by Mignon Mykel
“She’s safe, Porter. Just… You need to go back to Charleston.”
“She’s coming with me.” I found my keys in the cup holder and put them in the ignition, cranking it over.
“Porter. She’s staying here. You need to go to Charleston.”
“I’m not leaving without her!”
“As your agent, I need to tell you—”
“Fuck that, Avery! No. Where the hell are you? Where are you taking her?”
Avery paused and if I knew my sister, I knew she was going to crack. She was going to tell me. She’d tell—
“Goodbye, Porter.”
And she fucking hung up on me.
“It’s been two weeks, Asher.”
Avery stood across from me as I sat at the counter in the guesthouse.
After three days, Porter finally returned to Charleston, making it safe for me to return to the guesthouse. Even though she didn’t agree with it, she and CJ helped me change the locks on the doors, just in case Porter got a hair up his ass and decided to come back.
He didn’t need my baggage, my problems.
He needed to focus on him, on the upcoming season.
He needed to forget about me.
“I think I might head west,” I told the counter, afraid to meet Avery’s blue eyes.
“Like hell you will!” It was the first time Avery raised her voice in these last weeks. “I’m okay with you taking time, but you will not leave him. Porter loves you, Asher.”
I shook my head. “I know, Avery.” It wasn’t the first time in the last two weeks my eyes filled at the thought. “I just…I can’t, Avery. I can’t marry him.”
“CJ talked to me about going to therapy. Would you go with me?” Avery asked, confusing me. What did that have to do with—
It would ensure you stayed.
I shook my head. “I don’t need—”
Avery reached for my hand and squeezed my hand. The new diamond ring on her hand had twisted and the stone pressed into my finger, and stark reminder of the things I gave up on. “But I need it. And I need you with me.”
I regarded her. Why did she need it? Why did she need me there with her?
Nothing happened to her! I ensured that she wasn’t touched. I knew he didn’t do anything to her.
“Please, Asher.” Her hand squeezed against mine again. “I’ll keep telling Porter you’re fine. I’ll keep allowing you to take your time where he’s concerned but please, please don’t give up on him. He loves you.”
He wouldn’t though.
And if my deepest secrets came out in therapy, if Avery knew the whole truth…
She would be the first to help me pack and leave. Her family didn’t need my kind of filth.
“Please,” she said again.
“Fine.”
A couple sessions wouldn’t hurt anything.
“Let’s talk about your relationship with your kidnapper,” Trinity said, addressing me. She looked at ease and comfortable with the question, while I was sure I visibly flinched.
In fact, I knew that I did, because Avery reached over to squeeze my hand.
This was our third session with Trinity and this was the first time she focused in on what the world knew—James Johnson had been my foster father.
They also knew he “raped” me, but that Avery left the hotel untouched.
“Deep breath, Asher.” Trinity’s words were a far-off echo in my growing panic. “Let it out slowly through your mouth.” I fought to do as she instructed.
It had been no secret in that hotel room that I knew who he was. Avery knew. She hadn’t known that I went to him willingly one night, the night I found our things. We hadn’t talked about it. I was hopeful that she’d just assume that I snuck over and grabbed them, but things were leaked to the press and now she knew the allegations in the media had been true, because Trinity asked about them last week.
“He raped me,” I admitted, my hand slack into Avery’s as my eyes stayed trained on Trinity’s.
“Before the kidnapping?” she asked. She was trying to get me to open up, to admit everything.
Trying to help me rid myself of the guilt and the shame, I was sure.
I thought about the letter I received from Marie.
The one I chose not to answer.
I thought about Ryan’s words, when he pulled me aside at Christmas time. He’d had things he needed to tell me.
And yet, I refused to listen.
I had been in a good place, with good people. I didn’t want my dirty past to clash with my present. I hadn’t been ready for it.
You were selfish.
“How many others?” I deflected, knowing Trinity had the answer.
Just like the fact became known that I didn’t leave that hotel room unscathed, it became national news that James Johnson had been wanted on rape charges. I knew Ryan had more answers, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him.
Because if I did, that would make Mykaela involved in the mess.
I couldn’t keep bringing this family into it.
According to Avery, Myke and Ryan had worked things out, so whatever he had to tell her…
Trinity didn’t have to answer my question. She could take my question and sling it back to me, rewording it and make me answer it. But for whatever reason, she gave me what I was looking for.
“Just one.”
I swallowed hard and Avery’s hand tightened in mine.
There was no ‘just’ in this case.
Because of me, some other girl got hurt.
Because I was selfish, another girl went through what I had to endure when I was seventeen.
I lifted my free hand to my mouth, stifling an unexpected sob.
Behind my hand, I finally said aloud, “He raped me and because I refused the rape kit and refused to give a statement…nothing happened to him. This is my fault. All of it.” My voice broke and I whispered my last words into the otherwise quiet room. “All of this is my fault.”
“Not this time,” Coach told me, holding on to my shoulder as I stood to enter my shift on ice. “Steiner. Take his wing.”
