We walk over to the dock area where the same boat Asher had the other day is waiting.
“Does Devon mind you taking his boats out all the time? Won’t you get in trouble?” I ask as I climb onto the boat. I turn around and Asher is looking at me like I have an orangutan sitting on my head. “What?”
He walks forward and kisses my lips. “Nothing. You’re cute.” Asher must catch my eye roll because he adds, “Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who hates to be called cute?”
I cringe at the word. Saying a girl is cute is like saying she’s your little sister or some small thing that needs care. I much prefer being called bold, accomplished, or successful. Not cute.
I scrunch my nose at Asher and shake my head letting him know I am not a fan of the word cute.
He laughs. “You’re not helping your case.”
I lean my weight onto one foot and give him a stare-down. Asher stops laughing. His tongue skims his lip as he places his arms around my waist and pulls me back into him.
“I take it back. You’re not cute.” His eyes looking directly into mine. “You’re talented. You’re feisty. You’re mesmerizing. You’re captivating. And you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Yeah, those words will do.
With a soft kiss on my neck, he releases me, leaving me breathless and brimming. I set my rose down and watch him untie the boat from the dock. His shirt is clinging to him, showcasing the deep curvature of his muscles and the two divots at the bottom of his back.
I am staring at the perfection that is Asher when he turns around and stops, looking startled. “Wait. Where’s your sister?”
“She’s not coming.”
It must be the thing he wanted to hear because Asher gives me a smile the size of Ohio.
“Lucky boy,” he says, walking past me to start the engine while the boat drifts from the dock.
I take my place, standing in front of the chair I sat in last time. We’re not going fast at all so I choose to stand up and hold on to the panel in front of me. I love being on the island of Capri but not as much as I love looking at it. I know we have “mountains majesty” back home but this place is just surreal.
Asher grabs my arm and pulls me into the spot between his legs and drives holding on to me. This isn’t a lesson in driving like it was the other day. This time, it’s out of pure need to be next to me. I settle in as the boat skips over waves and sea spray mists around us.
The waves and wind in our ears make it hard to hear anything. That’s okay. I don’t need to hear anything. I have the intense feeling of Asher behind me, the smell of the sea and the sounds of ocean. I use the hymn of the motor humming and the sound of it muffling with each crash down on a wave as a down beat in my head. Soon a chord plays over that and I hear the sounds of my violin. The chords build up and I hear them playing out an amplifier, and then another violin joins in and then another until there is an electronic symphony in my head. It is exactly the sound I was working on before the accident.
Before I couldn’t play anymore.
Before I couldn’t feel anymore.
I’m torn between feelings of excitement for my breakthrough, or fright for what it could mean, when the boat starts to slow down. So caught up in my own head, I didn’t realize Asher had released me.
I crane my head back to look at him. His gaze is fixed ahead. His face is pensive, lost in thought. I don’t know when the mood changed. I look around at my surroundings and see water on all sides of us, the island lost in the distance.
Asher turns off the engine. This should be about the time I wonder if the hot guy I met on vacation is really a murderer who dumps bodies in the middle of the ocean. If that’s the case, I should have a weapon and, unfortunately, all I have is a rose.
I remain standing by the controls while Asher walks down to the lower cabin. He stays down there for a few minutes and comes back with a cardboard box and places it on the floor at the back of the boat.
The boat is moving up and down, riding waves from the current of a large ship that passed us. By the time the boat settles down to a calming bob in the water, Asher is standing at the back of the boat, staring out in the sea.
With his hands placed on his hips and his head bowed, Asher breathes deeply. I maintain my spot by the controls and watch him. We stand in silence for a long time. I’m not sure how long, because I’m not wearing a watch, but it feels like a long time.
Finally, Asher turns around and lifts the cardboard box off the floor and opens the top. From inside, he takes out another box. This one is a black cube. It’s a thicker material than the cardboard and from the way Asher is handling it, I can tell its contents are important. He holds the black box in his hands for a moment, staring at it and not saying a word. His expression is solemn and distant.
Asher breathes in deeply and when his head lifts and sees me still standing by the controls, his expression softens.
“This is my grandfather.”
His grandfather? In a box? This is so not how I saw the day playing out.
“Nice to meet you?” I say to the box with an awkward wave.
Asher lowers his gaze back to the box and lets out a sigh. “This is weird.”
I shake my head in agreement. “This is weird.”
We both share a grim look, which causes me to snort and him to laugh, and a tiny bit of the tension is lifted off the boat.
When Asher told me stories about his grandfather, I hadn’t realized the man was dead. And by dead I mean cremated in a box ten feet from where I’m standing.
When Asher was ten, he was sent to live with his grandfather, who was difficult to please. That must have been a nightmare. Being ripped from your warm and loving home? That’s just cruel.
I didn’t press for more of the story last night and I won’t today. Obviously, this is something Asher is trying to work through. I don’t have my own shit together, let alone have a say in how someone I just met should handle his emotions.
“I’ve been holding onto this thing for a year. First, it just sat in my apartment collecting dust. My grandfather, he was a control freak. He planned everything about his life. Hell, he even planned his own funeral. But the one thing he never did was tell me what to do with the fucking ashes.”
