by A. J. Downey
Apex of the Curve
Sacred Hearts PNW Chapter - Book III
A.J. Downey
Contents
COPYRIGHT
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Also by A.J. Downey
About the Author
Published 2020 by Second Circle Press
Text Copyright © 2019 A.J. Downey
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real except where noted and authorized. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Editing & book design by Maggie Kern @ Ms.K Edits
Cover art by Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs
Dedication
To Ben, for giving me more than a sliver of hope back. The least I can do is dedicate another book to you.
Prologue
Fenris…
The bar was hoppin’. I sometimes bounced at this cowboy bar out in Ravensdale, just north of Black Diamond. I lived out on the edge of Auburn in the Green Valley area, so it wasn’t too long of a haul for me and it was something to do on a Friday night when the club didn’t have anything going on.
It was a pretty okay gig – a flat rate of pay for the night, cash under the table, and it bought some goat or chicken feed for the farm on occasion.
Mostly, it gave me an outlet for some of my aggression when shit was otherwise calm around the club. There’s nothing like pitching some drunk frat bros or wannabe cowboys out on their ass, or better yet, their face in the gravel lot.
This was one of my pop’s first stops when he got out of the joint. His old high school buddy, Mitch, ran the place and always had a job for him when he got out. When my pops started getting up in years, after my sister died, I’d just naturally transitioned into the spot my dad had held down at the door.
He still came in and drank sometimes, taking up a stool at the end of the bar to shoot the shit with Mitch while I worked the door. Not tonight, though. Tonight, it was just me, checking IDs as the citizenry’s ladies and gents filed in.
Mitch had been making a killing ever since he’d put in the dance floor and sound system and added the mechanical bull in the corner.
He had a regular Texas-style roadhouse going on out here, and it was popular.
“Hey, Fen.” Bobby, the junior doorman, handed me an ID. I shone my flashlight on it and double-checked it for him. It was legit. I looked at the picture and up at the girl who didn’t look a fuckin’ day over sixteen.
“Try not to stay too late, darlin’. Place gets pretty nuts after eleven,” I said, handing it back to her. She smiled prettily and blushed, and it did absolutely nothing for me.
“I don’t know, Lindsay… I don’t think this is a good idea,” I heard. I looked up into a beautiful set of green eyes, taking the two rectangles of laminated whatever the fuck driver’s licenses in Washington were made of.
Lindsay was a brunette. The math told me she was twenty-eight, and she looked like a bitch. Her makeup was overdone, titties on full display – one of those types looking to hook up and ride a cowboy. She fit right in with the rest of the posers inside. Fake as shit, I had no interest in her or anyone else who came through these doors, typically.
The other license – the name, like her eyes, caught my eye for its uniqueness. Aspen. Aspen Lawson. I handed each lady their license back and let my gaze linger on Aspen.
She was beautiful in an unconventional way – thicker, with some real tits and an ass, a true hourglass figure in a thin sweater that clung to her over jeans and a pair of stylish knee-high boots. She looked cold standing out here waiting to get in. It wasn’t exactly a night for going without a jacket, but a lot of girls did. It was warm inside the bar and it was one less thing to have to try and keep track of.
She had these luxurious blonde curls that framed her face, held back by a slim glittering line of rhinestones – some kind of headband that was hidden but for the evenly spaced stones in her hair. Simple, cute, her makeup, if it was there, understated and accentuating her natural beauty.
She was tall, too. Five foot nine, maybe? Still, not too tall when it came to me. I still looked down at her from my six-foot-five height.
“Thank you,” she murmured, eyes wide when they met mine and I nodded. She plucked her license from my rough, tattooed fingers and I looked after her as she disappeared inside with her friend.
“Hey, man.” I turned back to the half-jock, half-cowboy wannabe who was next in line in his polo shirt and scowled, taking his license from him and skimming it.
“Go ahead,” I growled and let him through. I had some difficulty putting the pretty blonde out of my mind.
Hours later, the bar was closing and Mitch came to find me at the door.
“Hey, we got one that’s drunk as fuck and I can’t find her friend.”
“On it,” I growled and heaved myself off the stool at the door. It’d been a quiet fuckin’ night. One near fist fight over a girl, but they’d all been pussies, and I’d thrown them out without incident. That’d been it, so far.
I headed into the bar trailing Mitch, and I didn’t know what I would find. I can tell you, the absolute last thing I expected to find was the reluctant blonde, Aspen, drunk as fuck in a back-corner booth.
