She had so many things that she wanted to say to the man beside her, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember one of them. Imagining how something might go and actually being in the situation IRL were two very different things.
The truth was, she didn’t know the man beside her at all. Sure, she’d built him into this fantasy that she visited on a daily basis, but the reality was, he was a stranger to her.
Normally, she was great with strangers. She loved getting to know new people. But with Asher, she didn’t have a clue what to say.
“The book that I dropped, I bought it because my sisters know the author.” Really? Out of all the things she could have said, defending her literary choice was what she’d gone with.
She should have just kept her mouth shut.
“Emma Dorsey, yeah, she’s my friend Logan’s wife.”
“Oh, you know Logan?”
He nodded. “We worked undercover together years ago. That’s how I knew about the job here, in Hope Falls.”
“Oh, cool.”
Oh, cool? What was wrong with her. Why was she acting like a teenage girl with a crush? Probably because that’s what she felt like.
As they pulled up to a stop sign, he touched the screen on his phone and she saw that it was recording. “So can you walk me through the night of Monday the fifth?”
“Um, sure.”
Ava explained how she’d gone up to the bar and on the way back a man had approached them. She made sure to add the detail that when he put his arm around her sister, she noticed the liquid in the drink she was holding slosh. She relayed how she started feeling really loopy and that her words were slurring and that her sisters had taken her home but she didn’t remember any of that. The next memory she had was waking up to her alarm going off and almost being late for work and she hadn’t felt like herself the past few days. She’d been foggy.
She left out the part that her last memory at the bar was seeing him. She didn’t think that had any relevance to the case.
She’d just finished her statement when they pulled up in front of a brick building with a North Pine Diagnostics sign on the side. Ava reached for the door handle to get out.
“Wait there,” Asher instructed as he got out of the SUV.
Ava wondered if there was some sort of procedure that he needed to follow. Maybe he had to go inside first to let them know she was coming in.
Instead of going inside he came around to the passenger side door and opened it. She wasn’t used to that sort of treatment from Ian. She didn’t know if it was because they’d known each other since they were twelve or what but he never opened doors for her. He also never carried her suitcases, took out the garbage, made sure she had gas in her car, or fixed a leaky sink. And when he saw a spider, he called her to kill it.
Her heart was beating several beats faster than usual as Asher opened the door in anticipation for what she’d feel when she touched him again. This time when she took his hand, she thought that it wouldn’t be as shocking, that she wouldn’t have as strong of a physical reaction.
She was wrong.
The second they were skin to skin tingles rushed through her with white water rapid force.
“Thanks,” she said a little more breathlessly than she’d meant to and pulled her hand away as soon as both her feet were on the ground.
Asher Ford was unlike any other person that she’d ever encountered before and her reaction to him—both physically and emotionally—was unlike any other reaction she’d ever had.
He pushed open the door with North Pines Diagnostics etched into the glass and said, “You can take a seat. I’ll go check you in.”
“Okay.”
She walked to the left and sat in the waiting room while Asher walked up to the front desk. After he spoke to the woman behind the desk for a few moments, she stood and smiled at Ava. “We can take you right back.”
The tests were fairly simple. They had her give urine, took blood, and also took a few strands of hair from the root.
Within ten minutes she was done and they were headed back to town. They rode in silence for several minutes. The only sound in the vehicle coming from the radio that was playing Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl. Not a bad song, but she’d much rather be talking to Asher. But it seemed that when he was around, her ability to communicate like a normal person decided it was time to take a vacation.
“We should have the results back within seven to ten days,” Asher repeated what the tech had told her.
“Great.” Ava nodded then turned to him and said the thing she’d been wanting to say since she walked into the police station. “This is crazy, right? That you’re you and I’m me and we ran into each other.”
