Asher must have noticed me studying it. His hand settled lightly on my shoulder, making me jump.
“He used to force me to go on hunts with him; father-son bonding thing, he called it.”
“You looked really happy back then.”
He stopped to brush the dust off the picture frame. “I was. Dad wasn't always such a jackass either. Something changed him.”
We'd been so wrapped up in conversation that we hadn't noticed Macy. She had already gotten to work on the safe. I'd never seen one so big, taller than me with steel walls that I doubted even a bomb could blast apart.
“Darn it,” she mumbled, turning the combination lock this way and that. “I was so sure it'd be his birthday. Dad isn't exactly the subtle type.”
Asher clucked his tongue at her. “Looks like your foray into espionage isn't going as well as you hoped.”
Macy growled and probably would have thrown something at him if it'd been within reach. Instead, she just turned the dial faster.
“Make yourself useful and start guessing numbers.”
While the two of them argued, I went out to the hallway and looked through the window. It had a good view of the driveway. The only cars in it were ours, thankfully, and there was no sign of Asher's parents yet. Hopefully, Vivian's friends could keep her plied with enough mimosas to distract her from coming home.
“Did you try our birthdays?”
“Of course, genius. Didn't work. Not a surprise.”
Asher kept rattling off random suggestions, from Heath's wedding anniversary to the date he'd graduated from Princeton. Nothing helped.
“Damn!” Macy's face reddened and she gave the steel door a good kick. “We're this close to figuring everything out.”
Okay. We had to calm down and think rationally, right? Most people didn't use just any random number as their combination. It was usually something meaningful to them, somehow, even if the average person would never think to guess it.
The photo of Asher and the deer caught my attention again. There was something about it that kept drawing my eye back.
Then I got it. This hunting trip was important to Heath. Old photos usually had the date taken printed on the back.
Maybe...
“Sarah?”
Asher shot me a confused look as I pulled the dusty frame off the wall. I didn't respond; there was little time left to explain.
Carefully, I lifted the back off the frame. Just as I had thought, there was the date. Had the ink faded anymore, it'd have been impossible to read.
“September Sixth, 2003.”
Macy stopped spinning the dial and gaped at me. I gestured for her to keep turning it. This was it, it had to be!
“09-06-03,” I said, showing them what I'd found. “This is the code.”
Macy nodded and began inputting it. Asher looked doubtful.
“Impressive detective work, but that can't be it.”
“Why not?”
He took the frame from me and placed it back on the wall. There was a lump in his throat; lines of worry creased his forehead. He didn't respond. Still, somehow, I understood.
The safe's dial stopped ticking and suddenly made a different kind of noise. Macy let out a surprised cry, pulled the handle, and the door swung open.
“It worked,” she said breathlessly. “I can't believe you did that.”
Asher couldn't seem to believe it either. He stared at the open safe with wide eyes, then looked back at me, as if expecting some kind of explanation.
“You think you don't really matter to your dad, do you? This proves you wrong.”
His eyes glistened. “Nah. To him, that's just the date he bagged a record-setting buck. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You know that's not true, Asher.”
He rubbed his eyes and bit his lip hard. Normally, he was so charming, so confident. It was a rare thing to see him let that wall down.
He was more than just the cocky playboy I'd pegged him to be. What else was inside him that he hadn't shown me yet? The parts of him he'd kept secret, that he hadn't shared with any other woman in the world.
I wished I could be that woman for him.
“I don't like talking about this sort of crap,” he mumbled.
“Then you don't have to.”
Without thinking, I pulled him into a hug. His heart was pounding as his hands, trembling, settled on my back.
Over in the corner, Macy was tearing through the safe and chattering away about something she had found. That didn't matter to me anymore, not right now.
“I'm not used to this,” he said quietly. “It's scary.”
“You can't keep your feelings bottled up forever. I'm not going to hurt you, you know.”
“That's not what I'm afraid of.”
“Hey!” Macy's shrill voice interrupted us. “Can you guys stop making out for like, one minute and focus on the reason we're here? Dad has a ton of paperwork in here and it'll take forever to dig through it at this rate.”
Asher wriggled away from me, as though suddenly uncomfortable with the closeness. It wasn't like him at all, and that kind of bothered me.
But it shouldn't, should it? Getting close to him was stupid anyway.
Even if neither us were exactly faking things anymore.
“So, find anything useful?” He made his way to the cavernous safe and looked inside. “Damn. Maybe he ought to find a better place for his gun collection.”
Macy lifted a stack of folders and stray papers, thick as a couple of phone books, onto the desk. She wasn't lying; how would we ever get through all of that before someone came home?
“I guess we can split it up,” she said. “Not like we have a lot of choice. Here, Sarah. You take these.”
“Don't think we'll need to worry about