Stein stood and jumped over the board when Troyson, the fourth line winger I was supposed to follow, came in. I slammed back down to the bench, my body shaking with rage and energy.
I needed to be on the ice, not on this fucking bench.
Too many fucking weeks, I’d been in the big house I fucking bought, just me and the damn dog. I missed the hell out of Asher, but shit, I almost thought Caine missed her more.
He cried nearly every night, as I let him up on the bed and he put his head on her pillow.
It was the second game of the season and I was playing like shit.
Of course I was.
My fiancée took off her ring and I hadn’t seen her in weeks.
Hadn’t spoken to her.
Still, I traveled to Wisconsin every chance I could.
Still, I never saw her. Never heard from her.
Shit, I hadn’t even seen Avery.
I at least had the knowledge that she was still around the house. When I tried to go to the guesthouse though, I was surprised to find the locks had been changed. Even Mom—my own fucking mother—refused to give me the new key. “She needs a little more time, Porter,” she’d said.
Well, fuck that shit.
Coach tapped my shoulder. “Next shift. Keep your eyes on Baake.”
Baake was a handsy fucker on the other team, and he’d been pushy with Nico a few times in the game. Coach was asking me to take my chirping to a new level.
And I fucking welcomed it.
Anything to get my mind off Asher.
I got on the ice and set out to even this game, and level the emotions on the ice.
I welcomed the five for fighting.
Trinity hadn’t been able to get much out of me the rest of the session, instead redirecting her questions to Avery.
Avery, bless her heart, never let go of my hand, no matter how hard I tried to tug
mine free of hers.
I couldn’t remember the rest of our session. It passed by in a blur, but soon it was eight, and the end of our late session.
Avery drove us back to the guesthouse and mindlessly, I followed her in. She led me to my room and stood in the doorway as I stood next to the big, empty bed.
“Do you need anything?” she asked as I crawled into the covers, not bothering to change into bedclothes.
I rolled onto my side, curling into a ball, and shook my head. I had no words for her, not with the session still so fresh in my mind.
The knowledge that he hurt someone else all because I didn’t say anything…
“Maybe I’ll stick around,” Avery said, cutting into my thoughts. She looked around the room then back to me. She didn’t give me a chance to tell her no.
That would, of course, require me to open my mouth, but I didn’t trust my voice.
Before I realized it, I was moving over and Avery was lying beside me, her hand taking mine once again.
“You’re safe here, Asher,” she whispered to the ceiling.
I closed my eyes and tried to let her words reassure me.
They weren’t likely to, but I tried all the same.
Another week, and I still hadn’t been successful in getting Asher to come home. It had now been four weeks since I last saw her, six weeks since the whole ordeal.
Fuck, I couldn’t get her to even talk to me.
I really wished Coach would allow me to be a healthy scratch, but game after game, he was banking on my anger to fuel much-needed fights on the ice.
Because that was all I was good for.
The rest of my game was shit.
I couldn’t play, not while knowing Asher was hurting, knowing that she locked herself away from me.
Still, again and again I boarded a plane—coach, business class, first class, wherever the fuck they had a seat—and tried to get even a glimpse of the woman who was supposed to be my wife.
The one who pushed me away to an extent I didn’t even know was possible. Not with the shit and times we’d already been through.
Avery seemed to bounce back to her normal self, but she had CJ to lean on. And she did.
She leaned on him, just like Asher should have fucking been leaning on me.
I should have just held her that afternoon. I shouldn’t have given in to her words and taken what she offered. I should have held her until she fell asleep. I should have allowed her to break and I should have been there to help put the pieces back together.
But her eyes.
Her words.
I was so fucking helpless to her.
Fucking powerless.
And look where that got me.
Living in our house, just me and our dog, with visual reminders of her all around me.
I carried her ring with me everywhere, even when I was in South Carolina, and the likelihood of me seeing her was so far past nil, it was pointless to wonder, but I had it on me.
I refused to believe she was calling off our wedding for good. I’d give her the time she sought, the time she needed, but some way or another, I was marrying Asher.
I knew she was going to therapy with Avery—it was one of the only things Ace told me about her.
Was it helping her? Talking to someone, with Avery at her side?
God, I fucking hoped so.
I was in the middle of one of these thoughts, sitting at my parents’ kitchen table and staring at an untouched cup of coffee, when Avery took a seat across from me.
“How is she?” I asked, my eyes not leaving the cup.
“She’s doing okay.”
Avery didn’t offer me anything else, but I was getting used to that.
Getting used to knowing Avery knew things that I didn’t, and that she wouldn’t tell me.
On the one hand, I was glad Asher had that type of friendship with Ace but fuck, Avery was my sister! Surely, she could tell me something.
I could feel Avery staring at me and I glanced up, catching her nibbling on her lip in a way that reminded me of Asher.
“What?” I snapped at her, not intending for it to come out as rough as it did.
