Asher (Ashes & Embers Book 6)

by Carian Cole

  Katherine: Perfect! Dinner is in the crockpot. I can’t wait to see you guys!

  Me: I’m excited to see you too!

  When I close the text app, I see a folder on the main screen titled My Love . Without even thinking, I tap on it, and the screen loads with thumbnail images. It takes me a few seconds to realize all the photos are of me.

  Ember.

  Before the accident.

  I tap on one to enlarge it, and I see I’m in my early twenties, at the beach wearing very short denim shorts and a bright-red bikini top. I’m smiling at the camera, and my long hair is blowing in the breeze. I look happy and healthy—not a care in the world.

  I feel a tinge of envy toward my past self, totally unaware of how much my entire life would someday change.

  I swipe to the next one, and the next, and the next, until one fills the screen that immediately sends a different, deep stab of envy straight to my heart.

  Jealousy.

  Pre-accident Ember is standing in the bedroom doorway wearing sexy black-lace lingerie—her full breasts almost spilling out of the bra, nipples pointing against the lace. Long hair cascades down over her shoulders in big, loose curls. Tiny micro-bikini panties with spaghetti-thin straps wrap around her hips. Her stomach is toned and tight, her waist narrow—the perfect hourglass figure that all women want and men go wild for. Swiping to the next photo reveals her totally naked, lying on the very bed I’m currently sitting on, in incredibly sensual poses, touching herself with shiny, red-tipped nails, a huge diamond glinting on her hand, blowing kisses at the camera.

  At Asher.

  My heart races as I realize there are videos. Of her. Of them together. My finger has made a decision all on its own and clicks on each little image with the tiny play arrow. The screen explodes with them making love, their bodies damp with sweat, writhing and slamming together, moaning each other’s names. She’s curvy in all the right places, soft against his erotic hardness. Who knew my body could bend and spread that way? Not me. I can barely touch my toes, let alone contort into some of these pretzel-inspired positions.

  My stomach rolls and burns with a myriad of feelings as I frantically swipe past the videos until screen shots of what appear to be past text messages between them pop up.

  Jesus, what next? Stop clicking…

  Lines and lines of fun, sexy banter, declarations of love, heartfelt miss yous. More sexy pictures sent back and forth to each other. There’s so much love here, so much insatiable want. It’s visual and written and moving. I can feel its energy buzzing through me, tingling through my limbs, burning in my thighs, pulsing in my core. There are no pictures of Kenzi. No photos of friends or family. No casual pictures at dinner, on stage, or at a party.

  Everything in this folder is incredibly private, sensual, carnal, and intimate, and I’m a voyeur, pawing through this vault of memories that no one should ever see. But it’s too late. I’ve seen it, and I hate it because, deep down, I know what this all means.

  This Ember was his dream girl, and I’ve stumbled upon a digital library of her—the love of his life—sexy, happy, teasing, loving.

  To make matters even worse, it’s right on the home screen of his iPad, which he takes everywhere with him and uses several times per day. It’s not hidden. It’s right up front with easy access.

  And I know—I just know—this little folder is Asher’s portal back to the Ember he fell in love with and misses.

  “What’s wrong? Did you get in touch with Katherine?”

  I look up at him, standing there with his suitcase that has old band bumper stickers plastered all over it, and I have no idea what on earth to say. But the tears streaming down my cheeks, and my shaking hands, do all the talking for me.

  Scrunching his brows together, he takes the tablet from my hands, and his face pales as he glances at the screen, realizing what I’ve seen.

  “Em—”

  I cut him off. “How often do you look at that folder?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Tell me the truth.”

  Swallowing hard, his shoulder lifts slightly. “I’m not sure. A few times a week, I guess.” He throws the iPad on the bed.

  “So you sit and look at sexy pictures and videos of her?”

  “Of you, Ember. There is no her. It’s you.”

  I cross my arms, unable to truly accept that as truth. “It doesn’t feel like it. Not to me. And ya know what? I don’t think it does for you, either.”

