by Carian Cole
“Of course.”
“I want my life back too. I want you to have your life back. I also want Kenzi to have her mother. I don’t like feeling so lost. I don’t like living with a stranger. It hurts feeling like I’m some kind of intruder who took your wife away. I hate that I feel like I’m trying to be someone else. I’m trying to figure out who I am and where I belong. When you kiss me, I want to know you’re kissing me for me now, not for the past me. I’m lonely too, Asher. At least you have your memories to keep you company. I have nothing.”
Moments pass as he absorbs my response, which I don’t think he was expecting anymore than I was.
His eyes lock onto mine, searching and wanting. “You have me.”
“You have me too. And we both still feel alone.”
His complexion pales, and his mouth opens as if he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. Not a word. But his broad shoulders sink, along with his eyes.
He leaves. I don’t go to his room in twenty minutes to play a board game. He doesn’t come back or text me.
The house is quiet—no sounds of a guitar or television drifting from the master bedroom.
Sitting in the middle of my bed, bleakness chills me to my bones.
This isn’t an argument or a fight, because there’s no anger between us.
It’s much worse.
Heartache, confusion, and loneliness so deep there weren’t even any words left to be said.
I may not know a lot about Asher, but I know he’s not the type of man to just walk away and close a door. The journals have shown me that much.
He just did, though.
The buzzing sensation starts in my skull and spreads out through my torso and limbs.
Does he want me to leave?
Are we unfixable?
I clutch the skeleton key necklace and bring my knees up to my chest as tears trickle down my cheeks.
I’m not ready to be over yet. I haven’t gotten to remember my life and my love. I haven’t even finished the first journal.
I haven’t had a chance to live and love.
Am I never going to find out what happens to us? Is this how it all ends?
Overcome with sadness, I climb under the covers.
I miss him. I miss our game night. I love how comfy he looks when we play games—barefoot, wearing a white tee and faded sweatpants, sitting on the floor eating snacks with me. It’s one of the few things that make me feel like we’re just a normal couple at home, in love.
Unable to fall sleep, I lie in the dark and try to force myself to remember something—anything.
Nothing comes. Except a headache.
Our words from earlier are still echoing in my ears, and I can’t get them to stop. Maybe some things just shouldn’t ever be said out loud.
I close my eyes tight against the tears, and suddenly a scene like a movie starts playing in my head.
He’s sitting next to the bed, holding my hand against his damp face. I can’t see him, but I can feel him. Hear his ragged breaths.
“I miss you so much, Em. Please come back to me. I don’t want to live without you.”
He’s crying.
Searing pain rips through me.
I ache to touch him. I’m unable to move. I miss him so much—my heart is shattering.
He’s right here. I’m right here.
What’s happening to me?
Please, please…make this stop. Please let me talk.
“I love you, baby.” His lips warm on my hand, mingling with his tears. “I’m so scared, Em. I need you.”
Oh, God, please don’t let this happen.
Please, I have to tell him I love him.
Silence.
I love you! I scream. But no sound comes.
Footsteps. He’s leaving.
Please don’t go. I miss you. Don’t leave me here alone…
Gasping, I lift my head up off the pillow.
I remember! I remember him being there!
God, he was so distraught. His brokenness in those moments is still clinging to me, drifting through the haze of my brain. With it comes everything I also felt in those frozen moments—the fear, the absolute heartache and despair. The wrenching need to comfort my husband and the horror of not being able to move or speak.
My heart beats violently as the memories pebble into place—now a permanent part of me.
It all hurts. So much. Maybe some memories, like words, are better left buried.
Climbing out of bed, I steady my shaking legs before walking across the room to the window. I push it open, welcoming the cool air that breezes through the screen. As I’m sitting here trying to collect my thoughts, the bedroom door swings open. My eyes focus on his silhouette in the dark.
“I can’t sleep.” The hoarseness in his voice tells so much more. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I never can.”
His voice is exactly as it was when he cried next to my hospital bed, and I realize he’s still in that place mentally. Lonely. Scared. Helpless. Heartbroken.
“I remembered something.” Holding out my hand to him, I wait for him to join me on the cushioned window seat.
“I remember you by my bed in the hospital. You were crying, begging me to come back. You said you miss me and love me.”
His grip on my hand tightens.
“I wanted to tell you I love you, but I couldn’t. I was trapped. I couldn’t talk or move. Then you left, and I was just…” I shake my head. “Terrified.”
“Fuck.” He lets out a low breath. “That was my worst fear—that you were aware of things going on around you, but you wouldn’t be able to let us know. That you’d be scared out of your mind.”
“That’s all I remember. So I don’t know if I was like that the entire time or just sometimes.”
He looks down, his hair falling over his face, hiding his expression from me.
“I hate all of this,” he says quietly. “It absolutely kills me that you were lying there scared, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do.”
“At least I remembered,” I say, hoping it will make him feel a little better. “That’s good, right?”
He nods, but he still won’t look at me. “Yes. Every memory is good. Even if it hurts, I guess.”
