Chapter 31
Alyse
You know that anxious, gut-twisting feeling you get when the walls are closing in on you from all directions and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop them from crushing you? All you can do is sit helplessly frozen, watching as they inch ever closer to exterminating your hopes, your dreams, your very life?
I felt that way when I learned that Beck had died. I felt powerless, weak. My body and mind nothing but a swirling mass of utter despondency for several long months.
I worked hard to overcome my depression. It was a long, difficult road, but I did it and I vowed I’d never let myself get to that place again. No matter what. But since Saturday night, I feel like I’ve slipped. I’m suffocating. I’m slowly circling that dark pit of despair again and I’m scared. Absolutely terrified.
It’s a place I welcomed last time because I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t see beyond my soul-destroying agony. This time, however…it’s not fucking welcome. At all. It’s not, because I’ve found love again. I’m happy and hopeful, but even so I still feel the darkness seeping in around the edges like shadow warriors come to claim my soul so they can feast on it for eternity.
I look down at my phone to see fifteen text messages and four missed calls.
Cooper.
Livia.
Asher.
Asher is smothering me with worry and his anxiousness is washing over me in thundering, booming sprays. But I also feel his love wrap around me like a warm, comforting blanket and I need that damn blanket like a lifeline. It’s my only savior in this entire fucked-up situation, because without Asher, I would be hopelessly lost for good. I can only hope and pray he continues to be patient with me as I work to find my way out of this hole I’ve fallen through. I want to reassure him that everything will be okay, but how can I when I’m trying to understand it myself, let alone explain it?
I’m trying so hard to outrun my past, but every time I move forward, there it is again.
Blocking my path.
Holding me back.
Keeping me prisoner. Before it was just memories, but now…
Beck is alive.
He’s always been alive.
I keep replaying that moment, just a second frozen in time. I saw so much, but so little at the same time. I keep telling myself that it wasn’t really him, but I know that no amount of pretending will make it untrue. And the fact that I’ve heard from Cooper multiple times tells me it’s not a hallucination.
Beck is not dead.
Before I fainted, I saw the moment he recognized it was me. I saw sorrow turn down his handsome features. I saw regret eating him alive.
I anxiously wait, obsessively looking at my watch, my foot bouncing up and down so fast I think I’m shaking all the tables within a six-foot radius. I scan the diner for any signs that I’ve been tricked.
My heart’s racing. I don’t why I’m here, why I kept our lunch date, but I guess curiosity got the best of me. I didn’t respond to Cooper’s texts to confirm that I was coming, but I didn’t tell him I wasn’t either. I don’t even know if he’ll show. I think what I need is for him to look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t know anything about this. Because if he and Beck played me, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust another human being again. I don’t know how they could have, but who expects her dead ex to rise from the fucking grave either?
I sure as shit didn’t.
After I recovered from the shock, the pain set in, fresh and raw and gut-wrenching. I felt flayed to the bone, my heart sliced to ribbons all over again.
Beck’s not dead. He’s not dead, yet all this time he let me believe he was. He left me to deal with not only my physical injuries on my own, but my emotional ones, too, as well as the loss of our baby. By myself.
He abandoned me in the worst possible way anyone could.
The loom of a shadow lifts my head. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until it whooshes from my lungs at the sight of Cooper. He stands there, sympathy bleeding from his eyes and I know he can’t have known. My relief is so great, an involuntary sob breaks free. He holds out his arms. My need for human comfort can’t be denied. I stand, let him engulf me, and cry against his cold winter jacket, uncaring that we’re making a scene.
“I didn’t know, Alyse. Jesus, I swear. I didn’t know.”
Seconds, minutes, hell hours later, after my sobs subside, he smooths my hair, taking my face between his hands.
“You okay?”
I snort. “I’m nowhere near okay.”
He nods, dropping his hands. We sit and just look at each other for several moments.
“You should talk to him,” he finally says.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what he did to me?” I spit, incensed that he would even suggest such a thing. But, of course, Beck is family, so what is he going to do? From the way he’s talked about “his cousin,” they’re very close. Hell, they opened a business together.
I’ve gotten what I came for. I believe he didn’t know about the connection between Beck and me. I stand and turn to leave when a strong hand grips my wrist.
“Alyse, please. Just hear me out.”
“Cooper, don’t. I just…I can’t,” I choke. I feel like I’m seconds away from falling into a puddle on the floor, crying myself into a pool of tears until I drown. I kept it together all day Sunday, but today, seeing Cooper, it’s a completely different ball game. He lets my arm go and I start forward, making it about ten paces until his next words stop me mid-step.
“I didn’t realize you were that Alyse.”
I slowly spin on my heels. “What do you mean ‘that Alyse’?”
“Will you sit down while I explain or do you want to invite all our new friends to join?”
I look around to see that a dozen sets of eyes are intently watching our exchange, so I huff, walk back, and sit.
“What do you mean ‘that Alyse’?” I repeat, this time getting angrier.
