Chapter 18
Alyse
“Tell me something about your childhood I don’t know.”
It’s dark, it’s late, and I’m exhausted. Asher’s fingers lightly trailing up and down my spine have me nearly lulled to sleep when he quietly asks his question. We haven’t been able to get enough of each other and spent the last three hours indulging everywhere in Asher’s apartment. He may be almost thirty, but the man doesn’t seem to need much recovery time, that’s for damn sure. I’m deliciously sore and unbelievably sated, but I need the healing effects of sleep now.
Once again he’s insisted I stay and sleep in his bed. This time I don’t argue. He’s sexed the fight right out of me. In truth I really want to stay.
“What do you want to know?” I ask groggily, trying to blink away the mist of unconsciousness that’s almost claimed me.
“Anything. Everything. The good, the bad, the ugly. I want it all, Alyse.” His soft words almost undo me. I tilt my head from its resting place in the crook of his muscular arm and even in the dark, I see him looking at me. Into me. I want to close my eyes to keep him out almost as much as I want to invite him in. I want to let him root around and find all my hiding places so I don’t have to reveal them on my own.
I’m finding I want Asher to know everything about me, because somehow I think he’ll accept the bruised parts of me. Wanting it and getting the words out, however, are two completely different things. That’s the hard part. That’s always been the hard part. I don’t know where I inherited my inability to let people all the way in, but I hate it.
And somehow Asher seems to know this about me.
“Let’s start with an easy one. Tell me a story about you and Livia.”
I smile when I remember a particularly funny story. “Okay, well one summer when I was ten and Libs was fourteen we went to a park about a mile away from our house. My bike had a flat tire, so we took Livia’s, riding together. But we weren’t supposed to do that, because we had crashed before and if Dad caught us, we would have been in big trouble.
“Riding to the park, I sat on the seat and Livia stood, peddling the entire way herself. We must have stayed at the park for hours. Getting out of the house was not only an escape, but a necessity sometimes.” I sigh heavily, wishing my childhood was different. Happy. Like Asher’s. Rubbing my back gently he’s silent, letting me continue at my own pace.
“Anyway, it was starting to get dark and we decided we needed to head home, but this time instead of sitting on the seat, I rode on the handlebars.”
“Uh oh.” He laughs and I join him.
“Yeah, uh oh. So there was this pretty steep hill. We walked it on the way there, but on the way back, we decided to ride it instead. We flew down that thing going probably twenty miles an hour and Libs lost control after catching some gravel. I had on a sundress. Dresses and gravel do not mix, let me tell you.”
“Ouch.” He’s laughing harder and louder, which makes me do the same.
“Livia only had a few scrapes, but I filleted the skin from the right side of my ass, like literally took the first two layers right off. I couldn’t sit down for days and I had to wear thongs for what seemed like a month at the time, but was probably only a few days, because regular underwear stuck to the wound and our neighbor, who’s a nurse, insisted that it ‘get some air’ to heal properly. No ten-year-old should be forced to wear thongs. It’s damage I can’t undo to this day.”
Asher’s entire body is now shaking.
“Do you know what it’s like to have your dad see your bare butt at age ten? It’s humiliating. I still have scars from that incident, physical and mental.”
“Stop, stop.” He can barely catch his breath, he’s laughing so hard. After a few seconds, he manages to ask, “Did you get in trouble?”
“No. We told Dad we collided on swings at the playground. He never knew we’d crashed on Livia’s bike, or if he did, he never let on.”
“You collided on swings?” he asks incredulously.
“It was the best lie we could come up with on our long hobble home.”
We laugh for a few more minutes, before he wipes the tears from his eyes. “Oh my God. That’s a great story, Alyse.”
Now I’m wide-awake. “Your turn.” I prop up on my elbow and gaze down at him. Even in no light he is simply beautiful. His raw masculinity is hypnotizing. I trace the black Chinese tats he has running down the outside of his bulky left bicep.
“Tell me about these,” I say softly. “They’re very sexy.” I think back to just an hour ago when I was tracing each pattern with my tongue and impossibly, I feel myself getting wet again.
He brushes aside a stray hair that’s fallen in my eyes, tucking it behind my ear. The move is soft and seductive. Loving. He treats me like blown glass one minute and a raunchy sex toy the next. I love it.
“The first one means family. The next two stand for older brother, one each for Gray and Luke, and the last stands for younger brother, Conn.”
I laugh. “Oh, I bet Connelly loved it when you got that.”
“Pitched a hissy fit like a little bitch.”
That makes me laugh harder. “I love that you have a great relationship with your family, Asher. It’s very…endearing. And refreshing.”
“I’m lucky, I guess. We have our issues, like any other family, but…yeah. I have a great family. The best parents and brothers a guy could ask for.” He pauses. “I’m sorry you didn’t have that, Alyse.”
I’m sure Asher knows the basics, but I wonder how much he actually knows. His family was idyllic. Mine was…dysfunctional to the nth degree. Our voices soften. It feels like story time has given way to confession. And confession is something I am not good at. It takes me a minute to answer. “Me too.”
“Do you miss your dad?”
Do I?
“He had a sickness, you know, a disease, but he tried his best when he wasn’t sucked into his gambling so deep. When he managed to stay away, he was actually a good dad.” I thought maybe he had finally beaten it, until a few months before Livia disappeared, when he seemed to fall back into it. He was at his worst then.
“When Livia was gone for those few years, he was honestly the best he’d ever been and then he got cancer. I wish she could have seen him then. Until he became so sick and weak, those were probably some of the best times I remember with him. But at the same time it made me angry, because I had a glimpse of what it could have been like if he wasn’t an addict.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” His soft lips touch my temple. “Have you told her that?”
