Updated Apr 19, 2026 • ~13 min read
Chapter 2: Meeting Asher
Asher
Asher Brooks wakes up at five-thirty in the morning to the sound of his six-year-old daughter Ruby climbing into his bed, her stuffed elephant clutched under one arm and her hair a wild tangle of dark curls that desperately needs brushing, and he pulls her close automatically even though he’s barely awake because these early morning cuddles are his favorite part of the day—the quiet moments before the chaos begins, before he has to be Firefighter Brooks or Single Dad Asher or anything other than just Ruby’s father.
“Morning, Daddy,” Ruby whispers against his shoulder, and her voice is still rough with sleep in that sweet way that reminds him how young she is, how much she’s already been through, how desperately he wants to protect her from anything else that might hurt her.
“Morning, Ruby-roo,” Asher says, using the nickname he’s had for her since she was born, and he kisses the top of her head before forcing himself to actually wake up and start the morning routine that’s become second nature over the past two years of single parenting—making breakfast, packing lunch, finding shoes that Ruby swears she put away but are inevitably scattered across the house, braiding hair that tangles no matter how much detangler he uses.
Ruby chatters about school while Asher makes pancakes—her favorite breakfast, shaped like flowers because she insists on it—and he listens with half his attention while mentally running through his schedule for the day: drop Ruby at school by seven-thirty, his shift at the firehouse starts at eight, he’s got training in the afternoon, needs to pick Ruby up by three from after-school care, dinner, homework, bath time, bedtime stories, and then maybe an hour to himself before he collapses into bed and does it all again tomorrow.
This is his life now.
Has been for two years, since Emma died.
Since the car accident that took his wife and left Ruby without a mother and Asher without his partner and their whole family shattered into before and after.
Asher doesn’t think about Emma as much anymore—not consciously, not the active grieving that consumed him for months after the funeral—but she’s there in everything: in Ruby’s smile that’s exactly like her mother’s, in the house they bought together that Asher still maintains exactly how Emma decorated it, in the wedding photo on the mantle that he can’t bring himself to take down even though looking at it hurts.
“Daddy, you’re burning the pancakes,” Ruby observes, and Asher snaps back to the present to find that yes, he’s absolutely burning the pancakes, lost in memories instead of paying attention to the stove.
“New batch coming up,” Asher promises, scraping the burnt ones into the trash and starting over while Ruby giggles at his distraction.
They eat breakfast together at the small kitchen table—Ruby telling him about the butterfly life cycle project she’s doing in school, Asher making appropriate responses while trying to wake up properly—and then it’s the mad rush of getting Ruby dressed and teeth brushed and hair braided and backpack packed and shoes located (under the couch, naturally) before herding her to the truck for the drive to school.
“Daddy, there’s a moving truck next door!” Ruby announces as they’re pulling out of the driveway, pointing at the large truck parked in front of the Victorian house that’s been empty since old Mrs. Henderson died six months ago.
Asher glances over and sees movers unloading furniture, and he suppresses a groan because new neighbors means disruption to his quiet routine, means people who’ll want to be friendly and social when all Asher wants is to be left alone with Ruby and his grief and the carefully controlled life he’s built. Worse, if whoever’s moving in happens to be single, Mayor Judy will have a new matchmaking project within the hour—the woman has tried to set Asher up with every unattached female who’s passed through Maplewood in the last two years, from the substitute teacher who stayed for one semester to the UPS driver who made the mistake of smiling at him once, and Asher has shot down every attempt with the same firm “not interested” that the town has collectively decided to interpret as “try harder.”
“Looks like it,” Asher says neutrally, hoping Ruby won’t get too excited about new neighbors because the last thing he needs is his daughter making friends with whoever’s moving in and expecting Asher to be neighborly and welcoming when he’s barely managing to be functional.
“Maybe they have kids!” Ruby says with the enthusiasm of an only child who desperately wants playmates. “Maybe I’ll make a new friend!”
