Wasted Lust - JA Huss Page 0,95
soon as she got to the ambulance. Sasha Aston is not a crier. Not in front of anyone but me, anyway. “It’s a Roberto shirt. That’s his logo on the pocket.”
I look down at the white dress shirt parading as a Kevlar vest. It’s got a hole in it, right in the center of my chest where Max shot me. But sure enough, Sasha’s finger traces a logo embroidered with white thread, so that you can’t see it unless you know what to look for.
“That’s how James shot me, Jax. When everyone thought I was dead. He gave me a Roberto original. Where did you get this?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It was on the plane when I went to meet Adam this morning. He had one too. And it was a good thing, because Max Barlow shot us both. These designer shirts saved our lives.”
“There’s something in the pocket.” She unbuttons it and withdraws a key. We both stare at it for several seconds, confused.
“Sasha!” her pilot friend calls from across the yellow police-line tape. “Sasha!”
We walk over there together. Her legs are steady now, but we’re both silent as we think about these shirts. Putting the pieces together in a new way.
“I’m OK, Harrison,” Sasha says when we get close enough. “I’m fine, but Nick…” She stops talking to stop the tears.
Harrison holds her from across the tape. They embrace like that for a few minutes and then he pulls back and extends his hand. “I’m Sasha’s friend, Harrison.”
“Jax,” I say, unable to call myself by my last name. I just can’t be a Barlow anymore. Not after what I found out today.
“I have a message from Nick, Sasha. He sent me a text just before that gunshot.”
“What?” Sasha looks at the cell phone Harrison is holding out to her. “What’s it say?”
“Read it,” Harrison replies. “I have no idea what it means.”
Sasha takes the phone and squints down at the message.
“Well?” I say, impatient. “Tell me what he says.”
She looks up at me, her face changing from confusion to understanding before my eyes. “It says, I left you a gift at that hotel room.”
My own understanding creeps in slowly. “The hotel where he left you ten years ago?”
She nods up at me.
“Let’s go,” Harrison says. “We can be in Rock Springs, Wyoming in three and a half hours.” He doesn’t wait for us to answer, just takes off across the field in the direction of the airstrip here in Falls City.
Sasha walks off after him, not even looking back at me.
And I follow. With a new appreciation for what it means to be friends with Sasha Aston.
People love her fiercely. She’s right. They will die for her. Even sick and twisted fucks like Nick Tate will give their lives for her. Carting her ass around in a private plane is nothing to this pilot.
He’ll do whatever it takes to make her happy, no questions asked.
And so will I.
The three of us are a nervous wreck as Sasha pushes her key into the door of the hotel room she shared with Nick ten years ago. She takes a sharp inhale, then twists the key and turns the handle.
The cock of shotguns make us all freeze in the blowing snow, but Sasha, confident in her trust of Nick’s final message, pushes the door open anyway.
The two men lower their weapons and come forward, only to be pushed out of the way by two women.
There is shouting—the good kind—and crying. Also the good kind. And she is folded into a foursome embrace for several long seconds.
They notice Harrison next, and the greeting starts again, but this time only from the men, who slap him on the back as they usher us forward into the room. A moment later the door is closed and the room goes dim because the curtains are drawn tight.
I look around, stunned.
Stunned faces look back at me.
There are six girls pressed up against the far wall near the bathroom. Three who look to be sisters under five. One who looks to be a teen, holding a baby. And one who sits alone at the small table, a book clutched to her chest and her feet swinging like she hasn’t got a care in the world. She looks up at me with her brown eyes and she smiles. And then she takes an envelope out of her book and places it on the table, pushing it towards me with one pink finger. “He said to give you