Fixing her, p.20
Fixing Her, page 20
I know I’m hurting her, but dammit, she’s hurting me, too.
“Y’all having a perfect family moment with my niece without me. A little girl I already love, one you let me think wasn’t my blood. Now, I’m not even invited to the family get-togethers? You think I don’t miss her? I fucking do and when you let our worlds crash around us you fucking took her and my brother’s legacy from me.”
The tear down her cheek cuts me, but I need to put distance between us. If I have to watch her here in my family home, with my parents, acting like everything is fine for much longer I’m gonna lose it.
Every night I’m taunted with dreams of her in my arms. Of waking up next to her, of taking Ellie to the park, and building a family together. Then every morning, I wake to the sad reality that she was never mine to keep.
“Asher Kade! You’re not talking to any woman like that in my house. Chill out.”
Of course, my mom would wait until now to walk in with Peanut on her heels. Her scolding me brings me back to the moment. The look on Ellie’s face is a dagger to the heart.
“Hey, Peanut, sorry for losing my temper with your mom. You okay?” How do you tell a toddler your ego is bruised? I’m hurting this innocent girl, my blood. I’m an ass.
She gives me a quiet yes before she turns back to her mom.
“Is Muffin mad at you, Momma? Have you said sorry? When I mess up you tell me to say sorry.”
Being the amazing mom she is, she kneels down to Ellie’s level and talks clearly, calmly, and directly to her daughter, despite the fact she must be livid at me for the things I just said.
“Hey, baby, Mommy didn’t tell Asher something and he’s frustrated with her. Don’t worry, I’m working on saying I’m sorry and hopefully we can all be friends again.”
She looks up at me with the saddest, most hopeful eyes, and I’m tempted to forgive her just from that look alone. Peanut and my mom leave to head out back to the newly erected swing set, I’m sure my dad built with his own hands.
Mom’s using the tray Pop made her to carry fresh lemonade and some cookies with them. She’s stepped into the role of grandma as if it was one she was born to play.
Temperance and I are left alone, once again, in the kitchen where a month ago it all fell apart. My heart’s aching to step closer and pull her into my arms, but my brain is telling me to put as much distance as I can between us.
“Asher, I’m sorry for keeping the truth about Ellie’s father from you for as long as I did, but what you think happened—what you think I’m capable of—can’t be more wrong. Please, please let me explain.”
“I dunno.” I rub my hand through my hair. The pure need I have for her to be in my life is starting to win out. I’m going to have to face this if we want to continue at least as we have been.
“Next week is Ellie’s fourth birthday. Your parents want to do something small here. Have everyone come together to swim and celebrate. I want to tell them yes. They and Ellie would both love that.
“Ellie’s never really had any family before,” she continues, “other than me and Leigh. But if this is too much for you, I’ll tell them maybe next year. Ellie, Leigh, and I can do our annual manis and movie celebration like we have the past few years.”
“I want to be in Ellie’s life, no matter what our situation is. But I’m not sure where you and I stand.” I want to forgive her, but the pain from where she cut me is still too fresh.
“I understand if you aren’t ready for all this, but she’s going to be around, therefore so will I. We need to at least get closure as lovers, if there is any chance of being friends. You know, for Ellie.”
“Fine. Office tomorrow. Eleven a.m. That okay with you?”
“Yes,” she squeaks out. She’s always been a bit reserved when faced with something that makes her nervous and this is no different.
Without another word, I head down to the basement to grab the papers I need from Pop, who apparently overheard everything. Isn’t your hearing supposed to get worse, not better as you age?
“You were too hard on her. You’re hurting, Ash, but so is she. The pain is written all over that poor girl’s face whenever your name comes up.
“She cares for you. She doesn’t look like that when we bring up Mal. Only you, son. Remember that tomorrow when you hear her out. Trust me, I’m an old man, but I’ve made more than my allotment of mistakes over the years.
“It’s easy to disappoint those you care about when trying to protect them from a pain that is ultimately inevitable. Hear her out before you write off your feelings for her.”
“I know, Pop, I know. I’ll talk to her. I’ll hear her out. But that’s all I can promise.”
I’M PACING THE OFFICE. I have been since I got here at six this morning when I finally gave in to the notion that sleep was not going to be my friend. It’s been five hours, and I’ve barely touched the pile of work on my desk that needs to be accomplished today.
I hear the door open before I see her. Even after everything we’ve been through these past few weeks, I can admit what a vision she is. Even with her wrinkled wrap dress and two shoes that might look the same from afar, but I can already tell don’t match. She’s a mess. A beautiful mess.
Damn, I miss her.
Today she’s pulled her hair back and put on a bit of makeup, but it can’t conceal the exhaustion I see across her face. A look that surely matches my own.
We exchange nervous hellos, neither of us starting the discussion we’ve both been dreading. Minutes pass in uncomfortable silence. She’s anxiously leaning against the doorway fidgeting with the tie around her waist. I decide to suck it up and say the hard words I’ve been thinking on repeat constantly.