I mean, she was gone.
It was pretty impressive, actually.
I slid into the booth with her and cupped her cheek.
“Hey!” I called out. “Hey, Aspen!”
“You know her?” Mitch asked.
“No, I just remembered the name for some reason. Not one you see very often.”
“Well, she’s the last one in here. You remember if she came with a friend?”
“Yeah, a brunette, L-something,” I answered absently as Aspen groaned.
“Shit, I’ll have Becca check the ladies’ room but looks like Aspen here got ditched.”
“Don’t bother. The bitch she came with probably got drunk and fucked off with one of these wannabe cowboys. Do me a favor and call my pops, have him bring the t
ruck.”
“You sure?” Mitch asked with an incredulous scoff.
“I’m sure,” I said.
I leaned Aspen up against me and sighed. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d brought a drunk back to mine and my pop’s place to sleep it off, but it definitely was the first time I’d be bringing a woman as pretty as she was home with me.
It took my pops a good half an hour to get there, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“What the fuck?” he demanded, and I scowled up at him.
“Shut up and get the fuckin’ doors for me, old man.”
“I am not—”
“You ain’t doing shit except driving. I’ll handle the rest.”
He growled a rumbling noise of displeasure and I ignored him. I got her up, unsteady on her feet, groaning. It so wasn’t happening. I got my arm beneath her knees and lifted her just as she passed out again. She had some weight to her, and while I wouldn’t be able to do this forever, it was a straight shot to the front door and out to my dad’s truck where he’d parked it. Thankfully, he’d had the presence of mind to keep the passenger side pointed this direction. I went out, Mitch holding the front door for me, and put her right into the truck.
My pop’s closed the door when he knew she was clear and he wouldn’t bang into her.
“Hope like hell you know what you’re doing,” he said, and I nodded.
“Just drive, I’m right behind you.”
I waved at Mitch, who waved back, and I went over to my bike, mounting up.
The ride home was brisk, and when my dad pulled up, he did it right in front of the door, passenger side pointed the right way. He got out of the truck calling something or other out, but I couldn’t hear it over the bike. I shut it off.
“What?”
“I said, you clean that shit up! I’m going to bed!”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Sure enough, I opened up the passenger door of his truck and the woman was an absolute mess. The vomit sweet and off-smelling, and I wondered if there was more than just alcohol at play here.
“Come on, darlin’,” I muttered and helped her stagger out onto the gravel driveway. “I gotcha.”
I helped her into the house, carried her up the stairs and sat her on the john in the upstairs bathroom. She was out of it.
I stripped her, got her cleaned up, helped her puke into the tub and spent the better part of an hour helping her into my room and into my bed where she would be more comfortable. Her clothes I put in the laundry across the hall. I got out some aspirin and a clean glass of water and put them on the bedside table for her. Finally, I wrote a long-ass note trying to cover all the bases and left that too.
I still had some proverbial miles before I could sleep, myself. I dragged my ass back downstairs and dealt with my dad’s truck, which wasn’t that bad seeing as she’d mostly nailed herself.
Finally, after all of that, I dragged myself in and onto my couch.
Tomorrow morning was going to be interesting. That was for sure.
Chapter One
Aspen…
I woke up, my head just splitting, and I didn’t know where I was. I sat up in unfamiliar clothes in an unfamiliar bed and looked around.
It was creepy in here. The walls were rustic, rough-hewn boards on three sides, the wall behind me, at the head of the very large bed, stone. The bed itself was similarly rough-hewn logs, stripped of their bark and was not only high up off the ground, but was covered in what looked like animal furs.
An animal skull hung above the bed, vines twining through the eye sockets and around the horns, and I shuddered. On the bedside table was a tall glass of water and two round white tablets, beneath them, a note.
I picked it up with shaking fingers, letting the pills slide to the nightstand’s surface, and read the neat printing in big block letters…
Don’t Panic! You’re safe.
Where are you?
You’re at the bouncer’s house. Your friend ditched you and we couldn’t call anyone for you.
Where are your…
Clothes? In the dryer in the closet across the hallway. (You threw up. A lot.)
Phone? No idea. Maybe with your friend, maybe back at the bar. We’ll look for it.
Jewelry? Bedside drawer.
ID? Also, the bedside drawer with your debit card. Found both in your jeans pocket.
