Undeniably Asher (The Colloway Brothers Book 2) (38 page)

I sit up, taking stock of how I feel. I lost count of how many Bloody Marys I had throughout the day. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. I spent hours stewing over Conn’s advice, reliving every single memory I’ve ever had with Alyse. I ached with the thought of giving that up. Of giving her up. It was excruciating to think of a life without her.

It still is.

Looking at the clock, I see it’s almost eleven o’clock. I think I passed out from exhaustion more than the alcohol and had been sleeping for almost seven hours. With the way my body feels, I think I need about seven more, but the need to find Alyse is far more urgent than drifting back into my restless dreamland.

After a pit stop in the bathroom and a quick brush of my teeth, I leave my bedroom and hear soft voices in the living room. Rounding the corner, I see Conn and Alyse sitting on the couch, each with a glass of wine in their hand, quietly talking. The TV is on in the background. With the millions of tons of confetti floating through the air it looks like the east coast is celebrating a brand new year, while I’ll be nursing a hangover here shortly. This is not at all what I had in mind for ringing in the year that I had planned to make Alyse my wife.

“Do you think I should check on him again?” she asks, worry threading her tone. At least she still gives a fuck after the way I treated her earlier. That’s something.

“Nah. Give him another half hour. Then we can,” Conn answers.

“You can go, you know.”

“Alyse, I’m not leaving. You and Asher belong together and sometimes he’s his own worst enemy. Besides, he needs a good tongue-lashing for the shit he pulled today and that’s what brothers are for.”

Her smile pulls me forward. I take a few more steps when Alyse spots me and stops mid-sentence.

“I’m glad he—”

Conn cranks his neck following Alyse’s line of sight. His lips thin in fury, directed entirely at me, but I don’t care. He’s right. I deserve it. I quickly shift my attention back to Alyse, drinking the sight of her in, lifting my hand to rub the pain in my chest.

God, I love her. So damn much.

I can’t lose her.

“Hi,” she says quietly, making no attempt to move. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty much like an asshole.”

“You should. You
are
an asshole,” Conn grates. “Did you not listen to a fucking word I said earlier?”

“I did.” I listened. I just took a little self-pity detour first.

“You owe me,” he says, standing and walking into the kitchen to set his glass down. I brace myself for the “tongue-lashing” he’s about to deliver. “Big time. I had to sneak your drunk ass down the stairs and out the back entrance and you cost me a fan-fucking-tastic lay tonight. On New Year’s Eve of all nights, thank you very much. All because you were wallowing when you should have been getting the fucking truth like I told you to. Honestly, if I were Alyse, I’d kick your jealous, overreacting ass to the curb. I have no idea what’s wrong with my brothers. Book smart, business shrewd, relationship incompetent,” he mumbles the last part under his breath.

I ignore the last part. Like he’s a damn expert at relationships. “Good thing you’re not Alyse then.”

Our eyes haven’t left each other’s and, at this point, I don’t know what to think, what to believe, but I know this: I’m going to give her a chance to explain, because I don’t just want her, I
need
her. Desperately. And if there’s somebody else, as ego bruising as it will be, I’m going to fight for her.

I want her to choose me.

Conn walks back over to Alyse and kisses her on the cheek. “I’ll be just a phone call away if you need anything else, okay? I can be up here in a flash.” He glares at me when saying the last part. Then he walks to the door, but before he closes it, he drops a bomb that stabs me in the gut like a hot poker. “You do anything to her in anger again and you and I will have a big problem.”

I start to ask him what the hell he’s talking about when I see Alyse’s hand cover the right side of her neck. A wave of nausea hits me fast. I think back to how fury lit my blood on fire when I saw bruises on her arm from Finn. I feel absolutely sick. I am no better than that fucking loser.

“Fuck, Alyse. I’m…Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine. Conn’s making it a bigger deal than it is.”