  Taking a deep breath, he shoves his hands through his hair and sits on the bed next to me. “That’s not true. Not at all.”

  The images are still a slideshow in my head, taunting me with the past, of everything I was and everything we had and everything we’ve lost. Everything we want back. I wipe at the tears on my face and struggle to understand why this has me so upset.

  “I need you to tell me why you’re looking at all that…stuff. If it’s me, then why not look at me? I’m here, Asher, not on that screen.” He stares at me with a lost look in his eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. Something is bothering you. About me, or us. I think it’s a lot more than you just wanting to make sure I’m okay. It’s obvious from your little video performances that you love sex—”

  He reaches for my hand, but I pull it away. I don’t want his sweet, soft touch right now.

  “Ember, please. You know how complicated all of this is.”

  “No.” I stifle a sob. “This feels like cheating to me. It feels like you’re looking at another woman, fantasizing about her.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. That’s not how I feel at all. I’m just—” Tears pool in the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know how to explain this,” he says softly.

  “Just try,” I beg, trembling with sobs.

  “I don’t know how.”

  I’ve felt this slowly creeping over us for the past few weeks. There’s been a distance to him as we’ve grown closer, which hasn’t made sense to me. Especially when getting closer seemed to be the most important thing in the world to him. He’s been so supportive, so patient and loving since I woke up.

  Maybe he can’t deal with my memory loss. I know he’s tried, but some things are too difficult to work out. It would be understandable. Even I have to admit that. I’ve researched scenarios like ours on the internet when I’m alone. Most couples faced with a partner with memory loss don’t last. No matter how hard they want to, they can’t overcome it.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

  My heart plummets at those words. Whatever’s going on, it’s obviously tearing him up inside, holding him emotionally hostage.

  “In what way?” I force out through the tears.

  “In any way.”

  “You’ve been acting different lately. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong or what you want. Why are you looking at those things? I’m not good enough?”

  He shakes his head violently. “You haven’t done anything wrong. There is no “good enough.” All I want is you. Us.”

  I stare at him, and I’m at a total loss. The room is closing in on me, sucking up all the air. My head is pounding. Maybe he’s been right all along—maybe I’m not as strong as I think I am. Right now, I feel like the crack in my head is going to reappear from all this emotional stress, and I’ll be pulled back into the endless sleep, where the butterflies will protect me from it all.

  Squeezing my forehead, I shove those thoughts away.

  I will not be pulled to that place. “I’m so confused, Asher.”

  “So am I.” He tilts his head back, flinging his hair out of his face. “That’s what’s wrong, Em.” His voice is low, tortured, dragged out of him. “My head is confused, and I’m trying to get it right.”

  The raw, honest, agony in his words sends a shiver up my spine. Deep in my heart, an urge whispers for me to comfort him. Make this better. Take all this pain away from him. But I don’t know how.

  This isn’t the confident, full-of-hope man I’ve grown to know, r
ely on, and love. This is a side he’s been struggling to hide, silently battling. A vulnerable, confused, in-over-his-head-with-trauma man who fought with every fiber of his being for eight years to keep his wife alive.

  My stomach sinks with the realization that the problem could be that sometimes when we fight for something we want so badly, we lose sight of how we’ll handle it when, by some miracle, it becomes a reality.

  I gather up as much inner strength as I can and ask the question I’m not totally sure I want the answer to. “Confused how?” The words come out as a trembled whisper.

  “I’m not even sure how to begin to explain how I feel.”

  “Try…please.”

  He’s never like this, and I’m tempted to grab his shoulders and shake him, get him to just spit it out already before the unknowing eats me from the inside out.

  But at the same time, I want to hug him, kiss all this confusion away, tell him it’s okay. We’ll be okay.

  “We’ve talked about it a little, but I guess I didn’t realize it’s worse in my head than I thought.”

