Page 24 of Outside The Wire

I snorted. “Just one?”

“Yep.”

“Please tell me. I’m dying to know.”

She grinned at me. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Gee, was it really that easy?

6

ASHER

Fuck,I was nervous as hell.

Excited, yes, but terrified. I hadn’t been with a woman since Jade.

I was ready for this, but I hadn’t been on an actual date with a woman in so fucking long, I wasn’t sure I could remember how to do it. Then again, everything seemed to come so naturally with Holly. She was so different, so special. Even that fucking text message…

Kind sir.

Hell, I burst out laughing in the middle of work and all the guys looked at me like I’d lost my goddamn mind. It was unusual for me to smile that much, let alone laugh. Yes, I’d cracked a smile from time to time, but I wasn’t normally what you’d call jovial.

But Holly was different. She just did something to me. She lightened all the darkness inside me and made it easier to breathe. That’s the way it was supposed to be when you were with someone. I could see that now.

Everything with Jade was steeped in sadness and desperation. I did love her, but it was different, born out of a situation that neither of us could escape. And that left mewondering if I would have chosen Jade if I had met her on the street like I met Holly.

I checked myself in the mirror again and took a deep breath. I could do this. It would be fine. It was just dinner, and Holly was so easy to talk to.

The chain around my neck glinted in the mirror, catching my eye. Shit. I lifted my hand and looked at the wedding ring around my finger. There was no way I could wear this on a date. That had to be breaking some kind of dating protocol. At the very least, it was in poor taste to take another woman out while still thinking about your dead wife.

I slid the ring from my finger and removed the chain from around my neck. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like I was betraying Jade in any way. I thought for sure that I would mourn her for the rest of my life, that I would blame myself for her death—for not seeing the signs and saving her. But somewhere along the way, I came to realize that I couldn’t save her. She was drowning in a life that her father had created for her, and no matter what I did, I would never truly break the ice that had formed around her. I might have been able to help her, but would she have been happy?

I set the ring in my nightstand drawer and slid it shut. There was no room for Jade anywhere on my date tonight. This was about starting over, a night of reinventing myself and remembering that I used to be someone entirely different.

I grabbed my keys and headed out into the cold, blistery night. When Holly sent me her address, I googled it right away and was pleased to find out she lived in a safe part of town. That was one less thing for me to worry about. I even avoided driving past there earlier today to check out the neighborhood, forgoing my previous inclinations to do a full sweep before picking her up. I thought that showed real growth.

Parking out front, I avoided sitting in the truck and giving myself a pep talk. I was pretty sure getting caught waiting out front would be a bad sign, so I didn’t hesitate as I got out and headed to her house. It was small, maybe a two-bedroom house, but it was cute, just like her.

Knocking on her door, I could hear her scrambling around inside and grinned to myself as I heard her curse under her breath just before she answered the door. It swung open just two seconds later and she smiled at me, blowing a stray hair out of her face.

“Hey, I’m just—” Her face contorted in terror as her coat rack suddenly pitched toward her, nearly taking her out. She caught it just in time, wrestling with it as she struggled to push it upright.

Chuckling, I stepped inside and helped her set it upright before it poked her eye out. “You okay?”

“Sure, just about to be beheaded by an umbrella. Wouldn’t that be a story?”

She had no idea.

“I just have to find my shoes. I had them and then I ran to brush my teeth and I put them somewhere, but I can’t remember where and?—”

I nodded as she rushed off into the room. Shutting the door behind me, I peeked into the living room and held back my laughter as I checked out the rug that butted up against one wall and curled up against the opposite wall.

“Ah-ha! Found ‘em!” she called out from somewhere else in the house. She rushed into the room, tugging on one shoe as she ran.

“You really shouldn’t?—”

“I was just—ah!” She never got a chance to finish her sentence as she tripped and fell flat on her face, one hand still on her shoe. I rushed around the couch as she peeled herself off the floor.

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