Asher (Ashes & Embers Book 6)

by Carian Cole

  “It sounds pretty.”

  “We have a really nice back deck and a pool too. We barbecue a lot.”

  I close my eyes and try to envision those places, but the only thing I see are the flipped houses I’ve been watching on HGTV. The befores are always a bit of an outdated mess, but the afters are bright and beautiful. Asher’s house sounds like an after.

  “Was it a fixer upper?”

  Laughing, he shakes his head. “No, we bought it brand new.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know that.” I cringe at the stupidity of my words.

  “I think you’ll like it. You can change anything you want. I want you to love it when you come home.”

  Unease creeps over me like a draft.

  Tomorrow I’ll be transferred to the rehab and transitional living wing to start my intense “multilayered” therapy before I can leave the hospital and move back to the elusive place called home.

  “So that’s where I’ll go after the therapy? To your house?”

  “To our house.”

  “I—I’m not sure…”

  He kneels in front of my wheelchair, and I let him take my hand in his. Affection seems to be important to him, and I’m starting to like it. I stare at the designs tattooed across his fingers and the wedding band that, apparently, I slid onto his finger with the promise to love him forever when I was only eighteen years old.

  How can I possibly move in with a man that a teenaged version of myself—whom I can’t even remember—decided would make a good husband?

  “It’s your home, Ember.”

  “With you.”

  His dark eyes drill into mine. “Would that be so bad?”

  I lift my shoulder slightly. “I’m not really sure. I don’t know you very well. People don’t just live together so fast.”

  “That’s true, but this is different.”

  “Is it, though?” It’s not for me.

  “You’ll get to know me more before you come home. You might even have your memory back by then. The therapy could change everything.”

  I wish I felt half of his endless faith and optimism. It’s nice, but on some days, he seems more out of touch with reality than I am.

  “Asher…do you believe in things like Santa Claus?”

  He frowns. “I used to.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “A kid in second grade told me he wasn’t real. He ruined it for me and twenty other little kids.”

  “It’s possible Ember is a lot like Santa Claus. Just someone you used to believe was real. And now she’s not.”

  He winces, and I feel like a horrible, dream-killing, heart-smashing monster. I have no idea why I said that. He lowers his gaze to our hands, runs his tongue along his bottom lip, and lets out a sigh.

  “Don’t do that, Em.” His voice is husky. “Don’t make me believe in us by myself.” He lifts his head to look into my eyes, and my heart aches at the sadness I’ve caused him. “I’d still believe in Santa if someone hadn’t gone out of their way to make sure I didn’t.”

  I’m mesmerized by the gold flecks in his eyes and the raw emotion laced in his voice. There’s something almost magical and untouched about Asher Valentine. He has this unique, honest pureness.

  He makes me want to believe.

  “I’m sorry I said that. Sometimes things come out of my mouth that I really don’t mean. I’m trying to believe I’ll get better,” I say softly.

  “That’s all I’ll ever ask.”

  He walks around the courtyard for a few minutes, letting me enjoy the breeze. When he returns, he surprises me by bowing down in front of me theatrically and handing me a tiny yellow flower.

  “For you, beautiful.”

  My mouth falls open as I take it from him, and I twirl it around between my shaky fingers. For some reason, this little flower makes me happier than the bouquets he brings me every day.

  “Thank you.” My voice pitches into a squeak. “I’m so sorry about what I said—”

  He waves it off. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  I bring the small buttery flower to my nose and sniff its flowery scent.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

  I look into his dark-brown eyes. “I think so.”

  He laughs. “I guess that’s as good an answer as I can get. Will you let me pick you up?”

  I’m taken aback. “Pick me up?”

  “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  Swallowing nervously, I nod. “Okay.”

  “Put your arms around my neck and hold onto me as tight as you want to.”

  “You’re sure you won’t drop me?”

  Something flashes in his eyes that I don’t recognize. “I’ll never let anything happen to you, Em.”

  Leaning over me, he slips a muscular arm under my legs, and I wrap my arms around his neck. He lifts me carefully, allowing my body to settle against his broad chest.

  “You okay?” He smiles as he slowly swings me away from the chair.

  I nod excitedly. “Yes.”

  He carries me away from my wheelchair to a field behind the hospital building. The wind blows his hair into my face, but I don’t care. It’s soft and smells like him.

  He laughs at me wiggling my socked feet as he carries me. “Feels good, huh?”

  “It does.” No bed. No chair. No walls. No beeps and smells. Nothing but sun, blue skies, and fresh air.

  And him.

  He carries me over to a big oak tree, and without putting me down, he lowers himself onto his knees, then into a sitting position. Gently, he puts me down on the grass in front of him, between his long legs, and helps me lean my back against his chest.

  “You okay?” he asks softly. “I know we’re close, but I can’t let you fall over.”

  “It’s fine…thank you.” I’m breathless with emotion. Insecure about being so close to him. Excited to be sitting outside on the actual earth. Touched by his gentleness and thoughtfulness.