Sitting down next to her, I take the wine and reach behind me, setting it down. When I turn back, I gently remove her hand to inspect the damage I caused. My stomach rolls at the tiny bruises I already see forming. My eyes lift to see her watching me carefully.

“I’m—”

She places a finger to my lips. “Stop. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

My eyes search hers. I can’t possibly be mistaken at the love and affection I see. “Pick me, Alyse,” I beg, unable to stop myself. I’ll get down on my knees and stay there for all my days if I need to. I’ll swallow an ocean full of salty pride if it would persuade her to be mine. “Choose me. I don’t know how to live without you anymore. I don’t
want
to.”

“Asher,” she breathes with a voice that’s beseeching. “There never was a choice.” I must look confused because she adds, “There is no one else. There’s only you. I’m in love with
you
. I
want
only you.”

“But I saw you with him. Last night.”

She takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. I hate that her eyes shift from mine briefly. “I have a lot of things I need to tell you. Are you up for it now, because it’s not a short conversation.”

I nod, but I’m not at all sure I’m ready to hear something that could turn my entire world on its axis again.

“Do you remember the accident I was in when I was eighteen?”

“Yes,” I reply wondering what in the hell that has to do with the fact that I saw her in another man’s arms last night.

“And you remember that the driver died?”

I nod.

Another big breath. I can tell this is hard for her. “He didn’t die.”

“Okay…” I stretch the word out, getting more confused by the second. “What do you mean he didn’t die? And what does any of this have to do with last night?”

“The guy you saw me with last night wasn’t Cooper. His name is Beck Mercado. He’s Cooper’s cousin. He was the driver in that accident. He was my boyfriend.” Her eyes sweep down briefly before delivering the killing blow.

“And the father of my baby.”

Chapter 42

Asher

An hour later my mind is reeling with everything she’s told me. Her dead boyfriend is alive and is her stepbrother, and his stepdad is married to Alyse’s runaway mother.

Both she and this guy have walked through hell and come out the other side. Different people, but they’ve come out nonetheless. It absolutely shreds me that she was pregnant with someone else’s baby, but I would be a hypocrite of epic proportions to ever think differently about her because of it.

As much as I’m seething inside with jealousy, I feel for the guy. He was put in a tough spot. The difference between us is that
nothing
would have kept me away from Alyse. Not a damn thing. Now I understand why Alyse has been so protective of her heart. Why she’s tried to keep me out.

“This is all a little unbelievable. Like a fucking soap opera or something,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my hair. Then I ask the question that I know without a doubt I do
not
want the answer to, but not knowing will eat my gut raw. It’s already bled far too much these past two weeks. “Do you…do you still love him?”

The way I saw him holding her makes complete sense now. He’s still in love with her. I didn’t have to see anything other than the tender way he held her in his arms, even in sleep, to know that. I have to know if she feels the same.

Fuck. I can hardly stand to hear her answer.

She reaches for my hand, and both her gesture and words settle me. “I think a part of me was still in love with the
memory
of him. I’ll always care about him because of our history, but I’m not in love with him. I’m in love with you, Asher.
You
. I was wrong to keep all this from you, but it was just too painful to even put a voice to it and after I saw him at the bar that night, I just…I didn’t know what to do. What to think.
I
had to understand what was happening first before I could even attempt to talk to you about it.”

“I get it, Alyse.” And I do. I don’t like it, but I do get it. “I understand how hard some things are to talk about.” I reach for her, needing her in my arms, my mouth on hers. She stops me.

“There’s one more thing I have to tell you.”

Her nervousness makes me nervous, too. “You can tell me anything, Alyse. Anything.”

She swallows hard. “When I lost the baby and I thought Beck had died, I went into a very deep depression.”

“Understandable,” I reply softly, aching to hold her to me, to ease her discomfort.

