Asher (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 6) Read online

  Asher

  Hope Hitchens

  Copyright © 2019 by Hope Hitchens

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events & incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, incidents or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for checking out the latest (as I type!) novel in my new romance series Heartbreakers & Troublemakers. As with all my books, this story was a labor of love for me. I’ve poured my heart and soul into polishing it to perfection. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it!

  - Hope xx

  Contents

  1. Felicity

  2. Felicity

  3. Asher

  4. Felicity

  5. Asher

  6. Felicity

  7. Asher

  8. Felicity

  9. Asher

  10. Asher

  11. Felicity

  12. Asher

  13. Felicity

  14. Felicity

  15. Asher

  16. Felicity

  17. Asher

  18. Felicity

  19. Asher

  20. Felicity

  21. Asher

  22. Felicity

  23. Asher

  Epilogue

  Newsletter

  Introducing… Vann

  About the Author

  1

  Felicity

  The sun beat down on the back of my neck, unforgiving. I had chosen to leave the ranch after two in the afternoon, but it was still sweltering outside. It would be, I guess. This was the desert. I had managed to talk myself into hitchhiking when I got to the interstate, but the longer I waited, the worse the idea seemed. I didn’t know where I wanted to go; I just wanted to put as many miles between myself and the ranch as possible.

  There was the option to just start walking, but I wasn’t trying to die. I hadn’t been smart enough to stash more than one of the bottled waters that we got at meal times in my bag. I had been holding out on drinking it because the wait for a car had turned out to be a lot longer than I had expected.

  It wasn’t just as easy as calling my family and telling them where I was. If it was, I would have done it already. I had made the decision not to call my family to come get me the minute I made the decision not to tell them I had checked out of my treatment program. They didn’t know, and if they ever found out, it wasn’t going to be because I had told them.

  Who puts a rehabilitation center in the middle of the desert? Why would anyone think that further isolation would be something beneficial for a person who was already a little crazy? Maybe it was so if you escaped, you died of exposure trying to get back to civilization, and the center wouldn’t be culpable. Maybe it was because the dry, hot desert air did a sick mind good. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t about to hang out to see whether it was true.

  I could thumb a ride before sundown. I had to. If I didn’t, I’d have to hoof it back to the ranch, and they could all tell me they told me so. Would I rather get in a car with a stranger than spend any more time at the Bermuda Rehabilitation Center for Women and Girls?

  Yes. Yes, I would. I wouldn’t say that I’d go as far as dying of heatstroke or whatever in the quest to get out of there, but let’s just say I wanted very strongly to no longer be in that place. I already knew what was wrong with me going in; it wasn’t like I had been sent to them for a diagnosis. I had my drugs now, and that meant I was good. They were already working. I felt great.

  I’d know what to do as soon as I got somewhere with more than just one street running through it and a population closer to a million than a thousand. I watched another truck rumble past me slowly. Didn’t stop.

  I sighed. What was the worst that could happen? I could get Lawrence Singletoned, which was always a possibility, but what about if I got picked up by a nice family on their way to Portland who would go out of their way to drop me off. Yeah, what about that?

  Positivity. I needed to stay fucking positive. That was what had gotten me in this situation in the first place. If I was just going to keep doom and glooming, why didn’t I just stay at the fucking ranch?

  And even if I did get Lawrence Singletoned, which, let’s face it I probably would, maybe I’d make it on Dateline. I mean, Felicity Friedman? I had a victim’s name. Maybe my parents would start a Foundation and name it after me, for troubled young women, or victims of hitchhiking. And I could always remember my counselor’s last words to me before I left as being right. It had been a bad idea to leave against medical advice.

  But I was totally better.

  Cured.

  All I needed was a damn ride, and I’d show them how cured I was. Unable to live on my own? Not anymore. A danger to myself and others? No way. Everything was fine. I was totally fine. I had my stuff, and my meds, and once I got a way out of this place, I’d be golden.

  I had plopped my duffel down on the side of the road, so it was getting dusted in desert sand and debris with every passing vehicle. My parents had said it was for my own good coming here. I wasn’t going to pretend that I didn’t know why they had chosen inpatient treatment. Just because the decision had been made for me didn’t mean it was the wrong one. I just didn’t reckon the desert was the most restful or serene environment for people who’d lost it.

  It sounded like somewhere you put people when you wanted to forget about them. The desert was like the middle of the ocean, but dry. You could disappear without a trace very easily and be forgotten with the same ease.

  It hadn’t been all bad, though; the compound had been nice. There had been horses, a pool, fountains, trees and grass—who god knows how they managed to make grow there. As far as places to come to complete my mental breakdown, it was pretty alright. Now I had my meds recalibrated and had spent a nice few days doing tai-chi with other people who had fucked up the living on your own thing and now I was ready to move on.

