Nina
Taking a deep breath of the cold mountain air, I looked at the scene that lay below us. Riding the ski lift to the top of the slope, Ashton and I held hands and kicked our legs. “Colorado is just gorgeous. I can’t believe you made all these arrangements by yourself, Ashton. This is a great surprise.”
He only nodded as he looked at our surroundings. “Thanks.”
Of course, he’d had to make all the arrangements himself. I’d been adamant that I didn’t want to do anything all week long. But thankfully he’d went ahead and made plans anyway.
Ashton was my rock. It was hard for me to believe that he had been able to overcome what had held him back for so long so that he could see to me. But he’d stood up and taken charge right from the start.
I lived one day at a time after the attack. And Ashton was there every one of those days, helping me to ‘keep on keeping on,’ as he would put it.
I ran my leather-gloved thumb over the top of his hand. “Hey, thanks for being there for me, babe. I know I don’t say it enough, but I want you to know that I’m extremely thankful for you.”
He turned to look at me. “I know you are. And I’m thankful for you, too, Nina Lange.” He moved his hand to wrap his arm around me. “What do you think about putting all this baby-making stuff on the back burner?”
I had to admit, I was pretty shocked that he’d said that. “Huh?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “We could stop seeing the specialist. Stop doing the diet thing and the week of no-sex thing and just be normal. I think it would do us both a lot of good.”
The pressure was getting to me. He was right about me needing a break. “I suppose we can do that. If you’re really, really sure you want to do that.”
“I am.” He gave me a little squeeze. “I want to get back to you and me doing whatever we want to do. Starting right now. Tonight, I’ll take you to some fancy restaurant, and you can eat anything you damn well please—and drink all the alcohol you want, too!”
Not a drop had passed my lips in that whole year. Once we started seeing the fertility specialist, alcohol had been removed from my diet completely, along with fried foods and dairy.
“Some cheesy chili fries sound pretty delicious right now. And maybe an ice-cold beer. …aaand a greasy cheeseburger would hit the spot!” I laughed. “I’m going to get fat, aren’t I?”
Shaking his head, he held me close. “No, you won’t. You’ll just get to be you again, that’s all.”
The way he looked at me told me he missed the girl I used to be. “I’ll try to get back to who I was before all this happened. I will try as hard as I can. You’re a terrific inspiration, too, you know. You’ve come so far. I sometimes forget that you used to suffer much the same way I do now.”
“Time and the help of a couple of great women helped me do that. And I think time and the help of a couple of great men can do the same for you. Doc Marlow is a great man, and he can help you if you let him.” He moved his arm, so we could jump off the ski lift and begin our tour back down the mountain. “Here we go.”
I followed behind him, letting him lead the way. And as we sped down those frosty slopes, I realized that I needed to follow that very same philosophy in my real life. Follow my husband because he knew the way back to sanity. He’d also gotten lost on the path back from tragedy, yet he’d managed to find his way back. There could be no better person to follow.
So, I did just that. He thought we should put the baby-making on the back burner, so there it would go. Whatever he thought would help me, I would do it.
I’d been wallowing in self-pity for three years now. It was time to get up, and Ashton Lange was the man who could help me.
When we skidded to a stop, throwing a curtain of snow across the open field as we did, we were both laughing. My heart filled with love for him. Not that I had intentionally put it from my heart, but it hadn’t been first and foremost very much.
I supposed it had been filled with anger, my love for my husband getting crowded out of it.
Chasing the anger out of it permanently became my mission. After we got to the lodge, we sat down to take off the skis before heading inside. “I’m thinking a hot chocolate sounds good. What about you, Nina?”
“It sounds like Heaven in a mug.” I’d had to cut out my coffee, too. Lila and Julia would be glad that was coming back. “And when this weekend is over, I’ll get back to my coffee-making, too.”
“The girls will love that.” His arm went around my shoulders as he headed inside to the warmth of the huge fire that filled the main part of the lodge.
Just thinking about my friends and how they were moving on to another round of baby-making had me feeling a little blue. But when Ashton put a warm cup of cocoa in my hand, it quickly distracted my attention from those sad thoughts.
Inhaling the fragrant steam that wafted up, I decided to thoroughly enjoy myself for the weekend and to try to maintain that attitude for a long time. My husband had dealt with a mental case for far too long.
The time to pull up my big girl panties and move on had come.