  While I wait for him to continue, I stare at Teddy, who’s sitting patiently by his bag of things, waiting for us to leave. I’m filled with sadness and worry at the sudden turn the day has taken. I wish we were in the car right now on our way to Maine to visit my sister. This was supposed to be a happy weekend, and we were so looking forward to it. Our first trip together, my first visit with my sister at her home. I had hoped being in a different bedroom together, in a romantic place, would be good for us.

  One thing I do know is I’m never, ever going to click on an unknown folder on an iPad again.

  “For years, I sat by your bed,” he says slowly. “I massaged your arms and legs with lotion. I saw your head swell. I saw your hair fall out. I watched you stare blankly at absolutely nothing…for years. I watched your body wither away, bit by bit.”

  “Asher…” I don’t want to think about what the coma did to me—how it destroyed my body and my life—and I don’t want him to think about it, either. It’s becoming clear that that is where our problems lead back to.

  “It was like one day you were this gorgeous, sexy woman. So vibrant and alive. I knew your body like my own. I completely worshipped you in every way…mentally and physically.” A faint, sad smile touches his lips at the memory. “Then—out of nowhere—you were just…here, but not here at all. Everything shifted. Suddenly there were IVs and feeding tubes and catheters, and I don’t even know what the hell else. Our physical connection was taken away. Everything was taken away. You became like this sort of vessel that held my wife. And we had to feed it and water it and turn it to keep you alive.”

  He takes a deep breath and slowly blows it out. “I still kissed you hello and goodbye, I still talked to you, I even lay next to you, but you were just gone. And of course touching you in any intimate way was just considered wrong, and I obviously wasn’t doing that or even thinking about it.” He screws his eyes shut and rubs his hand across his forehead. “The only thing I could do, the only thing that mattered to me, was taking care of you. Keeping you alive.”

  I gulp uncomfortably over the lump in my throat. I feel sick with heartache and so incredibly gutted on so many levels, I don’t even know how to process what I’m feeling.

  How do we overcome this? How can he possibly see me as a woman again? Especially as the woman in the photos and the videos, the woman he needs and loves and desires, with absolutely no hesitations and no horrible images forever haunting him?

  He can’t.

  “Like a plant.” My voice is flat from the numbness creeping over me. “I basically became the equivalent of a plant.”

  He nods sadly. “Yeah, I guess as fuckin’ awful as that sounds, that’s true. After so many years, I got stuck in that mindset: take care of Ember. Having fun with you, growing old with you, making love to you, all that became the stuff of dreams for me. Now that you’re here, I’m having a hard time getting my mind and my body to accept that you’re okay. That you’re not gonna break, or leak, get unhooked, or slip away again. That it’s not wrong to want you, be turned on by you. I still feel like you’re not to be touched that way.” He finally looks up and meets my eyes, and the tears streaming from his break my heart into a thousand pieces. “I don’t even know if that makes any sense. It hurts really fuckin’ bad to say all this, Em,” he chokes on a gut-wrenching sob, “because I love you so, so much.”

  My heartbeat echoes in my ears, and I stare at him until he turns into a watery blur as hot tears spill uncontrollably from my eyes.

  He doesn’t see me.

  He hasn’t really seen me since I woke up. When he looks at me, all he sees are ghosts.

  I don’t want to be the living dead anymore.

  I want to live, love, and be loved…and I want it all with him.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Words hurt, even when unintentional.

  If they had the power to kill, I’m pretty sure I just verbally murdered my wife.

  Tears are flowing from her beautiful green eyes, tracking over flushed, angry pink cheeks. Her quivering lips are slightly parted as she gasps for breath between silent sobs.

  She’s dying right in front of me, all over again.

  And once again, I want to die right along with her, because this, too, is my fault.

  I ache to take her in my arms and shower her with kisses. Hug her until our hearts beat in perfect sync again.

  That may have worked in the past, but it’s not gonna cut it now. I have no fucking idea what will help right now, and it’s absolutely scaring the shit out of me.

  Why can’t I make things right?