  I run my hands over the grass. “It feels so nice.”

  He keeps his arms protectively on either side of me, lightly pressing against mine. His body heat encompasses me, warming me. I feel safe.

  Cherished.

  I squint up at the sun. “I don’t ever want to go back inside.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  After a few minutes, I allow myself to relax against him as we sit in silence under the tree. When he reaches for my hand, I open my palm to his. Our fingers interlock, the metal of his wedding band pressing against my thin finger. Sighing, he leans his head against mine, causing my heartbeats to skitter. Warmth travels from our linked hands all the way to my chest. An odd familiar energy pulses through us—a hesitant shyness mingled with gentle want.

  Closing my eyes, I give in to the sensations and savor his closeness just as much as the cool breeze and the sound of the chirping birds.

  “Thank you for bringing me out here,” I say softly. “I think I needed this.”

  “I know.” He touches his lips to the side of my head. “I did too.”

  Frustration and determination cling to me when Asher wheels me back to my room. I felt shackled the moment the automatic doors closed behind us. My short field trip to the courtyard lit a spark in me. I want freedom and fresh air. I want to be able to walk and eat and dress myself. Most of all, I want to live again.

  I didn’t just lose eight years of my life while in a coma. I lost my entire life. Memories, experiences, relationships, loves and hates, my career, my family. Things I obviously believed in, worked for, fought for, and cherished.

  All wiped clean like a crashed hard drive.

  Even though all the unknowns waiting for me outside the hospital are terrifying, I don’t want to lose anymore time actually living.

  “Are you excited about moving to your new suite tomorrow?” Asher asks after the nurse has helped me settle back in my bed again.

  “I’m excited and nervous.”

  “When I met with y
our doctor, he mentioned you could be discharged in less than the six months he originally thought.” He sits on the foot of the bed.

  I take a sip of water from the bottle on my nightstand. “He said that to me too. Maybe three or four months if I do well.”

  “That’ll be awesome. It’s going to be a lot of hard work for you, but I’ll be here every day. I’ll do whatever I can to help you recover. I can—”

  “No.” I shake my head. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I blink at her, trying to convince myself she didn’t just say that. “What?”

  “I want you to go. On the band tour you told me about.”

  “Em, I agreed to tour with EverLust months ago. Way before you woke up. But there’s no way in hell I’m gonna trek around the country for two months now that you’re awake.”

  When the guys from EverLust asked me to tour with them as a guest and run on stage to sing a few songs with them at each show as a “surprise” for the audience, I thought it would be fun. The fans love that stuff, and it would keep me busy without having to do full concerts. But I wasn’t planning on doing that now that Ember’s in rehabilitation.

  “I think you should go,” she says. “You gave up a lot for her.” She pinches her eyes shut. “For me.”

  The way she refers to Ember as if she’s an entirely different person and not herself continues to worry me, despite the doctor assuring me it’s a normal part of her recovery.

  “I didn’t give up anything. You’re the priority for me.”

  She sucks her lower lip between her teeth. “I think it’s best. They said therapy will be really hard on me physically. And mentally.”

  “That’s why I should be here for you.”

  She juts her chin out. “The doctor said it would be better if you weren’t here. That I’ll need time to focus. Adjust. Rest.”

  “I know, but I can get around that. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I don’t think you should. It’s part of the rules. For my progress.”

  I grin. “I don’t really follow rules, Em.”

  “Please? I don’t want you to give up your tour. I’ll feel bad. I don’t want to feel like any kind of burden.”

  “Are you tryin’ to get rid of me? I thought you liked me being here.” The emotional whiplash is killing me. Out in the grass, I felt like we had a moment of closeness. Now I feel a wall sprouting up.

  “I do…mostly. But you’re a little intense.”

  I lean back in surprise. “Intense? I’m not intense.”

  She lifts an eyebrow at me, and I’m shook for a moment at how beautiful—how much like her— she looks today with her hair shiny and styled, her eyes big and bright, accentuated by mascara and smudgy eyeliner. I’ve missed that teasing crooked eyebrow she’s shot at me a million times over the years.

  I can’t even look at her pink-tinted lips. I’ll lose my mind trying not to kiss her.

  “It’s the way you look at me, Asher.”

  Ah. Maybe I have been staring at her lips too much. “What’s wrong with how I look at you?”

  “You look at me like I’m a jack in the box, and you’re waiting for Ember to pop out.”

  Yikes.

  “I didn’t realize I was. I’ll stop.”

  The corner of her mouth turns up a bit. “I don’t think you can.”

  She knows me better than she realizes.

  “Asher, I’m really trying to see that this is confusing for you too. But it’s pressure. All the expecting. It’s hard.”

  My nerves rattle. Why the hell did I quit smoking?

  “I just want you to know that I’m in this for the long haul, no matter what. You’re not alone.”

  “That’s very nice, but I think I need to be alone sometimes. To kinda try to wrap my head around this.” She grins. “No pun intended.”