“I’m not sure how much closure we can get. I know what I am to you. I’m a reminder of what you lost. You might have liked me in school, but it was him who you wanted as a woman.”
“How could you think that, Asher? How could you just discount everything we had so easily? It’s only ever been you.”
“Really? Because that little girl you have says otherwise. You had a child with Mal. You must have been aware of his problems and yet you still had a child with him.”
The frenzy she ignites in me is hard to control. Whether I’m devouring her in bed or torn up over the scars only she can inflict, I can’t deny she affects me like no woman ever has.
I’ve never had a woman worth fighting for. I should have walked away when I found out the truth, but I know a part of me never could. I would rather have a sliver of her here fighting with me, than have none of her at all.
She’s pacing across the office as I lean against her desk. After several long moments, we both calm, and she comes to a stop right in front of me.
“I’m not sure what you think happened, but before I was pregnant I’d never had any contact with your brother. And I can’t say the contact I had with him after I was pregnant was something I’d want repeated.
“The only good thing that came out of wandering into a strange bar in the weakest moment of my life was my daughter.”
The recognition of what she’s admitting flashes across my eyes. Her shoulders visibly slump at the admission that she had a one-night stand with my alcoholic brother.
I’m still dealing with the idea that the brother I knew growing up, the one who taught me how to build things with my hands and how to throw a football, was the same brother to hook up with an obviously emotional girl.
The Temperance Price I know now and the one I watched from afar back in school can’t hide her emotions or feelings. I can’t see there ever having been a time in her life where she was any better at it. It’s part of who she is. She wears her heart on her sleeve. It’s one of the many things I fell deeply for during our time together.
“You and Mal? You didn’t date? You weren’t friends? How in the world did you manage to end up having my brother’s child?”
I can already surmise what happened but after all the secrets, I just want to hear it all from her. I want it all out in the open before we move forward from here. Her head slowly moves from side to side. She continues to tell me her hard truth.
“I needed a break from the decisions about Momma’s property, my schooling, a job situation. Leigh was at Gabe’s, and I honestly just wanted to be around people who didn’t feel sorry for me.”
“Tempie.” It escapes before I even realize it. I take her trembling hand in my own as she proceeds to explain what happened in her lowest moments.
“I sat alone for a long while, nursing one drink, then another. By the time a handsome man sat himself down next to me, I was past feeling like crying. I had to have had at least three drinks. It wasn’t enough for me to be falling down drunk, but it was definitely enough for my inhibitions to be lowered.”
I feel a sickness in my stomach, knowing what’s coming. No man ever wants to think about the woman he loves being with another man, let alone his own brother.
“I’m not an overtly flirty woman, but what I remember from that night is I was giggling, dancing, and allowing a perfect stranger to teach me to throw darts. In hindsight”—she lets go of our still adjoined hands as she sits down in the chair opposite of the desk—“I should have known I wasn’t clearheaded. But it was the first time in a long time I just felt free.
“I’d been dealing with a lot. While I didn’t know this man, he was nice to me, he was interested in me. So when he kissed me on the dance floor, I kissed him back. When he got us both another drink, even though I knew I’d had enough, I drank with him. By closing time, we were both so far past driving home, he offered for us to share a cab . . . to his place.”
My eyes drop to the floor, and I’m thankful to not hear the details of what happened from there.
“It’s been years, though. Years, and you kept his daughter from him. From us.” I hear the pain she must notice in my voice.
“Asher, that’s not fair. I woke the next day, without a clue who he was. I rushed out of there, and it wasn’t until three months later that I even knew I was pregnant. Do you know how embarrassing it is to admit that you got knocked up by a one-night stand you met at a bar in another freaking town and you don’t even know his name?”
“People hook up, it happens. But at some point, you had to know who he was.”
“She was a one-year-old when I started working at Pete’s. Back then, Leigh was just out of school and hadn’t started her business. She was working a few nights there. She knew they were looking for someone to work on Saturday evenings to help out. My first night working, he was there, planted at the bar.
“He was drunk and had a blonde on his lap. I barely remember the one night I was with him. Seeing him there, I knew even with different circumstances it could have never been more. I felt nothing seeing him again. Even less about the girl who was treating him like her own personal stripper pole.”
Pure relief flushes through me. She never wanted Mal. She didn’t even know who he was. A large part of me is overjoyed to be the only one she’s wanted the way I want her. I sit in the chair next to her and lightly wipe away the one tear that has finally fallen from her heavy eyes.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“After my shift ended, I was still in shock, but I had to talk to him. After settling up my money and getting my stuff together, I went back out to the bar to find him still planted in his seat.
“The blonde was gone, but the beer was still flowing. I walked up to him and immediately I knew he didn’t recognize me. He was drunk, too drunk for the conversation we needed to have. Not only did he not recognize me, he was now acting like I wasn’t sitting right next to him staring him down. I was invisible to him.
“I left downhearted. I felt like my old wallflower self. Unable to speak up, even about something as important as this. The next week he was back, only this time I worked until the end of the night. He was the last customer left and when he refused to leave Pete called a ride for him. Twenty minutes later, it was your dad who picked him up.”