“No. Livia has her own jaded views of our father. I mean, I can see where she’s coming from to some degree. He was imperfect. We all are. But I think it’s interesting how two people can grow up in the same house and view their parents in such a different light. He hated the way he was. He just…couldn’t help it. I think Livia saw it as a weakness, but I viewed it more as a sickness. One he just couldn’t find the cure for.”
“I think I know what you mean. I feel that way about Luke. The way he talks, you would think we had different fathers. My parents weren’t perfect, but they were pretty damn close, and I never understood how Luke could feel that way about our dad.” He pauses briefly. “You seem to have a pretty good relationship with your sister.”
I’m not really sure how to answer that. I want to have a good relationship with her. Another thing I can’t let go. I hate that about myself. The inability to forgive and forget. “I—It’s complicated.”
“Most relationships are. How did you get this?” he asks, tracing the scar just below my sternum.
“What is this? Twenty questions?”
Laughing, he pulls me tight. “I have hundreds of questions, Alyse. Thousands. I told you I want to know everything about you. Every scar, every wound, every hurt. I’m going to heal each and every one of them.”
I smile. “Wow. Theatre and medicinal prowess? Who knew you were so talented?”
“Oh, baby. You have no idea the things I’m capable of.” His fingers tickle my sides and I giggle. “Now, the scar.”
I sigh. I hate talking about that day. I hate thinking about that day. I hate remembering that day even happened. But I figure since Livia was dating Gray at the time, he probably already knows I was in an accident, so I can at least talk about that without revealing the whole sordid story.
“I was in a car accident my senior year. They had to remove my spleen.”
“Yes, I remember. I tried to come see you and your father wouldn’t let me up. Then I had to get back to school so I couldn’t come back.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised. “I never knew that.”
“Yes, really. I would have at least thought he’d tell you.”
“He didn’t,” I mumble. He was probably too distraught that he had to sit in a hospital chair versus a poker one.
“You were in the hospital for a few days right?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t the driver die in that accident?” he asks quietly.
I stiffen and he pulls me tighter. “Yes,” I answer on a choke.
“A friend?”
“I don’t like talking about it,” I say softly. Tears prick over another man that are most unwelcome in this moment with Asher. A reminder of no matter how much I try to put that part of my life behind me, I just can’t seem to cut the cord and leave it there.
“I’m sorry, baby.” I feel his lips on the top of my head. I’m surprised at how much they comfort me.
He doesn’t ask any more questions. I don’t offer any more information. We’ve gone silent again, but it’s not uncomfortable.
“Tell me what your tattoo means.”
Wow, he’s really going for the jugular and he doesn’t even know it. I was grateful that we’d moved off the topic of the accident, but this one isn’t much safer. I hadn’t even realized he’d seen the small tattoo on the inside of my ankle. He hasn’t mentioned it once.
“What do you believe in so much that you had that word inked on your body?” he prods.
It’s so simple, but often the simplest words mean the most. It’s a reminder that my life is worth so much more than I thought it was at my lowest point. The day I got it is a day I’ll never forget.
It’s life.
It’s hope.
It’s second chances.
It’s a future that I almost selfishly deprived myself of because I was too depressed to realize that my emotional agony would eventually become bearable.
But I don’t say any of those things. Instead, I settle for my usual MO. Being vague. It requires a lot less explaining.
“A lot of things and sometimes nothing at all.”
“That’s pretty cryptic, baby.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Alyse…I want in.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I’m trying. It may not seem like it, but I am. I’ve never shared with anyone what I just shared about my father.”
I’m back to lying in the crook of his arm, but he rolls me over so I’m now pinned underneath his heavy weight. He takes my face in his strong hands, eyes searching mine, thumb stroking my bottom lip.
“I want every single part of you.”
Breathing becomes difficult and not because he’s heavy, but because the conversation now is. I know exactly what he’s asking. I want to give it, but I’m terrified that he’ll look at me differently once he knows my dirty, dark secrets. I can’t expose myself like that without knowing where this is headed.
Those damn tears return. “What if you don’t like them?”
“Alyse, there’s nothing you could tell me that would scare me away. I’ll love every part of you.”
Doubtful. “I don’t want to be just a fling,” I respond instead. I won’t survive it. I’m already too invested in him.
His eyes soften. “This is so much more than just sex to me, Alyse. I was kind of hoping this would turn into forever.”
The pathways from my brain to my lungs are singed by those romantic words, rendering me breathless. “I—I don’t want to get hurt, Asher.”
“Neither do I, baby. And with the way I’m feeling about you, if you don’t feel the same, I… Jesus, I like you, Alyse. A helluva lot. More than a lot.”
“Me too.” I confess through the lump in my throat. I’m falling so hard and fast for him, I’m freaking out. My insides are quaking so much that all thoughts about why this was ever a bad idea are crushed to dust under the heavy weight of the emotional avalanche.
“Alyse,” he whispers reverently before taking my mouth in a soft, slow kiss. I expect him to deepen it, I expect him to ravage me, but he doesn’t. He worships my mouth, my body, and my soul.
Slowly.
Passionately.
Thoroughly.
He makes unmistakable love to me, telling me with unsaid words what we both feel, but what is probably too early to voice.
I am undeniably in love with Asher Colloway. If I hadn’t admitted it to myself before tonight, there’s no refuting it now, just like there’s no refuting the love pouring from Asher into me with each reverent touch or each slow thrust of his hips.
I’ve given him my body.
I can’t keep him out of my heart.
But I have to wonder…once I let him into my mind and he sees the real me, will he want to stay?