“Maybe,” Asher allows, because he can’t crush her hope even if he’s privately wishing whoever’s moving in will be quiet and private and not the type to expect neighborly interaction.
School drop-off is the usual chaos of kids and parents and teachers, and Asher waits until Ruby’s safely in her classroom before heading to the firehouse for his shift—eight hours of routine maintenance and training and hopefully no actual fires, because while Asher is good at his job and takes pride in serving his community, he’d really prefer a quiet day without emergencies.
His best friend Cole is already at the station when Asher arrives, drinking coffee and reading something on his phone with the kind of grin that means he’s got gossip and he’s dying to share it.
“New neighbor moving in next to you,” Cole announces before Asher’s even through the door. “Pretty woman, single, taking over Sugar & Spice from Claire Mitchell.”
“How do you already know this?” Asher asks, because it’s barely eight in the morning and the moving truck was just arriving when he left, and Cole shouldn’t possibly have this much information already.
“Judy called,” Cole says with a shrug. “Apparently the whole welcoming committee descended on her yesterday. Judy thinks you two would be perfect together.”
“Absolutely not,” Asher says immediately, pouring himself coffee and trying to ignore the way Cole’s grin widens.
“You haven’t even met her—”
“Don’t need to. Not interested. Tell Judy to mind her own business.”
“You tell Judy to mind her own business,” Cole counters, because they both know that Mayor Judy Hartwell is a force of nature who does whatever she wants regardless of what anyone tells her. “But Asher, man, it’s been two years—”
“Not interested,” Asher repeats firmly, and Cole has the grace to drop it because he knows better than to push when Asher uses that tone.
The shift is blessedly uneventful—a kitchen fire at Mabel’s diner that’s mostly smoke and no actual damage, a training exercise with the new recruit, paperwork that Asher hates but forces himself to complete—and by the time three o’clock rolls around, Asher is more than ready to pick up Ruby and go home to their quiet evening routine.
Except when he pulls into his driveway, there’s a ladder propped against the side of his house and a woman standing at the base of it looking up at his roof with clear consternation, and Asher has approximately three seconds to process this before he recognizes the situation: the damn neighborhood cat is on his roof again, and his new neighbor has apparently decided to rescue it.
“That’s not my cat,” Asher says loudly enough to be heard, and the woman jumps slightly and turns to look at him.
She’s pretty—Asher notices this clinically, the way he’d notice any objective fact, without any particular interest or attraction—with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and warm brown eyes that are currently looking at him with a mixture of frustration and determination.
“It came from your yard,” she says, and her voice has the slight edge of someone who’s had a long day and doesn’t appreciate being told that the cat she’s trying to rescue isn’t actually his problem.
“Still not my cat,” Asher repeats, because that orange menace belongs to no one and everyone in the neighborhood, appearing randomly to cause chaos before disappearing again, and Asher learned months ago that trying to claim responsibility for it was a losing battle.
The woman—his new neighbor, apparently, the one Judy wants to set him up with—narrows her eyes at him like she’s trying to determine if he’s being deliberately unhelpful or just naturally this unfriendly, and Asher could tell her it’s both but he doesn’t think that would improve the situation.
“Well, it’s free now,” she says finally, gesturing to the tree where the cat has relocated itself with typical feline perversity, and she moves to retrieve her ladder while Asher wonders if he should help and decides that would count as encouraging future interaction which he definitely doesn’t want.
He’s heading toward his front door when he hears the ladder shift—that particular scraping sound that means something’s wrong—and he turns just in time to see his new neighbor lose her balance halfway down, arms windmilling as she starts to fall.
Asher moves without thinking, crossing the distance between them in three long strides and catching her before she hits the ground, and suddenly he’s holding a strange woman against his chest while she looks up at him with those wide brown eyes and he’s extremely aware that this is the closest he’s been to anyone who isn’t Ruby in approximately two years.
“Thanks for the help,” she says, and her voice is heavy with sarcasm that Asher probably deserves given that he wasn’t particularly friendly about the cat situation.