“In a way, it took some of the emotional numbness away. That’s something I’ve been struggling with. That strange, disconnected numbness.”
Finally he raises his head, and my hope sinks at the sight of his bloodshot eyes and puffy lids.
“I know you have. I’ve seen it right from the moment you woke up.”
I’ve unknowingly ripped this man’s heart out time after time. I don’t know how he can even look at me.
I stare into his dark eyes, wishing I could somehow take all his pain away. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t—”
He touches his finger to my lips. “Shh…” he whispers. “We both said what we had to say. No need for apologies.”
“I feel bad.”
“So do I.”
“I don’t want either of us to feel sad or lonely.”
“You’ve always got me, Em. Every part of me.”
“You’ve got me too.” Tentatively, I reach out and touch his bare stomach, right over the skull tattoo. His muscles contract under my touch, and I’m shocked at how hard his body is. “I want to shush this guy. Make him stop screaming for you.”
“I want you to feel like you belong here with me, Em.”
“I’m starting to.” I slowly move my hand up the middle of his chest, over his pec, and to his shoulder. His skin is smooth and warm.
I nearly melt when he turns his head to kiss my hand on his shoulder. Earlier, he said he misses my touch, and I wonder how I used to touch him. Like this? More sexual?
I don’t know.
“Ya know, I’ve never played board games with anyone else,” he says, and it slowly sinks in. He didn’t do that with pre-accident Ember. “That’s an us thing. Just me and you. And I love it.”
<
br /> I smile. “I do too.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am,” I admit. “The whole memory thing sorta mentally exhausts me.”
Standing, he pulls me up to my feet and leads me over to my bed.
“Do you want me to stay with you while you sleep? Maybe play some guitar for you?”
Biting my lip, I turn away from the bed. “No.” I inhale a deep, nervous breath. “I want to sleep with you…in our bed. If you want.”
He did say he wanted me in our bed, but that could mean so many different things, and maybe sleeping next to each other wasn’t quite what he meant.
“Really?” he breathes. “Are you sure?”
I nod in the dark. “Yes. I want to try.”
“Look what you’re doing to my heart.” He places my hand over his chest, and his heart thumps rapidly against my palm.
“You do the same to me.”
“Do I?”
Copying his gesture, I take his hand and lay it over my heart. “See?” I say. “You make my heart feel like it’s going to beat out of my chest.”
“I think I can make you feel a lot more than that, Em.” His sensual tone, and his warm hand over my breast does exactly that. My core radiates with a heat that burns down to my inner thighs. “In fact, I think I know exactly what you need right now.”
I gulp. “You do?”
He leans closer, nudging his face into my hair to drag his lips across my ear. “Ice cream,” he whispers. “You need ice cream.”
I laugh as my body shifts from sensual tension to suddenly craving ice cream.
“I think you’re right.”
Grabbing my hand, he winks at me, and we sneak downstairs, laughing like little kids on our way to the dim kitchen. We fill dishes with scoops of creamy vanilla ice cream, and he crushes vanilla wafer cookies to sprinkle on top.
“Do you want a cherry?” he asks, opening the fridge and pulling the small jar out.
“Yes.”
He unscrews the lid and pulls a cherry out by its stem, then holds it in the air between us.
“C’mere,” he says in a low, husky voice.
When I step closer, his eyes shine with mischief.
“Open your mouth.” He holds the cherry closer and gently places it between my parted lips.
I bite it off the stem and chew it slowly while he watches me intently.
“You have the sexiest lips,” he says, leaning down for a soft kiss. “I love watching you talk and eat.” After he puts a cherry on each of our sundaes, he puts the jar back in the fridge. “Is that weird?”
I shake my head as I pull two spoons out of the cutlery drawer. “No. I like watching you sometimes. Like when you play guitar. I like how your fingers move. And the muscles in your arms flex. I like the way your hair falls in your face.”
“You can watch me as much as you want, baby. I’m yours, right?”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” I say teasingly.
He chuckles and picks up our dishes. “Let’s go eat these in bed.”
Upstairs, he puts a romantic comedy movie on the TV, and we eat our ice cream, sitting so close our legs touch, laughing at the movie.
What happened earlier feels a million years ago.
“I like this,” I say. “Spending time like this together. I’m glad we don’t stay mad.”
He meets my eyes and contemplates that for a moment. “There’s nothing worth fighting about to the point that it takes time away from us. It’s not worth it. We lost too much time already.”
It’s late when the movie ends, and some of my insecurities creep back in as we get ready for bed. I refuse to let my mind wander off into places of bizarre jealousy. Especially after we had such a great end to the night.
This is my bedroom, and this my husband.
Maybe if I repeat it enough times, I’ll finally either believe it or remember it.
I flush with warmth when he shoves his shorts off and climbs into the bed with black boxers on. His legs are just as muscular and inked up as the rest of him.
I decide to do the same, sliding my shorts off and crawling in next to him wearing my thin, purple T-shirt and panties.