What now?
There’s fresh water and two Tylenol on the bedside table. Start there. There are clean towels in the bathroom if you want a shower, which you might. I don’t think I got all the puke out of your hair.
When you come downstairs, we can give you a ride, call you a cab or an Uber – whatever you’d like. If no one is up when you get up, there’s food in the fridge, Netflix on the TV in the living room, and the dogs love to be played with and loved on.
Main thing is, you’re okay.
See you downstairs. I go by Fenris.
“Huh.” I blinked several times, read and re-read the note as if there were more answers to be found in it.
I had left my phone in Lindsay’s car because Charles had kept blowing it up. I didn’t want to see my soon-to-be-ex-husband. Didn’t want to speak to him. Lindsay, on the other hand, I would like several words with.
I threw back the blankets and furs and sat up, letting my feet dangle off the side of the bed. I opened up the raw and distressed rustic bedside table’s drawer, and sure enough, there was my license, debit card, rings and necklace.
I took the Tylenol, drank the water all the way down, and sat breathing heavy for a moment, willing the throbbing in my skull down to a dull roar.
Donning my jewelry and tucking my license and debit card into the front pocket of the red-and-black checkered flannel I wore, I stood up slowly and found the bathroom. I took care of that bit of business and peeked out into the hall. It was quiet out here. Too quiet, and I didn’t think anyone was up yet.
I crept down the stairs and halted in the entry way to the kitchen. An older man was in the kitchen at the cutting board cutting up mushrooms. He looked up and squinted at me, his head clean shaven, his beard quite the opposite.
“Ah, she lives,” he stated dryly.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I heard a cough behind me and I jumped, turning sideways. It was an open archway at the bottom of the stairs. To the left, there were two steps leading down into the living room, the couch along the wall. Someone rolled off of it and loomed, standing like some great leviathan rising from the deep.
This man, I at least recognized. He was the man checking IDs at the bar last night. I remembered his eyes – sharp and very blue. The silver beads winked from his blond beard, his hair braided and twisted in a sort of modern rendition of a Viking warrior’s mohawk. I shuddered as he loomed, the living room space quite diminished with his presence. He was huge at well over six feet and broad through the chest and shoulders.
“Morning,” he grated in this bass rumble.
I looked back at the older version of him in the kitchen.
“Well, what’s the matter?” the older man asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
I swung my gaze back to the younger man, Fenris, and he cocked his head, staring me down and I couldn’t help it. I broke down, clapping first one hand, then the other over my mouth as a pitiful sob escaped.
“Oh, shit. Hey, now…” Fenris said, everything about his imposing presence softening, but it was too late. The flood gates were open and the tears just started to pour, and I couldn’t stop them.
Too much! This was just too much!
Oh, shit was right.
I crumpled to the floor, sitting down hard on the edge of the landing at the bottom of the steps leading into the room, and hugged myself. I felt like such a freak, crying like that in front of these two strange men.
The older man in the kitchen turned his eyes away from me and grunted, jaw tightening, and I shoved both of my hands over my mouth to try and stifle the unpleasant noise coming fro
m it.
The younger man, who had risen from the couch, who positively towered over me, grunted and came toward me. I scooted aside and pressed myself to the wall as it looked like he was going for the stairs and I wanted out of his way. He took a great step from beside me, skipping one of the stair treads and I tried to get myself together, but then his warmth hit my back and his boots appeared to either side of me. Strong arms went around my body in a stabilizing hug and he grated in my ear, “It’s okay. Let it out.”
I didn’t know what to do for a heartbeat, but then the next wave of emotion hit, and I dissolved against him like sea-foam on the shore. I took his invitation and I let it all out.
Chapter Two
Fenris…
She calmed down eventually. My pops moved around the kitchen unconcerned, fixing up some breakfast for the three of us. I just sat still and waited on her. I was in no rush. She fit inside the circle of my arms kind of nice, actually.
“Come on up here,” I murmured when she’d settled down, and I stood, holding a hand down to her. She took it and I hoisted her up and onto her feet. She was an ugly crier, her face going all blotchy and red, all the way down her neck and across what I could see of her chest before she clutched the collar of the shirt, my shirt, she was wearing closed.
She looked damn good in it – the flannel hugging her breasts, the hem brushing just above her knees, the sleeves rolled back in this adorable way that made her look like a living doll. Like she was wearing her boyfriend’s shirt…
