Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers Book 3)

by Chloe Liese

  “Love you,” he whispers.

  I follow Ren, Aiden behind me, as we load into our massive rental van that’ll take us the thirty-minute drive to Ka’au Crater Trail. I’m nervous to see Dad pile into the driver’s seat, not because I don’t trust him behind the wheel, but because I feel like a hike that Ryder says is fairly technical could tax him.

  “Freya Linn,” he says, adjusting his mirrors. “Stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Busted.

  My cheeks heat. “Okay, Daddy.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Viggo and Oliver mockingly singsong.

  Aiden jerks back and swats each of them on the head. “Knock it off.”

  They sink down in their seats, looking like sad puppies.

  I glance over at Aiden for a heartbeat. He smiles, then cups my neck, massaging gently. My fingers curl into the upholstery, and my heart beats hard beneath my ribs.

  “Shouldn’t have done that,” Ren tells Viggo and Oliver. “Mocked the bride of Frankenstein.”

  Ryder snorts.

  Axel coughs.

  Mom wheezes.

  And Aiden scowls at Ren. “That was the most obvious Frankenstein ever. And you all know it. You were trolling me.”

  Dad’s deep laugh echoes as he turns on the engine. “I just didn’t want it to end.”

  I bite my lip and set my hand on his thigh. Aiden tried his best at charades last night, but he’s still so terrible. It was one of those familiarities that made my heart sing. Because even though we struggled guessing and the parrot kept calling him “hot stuff” as he lumbered around the living room, he gave it his all. I watched him, clueless, as he looked at me so pleadingly, like I just had to know. And then he laughed at himself, collapsing into my arms as time ended. And I laughed, too. I laughed so hard, I woke up with my ab muscles sore from it.

  “I got it,” I remind him.

  “Yeah.” Aiden smiles, nudging me. “Right at the end of my time.”

  I squeeze his leg before he slips his palm beneath mine and tangles our fingers. He meets my eyes for the briefest moment, before his gaze flicks to my mouth, then forward, on the road as Dad pulls out.

  Quiet chatter fills the van as Kailua disappears behind us and Dad merges onto 61-S. Willa laughs at something Ryder says while Ren and Ziggy discuss the information guide Ryder brought for our hike. Axel cranes forward, answering my mom as she turns back and asks something I miss, too lost in the feel of Aiden’s hand wrapped around mine, the warmth of our bodies next to each other.

  I press my forehead to the glass and watch the beauty of inland Hawaii unfold before my eyes. To my right, a kaleidoscopic blur of beauty bursts to life as Dad takes the turn, then slows a little so we can appreciate the view. Moss-green mountains scrape the sapphire sky as we pass rich marshland that’s the same vibrant color as the mountains above it.

  Having spent my life in the Pacific Northwest and then Southern California, I’m no stranger to lush landscape and ocean views, but this is so far beyond that. It’s like the moment Dorothy stepped onto the yellow brick road and Oz became a technicolor world of jewel tones and sun-drenched surfaces. Otherworldly lovely.

  “So,” Ryder says, clearing his throat.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Willa tells us. “The mountain man is in his element.”

  “Shut it,” he says before clasping her jaw and planting a hard kiss right on her lips. “This is Kawainui Marsh to our right. Kawainui means ‘the big water,’ likely because once long ago this was one big estuarine—”

  “God bless you,” Oliver deadpans.

  Ryder throws him a death glare. “An estuary is a partially closed-off coastal body of brackish water with at least one fresh water source as well as a connection to the open ocean.”

  “Thanks,” Oliver says tartly. “Not that I asked.”

  “No,” Ryder concedes, “you didn’t. You made a crack about it instead of saying what you really wanted, which was to know what I was talking about. Consider yourself educated in spite of your overblown pride.”

  “Burnnnnn,” Viggo says.

  Oliver elbows him sharply, and to no one’s surprise, they start pummeling each other in the back row where, wisely, no one else joined them.

  “Anyways,” Willa says. “Go on, Lumberjack.”

  Ryder clears his throat. “So Kawainui was most likely an estuarine body of water at the time when the area was first settled. Nowadays, the marsh is floating on water or possibly growing on a mat of peat floating on water—which is super cool—and in the higher-up parts of the marsh, it’s essentially a soggy meadow.”

