

“Don’t worry. I trust Dalton with my life.” I reach over and take her hand, pulling it onto my lap. “I’ll park at my car and then come over later tonight. I think there should be some distance between you getting home and me showing up.”

She nods, but she doesn’t say anything else on the drive home. We’re both dreading the inevitable, which is coming face-to-face with an unstable Asa Jackson. He’s bad enough when he’s in a good mood. I don’t even want to think of how he’s going to treat Sloan tonight.

When we reach my car, I look around to make sure I don’t see anyone. I parked a couple miles from her house and then walked the rest of the way this morning.

Before I get out of the car, I pull her to me and kiss her. She kisses me back with a sigh and it’s kind of sad. Like she’s tired of saying goodbye like this.

“How come it seems every time we take a step forward, we’re forced to take ten steps back?” she asks.

I push a strand of hair off her forehead. “We’ll just have to start taking bigger steps forward.”

She forces a smile and then says, “I hate that I won’t get to talk to you when you come over tonight. Or touch you.”

I kiss her forehead. “Me, too,” I say. “We should have a sign we can use in place of being able to talk tonight. Something subtle that only we’ll notice.”

“Like what?”

I lift my hand and rub my thumb across my bottom lip. “That’s mine,” I tell her.

She crinkles up her nose while she tries to think of one.

“You should twirl a strand of hair around your finger,” I suggest. “I like it when you do that.”

She smiles. “Okay. If you see me doing that it means I wish I could be alone with you.” She pulls at a strand of her hair and twirls it around her finger.

I lean forward and kiss her, then force myself out of her car. I wait until she drives away before texting Dalton again.



Me: Don’t let him alone with her before I get there. I’m scared of what he might do.

Dalton: Noted. Not sure what’s going on with him. He shot up, slept for ten minutes, now he’s talking incessantly. He keeps saying he wants spaghetti and that his hair is really thick. He’s not making any sense. He even made Kevin run his hand through his hair.



Fuck. He’s already unpredictable. This isn’t good.



Me: Let me know as soon as you all get back. I’ll wait an hour and then head that way.

Dalton: Good idea. BTW, he just looked at me and said you were LSD. What do you think that means?

Me: No fucking clue.

Dalton: He said, “Carter causes the worst hallucinations and he’s hard to fucking locate. He’s LSD.”

Me: He’s out of his fucking mind.





My phone is ringing as soon as I walk through the front door. I glance down at the screen and see that it’s Asa.

Great.

I slide my thumb across the screen to answer it. “Hey.”

“Hey, baby,” he says. He sounds like he just woke up, but I can tell he’s still in a car. “Are you home?”

“Yep. Just walked in the door. Are you still at the casino?”

“Nope,” he says. “On our way back.”

So I heard.

“We’re hungry. We want spaghetti. Can you cook some?”

“I have a lot of homework to do. Wasn’t really planning on cooking tonight.”

He sighs and says, “Yeah, well, I wasn’t really planning on craving spaghetti.”

“Sounds like we have a dilemma,” I say, uninterested.

“Not to me. Make some fucking spaghetti, Sloan. Please. I’m having kind of a bad day, here.”

I close my eyes and fall onto the couch. This is going to be a long night. I might as well make it as easy on myself as possible. “Okay. I’ll make you spaghetti. Would you like meatballs with that, dear?”

“I would love meatballs. We want meatballs, right, guys?”

I hear a couple of the guys in the car mutter, “Sure.”

I kick my legs up on the arm of the couch and put the phone on speaker, resting it on my chest. “Why are you having a bad day?”

It’s quiet for a minute, and then Asa says, “Have I ever told you about my father, Sloan?”

“No.”

He sighs. “Exactly. There’s nothing to fucking tell.”

Jesus. What in the hell did that man do to him? I rub my fingers against my temples. “When will you be back?”

Asa doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Is Carter there?”

I immediately sit up on the couch. Blame the paranoia, but my voice grows a little weaker. I try to hide it when I say, “No, Asa. He’s with you.”

There’s a short pause. “No, Sloan. He isn’t.”

The phone grows even quieter, and when I look down at it, I realize he hung up. I press the phone to my forehead. What does he know?





An hour later, they all walk through the front door. I’m not finished with the spaghetti yet because I had to go to the store to get the damn noodles. Asa walks into the kitchen, and I gasp when I look up at him. His shirt is covered in blood and his fist is almost unrecognizable. I immediately rush to the first aid kit in the pantry. “Come here,” I tell him, directing him to the sink.

I run water over his hand, trying to find where the blood is coming from, but it seems like it’s coming from everywhere. His whole fist looks like raw flesh. My stomach turns, but I force myself to finish cleaning it so I can bandage it up and not have to look at it.

“What in the hell did you do, Asa?”

He winces and looks down at his hand. Then he shrugs. “Not enough.”

I put ointment all over his hand and then wrap it, but that’s hardly going to help. He probably needs stitches. Several stitches.

I feel his hand clamp tightly around mine, and my eyes dart up to his.

“Where’s your fucking ring?”

Shit.

“On the dresser. I didn’t want to get it dirty while I cooked.”

He stands up and yanks my arm, pulling me toward the stairs. I can feel the pull all the way up to my neck. “Asa, stop!”

He doesn’t let go of me, and when he drags me behind him, through the living room, Dalton stands up. “Asa,” he says.

Asa still doesn’t stop. I have to run just to keep up with him as he takes the stairs two at a time, so I don’t fall down. He swings the bedroom door open and grabs my ring off the dresser, pulling my left hand up between us. “You keep your fucking ring on your hand. That’s why I bought it for you, so people would know they can’t mess with you.”

He slaps my hand on the dresser and then opens the top drawer, holding my hand down flat with his.

“What are you doing?” I ask, fearing the answer. He opens the second drawer and rifles through it.

“Helping you remember never to take it off,” he says, grabbing a tube and slamming the dresser drawer shut. My eyes land on the bottle of super glue in his hand.

The hell he is.