Asher is looking down at the box, observing it like its the first time. His eyes skim over it a few times before he lifts the top.
“For six months I’ve been sailing around the world trying to find the right place to leave him. Nowhere back home seemed right.” Asher frowns. “Isn’t that strange? I couldn’t think of a single place to scatter the ashes back home?”
Confusion and desperation sound in his voice. I search for the right words to comfort him.
“It sounds like you were trying to find the most perfect place,” I say, and then dare to go further. “Or maybe, you just weren’t ready to let him go.”
Asher slowly shakes his head but doesn’t answer. He walks over to the back of the boat and opens the door to the small diving port and takes a step down closer to the water. Kneeling down, he balances the box on his knee and opens the plastic bag inside containing the ashes.
I walk over to where he is and take a knee down beside him. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
He swings his body toward mine and those molten caramel eyes look so soft. “I didn’t know where to put him because my contempt is so deep I didn’t care where he went. Then yesterday, you spoke about how magical this place is. You said you could live here forever, and I just knew. This is where I should put him.”
Last night I made a comment about an island and he decided he was going to scatter the ashes here and I had to come along for the ride. Hell, he even invited my sister.
“Have you always been this impulsive?”
Asher’s lips widens in a closed-mouth smile. “Every second of every damn day.”
I know I should be alarmed by his actions but I totally get them. I u
nderstand what it’s like to put your emotions on hold. Avoidance has been my companion for the last six months. Asher’s been dating the emotional devil for a year.
Actually, something tells me they’ve been together for years.
He takes the box with its opened plastic bag inside and holds it upside down over the water. Gray ashes drift out of the box, hitting the water and drifting off with the breeze. Either his grandfather was a small man or there aren’t as many ashes from a cremated body as I assumed there would be.
When the box is empty, he gives the bottom a final pat before setting it down on the floor beside him. Our legs are getting wet with the current that splashes up.
The two of us sit here for a while, watching the ashes drift away from us. A pile seems to stay close to the boat, not wanting to leave but after a while as the boat drifts away, the ashes gain some distance.
I won’t tell him that I’ve already said about fifty prayers in my head. I say most of them for the man the ashes belong to. I say a few more for Luke. He would have been twenty-one years old today. I bite back my tears and let out a breath to control the feelings falling from my eyes. Hopefully Asher just thinks I’m emotional because of the experience he is sharing with me.
“What would you have done if Leah came?”
“This wasn’t as monumental a moment as you think. I didn’t care who was here. I just wanted you.”
He has to stop saying things like that. It makes my heart beat twice as fast and my head spin in twenty different directions of anxiety.
“Why would you want me here?” I ask and then sidestep my words a bit. “I mean, I’m not weirded out or anything.”
Asher doesn’t miss a beat before looking straight into my eyes and explaining with deep conviction, “I’m drawn to you. When I want something, I take it. You already caught on how impulsive I am. It’s just the way I operate.”
I envy him. Everything about my life had been planned out. Now I don’t know what to do. I want to be impulsive and free too. Maybe losing control is the only way to really gain it.
I look at the surroundings. Asher didn’t drop anchor so we are drifting out, the ashes now far in the distance. We are surrounded by nothing but the open ocean with the mainland in the distance.
My hands rub along the top of my thighs, and I catch Asher’s eyes as they follow the action. He rises on his knees, those intense eyes bearing down on me. I know he is going to kiss me and for a second I think about leaning forward. But, instead, out of sheer loss of control of my own nature, I spring up on my toes and dive into the water.
Cold Mediterranean water cools my warm skin. My body is submerged under and I break away, diving further down before swimming up to the surface.
My arms rise to push my hair smooth against my scalp. Looking up, I see the sun shining above me, beating down in approval. My body spreads out onto of the water, my arms and legs out like I’m making a snow angel. Instead, today, I’m an ocean angel looking up at the heavens.
This is for you, little brother.
Weightless, I bob and weave with the waves, a spatter of water covering my face but I’m not concerned. I don’t have any real cares at the moment. Everything feels so buoyant and it feels wonderful.
A splash awakens me from my date with the sun. Asher saddles up beside me and takes a place with me. We’re like two starfish in the middle of the ocean.
If anyone passes us they’ll think we’re out of control.
Because we are.
Wrapped in a large towel, I swaddle myself and settle onto the sun pad at the bow of the boat. With the sun at its peak, our clothes will be dry in no time.
Asher’s may dry faster than mine. His shirt will, at least, because it is hanging from the railing of the boat, drying in the breeze and sunshine. In return he is wearing his shorts and nothing else.
Well-defined pecks with the perfect sprinkle of chest hair . . . Yeah.
A lean, taut stomach with two, four . . . Yeah.
Gorgeous thighs whose definition are made out by the wet shorts currently sticking to him. Oh yeah.
A loud sound from deep inside Asher’s throat catches my attention and I immediately avert my eyes north of the border. When I look back at him, he shakes his head and smiles, liking that he caught me gawking.
