by Mignon Mykel
I also needed a minute to get my head back together, because this relationship was way too new to be going through this shit. This was a big neon sign.
Step away.
She’s not ready.
Resigned, I let go of her and pushed myself to the edge of the bed. Before I could stand though, Asher was on her knees behind me and grabbing for my arm.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked back at her. Her face was flushed and she bit that bottom lip of hers.
“I get claustrophobic, I guess,” she pushed out. Her eyes pleaded with me. “It’s a foster care thing,” she added quietly.
I stood there, staring down at her, neither of us speaking.
Finally, I succumbed. “Will you tell me about it?”
She started to shake her head so I pulled my arm from her. “I have to piss.”
What a fucking disaster.
I watched Porter walk away and out of his bedroom.
I screwed up. But what was I supposed to tell him?
My last foster dad fucked me and my body liked it? Because yeah, that would go over really well.
I pushed my fingers into my eyes, trying to ward off the burning sting behind them. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have even bothered with this.
I should have just stayed in Wisconsin and asked Ryleigh for a few more shoots, save a few more dollars, and start on my next adventure.
I could get a car loan. My savings and checking accounts were doing well, with the fact that Studio 11 was a premier studio and she could charge decent prices without complaints.
But where was I going to go? For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged somewhere, and I was slowly screwing it up.
I may not be able to do anything where Porter was concerned, but rather than completely screwing things up and therefore ruining anything I had with his family, I was better off leaving.
At least, leaving Charleston.
Go back to Wisconsin.
I slipped out of his bed and moved to his dresser, pulling open the drawer he cleared out for me this week. With both arms, I scooped it all out and deposited it on the bed before moving to his closet to grab my bag. I had it open and was about to toss my clothes in it when Porter walked back in.
“What the hell are you doing?” He sounded shocked, not pissed, like I imagined him being as he left the room.
“I’m going to head back early,” I told him, without looking at him.
I tossed balled-up clothes into my suitcase, but before I was even halfway through, he was pulling a shirt from my hand and pushing the packed clothes out of my bag.
“No. You leave tomorrow.” His voice held an edge of panic to it.
My eyes burned again as I pulled at the shirt he was trying to take from me. “I don’t want to screw things up with your family. We just shouldn’t do this.”
“No. We most definitely should be doing this.” He reached for my hand and pried my fingers from the shirt. Freed, he tossed it back into the still-open drawer. “Why can’t you just talk to me?”
“Because life’s just not that simple,” I snapped at him, bringing my face up toward his. Just as I’d been expecting him to sound pissed when he walked in, I was expecting to see some sort of anger on his face when I looked at him.
It wasn’t.
“God, Asher,” he said quietly. “I just want to know who you are. I wish you trusted me enough to share with me what makes you close off. Your zoning sometimes concerns me, but you passing out under me? That fucking scared me.”
“I’m claustrophobic,” I bit out, repeating my lie angrily.
“You weren’t in a small space,” he contested.
“You were trapping me.”
“If you needed to move, I would have let you.”
“You’re bigger than me.”
He frowned then. “I wasn’t going to force you to do something you didn’t want to do. I thought we were on the same page. Guess not.” He shook his head. “I don’t fucking need this right now,” he said, but I don’t think I was meant to hear it.
But I did.
Loud and clear.
And for whatever reason, it made the burning behind my eyes sting far worse than they had been, and before I knew it, I was crying. “I’m sorry. No, you don’t need this.” I shook my head and turned back to my task, sweeping everything into my bag and forcing it shut, not bothering to grab the shirt Porter took from me.
My hands were shaking, my body was trembling.
I needed to go.
I needed to leave.
I have to go.
I couldn’t see a damn thing through my tears. I lifted my bag and turned, ready to head out of his room, but Porter engulfed me in his arms. I let go of my suitcase and grasped onto his shirt with both of my hands, fisting them into the fabric and pressing my forehead to his chest.
With his arms banded around my shoulders and neck, and his face down near my head, I could hear him as he murmured, “I’m sorry, Ash. Please don’t leave.”
Her shoulders shook under my arms, but I wasn’t letting her go.
What a shit show.
I didn’t realize relationships could be this hard, because this fucking sucked. I hated the not knowing, but I also was a selfish bastard and wanted to keep her around.
I didn’t think that Cael and Sydney fought like this. And I knew damn well that my parents didn’t fight.
Well, maybe they did.
All I really knew was that I wasn’t going to let her go home, not yet. I mean, I would if she absolutely wanted to, but I didn’t think that she did.
I loosened one arm from around her shoulders so I could comb my fingers through her long hair. Every now and then, my fingers caught a snag, but she didn’t move. Eventually, her body stopped trembling under my own.
“Want to go to breakfast?” I asked, needing to do something. I tried my hand at lightening the situation. “It’s my birthday, as you know. And I really like breakfast.”
