I flicked off the safety and pointed the gun at the bikers. “Do not touch him,” I said with steel in my voice.

The bikers, who looked like any of the other bikers I’d ever seen growing up—old, dirty, sweaty, unshaven but without a beard, big belly, covered in leather—stilled, their widened eyes moving between me and the gun I held.

At the sound of my voice, my father glanced up. Peripherally I saw him hold one hand out to me, palm up, as though beseeching me.

“Now, Ashley, baby girl, you need to give me that gun.”

The bikers hadn’t moved from where they stood on either side of the trunk, Billy’s incapacitated form half in, half out of the car. They were staring at me and seemed to be sizing me up.

My father moved like he was going to take a step in my direction. On instinct, I lowered the gun to the tallest biker’s knee, aimed, and fired.

He fell to the ground, clutching his thigh. I’d aimed too high.

At the very least, I hoped the gunshot would get someone’s attention. We were in the parking lot of a library, for hootenanny’s sake! Shouldn’t someone have come around by now? Didn’t people read books? And where was everyone from the burial site? The parking lot was basically filled with cars. Wasn’t anyone done checking out his books and heading to the parking lot by now?

“Holy shit!” The shorter of the bikers exclaimed. To shut him up, I lifted the gun and pointed it at him.

“You will step away from my brother or I will make you a eunuch.”

He nodded, his hands held up in surrender. “Sure thing, sweetie.”

“Don’t call me sweetie!”

“Fine, fine. Just let me get my brother here and we’ll get out of your way.” The shorter biker shuffled to his fallen compatriot, who was cussing and hollering on the ground.

I watched them both with narrowed eyes, looking for any sudden movements.

“What the hell is going on?” I heard Jackson’s exclamation paired with the pounding of his footsteps on the pavement. Obviously, he hadn’t come after me until he heard the gunshot. He was maybe the worst police officer in the history of ever.

I didn’t take my eyes off the bikers. “Jackson, you remember my father, Darrell? Well, he and his friends just jumped Billy and me, and as you can see, they’ve loaded Billy into the trunk of his car, and I think they were trying to make off with both of us.”

My father’s ability to speak smoothly was inhibited by his broken nose. “Now, that’s not true. I came by to pay my respects, and Billy, he….”

“Billy knocked himself out and landed in the trunk?” Jackson asked, his voice laced with sarcasm. Jackson might have been a terribly derelict police officer, but he did know my family history. He used the radio on his shoulder to call for backup, and I could feel his eyes on me. I found it curious that he hadn’t yet tried to take the gun out of my hands.

When he finished calling in the situation on his radio, he took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and said, “Cover me,” as he walked by.

He then walked straight to my father and began reading him his rights. The shorter biker was next, then the taller one. Of the three, Darrell complained the loudest and barked something about police brutality.

Jackson was slapping cuffs on the man I’d shot when I heard the sounds of people approaching by foot. My eyes flickered to the side and I did a double take, almost dropping the gun. Relief flowed through me quick and warm.

Jethro was at the front and broke into a run when he saw me. Drew, Quinn, and Duane were close behind.

“Ashley, what’s going on? What are you doing?” Jethro slowed as he neared, his eyes bouncing around the scene like a Ping-Pong ball.

Quinn withdrew a gun from the back of his suit pants, nodded to me, and announced his presence to Jackson.

Drew, however, walked straight to me—never slowing, holding my eyes the entire time—and slipped his hand over mine, fluidly taking the weapon from my grip. He flicked the safety on with his thumb and wrapped an arm around my waist.

“Are you okay?” His free hand moved over my body as though searching for injury.

I nodded, looking up at him. “Yeah…I’m okay.”

He placed one hand on my chin and turned my face, his eyes shooting fire, his jaw clenching as he looked at my cheek and eye. “You’re going to have a black eye.”

I blinked at him and realized he was probably correct. My right eye must have been very swollen, because I was already having trouble seeing out of it.

“We heard a gunshot,” Quinn explained. “Who fired? Who was shot?”

