by Elle Luckett
I started pacing again, smiling at a group of tourists as I stopped to let them pass. Spinning on the heel of my tennis shoes, I began to walk and almost collided with Asher. Even in cargo shorts and a polo, he looked sinfully sexy. The features I’d adored were chiseled from marble as he looked down at me, and my mouth went dry.
“Hey. Let’s walk,” I said, hooking a thumb over my shoulder and spinning to follow the path into the park as my heart thundered loudly in the center of my chest. There were benches in the sculpture garden, and it felt like a good place to get this talk out of the way. I was only a little way ahead when he caught up with long strides, his hands jingling the change in his pocket as we walked together.
Neither of us seemed inclined to break the silence that had fallen over us, lending a chill to the air.
It took five minutes and two hundred steps for him to break first.
I’d counted.
“Even after seven years, you can’t do me the courtesy of explaining why you left?” he asked too quietly.
I shoved my hands into my back pockets and slowed from a power walk to a stroll, chewing the inside of my bottom lip for a moment before I began. I might as well get it all out of the way now. Dragging it on would only make the damn thing more painful and prolong this whole mess. I had a life I wanted to get back to.
“Gatlinburg Stigmata had some of the submissives come in to help a couple of days of the month. We were asked to mingle with any newbies, answer questions, be big sisters and brothers. Forming relationships with them helped make it easier for them to understand that what they were feeling. That what they were feeling wasn’t—”
“I know all of this,” Asher interrupted.
“I was in the club on rotation, headed up to the office to grab paperwork to explain how to fill it out to a sub I was mentoring. The door next to the admin office was open, and I heard your voice. You were upset, and in the time it took to stop at the sound of your voice, I understood why.”
Asher shook his head, but some of the chilliness had eased from his blue eyes, making them a periwinkle color that comforted me.
“I hadn’t intended to eavesdrop,” I said, swiping at an escaped tear. “But you weren’t quiet, and Sophia asked all the right questions.”
I turned into the sculpture garden entrance and beelined for one of the benches as yet another silence stretched between us. If Asher knew of the conversation I’d overheard, he wasn’t giving me an inch. So I sat, folding my legs under me on the hot metal of the bench, staring at my knee’s shiny skin while I spoke.
“You were upset that your family had given you an ultimatum. You were over thirty, you had family obligations, and you were messing around with little whores in your club. They’d given you until your wedding to sow your wild oats before they cut you off and absorbed your trust fund.”
Glancing down at his hands hanging between his knees, I could see I’d been right in the choice he’d made. The ring finger of his left hand had a defined tan line. It was faded a bit, but still clear to see. Over the years, I’d let my imagination run wild, seeing him and his wife on the yacht he’d once bound me to the mast of in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I’d imagined them together on his California King bed with the soft down comforter and the view of the smokies that had always stolen my breath away. Those images had been painful enough, but when one of the girls had sent me a text making sure I was okay after the wedding, I’d had to stop focusing on it. I’d had to stop imagining it. I’d had to let him go.
A part of me had been convinced that if he loved me, he’d come after me. That if we’d had something worth fighting for, he’d go to war.
He hadn’t.
Neither had I.
“That’s why you left?”
“That’s when I went to your place and grabbed my things. I was upset and confused. I needed time to think. I figured you’d have to come and talk to me about it eventually.” I glanced up and met his eyes, holding them firmly. “You didn’t.”
Asher closed his eyes, his stoic silence continuing to the point of frustration. Gripping his bottom lip between the knuckle of his index finger and thumb, he breathed in deeply. In and out, again and again, as the tourists began filtering in and the static noise grew deafening. I lifted my face to the sun and closed my eyes, absorbing the heat as I tried to cling to my composure. Revisiting wasn’t easy. That last week in Gatlinburg had been one of the worst in my life for a myriad of reasons.
“You left based on a conversation you overheard?”
I dropped my face and angled it toward Asher. “I left based on a conversation you didn’t have with me. I left based on the fact that I wasn’t going to be a part of pulling you in two. I came home because you didn’t have any fight in you. You gave up. I made it easy for you. You took my need for space as a choice and walked away from us.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? Jesus, Asher, I was in love with you... all the way in love with you. I would have done anything you’d asked of me. I did everything you asked of me. When I wanted something from you, when I actually needed you to fight, you didn’t.”
“You didn’t give me much of a chance. You walked away.”
“You understood me better than anyone I’d ever met. You made it a point to read me in ways others couldn’t. You can deny it all you want, but even in the middle of the hurt and pain, I believed you’d read me and that you’d give me the time I needed and then follow. You’d called me out on it before.”
“I’m not a mind reader, Shauna. I can’t give you what you need if you don’t let me know there’s a problem. You didn’t wait to talk to me and then walk away. You left while I was out of the house, no word, no note—”
I held up a hand to stop him. No note?
