“It could have been worse,” he responded honestly. “It was your cliched, jilted wife stuff. Nita, his wife, called me a few times. She found out where I worked and showed up at my office.” When Asher tensed, he shook his head. “She never made it past security.”
It had been uncomfortable and inconvenient, not to mention, a constant reminder of how badly he’d screwed up, but he’d meant it when he’d said it could have been worse. Nothing violent ever happened. He hadn’t ever come home to find dead animals on his porch, nor had he ever worried that someone was watching him from the shadows.
All her presence had really done was amplify the self-disgust he’d already felt.
A frown tugged at Asher’s lips. “So, what happened?” His gaze slid to Talon. “How does he know about it?”
Heat infused Cameron’s cheeks, and he coughed twice to clear his throat before continuing. “It was about a week later. I got a call from Maya around one in the morning.”
“Who?”
“Maya Young. She owns that bar off the highway by the lake.”
“Lucky’s?”
Cameron nodded.
To outsiders, it was a fairly typical name for a bar. The residents of Mission Grove, however, knew that she’d named the place after her one-eyed, bobtailed cat. The thing was a freaking menace, too, stalking people outside the bar and jumping into their vehicles when they tried to leave. Of course, Maya always sided with Lucky, and everyone else just sort of dealt with it.
“So, Derek’s drunk. Like, falling down, slurring his words drunk.” Derek didn’t drink often, and never enough to get sloppy—except when Tyler had a new girlfriend. “Maya called me to come pick him up and take him home.” From the time he’d received the call to the moment he’d walked his friend out of the bar couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes total. “Nita was waiting in the parking lot.”
“She’d followed you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, so she starts yelling and waving her hands around while I’m just standing there, doing my best to keep Derek upright.” He could only imagine what the three of them had looked like. “Anyway, Maya hears the yelling and calls the police. They show up and take Nita down to the station.”
She hadn’t even protested when they’d ushered her into the back of the cruiser.
“Did you press charges?”
“No.” Cameron shook his head. He’d just wanted to be left alone, not ruin the woman’s life. She’d been hurt and angry, and maybe she’d lost her grip on reality there for a while, but even now, he didn’t believe she was a bad person. “They let her go the next morning, and I never heard from her again.”
“Sooo…” Asher said, drawing out the word as he looked between Cameron and Talon.
“It’s a small town,” Cameron reminded him with a casual shrug. “It was in the Sunday edition of the Mission Grove Herald.”
Talon dipped his head once in confirmation of where he’d found the information.
“Jesus, fuck,” Asher breathed as he carded his fingers through his hair. “That’s…wow.”
Not the most eloquent assessment, especially considering the guy made his living with words. Cameron didn’t fault him, though. If he’d heard the story secondhand, he probably wouldn’t know what to say, either.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a long time ago.” He would have told Asher…eventually. Hell, he’d been with Richard for three years, and he’d never told him. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a big deal.” Honestly, it had been more humiliating than anything, especially since it had taken the townspeople a good three months to stop talking about it. “Besides, there’s not exactly a good way to bring up something like that.”
“I told you about Kyle. About Mitchell.”
Cameron tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. “True, but you also tried to get rid of me first. If Kyle hadn’t arrived when he did, would you have told me?”
Asher’s silence spoke volumes.
The attraction between them had been instant and explosive. Their connection was borderline epic. The past few weeks had been like something out of a fairy tale—a crazy, fun, slightly slutty fairy tale—but that didn’t change the fact that ithadbeen barely six weeks since they’d met.
“No wonder you have trust issues,” Asher mumbled.
Cameron straightened, his spine stiffening. “Right back at you, asshole.”
“Sorry.” Rubbing both hands over his face, Asher blew out a long breath. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