He pulls the fluffy down comforter up over us, and we simultaneously turn toward each other. The sheets are cool and incredibly soft against my skin. His delicious scent mixed with lavender fills the air. I’m gently pulled against his chest, his big arms encircling me. The motion is fluid and familiar.
Tilting my head up, our lips meet just as naturally. His hand slowly moves down to my ass, then even slower down to the back of my thigh to lift my leg up over his, pressing our lower bodies together. I gasp with the surprise of feeling him long and hard against me, but I let myself fit against him. Groaning against my lips, he kisses me deeper, holding me against his powerful body, igniting thousands of warm, scintillating tingles through my veins.
We gradually kiss slower, softer, gentler, until we’re barely kissing at all, our lips lingering, dreamily, mere millimeters apart, touching briefly every few moments. His hand—huge and warm—massages slow, gentle circles over my back in tune with his kisses, lulling me into a place of contentment I’ve never felt.
But I know that’s not true. As I drift off to sleep, I know there’s no doubt I’ve felt this way with him thousands of times before.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Timing can be the friggin’ worst sometimes.
I don’t want to get out of bed. Ever.
I waited an eternity to wake up to my wife all snuggled up in my arms in our bed, in our room, in our house.
Something so damn normal, yet I will never take for granted again.
For the first time in I don’t know how long, I have important plans today that can’t be changed.
Just a few more minutes…
Turning, I gently roll Ember over onto her back and gaze down at her. It still scares the hell out of me to see her sleeping. My gut always twists in fear that she’s slipped away again.
I brush her hair from her face. An excuse to touch her and confirm she’s real and not a dream. Her eyelids twitch, then open like little window blinds. I watch them morph from wide with confusion to soft with recognition.
“Hey you,” I say softly.
“Hey.”
Her shy smile tempts me to kiss her everywhere. Her lips, her neck, her breasts, her thigh that was curved around me last night.
Does my dick even work anymore? I don’t think I’d last thirty seconds if we made love right now.
I clear my throat to refocus myself. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better than I have in a while.”
“I did too.”
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I reach over to see a text message I wasn’t expecting this morning lit up on the screen.
Shit.
“I gotta go,” I say reluctantly. “I wish I could stay here with you, but I have a meeting I can’t miss.”
“Oh.” Yawning, she sits up. “That’s okay.”
“You don’t have to get up. You can sleep some more.”
“I have to work my arms today. I don’t like being in here without you.”
“It’s your room too. You don’t have to leave. You could even…I dunno…” I raise my eyebrow. “Maybe move your stuff in here while I’m gone.”
Her chest rises with a sigh, and her gaze slides over toward the door. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I just need to feel right about it.”
Hope crashes and burns into a ball of fire in the pit of my stomach.
“Didn’t last night feel right?”
She touches a lock of my hair hanging over my shoulder, twiddling it absently between her fingers.
“Your hair is so shiny and soft. It bothered me at first—your hair. Actually, it kinda scared me. You looked so wild.”
Closing my eyes, I lose myself in the light touch of her fingers in my hair, the angelic softness of her voice.
“But now I like it. It fits
you. Wild and soft.” Her lips brush across my shoulder. Quick and gentle. So gentle that maybe I imagined it. But it’s enough to make my cock throb for more of her. “I’m trying, Asher. To feel right.”
She looks a little bit wistful and a lot of beautiful when I turn to her. “Me too,” I reply. “We’ll get there.”
We always meet in the park on a typical workday because there’s usually less people, which means less chance of someone recognizing me. Don’t get me wrong—I love all my fans, but I’m not keen on people getting all excited about seeing me. Especially the ones who want to pet my tats or feel my hair. In general, the attention makes me feel strange and undeserving.
He’s already sitting on our usual old wooden bench, tossing seed to the birds. He has a thing for birds and won’t throw trash or people-food at them. Nope. This guy actually makes little bags of mixed seeds and dried fruit for them. When I sit beside him, we watch them in silence as they peck and hunt.
His text surprised me this morning, and as usual, his timing sucks. It’s been months since I last heard from him. Every day of silence made me wonder if he was dead.
But here he is, and here we are.
“Eight years,” he says in his deep, gravelly voice. “Can you believe it? Eight. Fucking. Years. That’s some crazy shit.”
I nod.
“How do you feel? In one word, tell me how you feel.”
“Grateful.”
He pulls a silver box from the inside of his leather jacket, taps a cigarette out of it, then lights it up with a wooden match. “Grateful,” he repeats, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “That’s a good word. You waited a long fuckin’ time for her.”
“I’d wait forever for her.”
“Understandable. She’s beautiful. Especially awake and talking, sans all that blood gushing out of her head. Although that stuff does tickle my fancy.” His unnaturally bright-blue eyes fixate on me as he takes a long drag, waiting for my reaction. I refuse to entertain him.
Not today.
“And when exactly did you see her?” The calmness of my voice completely masks the rage boiling inside me.
“When you were on tour. She didn’t tell you, did she?”
“No.”
His mouth curves into an evil grin. “That’s interesting.”