  Just when I thought we were getting closer, she’s stepping back. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. All the balls have to be in her court while she’s recovering. I can’t risk pushing her further away by forcing myself into her life.

  “If that’s what you want, then I’ll go on the tour. I’d rather be here with you, though.”

  Hey, I can at least toss some balls into the court, right?

  “You can come back when you’re done. By then I should be a little better, right? I think it’s good for you to not be thinking about me so much. Everyone here is nice. Kenzi said she’ll come see me.”

  Not think about her so much? Impossible. Never gonna happen.

  “I think about you all the time. You’re my wife.”

  The word wife has made her uncomfortable. She shifts in the bed and picks at the label on the water bottle. Refusing to look at me. She’s like an animal caught in a cage and taken to a place she doesn’t want to be.

  “I’m no one.” Her voice is low and haunting. “I’m not a wife or a sister or a mother or a singer. I’m a mindless mannequin who looks like someone else.”

  My gut twists into a knot of turmoil. The doctor warned me she’d phase through different radical moods. That she’d ping-pong from happy to depressed to angry and back around again.

  I wasn’t expecting this, though. It’s not that she doesn’t connect to her past identity, it’s as if she sometimes wants to shut the person she perceives as Ember out.

  Which also means shutting me out, as well as her family and friends.

  “Don’t say that. You’re not no one. You’re someone who was in a horrible accident, and you lost your memory. But you’re still, and always will be, Ember Valentine.”

  She continues to tear the label off the water bottle, tossing the scraps of paper to the side with angry flicks of her wrist.

  I grab her hand to stop her, and she looks up, her eyes dilating with surprise as if she didn’t realize I was still here.

  “Em, I’m sorry if I’ve been making this harder for you. None of us know how to act or how to feel. I’ll give you space if you need it, but I want to come back and be with you. Do you want that too?”

  Her bottom lip quivers as she stares at me, a single tear clinging to her lashes like a tiny icicle.

  “Yes,” she whispers.

  “Do you want your memories and your life back? You can be honest with me. I won’t be mad. I promise.”

  “I think I do. I want to remember who I was, what I did, and who I loved. But right now, I have no way of knowing if I want to live the same life. I don’t know what I want or would’ve wanted.”

  “You have to try to trust me. I know the person inside you better than anyone. You’d want to be home. You’d want to be with me. I know that as sure as I know the sun is gonna come up tomorrow.” I gently wipe the tear from her face. “When you get scared, or unsure, try to hold on to that. Try really hard to trust that even though you don’t remember, I’m doing everything that I know you would want. It’s not just for me, Em. I’m trying to make sure that someday, when you get your memory back, that your life is still here. I’ll still be here.”

  She bursts into tears and sits up, throwing her arms around my neck, squeezing me like she never wants to let go, and I don’t want her to. Ever. I put my arm around her and slowly rub her back, trying to ignore the prominent points of her spine beneath my palm. When she finally untangles herself from me, she sits back and takes a deep breath. “I do trust you. It’s…it’s actually the only thing I know for sure.”

  “That’s good. Really good.”

  “I still want you to go on your tour. You need to do things for you. I like knowing you have a job,” she teases. “It’ll give me time to unboggle myself.”

  It’ll kill me to leave her after I waited so long for her, and it feels incredibly wrong to go on tour like everything is great. But if it’s what she wants, I’ll force myself.

  “I’m going to call you every day.” I decide I’m going to buy her a cell phone tomorrow.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”


  She hasn’t leaned back against her stack of pillows yet. Her face is inches away from mine, her hands still on my arms.

  “You look beautiful today,” I say softly. “Seeing you outside smiling, being so close to you, was the best date ever. I wanted to run away with you and forget this place.”

  A shy smile spreads across her lips. “You’d really do that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I really would.”

  Hesitantly, she leans forward and gives my cheek a quick kiss. “I hope I remember you someday.”

  I cup her chin in my hand before she has a chance to move away.

  “Me too.” I touch my lips softly to hers for just two seconds, then reluctantly release her. “Me too.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Albany, New York. I can’t count how many times I’ve played here over the years. It only took us about four hours to get here, but I already feel like I’m a galaxy away from Ember.

  “You doin’ okay?” Finn, the lead guitarist and ringleader of EverLust has found me sitting outside the tour bus, staring up at the sky with my cell phone in my hand, debating on whether I should send a text message to Ember or not.

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  He sits next to me on the bench, not waiting for an invite. Finn’s a lifelong friend of my cousin, Lukas, but he’s slowly becoming someone I consider a friend. I have my suspicions there’s something going on with him and my little sister, but that’s drama for another day.

  “I know you don’t wanna be here, man.” He lights up a cigarette. “But we’re glad to have ya.”

  “Thanks for letting me change my mind at the last minute.”

  He exhales a cloud of smoke. “I kind of had a feeling you might. Lukas told me things have been up and down.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I ain’t never been in love, so I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what you’re going through. But for what it’s worth, I hope it all works out.”