I felt her quick chuckle under my arms and everything seemed to click back into place. This was going to be okay.
“Alright,” she said against my chest. I let her push back but I wouldn’t let her pass without her looking at me. I took her hand and squeezed it before lifting her face with my other hand.
Her face was red, and puffy, and streaked with tears. Her eyes were nearly a sea green with red dancing in them.
And she was still so fucking beautiful.
I dropped my head to place a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you.”
Nico and I found this mom and pop breakfast spot the month before. Nothing like a good, home-style breakfast.
Sitting in the booth across from Asher, I picked up my water glass and sipped from the icy coldness as she looked through the menu.
I had changed into sweatpants and a team shirt before leaving the house, and Ash was in leggings and a hoodie, sleeves pushed up, her hair in a messy knot at the top of her head. We both looked like we just rolled out of bed, but that was the beauty of this establishment.
There was no judgment.
“You know what you’re getting?” she asked me, not bothering to look across the table toward me.
“I do.”
She hmphed, and I had to hide my chuckle behind a cough. “Well, I guess I’ll just do an omelet or something.” She closed the menu and placed it on top of my untouched one. She slouched comfortably into her booth, regarding me across the table.
Now wasn’t the place, but I badly wanted to go back to what happened this morning.
Was it something I could fix? Something that I could keep from doing, to keep her feeling safe? And just who the fuck hurt her so bad?
“So twenty, huh?” she smirked at me. “Old man.”
“Twenty is not old,” I scoffed.
“It’s the beginning of the end. Except you still can’t drink.”
“Legally.”
She shrugged. “True.”
“At least I’m closer to that than you, you young’un,” I teased.
Again, she shrugged, not taking the teasing bait. “I’ve seen enough to age some people.”
I froze.
Was she...?
Was that...?
But before I could ask her to elaborate, our waitress came. I held off my thoughts, letting Asher order first before I added my own. When our waitress left though, I wasn’t sure how to start that conversation again.
Thankfully, she did it on her own.
“So, you know I was in foster care.”
I sat up straight and pushed my water glass to the side so that nothing was on the table between the two of us.
Asher played with her silverware, her eyes trained on the table now.
What do I do? Do I say something? Prompt her to continue?
She looked up at me and tilted her head to the side, a sad smile on her face. “Since, I don’t know…I think I was three when the Bureau took me. I have no idea who my mom is, if I have siblings. Nothing.” Her eyes looked out the window beside our table. “I don’t really know who I am, I guess.”
As badly as I wanted her to open up, already I could see, could feel, what these words did to her. “We don’t have to talk about this here,” I told her, meaning every word.
“No, it’s fine.” Again, with that sad smile. I wondered if she knew it was strained. “No one in your family knows this,” she started, her eyes meeting mine and holding. “I’d rather it doesn’t get mentioned, but I do trust you.”
I sucked in a breath.
“When I emancipated, I legally changed my name. Asher Spence is my legal name now. But I was Genevieve. Genevieve Asher Spencer.”
She said her full name quietly and pronounced, as if she could taste the words.
“When I left,” she continued, her voice rising back to normal, “I needed everything from my past to stay in the past. There are some things…”
I watched as she bit the inside of her cheek and she shifted her eyes toward the window again. “Some things I won’t talk about. But it wasn’t terrible.”
As badly has it annoyed me having five siblings all up in my business at all points in my life, I couldn’t imagine not having stability being ‘not terrible.’
“My last house,” she started, looking at the table again, “it just wasn’t good.” She said the words with a shake of her head. “That was why I enlisted.”
“You never said why you weren’t still in.”
With a shrug, she picked up her fork and flipped it over so the prongs were down. “I just wasn’t cut out for it.” She looked back at me. “But hey, it led me to your family, so silver lining, right?” The smile on her face now was closer to her real smile, as small as it was.
There were questions on the tip of my tongue, but I held them back; instead, asking her about some of her early foster families. “Were all your homes bad?” God, I hoped not.
She shook her head and I felt a small amount of relief. “No. I was with a family until I was eight, I think, that I had a lot of hope for. But in the end, they couldn’t keep me. I don’t remember the reason anymore, but it was a wake-up call for me. If a family didn’t want me when I was bright, and smart, and polite, I figured no one was going to want me for the long-term. My case worker, Marie,” she smiled now, even though her eyes dropped to the table, “she had my number. Even as I started to be a bit of a troublemaker in school, she knew I was freaking smart. She didn’t really hound me on that until before graduation, but by that time, I knew that graduating was my last hope, so I had to do something about my poor grades and prove myself.”
I was struck with the realization that she and I had more in common than I would have guessed.
She fought for acceptance as a child, and then had to prove her worth as a teen.
I was pretty sure her brand of troublemaker wasn’t anything like mine, but the fact that, as different as our lives seemed, we had that much in common?
“So,” she said on a sigh, “that’s where I come from. A string of foster homes who didn’t want to keep me, for whatever reason. But here I am. In South Carolina, with a hockey player, of all people.”
