Ten
Asher
“I have to leave,” Ryleigh was telling me into the phone. I was sitting in the studio, editing my last shoot, when she called. I started picking up shoots again last week. I still wasn’t one hundred percent, but I was feeling more like myself.
…Even though Ryan proposed to Myke over the weekend.
Over the last few days, I had to come to terms with any ill feelings I had toward Ryan.
Or, I had to leave.
And even though I hadn’t seen Porter, hadn’t spoken to Porter, I wasn’t ready to leave.
Not yet.
I bit my lip.
Maybe not ever.
I had almost convinced myself that even if I couldn’t have him, even if I had to watch someone else fall for him, watch as he fell for someone else…this was where I belonged.
Yesterday, Ryan and Myke met with me at the guesthouse and Ryan told me everything. Now, Myke knew everything.
Just not that you enjoyed it.
Ryan never meant to bring James to us. Ryan never expected that on his journey to find me, he would meet and fall in love with Myke. And he did love her. I saw it with my own eyes.
He only came to talk me into testifying against his father. Not long after I left, James and Tracy divorced. James’s last victim was his stepdaughter, and the knowledge had made me violently ill.
Now that there had been another case, my statement would be even more damning.
And in the end, because of me, James was dead and the case would never see the light of day.
I was okay with that. But my heart hurt for the other girl.
“Are you there?” Ryleigh’s voice brought me back.
“Yes, sorry. What was it you needed?” I saved the image I was working on and pushed away from the desk.
“I have to leave. Emergency birth shoot.” I could see between the lines. It was one of Ryleigh’s “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” shoots, a charity photography service where photographers donated their time and services for birth shoots of stillborn babies and babies that wouldn’t live long.
I loved doing newborns, but I had a hard time with the idea of the charity shoots. I knew for a fact Ryleigh cried after those shoots—I’d gone with her a time or two—and the pictures always came out so beautifully but…
I couldn’t bring myself to do them myself.
“Porter should be released within an hour.”
I clenched my jaw, bunching the muscles. She wanted me to pick up Porter. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
I hadn’t seen him in weeks.
I hadn’t even watched a game.
I knew he’d been hurt two weeks ago—an ACL and MCL tear in his left knee, I was told—but I refused to watch the playback. Ryleigh and Avery didn’t say much about it, other than he’d elected to have his surgery up in Wisconsin. I honestly thought it was more to appease his mom, than anything else.
“Ryleigh…”
“Noah’s out of town, Avery’s in San Diego with Caleb and Jonny, Myke—”
I sighed. “Okay. Alright. Sure, yeah, I’ll pick him up.”
Porter
“Your ride is here,” Nicole, my post-op nurse, said as she walked into my room.
She stood a little too close as she helped me to stand, my crutches in her free hand as her other cupped my elbow. I wanted to growl at her that I was fine and could stand on my damn own, but being a bastard wouldn’t do me any good.
When Mom first brought up me having the surgery at home, I jumped at the chance. But in the two weeks I’d been home before surgery, I still hadn’t seen Asher and now I was just fucking pissed.
If I was going to be home and not see her, I might as well be down in South Carolina. Granted, Nico probably wouldn’t watch Caine for me if I were there but shit, I’d rather deal with the disaster that came with a nearly three-foot puppy and a bum knee.
Still standing too fucking close, Nicole helped to adjust my crutches under my arms before kneeling, her hands on my brace and checking the tightness, while her face was too damn close to my dick.
I rolled my eyes heavenward and chewed on the inside of my cheek. I was done with the overly friendly nurses, the too friendly pats and slides of their hands down my arms.
The fucking pressing on my bare stomach to check for intestinal and liver shit.
I just wanted to tell them to get their damn hands off me, but the entire time I just dealt with it.
When she stood again, she stumbled into me, and I had to grit my teeth against both the press and the pain in my knee.
She giggled lightly and blushed. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I can be so clumsy.”
“I’m good,” I said through my teeth, glancing up at the clock.
“Alright, well, here are you discharge instructions. Would you like me to carry them?” Nicole held out a small stack of papers.
I leaned into a crutch—no fucking way was I going in a wheelchair—and held out my hand. “I’ll take them.” She looked disappointed but handed them over. Crumbling a side in my hand against the crutch, I organized myself and when she moved out of the way, moved toward the door.
“Good luck in therapy,” Nicole finally said, after a few feet of silence. I almost forgot she was walking slightly behind me.
“Thanks.”
“Just this way.” She turned down a hall and toward a waiting area.
I nearly stumbled when I glanced into the room. Asher.
Everything faded out. The only thing I saw, the only thing I noticed, was Asher.
I was expecting Mom.
My heart tapped into overtime and I had to swallow the lump in my throat.
She was so fucking beautiful.
She looked good, too. The lifelessness that was in her eyes the last time I saw her, was gone. Her hair was pulled up on the top of her head and she wore clothes that told me she likely hadn’t been planning on leaving the house today.
Still, she was a beacon of light.
Asher stood from the chair she’d been in and walked toward me, and it was then I realized that she still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Ash.”
Her eyes flitted to the side but she gave Nicole a smile. “Thank you. I’ve got it from here.”
It wasn’t a full smile. Just one of those little ones where the sides of her lips curled up, and if you didn’t know the fullness of her smile, her laugh, this show could pass as a true smile.
But then add it with that little bit of sass…
“Let’s go,” Asher addressed me without looking at me, slipping out of the room and down the hall toward the elevator. With no choice but to follow, I did.
I let her have her silence—I was too busy trying to come up with something to say to her.
Come home.
Caine misses you.
I miss you.
Fuck, I love you, beautiful.
Talk to me.
Look at me.
Asher stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor. After the doors slid to a close, I stared openly at her. Her eyes were fixed on the dropping numbers.
“How are you?” I finally asked.
“Fine.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“A shoot.” Her answers were clipped, and it hit me in the gut that she didn’t want to be here. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils, letting it out slowly, but it did nothing for the rising panic.
“Don’t you want to know about home? The dog? Fuck, anything?”
I watched her throat as she swallowed hard, but she said nothing.
“The dog misses you,” I bit out and still, Asher remained quiet. “Nico was asking about you.”
She dropped her eyes to the floor but again, not a damn thing.
“I sent pictures from North Carolina to Carter. I have her overseas address, if you wanted it.” That was the other thing; Carter texted me, saying she hadn’t heard from Asher. It tore me up knowing that I wasn’t the only one Asher was pushing away.
“What the fuck, Asher?” I said when her crossed her arms over her chest. My words were quiet, broken, confused.
The elevator doors slid open and Asher stepped out, not looking at me, not answering me, not even waiting for me.
I rearranged my crutches and set out behind her. She stopped at the valet desk before moving through the automatic doors and into the fall sun. It was unseasonably warm, but the breeze was cool.
I moved to stand beside her, purposely close, but she kept her arms crossed, her gaze fixed ahead of her.
I didn’t understand.
Why?
Why was she doing this?
Why was she pushing me away?
And then a thought struck me so hard, I had to swallow past the need to get to sick.
Why didn’t she love me anymore?