  “So what you’re saying is,” she sniffles and blinks back eyeliner-tinged tears, “that you don’t feel comfortable touching me because you’re still thinking of me as a plant. Or a vessel. Comatose.”

  I cringe at those words. They’re so ugly. They remind me of the vegetable description I despise so much. “I guess if you want to put it that way…yeah. But it’s so much deeper than that, Em. I’m not some shallow asshole. I think you’re gorgeous. This isn’t about looks in any way.”

  “I know,” she says softly. “I know you’re not like that. But why look at the pictures? I don’t understand.”

  Fuck. How do I explain what I’m doing when I don’t even understand what I’m doing?

  When the hell did I become so inept?

  When did I start to fall apart?

  “I think, in a way, I wanted to obliterate the past eight years, get all those images and constant worry out of my head. Get myself back to who I was before.” I swallow and try to sort through my jumbled thoughts. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I don’t think it’s just you who forgot who you were. I think along the way, I forgot who I was too.”

  She looks down at the little butterfly ring on her finger as she contemplates this, then nods slowly. “You went through a horrible thing too. I don’t think anyone can go through that without coming out changed.”

  I let that sink in. Deep down, I know she’s right. I was a fool to think that I’d be invincible to any repercussions from what we’ve gone through.

  I thought our biggest hurdle would be her memory loss.

  I was wrong.

  “I never meant to hurt you. I never thought of the photos as emotionally cheating on you, Em. I wouldn’t do that. They helped me remember what we had and what we can have again. I’ve been looking at them for years, not just recently. It helped keep your memory alive. It helped me stay connected to you.”

  She grabs my arm. “I need you to see me as me. This new me. Not as photos from the past. You have to let go and stop resurrecting the old Ember.” She stands up and points at the iPad. “Those memories, that person, is dead, Asher. I’m alive.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, she walks toward Teddy like she’s on a mission. I grab her wrist before she gets there. “Em, please don’t walk away.”

  She gently pulls her arm from
my fingers.

  “You have to make the choice of who you really want, Asher. As crazy as that sounds, that’s where we are.”

  My chest aches, as if my heart is being torn in half. I don’t know how to let go of the woman she used to be, and I’m not sure I want to. The crazy truth is, I’m in love with them both, and I’m slowly losing my mind trying to make sense of it.

  “I want to go to Katherine’s alone,” she says when I don’t respond. “Me and Teddy.”

  “What? No. You can’t drive all the way to Maine by yourself. That’s an almost three-hour drive. You’ve never—”

  “Stop it!” she yells. “I’m a grown woman! I know how to drive. I used to travel all over the world on buses and planes, and I’ve driven all over the place too. Stop treating me like I can’t do anything!”

  I step back from her unexpected outburst. “Sorry. I’m just worried about you.”

  She grabs the suitcase and yanks it off the bed. “That’s part of the problem. You’re an amazing man, Asher. I appreciate that you care about me so much, but I want you to treat me like your wife. Your currently alive and breathing wife, not an invalid.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you. That’s all.”

  Dad, you’re a helicopter. Stop hovering. Kenzi’s words from long ago echo through my mind. Is that what I do?

  “Things have happened to me,” Ember says. “Horrific things. We can’t stop them.”

  I switch to defuse mode, hoping to get us back on track before an all-out fight starts. “Let’s go to Katherine’s like we planned. It’ll be a nice change for us. We’ll both feel better once we get there. It’s peaceful. We’ll sit by the water and talk about everything.”

  That’s all I want—this romantic weekend with her. To sit on the beach, watch Teddy run in the sand. To kiss her while the sun sets. I need this time together to show her I can overcome all this crazy shit in my head.

  “I want to go by myself. I think we both need some time to think. And I don’t want to sit near water.”

  Oh, fuck. My heart sinks like a bag full of lead. My worst nightmares are coming true—she wants time alone. To think about whether she wants to be married to me or if there’s just too much baggage here for her to stay.