  Ren snaps a photo with his phone, then starts typing. I bet anything he’s texting it to Frankie. “It’s beautiful. Why aren’t we hiking there?”

  “Because the views will be much better on the Ka’au Crater Trail,” Ryder tells him. “Multiple waterfalls, killer views of Kaneohe, Kailua—which is where our house is—Diamond Head, and of course the Ka’au Crater.”

  Dad says, “As Ryder told us, it’s a pretty tough trail, and there’s no pressure to do all of it. We’ll check in with each other periodically, and if someone’s getting tired, we’re experienced enough hikers that we can break into groups. Anyone who’s ready to go home will head back with me and Mom, and I’ll drive them, while Ryder takes the rest of you for the full hike. It’s only a thirty-minute trip to the house, and I’m happy to be shuttle driver.”

  Mom cups his neck and smiles at him as Dad sets his hand on her thigh. A lump forms in my throat as I realize each day that passes here, my hope grows but my question is still: Will we have that? Will we make it?

  I glance away, out the window, taking a slow deep breath. Aiden’s hand squeezes mine, and I could swear I hear his voice, soft as a whisper: Yes.

  Well. If I doubted whether or not I was in shape, this hike confirms it.

  I am a badass motherfucker with muscles of steel. I mean, I know my job’s physically demanding, but even I’m surprising myself with how well I’m making my way through this.

  Ahead of everyone except Ryder, who leads, I grip a stabilizing rope when I hit a slippery patch, bumping into yet another guava on the trail. Viggo’s already eaten two.

  The sounds of wildlife, the vitality of the jungle all around us, is breathtaking. Our hike is also breathtaking. As in taking our breath. Except for me. Because I’m a beast.

  “Damn, Frey,” Ryder puffs, glancing over his shoulder. “You’re pushing my pace.”

  I wipe my forehead, which is dripping with sweat. It’s in the mid-eighties, but with the humidity, it feels well into the nineties. My clothes are soaked with sweat. I smell like a barn animal.

  It’s fucking glorious.

  “She always was an endorphin chaser,” Dad huffs, his momentum starting to wane. We all glance back and subtly drop pace too, until we come to a natural stop at a wide stretch of the trail. “When she was three, she’d make me time her doing sprints across the yard and count her push-ups. I’d do my physical therapy routine, and she did them right with me. Saying, ‘Come on, Papa, don’t give up!’” Dad laughs quietly as he dabs his forehead. “I couldn’t skip my PT exercises if I wanted to.”

  I feel myself blushing.

  “And that’s how Freya fell in love with physical therapy,” Aiden says quietly, brushing his knuckles against mine.

  “Ugh,” Willa groans. “What’s happened to me? I just teared up.” She turns to Ryder. “Am I officially a softie now?”

  Ryder grins and strokes her cheek. “You have been for a while.”

  “Dammit,” she gripes.

  Mom smiles and sets her hands on her hips, taking deep tugs of air. “She’d say, ‘I want to be strong, just like Papa.’ He was very fit then.”

  Dad frowns. “Excuse me, wife. Was?”

  Mom laughs, her smoky voice like mine, popping against the quiet of the trail. “I’m so sorry. Was. Is. Always will be.”

  “That’s more like it.” Dad unscrews his water lid and hands the canteen
to her, watching her drink, signaling to keep going. “More, Elin.”

  She rolls her eyes and gulps more. Lowering the bottle, Mom dabs her mouth and sighs. “Well. Your father is up to this hike, but that prosthesis isn’t. And I’m getting tired. Ready to go back, Alex?”

  Dad smiles. “Sure, sweetheart. Anyone else who’s ready to go back?”

  Axel’s eyes leave the tree canopy that he’s been watching in silence. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Same here,” Ren says, hand inside his pocket around his phone. “I’m out of cell reception, and it’s making me antsy. I want to get back to Frankie.”

  Mom blows all of us a kiss. “I love you, every one of you. Be safe,” she says to us, before she and Dad turn and start down the path.

  After they’re on their way down the trail, Willa turns and says, “Okay, keep it moving. This is fun and all, but I’ve got a beach calling my name.”