“You recognized Pop?” I’m surprised.
We weren’t close back in school. We weren’t even really acquaintances, so the idea that years before I was back she recognized my dad surprises me. Our town feels small, especially when you are trapped here, but it’s easy to live your whole life here and not know everyone.
“Well, he was at all your games, cheering you on in the front row.”
“You went to my games?” I know she did, but I still can’t help wanting the verbal acknowledgement of what I meant to her back then.
The blush that creeps across her face has my cock stiffening, but now is not the time to deal with that. I push aside my physical need for her and continue our conversation.
“Of course! We’ve been over my giant, embarrassing crush on you before. Please don’t make me relive my awkward high school years all over again.
“I was shocked when I found out he was your brother. I was embarrassed and hurt. Even though I never even really knew you. But I had to tell him. A man deserves to know he has a kid. So one night when he was at Pete’s, before he had a chance to get completely wasted, I cornered him outside while he was lighting up a cigarette. I told him who I was and that he had a kid.”
“Then how did none of us know? Mal wouldn’t have kept this a secret.”
“He walked away that night, and every night after. I tried to talk to him for a month until he stopped coming to Pete’s. But I couldn’t just let him ignore me and definitely not his child. He didn’t have to want her, or pay child support, or be a part of her life. I just needed him to acknowledge he had a child. That she was his.
“One day I saw him working on a job site, sober and happy. Joking around with the other guys on the crew. I was mad. No. I was pissed.”
I hurt for her. She dealt with this. Alone.
“I was working two jobs just making ends meet on my own. My best friend was having to be a surrogate parent helping on nights I had to work. And he’s out every night drinking and acting like life hasn’t changed during the day.
“I called out his name, and the bastard had the audacity to flash that cocky Kade grin at me as if I were some girl he was just fooling around with.”
“Fuck, Mal,” I whisper. I’m so disappointed in my brother. Part of me wants to defend him, tell her about his struggle, describe in detail the kind of man he was before pills and alcohol. But if this is how he really treated her, she isn’t wrong. He was a bastard.
So much is going through my head. I want to comfort her, but I know we both need her to say it all. Instead of pulling her into my lap to hold her and feel her like we both need, I sit quietly and let her finish.
NOTHING HAS BEEN HARDER THAN sitting here within arm’s reach of Asher Kade, the man I love, telling him how I slept with his brother. He’s never going to be able to forgive me for the secrets I kept, but he deserves to hear it all. Every question he has deserves an answer.
I’ve gotten through the hardest part, but I continue to explain how once I got Mal to have a conversation with me without having any alcohol in him he asked me if I was sure he was the father, if there were other men out there who could be the dad.
I tell him how I slapped his big brother’s face and called him an asshole. How weeks later he was the one hunting me down, begging me to give him a chance to be in her life. How I let him convince me to keep her a secret until he could get his life in order.
“He met her once.” Sadness fills me as I remember that day. “She was two, and we met at the park by the lake. He’d been sober for a couple weeks and asked if he could meet her. We agreed until things were more stable he would meet her as a friend of mine.
“He met her, his daughter? Before he died?” Asher’s voice is so pained. My heart is breaking for him for the mixed emotions he must be dealing with.
“He did. He was great with her. I’d hoped that while I knew we’d never be a couple, the two of them could have a relationship.”
“What happened? What changed that day?”
“They were playing and laughing when a woman showed up, and immediately I could tell a difference in him. I didn’t recognize her. But you know me, if it isn’t Leigh or Sam, I probably wouldn’t recognize any other member of this town. Well, he ran over to her and the two of them got into what appeared to be a heated argument.
“Next thing I knew he was saying goodbye to Ellie and giving me some excuse about her being his ex and rushing off. The next time I saw him was on Saturday at Pete’s. Right in his old spot at the bar.
“It was like he was sending me a message that he wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t an angry or loud drunk, but I knew just seeing him there by the bar that he was back to old habits.”
The cold and hard Asher I’ve been seeing these past several weeks has vanished. In his place is the man I fell in love with. I no longer see anger and rejection in his eyes. When our eyes connect I see the man I love, the one who’d do anything to make my life and my daughter’s life better.
“Babe, you shouldn’t have had to deal with that alone. I wish my parents had known. I wish you knew they were aware of his addiction, too. There’s so much I wish I could have fixed so you wouldn’t have had to endure that.”
With his words the cracks I put in our budding relationship start to slowly heal. This won’t be a simple fix. We might never be able to be what we were. But here and now, I can tell he isn’t the same angry man I found in this office just a short bit ago.
“Mostly I wish I’d never made you feel like you owed me anything. You were here handling this while I’d run out of this town and away from everyone in it. I didn’t even know Mal had a problem. I’m sorry for not letting you tell me everything when you were ready.”
I can’t control the sob that escapes. This man is everything I’ve ever dreamed of and so much more. Neither of us is perfect, but somehow when I’m with him I feel perfect.
“I hated watching him fail but was helpless to fix him. I had a small child and was struggling on my own. I never imagined it would all end the way it did.”