Sighing heavily, he scrubs his hand over his hair several times, messing it up so it stands on end. I try to remain unaffected, but the gesture reminds me so much of Beck, the waterworks begin again. I angrily swipe them away. An undead man who pulled one over on me does not deserve my tears. Or my forgiveness.
“He talked about you all the time, you know.”
“No. I don’t know, actually. He never talked about you. He never talked about anything really, because Beck was about as secretive as the KGB, so apparently I didn’t know a fucking thing about him. He let me believe he was dead all this time, Cooper. All these years. So, forgive me if I don’t believe you. I almost—” I almost killed myself because I didn’t want to live without him.
“He was in love with you. He was, Alyse. I…I don’t think he’s ever gotten over you.”
“How can you possibly say that, Cooper?” I sneer. “Did he tell you I was pregnant? Did he tell you he fucking lost it when I told him? Did he tell you he drove us into a grove of oak trees, trying to kill us after I gave him the good news that he was going to be a father?”
He looks as heartbroken as I feel. My breath hitches.
“He told me everything, Alyse. Beck was devastated after the accident, but the accident was not intentional. Carelessness? Yes. Intentional? No,” he says quietly.
I’m so overwhelmed in that moment I don’t know what to do, so I put my head in my hands and cry. I hear the scrape of chair legs against the floor. I feel an arm around me as Cooper takes the seat next to mine.
“Why? Why? Why would he do that to me?” I openly weep. “Why would he let me believe he’s dead all this time? I loved him. Even after what happened, I still loved him.”
His arms tighten. “That’s his story to tell. I won’t do that to him.”
We sit like that for ten, maybe fifteen minutes and this intense, overwhelming need to see Asher unexpectedly hits me. To have him hold me, kiss me, make love to me. I have a four-hour drive ahead of me, but I can’t leave town first without seeing him. It’s like someone has pulled a thread, just one loose thread that’s barely holding me together. The only person who can stop me from completely unraveling is him.
“I have to go.” Pulling a tissue from my purse, I wipe my eyes the best I can and stand, looking down at Cooper’s seated form. “Do not bring him to the wedding, Cooper. Don’t do that to me. Please.”
“I wouldn’t, Alyse. I won’t. No matter what’s happened between you and Beck, I like you. I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
“How will that work exactly? Our friendship? With Beck?”
“I don’t know, but you are both important to me, so I’ll figure it out.”
I want that, too. I truly like Cooper. Nodding, I lean down, placing a light kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
“Alyse, please tell me you’ll think about it. Talking to him, I mean.”
“I—”
“Don’t say no. Just say you’ll think about it. Please. Not for him, but for you. There are things you don’t know. Things you don’t understand, and I think if you knew them, you’d see the situation in an entirely different light. He’s…well, he’s suffered just as much as you have, if not more.”
“Doubtful,” I mumble as I walk out.
Outside, I stand in the blustery winter wind, pulling my coat tighter around me. While I wait for the little white hand at the crosswalk to indicate it’s safe, something makes me turn to my left. When I do, through all the throngs of lunchgoers, I see Beck standing across the street, leaning against a brick building, intently watching me.
My breath is momentarily lost. He’s aged into a simply beautiful man.
“I’ve never loved another person as much as I love you, Alyse. You’re my entire life. My world. My future.” Beck has tears in his eyes. I wonder what’s wrong. He’s been more erratic than usual lately.
“Mine, too,” I whisper before pulling him down to my waiting lips, trying to seal him to me forever. “Don’t leave me, please.”
“Never. Never, baby.”
I realize that since the front of the diner Cooper and I were sitting in is solid glass and we were by the window, Beck’s probably watched our entire exchange. Watched me yell, watched me break. Probably hoped I would want to see him, just waiting for the prearranged signal.
Ever since I saw Asher again months ago, the giddy, teenage feelings I’ve always had for him have blossomed into undeniable love. A love so deep and passionate, it makes me breathless. I’m so filled to the brim with happiness I feel like I might burst some days. Some may think it’s too early, but I don’t care what they believe. I know what I feel. It’s a love that makes you question all other loves before it and I’ve found myself wondering if I ever really loved Beck at all or if that was something I made up in my young mind.
But seeing Beck again, gazing at me with those dark, hooded eyes, the same ones I fell into the first time I saw him across a coffee counter, I know my love for him was real and true and it’s never left. In all these years, it’s never faded.
Even from this distance, I still see the love for me swimming in his own eyes.
Guilt eats my insides raw until they bleed. I love Asher with my whole self and I shouldn’t be feeling this way about another man, especially one who duped me.
We stare, neither of us shifting toward the other. I can’t deal. Not now. Maybe not ever. When the crowd starts moving, that’s my cue. I break away and cross with them, hoping like hell he doesn’t follow.
Then I make it to my car, point it toward Detroit, and drive. As much as I need Asher, the only thing that will happen if I see him is tears (mine), questions (his), and hurt feelings (both) because I can’t talk to him about this yet. I’m not ready. I need time to process something that’s come directly out of a fucking soap opera and figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the pile of crap that’s now thickly coating the bottoms of my shoes.