  Ryder holds out his hand, which she takes. “C’mon, Sunshine.”

  As I turn to join in, too, my foot slips. Before I can even shriek or grab the stabilizing rope, Aiden’s hands are on my waist, clutching me hard and steadying me. “Okay?” he asks quietly.

  Heat soars through my skin at his hard grip. I swallow thickly. “Y-yes.”

  Ziggy jogs past us, before Oliver and Viggo follow her, bickering about something as usual.

  I’m on a knife’s edge of longing. Because after charades went on for hours and we all got a little tipsy, Aiden and I blearily brushed our teeth and fell asleep kissing, tangled close in bed. And then I woke up, very much expecting to pick up where we left off, but no, Ryder was banging on doors telling people to get up and get going so we weren’t hiking in prime-time heat.

  “You seem distracted,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing hiking with my brothers will cure,” I mutter.

  Aiden coughs behind a fist. “I can’t believe we fell asleep last night.”

  “Right? How old are we?”

  “Well, you have no excuse. I, however, am in my late thirties,” he says.

  “Oh, please. Thirty-six is not late thirties.”

  “Pretty sure math is my wheelhouse, Bergman.” He softly swats my butt and walks by, giving me a dazzling smile. “Thirty-six rounds up to forty.”

  I jog to catch him. “I hate when you do that.”

  He leans in and drops his voice. “Generally not what your panties report afterward.”

  “Aiden!” I hiss, jerking my head toward Ziggy who’s not far in front of us.

  “What? I was quiet.”

  “Not that quiet.”

  Aiden suddenly yanks me by the elbow and pins me against a tree, its wet bark digging into my back, dark leaves making a secret canopy around us.

  His mouth is warm on mine, firm and hungry. I thread my fingers through his hair, the waves so tight from Hawaii’s humidity, they’re almost curls. He groans and pulls me close when I drag my nails along his scalp, melding our hot, sweat-soaked bodies together.

  “We’re going to lose them,” Aiden mutters.

  “It’s a well-marked path,” I say between kisses, tugging him even closer. “We’re stopping at the first waterfall. We’ll be fine.”

  Aiden’s hands sink into my hair as our kisses grow hotter, slower, tongues dancing. My touch wanders the planes of his chest, down his stomach. He shudders and pulls back to press a kiss to my temple, then down my cheek. His tongue darts out, tastes the sweat of my skin, and Aiden groans, rocking his pelvis against mine. I’m exactly seven seconds away from dragging us behind this tree and telling Dr. Dietrich her no-sex rule can go take a hike instead of us.

  “Guys?” Viggo calls from up the path. “Coming?”

  Aiden bites my neck in frustration and groans before he turns back and pins me with one more hard kiss.

  Emerging from beneath the tree, we catch up quickly to Viggo who’s peeling another guava fruit. He cocks an eyebrow. “Behaving yourself, children?”

  “I hope you choke,” Aiden mutters, dragging us past him.

  Viggo smirks and falls into step behind me as we make a turn in the path.

  A prickling sensation crawls up my spine as we turn the bend. Ziggy’s leaning against a tree—long legs crossed at the ankles as she stares at the guidebook.

  “Where are Willa and Ryder?” Aiden asks.

  Ziggy glances up. “I’m not the most astute observer of human behavior but even I could tell they wanted a little alone time. I let them go ahead a bit.”

  Aiden grins and peers down at me. “See. Hikes are sentimental for them. Because yours truly meddled and set them on the path to bliss.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’d almost find it tolerable if you didn’t gloat about it.”

  His smile deepens as he laughs, making so many moments from our early years flash through my mind—when we were young, even with so little, somehow so much happier and closer. I try to push away my worries about when we’re home and life’s busy and our professional demands drag us a dozen different directions. I try to stay in the here and now, grateful for what this week has given us. Because I know that getting away forced us to face each other in a way that being home never would have. And yet part of me is scared that going home will shake what we’ve tentatively begun, isolated from the outside world and its countless pressures.

  As if he senses my spiraling thoughts, Aiden’s thumb circles my palm. “Watch your footing, Frey,” he says gently.

  When I glance up and focus on the trail, I realize we aren’t just missing Willa and Ryder, either. “Where’s Oliver?”