“I left a note on the fridge. I remember because I used your Shakespeare poetry magnets to spell out ‘I love your codpiece’ to hold it in place.” I’d hoped the small injection of humor would make him see that I was having issues but still wanted him as much as I always had. As I’d said to him, he had the deepest of understandings when it came to me. He’d been able to read my body, mind, and soul because he owned them all.
“There was no note.” Asher hung his head, his chin against his chest as he shook his head.
“I left one,” I insisted, the tone of my voice had his chin angling to a point he could see me again.
“What did it say?”
“Um, I need a minute. Give me a week to get my thoughts in order. I just need to think. Or something close to that, anyway. I wanted to give you time to think about what you had to do, and I wanted to give myself some time to come to terms with possibly losing you.”
“Yet, you didn’t bother coming back to talk to me. I guess you came to terms with it just fine.” His anger mingled with his hurt, something I hadn’t heard from him before. The guilt it inspired in me only served to bring back memories I’d buried. Images from that night flashed in my mind. Even after all this time, they made the heat fade and a chill settle in my veins.
“I did.” I watched his face as his spine stiffened. “You’d already made your choice. It was clear when I watched you fucking her on the ottoman in front of the fire.”
Covering his mouth with his hand, Asher sat back on the bench, looking mortified. His skin paled, and emotion finally broke through the stony set of his features enough to crumble them.
“That was the night I packed my car and drove back to New Orleans. There was no going back from that for me. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive you. I loved you so much.” Part of me still did, but I wouldn’t and couldn’t tell him that.
Dragging in a breath, I gave him a moment to wrap his head around that before I went on. If he’d done that little bit of research on me, I figured I needed to give it all to him. He had to know, and if he didn’t, he needed to.
“I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I’d been home for almost two months. I was five months gone and barely showing. I tho
ught it was the flu.” I laughed without humor and picked at my tennis shoes. I felt him stiffen next to me and realized immediately that I’d been wrong.
He hadn’t known.
“Pregnant?”
“Your research on me didn’t show you that?”
“You were pregnant with my child and didn’t tell me?”
Another humorless laugh fell cruelly. “I tried. I left messages at your office, at your home, and at your parents. I even tried at the club, but you never called me back. I tried right up until she was born, and I drove up there to talk to you before your wedding, but I couldn’t get close to you. You had your trust fund and were stupidly rich—no one was willing to let me near.”
“I have a daughter?”
“Asher—”
“I’m a father?”
Panic rose inside of me as I nodded, and the tears fell freely. The life I’d worked so hard to build for Ashleigh and me was suddenly shaken, and the foundation I’d maintained had begun to crack with uncertainty. Asher was an unknown variable in the lives of my daughter and me, but I’d told him because he deserved to know. I told him because I hadn’t been able to before.
“What’s her name?”
“Ashleigh Laurel.”
Asher Morris, always a formidable man with a dominant nature, crumbled at the sound of her name. I’d named her Ashleigh after him, but Laurel had been his grandmother’s name. A woman who had been compassionate to him as a child and loved him when his mother was too busy with her social life. She’d been the standard he held every woman to. She was who he spoke about when we’d blocked the world out and fell into the bubble of us up in his cabin in the smoky mountains.
I reached out to offer him comfort but found myself in his lap before I’d had time to make contact. Asher pressed his face into my neck and breathed me in folding his arms around me, even as I stiffened. The whole world melted around me when he whispered her name, and I slung my arms around him in resignation. I could give him comfort. I still cared about him enough to provide him with that.
I’d spent a lot of time with Asher while we’d been involved in and outside the club. He hadn’t wanted a servant, so beyond the club’s walls or his bedroom, we’d been a couple in every way you could be. In all that time, he’d never been vulnerable. Dominant men always seemed to have a hold on their emotions. I certainly hadn’t seen a man who held such formidable attributes close to tears as Asher was now. It made me feel strange.
Sitting in his lap, running my fingers through his hair, I said nothing and watched the tourists milling about the park, taking photographs and laughing as they spoke. I spotted two girls in their early twenties looking like they’d stepped right out of a fashion magazine, admiring the man who still held me close to him, making my skin bead with sweat. I understood their inability to glance away. Even half of his face was a draw to people.
It took a while, but when he eventually composed himself enough to draw back, I sighed. The hot, humid air actually felt like a relief to the heat he’d created between our bodies. I didn’t dare look at his handsome face. I wasn’t sure I could handle whatever emotion he held in those eyes he shared with our little girl.
“Will you tell me about her?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Nodding in agreement, I moved from his lap and took my place on the bench next to him again. He let me go easily, his hands brushing through the strands of his dark hair clasping them at the back of his head as he looked at me.