Rather than be put off by my raised voice, she continued to stare at me.
“Don’t you have clients to look after?” I grunted, looking back to the coffee cup.
“I’m looking at one now.”
“Go bother Caleb or Jonny.”
“They’re in San Diego. You should be in South Carolina, but here you are… So I’m looking at you.”
I crossed my arms and slipped into a slouch in my chair.
“Asher…” she started, and I snapped to attention, all while trying to hold my relaxed, albeit annoyed, pose in my chair.
Avery sighed before continuing. “Do you know everything that she went through as a teenager?”
I stared across the table at my sister, challenging her. “Yes.” A simple answer for a complex time in Asher’s life. But in case Avery didn’t know everything, didn’t know that she’d been raped, in addition to being in that hellhole of a house, it wasn’t my place to blurt it all out. Asher trusted me with those pieces of her past.
“Everything?” she asked again, a brow lifted in question.
“Yes!” I couldn’t stop myself from raising my voice.
Avery opened her mouth to say something, only to close it again. Finally, she said, “Did she tell you who raped her?”
My blood ran cold. So Avery knew Asher had been raped.
When I didn’t answer, my sister squeezed the bridge of her nose. “She’s going to kill me. I shouldn’t tell you.” She dropped her hand and her sad blue eyes met my green ones across the table. Therapy was supposed to be sacred, I got that, but if she had something that would shed light on why Asher was pushing me away? I wanted the information.
“What happened, Ace?” My gut was dropping with every moment Avery didn’t give me the answer. Avery knew something about my fiancée that I didn’t.
Immediately, my mind began to try and find the missing puzzle piece, trying to figure out when everything started going to hell.
Asher was upset when Ryan came.
Avery and Ash were taken, where, from my understanding, Asher took the brunt of everything her former foster father had to give.
And Asher didn’t leave that hotel room as whole as she’d been before she’d been in.
She took the brunt of it.
She’s been raped as a teenager.
Her last foster family had been ‘bad.’
The bastard touched her now.
I swore when the dots connected. Fuck no.
“No,” I sneered, shaking my head.
No.
No fucking way.
She took the fucking brunt of it all, because it wouldn’t have been the first time.
She knew what the man was capable of.
He was the reason she wanted to be so far removed from her foster care days. He was the reason why she was upset when Ryan showed up.
“She has things she needs to work through, Porter,” Avery tried saying, her voice low. My mind was racing in overdrive, everything Asher had been through, sinking in, and sinking deep—a heavy rock tied to it and bringing it to the bottom of the ocean.
The bottom of my gut.
She went through all of that, and she didn’t want to lean on me.
She went through it, and she was fucking pushing me away.
“She needs time.”
I pushed away from the table, the force knocking the chair over as I slammed my hands down. “Fuck that! She needs me! She needs someone to hold her through the fucking dark times. I’m her goddamn fiancé! Why the hell is she pushing me away?”
Every time a shoe fucking dropped where Asher and I were concerned, it shattered the illusion that what we had was solid.
“You’re making it about you,” Avery said, her tone placid, but I could see that her temper was rising and would easily match mine shortly. And sure e
nough, “This isn’t about you, Porter!”
“I show up!” I jabbed a finger into my chest. “I’m here for her at every fucking turn and she won’t bend enough to let me in all the fucking way! Just when I think I’m there, something else fucking happens. She was supposed to marry me, Avery, not even three weeks ago, Avery. So, yes! Yes, I’m making this about me. Why the hell can’t she lean on me? Why does she have to go through this on her own?”
My sister clenched her jaw and looked away, shaking her head before looking back at me. “You need to give her the time and space she needs.”
With that, she left the kitchen, left the house, leaving me there to stew on her words in silence.
Not long after Avery left, I made my way to General Mitchell, getting on a stand-by flight with relative ease. I made it to evening practice, then the next day, to morning practice, the entire time Nico not saying a word to me.
Probably my rosy disposition.
After years of rooming together, my teammate and friend knew my moods.
He also knew Asher. He knew everything I went through, from the moment I got the phone call to go home, to the first moment I stepped foot in South Carolina without Asher at my side.
Right now, though, another day of being in this house that was much too big for just me and the damn dog—big as he was—I was lying in bed, trying to get my body to relax enough to fall into a pre-game nap, when he came walking through my bedroom door. I glanced at Caine laying in bed beside me.
“Your guard dog duties are shit, Caine,” I mumbled to him. He merely lifted his eyes, his face still resting on his paws as he laid on Asher’s side of the bed.
“Still no wife?” Nico asked, and I refrained from giving him my middle finger. Instead, I just watched him as I lay unmoving on my bed.
Nico leaned against the wall, his ankles crossed and his arms over his chest. “Have you talked to her?”
“Nope.” I looked back up at the ceiling.
“Avery tell you anything?”
I ground my molars. My heart clenched in my chest at the knowledge of what Asher had been through, the secrets she had kept, the ones she still hadn’t had the fucking nerve to tell me.