  Viggo tosses the guava peel and pockets the Swiss Army knife he lifted from the house. “Hm?”

  “Oliver,” I say tightly. “Twelve months younger than you? Looks like you but with blond hair and an even worse penchant for mischief? Ringing any bells?”

  “Oh,” Viggo says casually, glancing around. “I’m sure he’s up ahead harassing Willa and Ryder.”

  Ziggy pockets her guidebook and pushes off the tree. “He said he had to pee.”

  “Ah.” I peer around. “Shouldn’t take that long, though.”

  Aiden releases my hand and quickens his pace. “I’ll poke around up ahead on the trail.”

  “Wait, Aiden.” I jog after him, feeling uneasy about something, but not knowing what. I don’t want him out of my sight.

  He peers over his shoulder and frowns. “Freya, stay back and keep an eye on Ziggy and Viggo.”

  “Ziggy is a fair point but Viggo is twenty-one years of hellish trouble. He’ll handle himself.” I turn back and call for Ziggy. “C’mon, Zigs.”

  She lengthens her stride, giving me a long-suffering look. “Yes, Mother.”

  I gently tweak her long red braid. “Don’t sass me. We’re in the jungle. And I care about you.”

  Smiling, she falls into step with me. “Well, when you put it that way.”

  We find ourselves in a dip in the trail that has us rushing down a small hill, then climbing its other side, toward a blind turn along a narrow point in the path that overlooks a steep drop. I hug closer to the wooded edge and drag Ziggy with me, so she’s tucked safely away from the ledge.

  Halfway up the hill, Aiden catches his foot and swears under his breath. Dropping to one knee, he ties his unlaced boot. “Go ahead,” he says. “I’m coming.”

  Ziggy and I jog up the last of the hill, huffing and puffing as we turn the bend, then come face to face with the last thing I’d ever expect in the middle of a Hawaiian jungle: a tall man in full-on circus gear, complete with a horrific clown face.

  It scares the ever-living shit out of me.

  Shrieking in tandem, we startle violently. But while Ziggy falls safely toward the trees, where I purposefully set her, I stumble toward the ledge, tripping over a root.

  And then I’m hurtling backward, with nothing but the terrifying silence of falling whirling around me.

  23

  Aiden

  Playlist: “Video Games,” Trixie Mattel
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  My head snaps up the moment I hear Freya scream. Then I realize Ziggy is screaming, too. And then my heart lurches as a guy in clown gear flies toward Freya, desperately trying to catch her—Freya, who’s falling, stumbling toward the edge of a drop whose height I have no time to calculate but only know I can’t risk.

  I can’t explain it. How in the blink of an eye, I explode up the last of the hill, lunging toward Freya as her arms pinwheel and she starts to pitch off the ledge. The clown catches her hand, enough to slow her fall, before I grasp a solid fistful of her shirt and use all my strength to hurl her toward me, throwing myself forward as a counterweight. I hear Freya’s body connect with the earth, a collective gasp of relief around us.

  And then the piercing sound of my wife screaming as I fly into the air.

  They say falling happens in an instant. But for me, it happens in merciful slow motion. My head jerks back as I realize there’s another ledge below me. Maybe twenty feet. I can land there and not careen further into the jungle below. Hopefully.

  It’s instinctive, my muscles calling to mind what I’ve learned, because I’m that guy who has actually studied how to fall safely. You never know when you’ll have to jump out of a multi-story building and try not to die. I know to bend my legs and hold them together to prepare for impact so that I won’t fracture my spine or split my head. You bet your ass I’ve made sure I’m prepared.

  Even though the ledge is approaching, it’s narrow, and there’s a chance I’ll flip off it and fall to…well, my death, probably. I have to slow myself down, decrease momentum, so I reach out, clawing for anything I can, and find a sapling that my hand somehow catches.

  Freya screams again. I hear it, far off, yet close. I want to yell back that I’m okay, tell her she doesn’t have to worry, but as I grab the sapling with my other hand, and the weak branch starts to bend, then snap, I realize I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep.

  That’s when my grip fails, and I drop, for a terrifying moment, inverted, until I tuck myself so I can land feet first. And I do, with a sickening crack that sends white-hot pain burning up my left arm.