“I…I didn’t want to live. I felt like I’d lost everything and I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. Neither Livia nor my father knew about Beck…or the baby. The pain was so vast and so deep; I felt completely and utterly lost. I would lie in bed at night and wish I were the one who had died instead of Beck, instead of our baby. I was in so much emotional pain, I literally couldn’t function. All I wanted was to be with Beck and my baby, even if it wasn’t in the flesh.”

She flashes a look of embarrassment before continuing. “The first time, I took an entire bottle of ibuprofen, but all I managed to do was make myself sick for three days. The second time, though, I got smarter. I took a handful of Cymbaltas and pain pills and as much whiskey as I could drink until I blessedly passed out.”

I literally cannot breathe when Alyse pauses, biting her lip. Her gaze shifts away again. This time I don’t give her a choice. I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms tightly around her, all the time thinking
fuck fuck fuck
! I could have lost her. Forever. The only woman who was meant for me could have been taken away before I even had her. I squeeze tighter, relishing in the warmth of her body bleeding into mine.

“Livia found me,” she tells me quietly. “I’d stopped breathing and she did CPR on me until the ambulance arrived. If she’d been even two minutes later I would have died. After three days in the hospital, my father admitted me to an inpatient psych ward where I spent the next thirty days in intense therapy and another year after that in outpatient care.”

My eyes prick as irrational guilt assaults me. None of this would have happened either if she were mine back then. If I’d never let her go.

“Jesus, Alyse. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you went through all of that by yourself. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

“Asher, you have no reason to be sorry. It’s just…my path, I guess.”

“I should have never let you go. It
is
my fault.”

“Stop. It’s not. You don’t…think any less of me because I had a little psychotic break?” she asks tentatively.

“Christ, why would I, Alyse? I can’t even imagine what you were going through. I’m in no position to pass judgment on something that I can’t possibly understand. If anything I’m proud of you.”

“Proud of me?” she asks disbelievingly.

“Yes. I’m not sure I could have been as strong as you were to get through all of that.”

“I wasn’t strong. I was weak.”

“No, baby.” I tilt her face to mine. “A moment of weakness doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. You’re here and you’re an extraordinary woman. The strongest I know.”

Her smile is tired and sad. “After I recovered, that’s when I got the tattoo. To remind myself to believe in hope and life and me.”

“I figured it was something deep and meaningful,” I say, stroking her hair.

“Yeah.”

She looks away again, going silent. I have to wonder why she was so nervous to tell me something like this. As far as I’m concerned, the whole dead/not dead boyfriend is a far more important part of what shaped Alyse into the woman she is today.

“Your mother’s very wise, you know,” she finally says.

“Yes she is,” I numbly agree, unable to think about anything but the fact that I almost didn’t get the chance to sit here now with her. I could have missed the smell of vanilla in her hair or pressing my lips to her warm temple or the feather of her fingers down my spine as I rock inside of her. My arms tighten. She squeaks so I loosen them, but only slightly.

“She told me that life takes us where we’re supposed to be, even if that road is bumpy and there are detours. My road has been hard, but I know it’s led me back to you.”

“She did, huh?” I smile. My mom is one-of-a-kind incredible, always knowing the right thing to say at the right time. I hook a finger under her chin, tilting her head up. Her gorgeous, misty eyes meet mine. “I wish I had never let you go.”

“Don’t let me go now.”

“Never,” I whisper. “Never again.” As I stare into the eyes of the woman who single-handedly brought my heart back to life, I can’t keep the next words from leaving my mouth no matter how hard I try. I didn’t plan on doing this now, but I can’t imagine a more perfect time. “Marry me, Alyse.”

“What?” she murmurs in shock.

“Marry me,” I say with conviction, positioning her so she straddles my thighs. “It doesn’t have to be tomorrow or next month or even in six months, but I want nothing more than to be your husband. I want to spend every single day of the rest of my life worshipping you, taking care of you, loving you. I’ve never loved a single person more than I love you, Alyse, so marry me. Let me spend the rest of my days showing you just how much you are wanted, because no one will ever want you as much as I do.”