“She’s my whole world. Beautiful, smart, and funny. She has your eyes.” I paused and studied his face for a moment. “And your cheekbones. She was in kindergarten but will start first grade in the new school year. She loves animals, Frozen, and any Disney movie. Her favorite show is Paw Patrol, but she can be convinced to watch Spongebob when she has people to watch with her. She lights up any room she walks into, and she’s going to marry Kristoff when she’s bigger. She’s currently going through the ‘why?’ stage at the moment. She wants to know how things work, why they work. She inherited the need to chatter from me, but she’s more than capable of entertaining herself. She reminds me of you when she’s doing that: thoughtful, inquisitive, and studious.”
I stopped for breath. Rambling was a trait of mine that went into full effect when I talked about my daughter.
“Who is Kristoff?”
“Sorry?”
“Kristoff? The boy she’s going to marry?”
“It’s a character from Frozen. A cartoon man. Her favorite character is a reindeer named Sven, and Sven is best friends with Kristoff. So, she figures marrying Kristoff means she will also be best friends with Sven.”
Asher’s face fluttered into the area of vulnerability, once again. I couldn’t help the smile that followed. “Kid logic doesn’t always make sense.”
“Tell me more.”
“Asher, she’s damn near perfect.” I was getting emotional. “Kind and brave as they come, she’s grumpiest when she’s in need of a nap. Everything becomes a soap opera then, and she doesn’t like to be laughed at, even if she’s close to throwing a tantrum, and being stubborn makes it so much worse. I love seeing the world through her eyes, though. Everything is an adventure. The first time I took her to the park, she asked if she could play with the friends she hadn’t met yet.”
I fell into silence as my mind took me back to that afternoon, and a smile tugged at my lips.
Asher fell into silence next to me, staring out into the park, looking stricken.
“How hard did you try to reach me? Did you know when you left?”
“If you’re asking if I left out of spite, I didn’t. I had no idea I was carrying her until the fifth month when I started to show a little. I was too—” I cut myself off. I’d been too emotionally spent to realize I’d skipped periods and notice my body changing. I’d been mourning my relationship and putting my heart back together. I didn’t want to lay that guilt at his door.
“When was that?”
“That May.”
“New Year?”
“By my estimations,” I said gently. That Christmas and New Year had been spent up in the mountains surrounded by snow in his cabin. We’d spent hours lying in front of the fire, making love, and playing games. “Thinking back on those weeks up in the mountains, I hadn’t taken one of my pills, and we never used condoms. We’d been too wrapped up in one another.”
Asher made a noise that was full of sarcasm.
“What?”
“That trip was the reason my family gave me the ultimatum.”
“What?”
Drawing in a breath, he raised an arm and rested it along the back of the bench. The emotional vulnerability passing as cynicism took its place.
“I was in love with you, too, Shauna. I’d never known a woman like you in my life. They could see that. Suddenly I was breaking all the rules. They’d given me that freedom to play out my sexual deviancy before I married the woman they’d picked out for me. They’d given me my twenties to sow seeds and tame the wildest parts of myself before I was forced to represent them in public. Falling in love with one of my…” He trailed off, not saying the words I’d been waiting for.
“Whores?” I finished for him. “I’d overheard some of the terms while he’d been talking to Sophia in the office.”
“They didn’t understand, but yes, that was the terminology my parents used. I’m their only son, and they demanded I carried on the family name with another good family from their over-privileged circle of friends with ‘old money’. My sisters were in the same boat, but they would carry on the line, not the name like I was supposed to.” Asher scrubbed his face, tipping his chin to look at me again. “Poor little rich boy, right?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Sorry. I just hear it, and that’s how it sounds to me.”
“It’s an antiquated system, but your family is in the one percentile. A group known for their archaic trad
itions.”
Asher smirked again. “That’s an understatement. Their heads are so far up their asses…”
We studied one another for another moment, all of the information settling between us like ash after a fire.
“What does this mean for Ashleigh?”
“Nothing.” Asher pressed his thumb to the dip beneath his lower lip and rubbed while he thought. “My family can’t and won’t know about her until you have a contract drawn up by a lawyer. I’ll sign it before they know she exists. I’d like to get to know my daughter, but not until I have this taken care of. Do your parents know a lawyer?”
“Preston’s brother-in-law is a lawyer.” I heard myself say the words and stopped. “Asher, I… you can meet her, but when you do, you can’t just announce that you’re her father. She’s five, almost six. She’s not going to process that. I need to know you’re not going to be in and out of her life inconsistently.”
“I’m willing to abide by your rules.”
“And your wife?”
Asher’s eyes swung to mine. “Shauna, I’ve been divorced for two years.”
I was stunned into silence again. I hadn’t heard that from the gossip chain I had contact with from Gatlinburg. I still spoke to a couple of the subs there, but they gave me information on everyone but him, and I’d been too embarrassed to ask. Seven years was a long time to hold a torch for someone I’d thought had no interest in me.
“You thought I would seek you out while I had another woman in my bed?”
“I… no. I thought you were here because you’d found out about the pregnancy.”
“I had no idea about Ashleigh. I... I came back for you.”
The lump in my throat and tears threatening forced me to drop my gaze to my hands.