Hold On

by Kristen Ashley

  Hold On

  Kristen Ashley

  Discover other titles by Kristen Ashley:

  Rock Chick Series:

  Rock Chick

  Rock Chick Rescue

  Rock Chick Redemption

  Rock Chick Renegade

  Rock Chick Revenge

  Rock Chick Reckoning

  Rock Chick Regret

  Rock Chick Revolution

  The ‘Burg Series:

  For You

  At Peace

  Golden Trail

  Games of the Heart

  The Promise

  Hold On

  The Chaos Series:

  Own the Wind

  Fire Inside

  Ride Steady

  The Colorado Mountain Series:

  The Gamble

  Sweet Dreams

  Lady Luck

  Breathe

  Jagged

  Kaleidoscope

  Dream Man Series:

  Mystery Man

  Wild Man

  Law Man

  Motorcycle Man

  The Fantasyland Series:

  Wildest Dreams

  The Golden Dynasty

  Fantastical

  Broken Dove

  The Magdalene Series:

  The Will

  Soaring

  The Three Series:

  Until the Sun Falls from the Sky

  With Everything I Am

  Wild and Free

  The Unfinished Hero Series:

  Knight

  Creed

  Raid

  Deacon

  Other Titles by Kristen Ashley:

  Fairytale Come Alive

  Heaven and Hell

  Lacybourne Manor

  Lucky Stars

  Mathilda, SuperWitch

  Penmort Castle

  Play It Safe

  Sommersgate House

  Three Wishes

  www.kristenashley.net

  *****

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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

  Copyright © 2015 by Kristen Ashley

  First ebook edition: September 1, 2015

  First print edition: September 1, 2015

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Discover other titles by Kristen Ashley:

  Dedication

  At the end of this series—

  a series precious to me because it’s based where I learned how to be me—

  it’s apropos to dedicate this book to my readers.

  Thanks for going home with me.

  Thanks for liking being there.

  I tip my Hilligoss powdered sugar, chocolate buttercream-filled donut to you.

  We might be done with this version of The ‘Burg…

  But here’s to many adventures to come.

  Chapter One

  Worth Every Penny

  Cher

  “I’m stayin’.”

  “I got this.”

  “I’m stayin’.”

  “Go.”

  “I’m stayin’.”

  “Go.”

  Darryl looked at me standing in front of him, his back to the back door, then beyond me into J&J’s Saloon.

  I knew what he saw and that meant I knew why he wanted to stay.

  What I didn’t know was how this was going to go. Darryl didn’t have a lot going on between his ears, but he was loyal, worked like a horse, was strong as an ox, and, since getting hacked with an ax by a serial killer in order to protect his boss, was insanely protective.

  But he knew me. He knew I could take care of myself. Saying that, I didn’t know if he knew what I’d be putting myself through, taking on what was right then sitting alone at the bar.

  He looked back to me and jerked up his chin, ordering, “Get his ass in a taxi.”

  “You got it, hoss,” I muttered.

  He opened the door and kept bossing my ass. “Lock this behind me. Code the security for doors and windows.”

  I rolled my eyes but moved forward so I could do what he said, even though I would’ve done that anyway.

  I’d learned to be smart, to go out of my way to stay safe and not to take any chances.

  I locked up, moved to the security panel, coded it, then took a deep breath and moved down the back hall into the bar.

  It was after three thirty in the morning. We were closed. The glasses washed and put away. The trash taken out. The fridges restocked. The cash register cleaned out, money in the safe in the office. The bar top and tables wiped down. Chairs up on the tables all ready for Fritzi to come in in the morning and mop the floors as well as clean the bathrooms and stock them with toilet paper, so when Feb got in tomorrow, she could just unlock the doors and start the day.

  He was at the side curve to the bar, had his back to me, ass to a barstool, feet up on the rungs. He had his elbows to the bar, and since I’d poured it for him, I knew he was nursing a glass of top-shelf whisky sitting in front of him. Whisky that set him back a whack, more so seeing as he’d had five shots of it along with the seven beers he’d sucked back the last five hours.

  When I’d followed Darryl to the back, I’d left the hinged section of the bar open. I rounded it and took the two steps to stand in front of him.

  The minute I stopped, Garrett “Merry” Merrick, lieutenant on the ’burg’s PD, tall, dark, gorgeous, and the last bastion of good guys available in the ’burg—that meaning he was single—grabbed his glass. He put it to his lips and threw it back.

  I watched him do it, my palms itching, my eyes to the muscular cords working around his throat.

  He slammed the glass down and lifted his beautiful blue eyes to me.

  “I’ll call a taxi, Cher.”

  I didn’t say anything even as his hand went to the jacket he’d thrown on the stool beside him.

