Page 26 of Creed

(AGE 27)

“Yo.” Asher’s sleepy, slurred voice croaks on the third ring.

I don’t even bother with a greeting. “What the fuck is going on with Collins?”

“Creed?” he croaks. I roll my eyes.

“Yes it’s me, dickhead. Who the fuck else would ask you about your fucking sister?” I seethe.

Asher hasn’t been the same person ever since he and Dani split. He called me late one night after our concert in Vegas, drunk and in tears because he’d proposed to her and she said no. She left him in the middle of the night that night and never came back. She wouldn’t answer his calls or texts. What fucking gutted him was when she resurfaced in a tabloid magazine two years later with Gage McFall, a third baseman for the Pirates…with two kids in their arms. One had to be a few months old, while the other looked to be almost two. Which means she was fucking pregnant when she left Asher. The kicker? It definitely wasn’t his kid. Dani’s daughter has fiery red curls and brown eyes, just like Gage.

Asher finally confronted her and the only question he asked was how long it had been going on behind his back. She told him it’d happened when she met Gage for the first time at a bar after a game in Pittsburgh a year prior to her leaving, when she was supposed to be out with the other baseball wives. To know she’d been unfaithful to him had twisted a knot so hard in his soul that something changed in him. He was crazy about Dani and I knew he wanted to spend his life with her and her betrayal gutted him. He retired from the MLB after such a short career, and fell into a self-destructive lifestyle of drinking, partying and getting into drugs.

I refused to let my best friend fall apart so I flew out to his house, dragged his ass out and put him into rehab. It took him several months to stay clean and ended up landing a job at a club in northern California called BLAKKOUT and worked his way up to bar manager and head bartender. I’d asked him if it was a good idea to work with alcohol, but he assured me that he was good and had no temptation to drink. His boss, Lachlan, even gave him a place to live.

I’d left him alone after seeing how his life seemed to be getting back on track, but I didn’t realize that eliminating the toxic and negative parts of his past apparently had included his little sister. According to her letter, he hasn’t spoken to her in years.

I know he had to work through his own shit and get his life back in order, but the thought of him abandoning Collins when she was just a kid has my blood heating to near boiling.

I pick up the polaroid again, my eyes struggling to focus on her face in the dark of my room.

“Have you spoken to her lately? Responded to any of her letters?”

“What letters?” His voice a little clearer. “I haven’t received any letters from her since I moved into Lachlan and Cori’s spare apartment.”

“You didn’t think to send your new—you know what, never mind. That’s not fucking important right now.”

“Why? What’s going on?” He asks, concern lacing his words as a rustling noise sounded over the line, as if he were getting up.

I grip my hair by my roots, tugging harshly with one hand as I pace a path into the flooring of my room. “Fuck, I don’t know man. Collins wrote me letters every two to four weeks, depending on what was going on in her life and it’s been too many weeks since I’d heard from her.”

“O-kayy…” he says slowly, waiting for me to explain. So I do.

“Long story short it was a fucking mailing address mishap I could kill my manager over, and this letter…Asher…it fucking scared me, man. I knew from her letters that she had some shitty foster parents over the years, but this last guy…” I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to say the next words.

“Creed, what the fuck did the letter say?” Asher growls, his words a warning of impending violence. I know, because I feel the same way.

“I think he was hurting her,” I swallow past the lump in my throat. Asher’s curse was near deafening before I heard crashing sounds coming from the other end of the call. I rush out before he fucking spirals, “Asher,” he goes silent. “What day is it?”

“The fuck does it matter what day it is, Creed?”

“It’s May 28th, brother. Collins’—”

“Birthday.” He finishes on a raspy breath. “I fucking forgot my baby sister’s birthday…” he whispers, and I’m sure it’s something he meant to say to only himself.

Yeah, definitely not a fucking baby anymore.

He’s quiet for a moment before he curses quietly under his breath again. I try to keep my voice calm as I speak. “She aged out of the system today. And…I think—I think she got out of her living situation. But I have no fucking clue where she’s going. No idea what her plan is, and it’s fucking killing me, Ash. She wouldn’t let me help her and I don’t have a single goddamned idea as to where she’s running to, other than it’s somewhere out west, based on what I heard in the background.”

“Shit. God, Creed, I…FUCK!” he yells, followed by a loud thud, no doubt his fist making contact with the wall.

“Asher!” I yell his name, needing him to chill the fuck out for a second. “Take a fucking breath and just listen for a second, because we can’t focus on small shit like that. We’ve got a bigger fucking problem right now.”

A moment of silence stretched out before he spoke quietly. “Right. Fuck, you’re right. Okay,”

When I was fairly positive he wasn’t going to lose his shit again, I went on. “Listen, I know, I fucking know shit about the past where Collins is involved is fucking frustrating. We fucking failed her so badly and as much as I’m sure we’ll hate ourselves for the rest of time for it, there’s nothing we can do right now about the past. But failing her now? I can’t let that happen. We were always her constant… until we left, and right after that, her life went to shit. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“No, she fucking doesn’t.”

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