I barked out a chuckle, a bit louder than probably necessary. “That all I am to you? A hockey player?”
With her head tilted to the side and her eyes bright and locked with mine, she shook her head. “No. No, that’s not all. With you, heck, with your family, I finally feel like I belong somewhere.” She shrugged again and I could only imagine the knots in her shoulders. “Which is really why this, being with you and seeing what this is and where it goes, scares me. “
Needing to touch her, but respecting that maybe she needed space, I reached out across the table, palm up. She stared at my open hand a moment before placing her smaller one in it, and I squeezed gently. “I promise you that, whatever happens, it will not affect what you mean to my family.”
“That’s a hard promise to make,” she whispered.
“I will not let you lose whatever peace you find. I mean, you and me? We’re young. Who knows what tomorrow brings. But I know how much my family means to you and I refuse to let you lose that. Besides, my mom would probably disown me if you left the Prescott fold. She likes you better than me.”
Her lips kicked up in a smile. “Doubtful. You’re her baby.”
“Her baby who has sent her to get her grays covered since he was thirteen. Trust me, she’ll pick you over me,” I said, smiling back at her.
“Okay,” she drew out, but with a teasing lilt that did things to me.
“We can totally ask her when we Skype her later.”
“Who said anything about ‘we’ with Skype? It’s your birthday. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“Trust me. She’ll want to talk to you.”
I wasn’t expecting to get into my past with Porter, but it just felt right. This morning had felt very push-pull—my emotions, my secrets, my fears, they all had the ability to push away what I wanted as mine.
Where I came from, at least the prettier parts, was something I needed to share, and Porter was the logical choice. Not because he was there, but because I found myself wanting him to always be there.
And at eighteen, with very little dating history to speak of, if that wasn’t a confusing thought, I didn’t know what was.
My last foster home was a nightmare.
But so was the school, so dating hadn’t happened.
The teachers weren’t bad, no, but transferring into a high school during your senior year was a difficult task. Then add in that I was a super young senior, having skipped grades as a bright elementary student, and I was immediately outcasted.
I was the girl with the crazy piercings in her ears and nose, who wore clothes that weren’t ‘in,’ and just didn’t fit in with the kids there. It was an upper-middle class school and if you weren’t in the popular groups, or an athlete, or hell, even a nerd, because they had their little cliques too, you were simply an outcast.
I didn’t try to make myself fit in, not when I knew I wasn’t staying. Why make friends for eight months out of your life?
The last time I did things one on one with a boy, I was sixteen. I had a boyfriend and everything. He was a decent guy. Artsy. We had been friends from freshman year up, until I was removed from that particular home right before senior year started.
We messed around some, but he wasn’t the first boy I kissed or messed around with. I think I hit third base at fourteen.
But after my last home, after him, the thought of getting close to a guy was terrifying.
Kissing Porter was easy.
Eventually though, hands would start to roam, and I was fucking terrified shitless of that step.
Granted, Porter was making the eventual transition easier, even if he didn’t realize it.
It was in his hug at the airport.
His hand on
my back.
His hand holding mine.
The easy kisses, the heated kisses.
And even now, as he pulled me into his lap as his laptop rang, dialing his parents.
“Porter, no,” I said, trying to move. As much as I found myself craving these little moments, his parents didn’t need to see me sitting in his lap. Good Lord, no!
He kept his hand on my hip though, squeezing gently as I tried to move. “We sit on laps all the time at home. Totally normal.”
My brows went up. “But I’m not your family! They’ll think—“
“They already think it, Ash.” His grin was borderline cocky, and I was in the middle of backhanding his shoulder when the call opened up.
Great.
“Happy birthday!” Ryleigh exclaimed the moment the video cleared.
I lowered my hand to my lap and glanced quickly at the screen showing us what his mother saw, seeing quite clearly the redness in my face.
“Thank you. How are you guys?” Porter asked, talking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Like me sitting on his lap while talking to his parents was an everyday occurrence.
Heck, in San Diego for Christmas, whenever we sat next to one another, there was at least the width of a hand between us.
“We’re good,” Ryleigh said as Noah came onto the screen and placed a glass of water in front of Ryleigh. I watched as he tapped her shoulder and she stood, moving to…
Sit in his lap.
Porter tapped my hip and whispered low, “Told you.”
“They’re your parents,” I whispered back. “They’re allowed to.”
“When does your flight land, Asher?” Ryleigh interrupted.
“Um,” I started. I couldn’t remember.
“Six,” Porter answered for me, and I glared at him over my shoulder. “What?” he asked innocently.
I twisted my mouth in a side scowl but he chuckled at me, and I couldn’t help but shake my head.
“Missy’s family asked about you, Asher,” Ryleigh continued, speaking of a newborn I helped shoot two months before. “They’d like for you to do her three-month shots. They were very impressed.”