  Instead, I moved to the back of the bar, reached high, and grabbed the bottle of whisky that had stayed at its level for months, seeing as it was fifty bucks a shot, until Merry had brought that level down that night.

  I grabbed another glass, put it in front of him, and I knew his eyes were on my hands as I filled both glasses, his and mine.

  “On me,” I muttered, setting the bottle aside and looking at him.

  He tossed the phone he’d gotten out of his jacket to the bar and caught my eyes.

  “You know,” he stated. His words weren’t slurred. Merry could hold his drink. He’d had more than his norma
l that night, for sure. But he wasn’t sloppy drunk. Just, I hoped, feeling no pain.

  Or less pain. The kind of pain he was drinking away didn’t really ever go away.

  “I know,” I told him.

  And I did. Everyone in the ’burg knew.

  The finale to a fairy tale that didn’t have a happy ending.

  He looked at me a second, then grabbed his glass and lifted it toward me. He didn’t wait for me to grab mine. He took a healthy swallow of his. He didn’t shoot the whole thing, but he wasn’t fucking around.

  He set the glass back to the bar.

  I wrapped my fingers around mine and leaned into my arms on the bar top.

  “She’s a dumb fuck, Merry,” I said softly.

  He didn’t look up from his contemplation of his whisky when he replied, “She isn’t. But I sure as fuck am.”

  “That just isn’t true,” I returned, and he lifted his gaze to me.

  It took a lot, but I didn’t flinch at the depth of pain and strength of anger burning from his eyes. The bad kind of anger. The worst.

  The kind where you’re pissed as all hell at your own damned self.

  “Got shot of her,” he declared. “Fucked around when I knew I shouldn’t in gettin’ her back. Watched Feb and Colt get it back. Watched Cal get his head outta his ass, find Vi, and hold on. Tanner and Rocky got their shit together, and when they did, Tanner told me. Pointed that shit out to me. Warned me what would happen if I fucked around. Mike nearly lost Dusty, bein’ stupid and protecting himself against somethin’ good, but he pulled out all the stops to get her back and keep her. All that goes down, what do I do?” He shook his head. “Dick.”

  He lifted his glass, took a sip, and lowered it.

  When he did, he muttered to his glass, “I did dick.”

  “Your ex lives in the ’burg too,” I pointed out.

  He looked at me, brows slightly pulled together. “And?”

  “She also did dick.”

  It was true. She did.

  Mia Merrick did dick.

  Which made the bitch the single stupidest female on the planet.

  I was not around when they were married. I was not around when they got divorced.

  I was around when every decent man in the ’burg got nailed down and happily allowed the ball and chain to be clamped around their ankle. And that meant I was around, and Mia Merrick was around, seeing all that and waiting for Merry to make his play to get the wife everyone in that ’burg said he loved more than anything back in his bed.

  And now I was around, alone at J&J’s Saloon, the bar where I worked, watching Garrett Merrick drown his sorrows because the news made the rounds that day that Mia Merrick got engaged to another man. Not only that, he was a professor, had worked at IUPUI in Indianapolis, but this semester he’d taken a new position down at IU in Bloomington.

  So she was getting hitched and leaving town. The For Sale sign had gone up in front of the house she’d shared with Merry that very day.

  Moving on.

  Leaving Merry behind.

  “Was my play to make,” Merry told me.

  “Yeah? How’s that?” I asked him.

  “Cher, babe,” he said gently, “it’s cool you’re tryin’ to be there for me, but you don’t know.”

  “I know she did dick,” I shot back.

  His lips tipped up in a small, sad smile.

  “Was my play,” he repeated.

  “No,” I declared, leaning into my arms on the bar. “That’s bullshit, Merry, straight up. You got good, you don’t let it go. It lets you go, you hold on. It slips through your fingers, you pull out all the stops to get it back. You got somethin’ worth fighting for, you fight for it. You do not sit on your ass waitin’ for it to come back to you. You show whoever that is they mean something and you go all out on that, and the only way you go down is doin’ that shit swinging.”

  Merry stared at me, which was good since I had his attention and I wasn’t done.

  “I get you. I been around this ’burg for a while now so I get you, the kind of man you are,” I stated. “You think, you got a dick, you gotta do the work. Make the plays. Give the chase. Fight the good fight. But you’re wrong. It’s not like that woman was not in the know you had some serious history, and the seriousness of that history was the kind that hangs around a while. Your sister sorted out her gig with that because she had a good man at her back who kept her standing and swinging. But that isn’t the only way it goes. Any woman worth that kind of devotion, she takes her man’s back so he can stay standing. She does not wait for him to sort out his shit and then find her and kiss her ass.”

  Merry continued to stare at me before one side of his lips bowed up in a small but not sad smile.