Jackson spoke before I could. “I fired. I shot this one,” he pointed to the biker with the toe of his boot. “I handed the gun off to Ashley to provide cover so I could get the three of them sorted.”

“Which one of them hurt you?” Drew asked through gritted teeth.

I studied him through my one good eye. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

My next words echoed what I’d been thinking all day and emerged from my mouth before I knew I was going to say them. “Why? I’m not your problem anymore.”

Drew flinched, his hand falling from my face, and he leaned back as though I’d pushed him away.

“What’s wrong with Billy?” Duane was at the trunk of the car, leaning over his brother.

I stepped away from Drew and immediately missed the brief oasis of comfort he’d offered, comfort which I stupidly took even though he never needed or expected anything from me in return. I crossed to Billy to see what could be done for him before the ambulance arrived.

Jackson walked to Drew; in my peripheral vision, I saw him hold his hand out as he said, “You can give me my gun back now.”

“Hey,” Duane was standing next to me. “What happened to you?”

“I got hurt.” My fingers were on the back of Billy’s head, probing for signs of bleeding; I responded without turning. “But, don’t worry, I’ll recover.”

CHAPTER 25

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”

? Walt Whitman

Time heals all wounds. Time is of the essence. Time is short. Time is on my side.

Lies. All lies.

Time is the enemy. Time was playing for the other team. Timed stretched like an endless desert. The only thing time does is stagger along like a drunk sailor and give you wrinkles. And syphilis.

Summer begot fall, fall begot winter, and winter begot seven thousand feet of snow in Chicago—give or take six thousand, nine hundred, and ninety feet. And it was only the last week of November.

Luckily for me, it was my turn to host knit night, and I had the next day off work. This meant that once I arrived home, I didn’t have to venture out into the howling wind and driving snow for thirty-six hours. I could get dressed in my thermal PJs and get drunk.

But I wouldn’t get drunk. I didn’t like how I felt when I got drunk, how I lost control when I imbibed beyond reason. I’d done it once since returning from Tennessee and had to be physically restrained from drunk-dialing Drew.

It hadn’t been pretty. While I was intoxicated, I spilled the entire story; my friends provided seven shoulders to cry upon.

Sandra, Nico, and Fiona were huge Drew advocates at first. They didn’t exactly pressure me, but they did take every opportunity to subtly hint that I should contact him and be honest about my feelings.

I couldn’t. I kept picturing his face, gently letting me down. When I played the scene in my head, I was that poor girl Jennifer I’d heard the women murmuring about at the jam session, all gussied up in my yellow dress and wielding a banana cake to a man who could probably out-bake anyone he knew. He would tell me how beautiful I was—pretty face, nice piece of ass, trashy accent—but that he didn’t need anything from me.

He’d been honest from the start about not needing me. I couldn’t fault him for that.

Once the three of them realized that the only thing accomplished by their subtle hints was my silence and a growing rift between us, they stopped pushing.

Now we—my knitting group and I—collectively called him Dr. Ruinous. Note the addition of the ‘i’. Sandra thought of the nickname. I think it was her peace offering, a way to show me that she was on my side.

Still, I rarely discussed him. Instead, I marinated quietly in my hurt feelings. When my friends brought up my unusual silence during our knit nights, I attributed it to the lingering grief caused by my mother’s sickness and death, which was true to a great extent.

I missed her every day, and I didn’t know how to mourn openly and loudly.

Therefore, I escaped in books, but I avoided reading romance Books. I didn’t need to read any happily-ever-afters. Instead, I settled into the contentment of just being with the people I liked.

When I arrived home from work Tuesday night, Kat was already there. She’d never returned the key to my apartment, and I’d never asked for it back.

“Hey!” she called from the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, I stopped off and picked up wonton soup and eggrolls for the gang. I’m using your one pot to keep it warm.”

I couldn’t help my smirk. “I have more than one pot.”

“No, you don’t. You literally have one pot. By the way, I grabbed your mail. It’s on the coffee table. You got a package.”