She’s not happy to see me.
She’s not relieved that I’m alive.
There will be no hug, no kiss, no tears.
Because even a decade later, I can still read this girl like nobody’s business and she is pissed.
I want to look back at the house to see if Wendy is watching, but I don’t dare. Hopefully, she’s still in the shower.
Hopefully, Nick? I almost laugh out loud.
Merc didn’t get me once, he got me twice. Because the last thing I need fucking up what I’m doing with Wendy is Sasha. The one girl on this entire planet who makes Wendy feel like second best.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Harrison appears in the doorway and when our eyes meet, he shrugs. This shrug says, Wasn’t my idea.
No. This little play has Merc written all over it and I did not see it coming. I figured he’d… well. He’d lie. At least for a little while. Then maybe a phone call. Feel her out. Maybe Sasha wouldn’t even want to see me. Hell, maybe she prefers me dead?
At this point the awkward silence has gone on for over a minute and someone has to make a move, so I decide it will be me. I walk forward, but then stop when Sasha takes a step back.
I shrug with my hands. “What are you doing?” I don’t say it loud but the fields surrounding my shitty farm house have gone silent so my voice carries across the distance between us.
She doesn’t move or say anything, so I continue my little stroll down the driveway until I’m close enough to see her properly.
Sasha shakes her head. Her eyes are narrowed down into slits. Her hair is pulled back into a pony tail. She’s wearing a pair of worn-thin cotton army pants with strategic frayed rips that tell me they come from a catalog and not a surplus store. On top she’s wearing a black tank top, but it’s frilly. It’s got cotton ruffles for straps and a screen-printed rose in white across the front. She’s wearing a pair of well-worn sneakers on her feet and there’s a little hole in the left one near the toe.
I’ve been watching Sasha this whole time. Nothing about how she looks right now is a surprise. But everything about her takes me back in time to that hotel room in Rock Springs.
I ruined her life that day.
Or is that just my ego talking? Because her life is far from ruined right now. She has been forced to live it a little too close to the edge, but she hasn’t fallen off yet.
If I could do it over again, would I make a different choice?
I mean, by the time we got to the beach at the foot of that Santa Barbara mansion there was no turning back. Things had been set in motion and James was the one who needed to get away, not me.
But I could’ve made a million different choices leading up to that night. I could’ve been Sasha’s promise.
The four-carat diamond on her finger catches the fading sun and sparkles, flashing me in the face and snapping me back to the present.
I blink and she speaks. “Nothing to say to me?”
Oh, Sasha Cherlin, I have an entire eternity of things to say to you. But not when Wendy Gale is a hundred feet behind me.
“Well? You guys brought me here, what the fuck do you want?”
When I don’t answer her, she starts walking towards me and my heart begins to beat like crazy. I’m talking it’s practically fluttering inside my chest.
When she’s about six feet away from me, she stops and her eyes find mine. They are filled with… what? Is that hate? Sadness?
No. Worse. It’s disappointment.
“OK. Fine. I think I get it. You didn’t know I was coming, did you?”
I barely manage to shake my head no.
“Merc brought me here. He said he needed my opinion on something, and I’m going to assume that’s you, I guess.”
I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s Adam’s offer. Because Merc needs someone to tell him it’s OK to be that guy again. The one he’s been hiding away. That person inside him who is capable of kidnapping a girl, pumping her full of drugs, and taking over her mind until he gets the answers he wants.
Once a Company man, always a Company man.
I don’t care that Merc doesn’t have Company blood flowing through his veins, you don’t do the things he’s done and keep your distance.
Bringing Sasha here was a cold, calculating move on his part. One that might set me on edge and possibly make me sloppy. That is a fantasy. I am one hundred percent in control here.
But he also brought her here to point him in the right direction. Should he go meet up with Adam Boucher and save Donovan, or shouldn’t he?
And now, thanks to me, he’s got another choice.
Should he kill Carter Couture or save him for a rainy day?
This makes me feel a little better because it means Merc is still in the dark about what’s really going on. If Merc knows anything else about what I’m up to, he hasn’t shown his hand. And right now would be the time to play that card. We’re just about there. We’re so close to getting back inside Harrison’s jet and taking it down to the Old Pearl River in Louisiana, I almost itch from all the mosquito bites in my future.
But I don’t say any of that out loud.
I do, however, look over my shoulder at the house. Because Merc should be outside by now and he’s not. And then, when I look back up at the plane, Harrison isn’t there anymore. He went back inside.
So. Maybe this confrontation wasn’t Merc’s main purpose, but he’s gonna let it play out.
I prepare for what comes next by drawing in a long, deep breath and exhaling very slowly.
Sasha notices my calm-down technique and nods her head. “OK. We’re in assassin mode now? Or what?”
“What?” I barely manage this word.
“Do I scare you or something? Because I’m not that girl anymore. Haven’t been her since that day out in Kansas when I killed you.”
“No.”
“Tell me, Nick. That’s who you are, right? Because that’s who you look like. Tell me which part I got wrong.”
“I’m him, yeah. But no, we’re not assassins. This isn’t… that.”
“Then what is it?”
I look over my shoulder.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“Because, Sasha, I didn’t bring you here. Merc did.”
“You don’t want me here?”
“No. I mean…” But I can’t change that reply, so I just sigh.
I haven’t been fantasizing about this moment. I was never going to see them face to face again. Her or Lauren. It was done. It was over. And yeah, I like to look at her life from a distance. I live a little vicariously through Sasha Cherlin’s suburban mom life. So kill me. But I was never going to see her again and I sure as fuck was never going to bring her out here. To this shitty, run-down fucking farmhouse that—
OK. Maybe that sounds bad because I bring Wendy here. But Wendy shows up here. And the only reason that happens is because I own this place and sometimes, I’m actually home. I have never thought of this house in the middle of my massive farm as anything other than a waystation.
But now that it’s been invaded by my past… I am starting to resent the intrusion.
“OK.” Sasha chuckles, but it’s not a fun chuckle. “You had better say every single thought that just ran through your head out loud or I’m getting on that plane and I’m leaving.”