  I probably should have called them before leaving to warn them of what I was doing, but they would be expecting that. They would have had words of encouragement, to make me stay the whole thirty days, tell me that it would all be worth it in the end. It’s always the hardest in the beginning. Blah, blah, blah.

  It didn’t need to be their problem anymore. It shouldn’t have been their problem in the first place. I had just let it get out of control, but now I was going to fix it. A phone call letting them know I had a job and an apartment somewhere in three months instead of one lying to them about what I thought of the ranch’s leisure facilities today.

  Maybe it was guilt. Dad and my stepmom had spent the years of my life that they should have been parenting me not doing that, and now, when the effect of those years of neglect finally manifested into ugly habits and maladaptive behavior, they suddenly wanted to help.

  I sighed. Nope. As much as I would have loved to blame them, this one wasn’t their fault. It had been almost nine months now since he’d died—past time to move on already. This one was on me. He was dead, but I couldn’t keep living like I was too. Twelve days sequestered in a peaceful desert ranch and I felt like a new woman. Yeah, it wasn’t the whole program, but I didn’t want to get comfortable being coddled and taken care of again. I was ripping the Band-Aid off. I kicked the ground,
raising a cloud of dust that got all over my white sneaker.

  I had been waiting about two hours, give or take. There weren’t that many cars on the road. More trucks than anything, but they probably weren’t authorized to pick up passengers. I wanted to sit, but I wasn’t that tall—sitting would make me even harder to spot.

  I had a pair of short shorts in my luggage; maybe those would have gotten me a ride faster than the jeans and t-shirt get up I had on just then. No, it was bad enough I was doing this. I didn’t need to make myself more of a target. I stood with my thumb out feeling incredibly foolish. There was a car in the distance; maybe this would be it.

  Should I smile to seem more approachable? Move back out of the road? Run out so they had no choice but to stop… maybe they had another choice, but what I wanted was for them to stop.

  The car drove past me for a few yards before it came to a stop. Heh. It worked. I picked my duffel up and ran to the passenger’s side, leaning down into the open window. The driver was the only person in the car—a man. He smiled at me and took his sunglasses off.

  “Hey. Need a ride?” he asked. He looked like he was a few years older than I was, with longish hair that looked sun-bleached and freckled, tanned skin. He was sort of cute, I thought, absently. He didn’t look like a murderer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Was I really going to keep waiting though? How long would that take? There were only a couple of hours till the sun went down. He didn’t make me feel unsafe. I paused to listen to my gut, and it didn’t tell me anything.

  “I’d like that,” I said, grateful. I opened his back seat and tossed my duffel inside before sliding into the passenger seat.

  “Where are you heading? Let me guess, LA?” he asked. Actually, my family lived in Seattle, but now that he mentioned it…

  “How’d you guess?” I asked. LA, Seattle, po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Home wasn’t the destination. Seattle might have been, but LA was closer. I could get a ride back to Seattle from LA. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get out and let him leave. How long before someone else wanted to pick me up?

  “You look like the actress type,” he said. I didn’t know whether that was a compliment.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Joshua Tree. Well, LA, but not till tomorrow. I actually have a place there where I wanted to spend the night. You can join me unless you want me to drop you off someplace along the I-10 before we get there.”

  “I’m not in a hurry,” I said.

  “No? Don’t have an audition you need to get to?” he asked looking at me as he started the car again. I reached for the safety belt as a reflex but stopped. Nope, I didn’t feel weird. I didn’t feel scared. He felt… not safe, but not dangerous either.

  “I have to get there first,” I said, going along with the ruse. I mean, chances were I would never see him again. He wouldn’t remember the insignificant girl he picked up in the desert one day. Besides, ‘I just checked myself out of a rehabilitation center against medical advice’ didn’t sound like what you told people when you wanted them to take you somewhere.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. I opened my mouth and immediately swallowed the truth. I wasn’t telling this dude who I was. I didn’t want to be found. If my family decided they wanted to see me, they’d go to the ranch looking for Felicity Friedman, and that was who they would be looking for when they couldn’t find me.

  It wasn’t like he’d know if I was telling the truth or not. What difference would my real name make if he didn’t know if it was true or not? I didn’t want a lead even if the chances of this guy ever meeting them was close to zero.

  “J-Jennifer. My friends call me Jenn. What’s yours?”

  “Jasper. Lots of great actresses named Jenn. Lucky name,” he said glancing over at me. I smiled and shrugged. Great for the aspiring actresses named Jenn, I guess. “Where’re you running from, Jenn?” he asked.

