Corps Security, The Series (2)(18)

I find my own lips tipping up slightly. What can I say? It’s infectious.

She takes a deep breath, holds her hands to her stomach, and closes her eyes. I watch as her lips move slightly as if she is speaking before she smiles again.

Reaching down, I adjust myself quickly before she has a chance to notice that I’m here. Once I’ve curled my arm behind my back, I silently turn the latch and lock us both inside.

“Chelcie.”

Her eyes snap open and a look a horror and panic flashes over her features before she quickly hides it. A feeling of frustration washes over me that she is once again closing herself off to me. I have not one damn clue as to why she’s been acting like this lately. At first, she would walk on eggshells around me, but then again, everyone else did as well. Then, as we got to know each other better during the weeks she spent helping me research Dominic, I felt like she had finally let those damn walls down.

That she had finally started to let me in.

And then, last week, those walls didn’t just come up; they were enforced with a strength I just couldn’t wrap my mind around.

How did things change so rapidly?

“Chelcie,” I repeat when she doesn’t make a move to talk.

“You shouldn’t be in here, Ash. Aren’t you busy?”

Ah, so this is the way she wants to play it.

“Are you jealous?” I bait.

“Ha! Hardly. I don’t want to deal with another one of your groupies.”

“I don’t have groupies, Chelcie.”

I take a few steps and mentally grin when I see her chest start to rise and fall faster. Her eyes keep darting from my face to the door behind me. I let my lips curl into a smirk at the thought of her trying to run from me.

I’m done letting her run.

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

She looks confused for a second before I see those damn walls getting thicker.

“Don’t,” I firmly state. “Do not even think about making those goddamn walls any fucking stronger, Sunshine. No more of that. Why have you been running from me? I come into a room you’re in and you leave. I call and you don’t answer. You’ve been there for weeks and now nothing.”

“I’m not running. I’ve been busy.”

“You can’t even look me in the eye, so don’t give me that line of crap.”

Her eyes narrow, and I watch in rapt fascination as she stands a little straighter, marches right up to me—toe to toe—and jams her finger into my chest. “You . . . you SHIT! Why would I want to be around you, Asher? Huh? So you can throw some more insults at me? So you can show me just how little you think of me, of our friendship?! Or maybe, just maybe, I need another little self-esteem knockdown.”

When she stops talking, her cheeks are flushed, her chest is moving even quicker than it was before, and those eyes I love so much are blazing with her anger. What in the hell did I miss here?

“Uh, Sunshine, I have no clue what you are referring to.”

“Of course you don’t, Ash. How could you possibly remember something that happened when you were so drunk you couldn’t even stand up straight? Let me ask you this. Do you remember what happened to give you all those damn claw marks on your body? Don’t even think about lying to me either. Let me guess. Another one of your skin-and-bones groupies?”

“I don’t have groupies!” The words are heavy with the angry power I feel forming in my gut.

“Yeah, okay, then you have an army of sluts. Easy bitches that you fuck every day or hour—I don’t know. But I know I’m sick of watching it.” She rolls her eyes, but not before she can hide the flash of pain.

“And why is that, Chelcie? Is it because you wish it was you? Because let me tell you, I wish it was you. Every. Single. Time.”

Her gasp echoes against the walls. Even the noises from outside the door of the busy restaurant seem to mute themselves. It’s just us in here.

These are the moments you look back on when you’re knocking on Death’s door and smile. These are the moments when you can just feel in your gut that something life changing is happening.

And I thank Christ that I’m sober enough to remember this.

“That’s right, Chelcie. You. Do you really want to know how I got scratched up? It’s because the last woman I had, unfortunately, didn’t like it when I said your name when I came. I can’t change the past, and Lord knows I’m no monk, but I’m done. Done with the drinking, the other women, and I’m damn sure done fighting this attraction we’ve both been dancing around for three long months.”

She gasps, and using it to my advantage, I crash my lips down to hers.