He kneels down to the sun pad, then lays his body next to mine, facing me. “Its ninety degrees out here. Lose the towel.” His hand grabs the lining and pulls the towel away from my body,
I grab hold of it. “No way. I’m wet and cold and have all kinds of lady parts that aren’t acting very ladylike.” Not only is my shirt getting increasingly tight but when I put on white shorts this morning I wasn’t planning on taking a swim in them.
He rolls his beautiful blond head back and laughs out loud. “It’s okay for you to check out my man parts but I can’t see yours?”
My lips purse. “My parts are more . . . sacred.”
“That they are. But you’ll dry off faster without the towel.” He peels the towel off my shoulder and lets it fall to the side. “I promise. I won’t check out your—okay, I lied. I just checked them out.”
My arms jerks up and hit him in the arm. “You’re such a fool.”
“Watch it, woman. You have a serious hook. Nice to see that hand of yours is still useful for something.”
I look down at my hand and notice it didn’t hurt. That doesn’t mean it will ever heal. It just means it may not be as fragile as I have been treating it.
Asher leans down and grabs my injured hand in his, rubbing his fingers along the scar. “I’d like to know more about the accident.”
“I’d like to know more about your grandfather,” I counter. So far, Asher hasn’t told me anything worth sharing my secrets for.
Asher’s brows curve in. “There isn’t much to tell. He’s dead.”
“When did he die?”
“Last summer. He had a massive heart attack. Died before I made it to the hospital.”
His eyes stay down, his voice void of the emotion one would expect to bear when losing a loved one. Even though he seems to have no feeling toward the man, it still seems important to share my condolences.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
The jaw on his chiseled face tightens as he works out a thought in his head. Asher closes his eyes tight and holds it for a few beats. A heavy sigh releases and when those eyes open, they’re honey.
“Are you for real, Emma Paige? Can I trust you? I’ve searched for a reason to believe otherwise. I’ve done my research and I can’t find anything that leads me to believe you aren’t anything but perfect.”
A red flag goes up in my head. He did research on me? What kind of research? I know in the age of Facebook and Google, you can pretty much find out anything about anyone but I’ve never done that. Never needed to. And in this case, I didn’t even have an urge to.
But with the red flag is a white flag waiving so dramatically my body does a double take as I try to contain my excitement.
This man thinks I’m perfect. Yes, me. The broken mess with a broken hand and a broken dream and a broken soul.
I lean up on my knees and gain some space from Asher. “If you knew the half of it you wouldn’t think I’m perfect. You want to know if I’m real? Well, I need you to tell me something real. And don’t say that you’re impulsive and you’re drawn to me. Because right now I can’t believe how someone as amazing as you is here with me. It doesn’t make sense and it makes me feel so insecure you won’t believe.”
Asher rises to his knees as well and meets me eye to eye. “I make you feel insecure?”
I nod my head slowly. He looks to the side, clenching his jaw. I think he’s going to tell me he wants to head back but he opens his mouth and says, “My mother’s name was Juliette Asher and my father was Alejandro Gutierrez. I haven’t said those names out loud in twenty-two years.”
My mouth falls open slightly. I haven’t said Luke’s name in six months but I’d hope twe
nty-years from now I’d be able to tell stories about him.
Asher looks back to me and continues. “My father was a mechanic with no family to speak of or two cents to rub together. Not to mention Latin, something my Scottish grandfather would never have allowed. But my mom, she was in love with my dad. She gave up her family and everything that came along with it. We lived in a poor section of Pittsburgh while my parents tried to figure out how to make ends meet. My mother was educated but she didn’t know how to do anything other than play music. She was bred to be a rich man’s wife, not a money-maker.”
“And my dad, he was a hardworking man. He had a criminal record so work was hard to come by. We didn’t have much but I never went without.”
Asher’ s hand takes mine and skims over the scar again, keeping his focus on the imperfection while he tells his story.
“When they died, I didn’t have any other family. My grandfather took me in under one condition: I was never to speak of my parents again. It was the first time I ever met him. He didn’t show love the way my parents did. I learned early on that if I pleased him, his pride in me was as good as love. I let him breed me into who he was. Work consumed me. Family was not an option. According to him, who can have one when they are going to leave you anyway.”
My own jaw tightens as I try to control the burn in my throat that comes before a good cry. I breathe in calming breaths. “Asher, you know that’s not true. Family is what you lean on when times get hard. I know you don’t remember that but your parents seemed like the kind of people who would be there for you no matter what.”
His cheeks hollow but with a deep rumble he lets out a puff of air and shakes his head. “I know. I just have a hard time remembering sometimes.”
Is that what he’s doing out here? Working for Devon? Trying to figure out who he is?
He must think I’m such an ass. I’ve been complaining about my overbearing parents, yet here he is trying to remember his own for the caring people they were. Probably exactly like mine are.
And to not have spoken about them, said their names out loud in so long. Well, that’s just sad. It’s a sadness I am swimming in, myself, and if I don’t fight the current I’ll drown. I can’t let that happen.
Reckless Abandon Page 11