  “Small town that would never give me what I want,” I said vaguely, thinking about where Jenn the actress might have been from and her motivations for getting out of there.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “They’re all the same,” I said, “does it matter where?” He smirked hearing that. I was certain that I could hear something southern in his voice, but I didn’t want to ask too many questions. That would have encouraged him to ask me questions, and I wasn’t trying to tell him anything that might make him less sympathetic to my cause.

  “Better brace yourself then. LA’s a big, bad place.” I looked over at him. Him glancing in the rear-view gave me a good look at his eyes; deep, dark brown. Oh, I realized. I hadn’t seen a man who was even close to my age since going into the ranch. All the men who worked there were old enough to be my father or grandfather. It was a center for women and girls, and there was a pretty good number of women there who were coming out of abusive relationships, so you know, not many people were thinking about the last time they had gotten any.

  Not that I was thinking about that. It was just something I couldn’t help noticing, being in his car with him. The car smelled faintly of weed and his cologne. He had only one hand on the wheel. The other arm was resting on the door; his window was rolled all the way down. His driving arm had tattoos from his elbow up, disappearing under the sleeve of his t-shirt. His forearm looked hard and sinewy. I swallowed hard and tried to get my mind out of the gutter.

  “Any requests?” he asked, reaching for the radio. He had his phone up there on this rig that was holding it mounted. I shook my head.

  “I’m good,” I said. He tapped at his phone, and a voice filled the car: an audiobook, or a podcast or something. I sighed and leaned back in the seat, finally doing my seatbelt, wondering whether he’d care if I reclined it a little.

  Guess I was going to LA.

  2

  Felicity

  I looked out the window, watching the desert roll by. I’d never been to Joshua Tree before. I had never been this far south before. I had never seen a landscape so bare with my own eyes which wasn’t covered in snow. I might as well have been from a small town with how sheltered I felt. Our traveling as a family had been restricted mainly to the Pacific Northwest.

  I had no reference for this place. There were no landmarks. Everything looked like it was the same mile of desert repeating itself. Jasper was driving pretty fast, but it still took over an hour to enter the national park. The terrain and house looked like something out of Breaking Bad. Desert scrub and cacti stretched out in all directions.

  He warned me when we were close. We were no longer on something that could be called a real road. It was a dirt road that likely disappeared when it would rain. If it did rain here—I wasn’t that sure. Soon I saw the house in the distance, getting bigger the closer we got. It was a bungalow with a short fence surrounding the perimeter.

  “This is it,” said Jasper, stopping the car outside the fence. I got out, grabbing my duffel and looking out around us. The desert has this weird beauty about it. Severe and bleak, but peaceful. He went up to the gate and opened it. It had a bleached skull of a dead something mounted to it. I followed at a safe distance. Yeah, it absolutely looked like a family of rednecks cooked methamphetamine in a place like this, but I was taking a chance. Jasper fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. “After you,” he said, grandly, walking back past me towards the car again.

  I walked into the house and had to pause for a second because it’s outside definitely gave no hint of what it’s inside looked like. It opened into a large, inviting living area. On one end were simple but comfortable sofas around a coffee table which flowed uninterrupted into the dining area.

  The table looked like it was made of rough-hewn driftwood, with two similarly styled benches running across its lengths instead of individual chairs. The walls were crisp white decorated with paintings and tapestries—a few more skulls, some horseshoes; desert decor. It looked comfortable.

  “Two bedrooms; take your pick,” he said, coming back in behind me. He walked
past me, leaving me in the main room. I walked in and opened one of the closed doors finding a bathroom behind it. The next one revealed a bedroom decorated in the same manner as the living and dining areas.

  There was a tall shelf stacked with little chachkies and knickknacks. The bed was a large twin with white sheets, and a blanket that looked Indian made thrown over it. I dropped my duffel on the ground and opened a door I hoped was a bathroom. It was. I could feel the desert all over me; I was dying to wash it off.

  I looked at my reflection in the small mirror over the sink and frowned. My cheeks had the beginnings of a sunburn on them, and I was caked in dust. I washed my face off in the sink. At least I was here. I had made it this far, and he hadn’t murdered me yet. In the event that I had to get through the park at night, alone, would I survive? The answer was no, but I had a pretty good feeling that I was okay with this dude. Jasper. He seemed okay. This experience would be one that I would share with people at parties as having enriched me, not killed me.

  I took a quick, lukewarm shower and washed my hair. I pulled on sweats and a long-sleeved t-shirt. I knew it could get cold, but I also didn’t want to show up in little sleeping shorts and send the wrong message, you know? It took me a while to find Jasper after I’d come out of the bathroom. He didn’t seem to be inside the house. The sliding glass door to the patio was unlocked, and I could see his dark figure moving in the weak light of the sunset. I slid it open and stepped outside.