  “Don’t hold back, Cher. Hand it to me straight,” he teased.

  When he did, I felt it. I felt it like I felt it every time he was in. Every time he gave that kind of thing to me. Every time he gave anything to me.

  The sting. The sting that made itself known. The sting that was a thorn that lived with me. A thorn I’d had so long that I could sometimes ignore the pain.

  A thorn buried deep under my skin. A thorn that was Garrett Merrick.

  A man who liked me. A man who laughed at my jokes. A man who smiled at me regularly. Who teased me often. Who shot the shit with me. A man who liked me a lot.

  A man who was my friend.

  A man who thought of me as a friend.

  The man I loved more than breath.

  “How long you known me?” I asked.

  He just gave a slight shake of his head, his mouth still curled up on one end, making the beauty of his face a playful beauty that felt like a gift from God. A gift I wanted to call mine. A gift I wanted aimed at my son so he had a good man who could make him laugh, make him feel funny, and teach him how to be decent.

  A gift that I got just like that, the way he was giving it to me now.

  It was there.

  But it would never be mine.

  “A while,” he answered my question.

  “I ever go soft?”

  That got me a full smile and I knew I should feel lucky.

  I never went soft. I was all hard. I’d built a shell around me no one could crack. I had reason. A really fucking good reason.

  Problem was, I built that shell so hard, even I couldn’t break out of it.

  That wasn’t exactly a bad thing. It could be considered good. It meant I couldn’t open myself up to the likes of Garrett Merrick, or the rest of the male population who were shades or whole freaking strides less than him, to walk all over me.

  Still, I should feel lucky because Merry didn’t mind the hard. He looked past it to be my friend. A lot of folks didn’t.

  That was good too. You didn’t put in the effort, why would I bother with you?

  Merry put in the effort. A lot of folks in that ’burg did when I’d moved there, even after what had happened to make me move there.

  Which was why I stayed.

  Not for me—for my kid.

  Ethan needed people around him like that.

  “You aren’t drinkin’,” Merry pointed out, tipping his head to my glass.

  I lifted it and shot the whole damned thing.

  Merry burst out laughing.

  I slammed the glass down and grabbed the bottle to pour more.

  “Only you would shoot a fifty dollar glass of Feb and Morrie’s finest Scotch,” Merry noted.

  I topped his off and poured myself another one.

  Then I again shot it.

  When I did, Merry burst out laughing again.

  Which was precisely why I blew one hundred dollars I could not afford in less than thirty seconds.

  Laughter like that coming from Garrett Merrick was worth every penny.

  * * * * *

  The bed moved and my eyes opened.

  I closed them immediately as the sick hit my gut and the throb of pain made itself known in my head.

  It took me a few
beats, but I heard the noises.

  A man was getting dressed and doing it quiet.

  Shit. What did I do last night?

  It had been a while since something like this had happened. Around about the time I got hooked up with Ethan’s dad, thought I’d hit the mother lode, found myself knocked up, and got myself left behind when the asshole evaporated. Hard to live wild and have a good time pregnant. And a single mom at twenty-four, you got your shit together. So, between working to keep my kid fed and in babysitters, I didn’t have many shots at living wild.

  Ethan, however, was right now at a friend’s house. A sleepover.

  And expending effort I didn’t have in me, considering I was totally hungover and maybe still a little drunk, I remembered that last night, for the first time in years, I’d lived wild.

  I’d done this shooting the shit with Garrett Merrick, polishing off a bottle of scary-expensive whisky, chasing that with beer, going all out, putting everything I had into it to do what I could to ease the heart of a brokenhearted man.

  Somewhere between polishing off the bottle and moving to a less expensive one, things turned.

  We got a taxi.

  We came to my house.

  We fucked, we did it wild, and we did it for a long, long time.

  And now it was morning, I felt like I had twenty seconds of sleep, and he was up before me, quietly dressing.

  It had been a while, but I knew the drill. I knew those careful sounds he was making.

  He didn’t want me to wake up. He wanted to get his ass out of there and get home. Get a shower to wash himself clean of me. Get his head straight enough to kick his own ass that he did something as stupid as banging me. And, only since he was Merry and Merry was that kind of guy (other guys wouldn’t bother), finding it in himself to determine the right time to make his approach and make it clear where we stood.

  We’d fucked.

  But nothing had changed.

  Friends, even though he knew the taste of me and I knew the feel of him.

  I always thought everyone got it wrong, and lying there, eyes closed, pretending to sleep to let Merry have what he needed—a clean getaway—I thought it again.

  It wasn’t walking out of a house into a taxi or your car in your clothes from the night before that was the walk of shame. You wanted what you wanted, you went after it, you got it, then you left it and went on with your life. There was no shame in that. None.