“Welcome to Maplewood,” Asher responds with equal sarcasm, because he’s terrible at social interaction and his default mode is grumpy when dealing with anyone outside his very small circle of people he actually tolerates.
He sets her down quickly—too quickly, maybe, but prolonged physical contact with an attractive woman is not something Asher is equipped to handle right now—and steps back to a safe distance while she brushes herself off and tries to regain her dignity.
They have a brief, ridiculous conversation about the cat—which is definitely not his, regardless of what his yard situation suggests—and then Asher escapes to his house before he can be drawn into further interaction, closing the door behind him and leaning against it while his heart pounds uncomfortably in his chest.
That was his new neighbor.
The woman Judy wants to set him up with.
The pretty pastry chef who’s apparently brave enough to climb strange roofs to rescue cats and sarcastic enough to match his unfriendliness with her own.
“Absolutely not,” Asher mutters to his empty house, to the life he’s carefully built around keeping everyone at arm’s length, to the part of him that noticed how she felt in his arms and immediately wants to notice again.
He doesn’t do relationships.
Hasn’t since Emma died.
Won’t, because Ruby’s been through enough upheaval and loss, and Asher’s heart can’t take risking anything else or anyone else who might leave them.
Ruby comes home from after-school care full of stories about her day—the butterfly project is going well, her friend Emma shared cookies at lunch, the gym teacher let them play outside for extra time—and Asher listens while making dinner and trying very hard not to think about the woman next door or the way she felt in his arms or the fact that Cole was right and she is pretty and Judy’s probably already planning elaborate schemes to push them together.
They eat dinner together, just the two of them at their small table, and Asher helps Ruby with homework and runs her bath and reads her three stories before bed because she’s an expert negotiator and he can’t resist her big eyes when she asks for “just one more, Daddy, please?”
“I love you, Ruby-roo,” Asher says when she’s finally tucked in, her stuffed elephant secure under one arm.
“Love you too, Daddy,” Ruby says through a yawn. “Tomorrow can we make cookies?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Asher promises, kissing her forehead before turning off her light and closing the door most of the way—she likes it cracked so the hallway light comes through.
Asher collapses on his couch with a beer and the TV remote, fully intending to watch whatever sports game is on and then go to bed early, but his mind keeps drifting to the woman next door—Quinn, Judy said her name was—and he finds himself wondering what brought her to Maplewood, why she left wherever she came from, if she’s running from something or toward something or just looking for a fresh start in a small town that specializes in meddling and matchmaking.
Not that it matters.
Not that he cares.
Not that he’s interested in anything beyond being civil neighbors who maybe wave occasionally but otherwise leave each other alone.
His phone buzzes with a text from Cole: “Judy says you met the new neighbor. Says you caught her. Romantic.”
“Not romantic. She fell off a ladder. I prevented injury. That’s it,” Asher types back.
“Sure,” Cole responds. “Keep telling yourself that.”
Asher throws his phone on the couch cushion next to him and takes a long drink of his beer, staring at the TV without actually seeing whatever game is playing, and tries to convince himself that he’s not interested in his new neighbor, that catching her was just reflexes and nothing more, that the small flutter in his chest when their eyes met was just surprise and not attraction.
He’s fine alone.
He and Ruby are fine together, just the two of them.
They don’t need anyone else.
They don’t need complications or relationships or meddling townspeople pushing them toward someone new.
Outside, he can hear the faint sounds of his new neighbor moving around next door—unpacking, probably, settling into her new life in Maplewood—and Asher determinedly turns up the volume on the TV and focuses on the game.
Tomorrow he’ll make sure Ruby understands they’re not going to be overly friendly with the new neighbor.
Tomorrow he’ll tell Judy to stop her matchmaking schemes.
Tomorrow he’ll go back to his carefully controlled routine that doesn’t include attractive pastry chefs who climb roofs to rescue cats.
But tonight, despite his best intentions, Asher falls asleep on the couch thinking about brown eyes and the way Quinn Mitchell felt in his arms, and hating himself just a little bit for noticing.
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