Chapter 224

After my mother had finished spewing her venomous words, she and my father turned and left without saying anything more.

Once they were gone, Asher gripped the handles of my wheelchair and steered me back to my hospital room. Gently, he lifted me from the chair and lowered me down onto the bed. We both worked together to right my covers.

“I’ll be right back,” Asher said then, straightening.

I gripped his sleeve. I really didn’t want to be alone after what just happened.

“I’m just going to speak to the policeman. I have a few things to say to him. I won’t go far, and I’ll come straight back.”

I could understand that. Truthfully, I would feel better if Asher did speak with the officer, and perhaps helped set down some more rules. After what had just happened, I hoped we could add my parents to the list of people who were no longer allowed in to see me.

I unhooked my fingers from his sleeve, and he left the room, closing the door softly behind him. True to his word, he was only gone a few minutes before returning.

He didn’t tell me what he said to the policeman, and I couldn’t hear through the door. I had no doubts he had given him a verbal lashing though, with the wild look in Asher’s eyes. He almost looked like he might shift at any moment.

He got like this, when he needed to protect me. I knew it was difficult for him to restrain his wolf.

I reached my hand out to him, and he came to my side at once. I brought his hand to my face, placing his palm flat against my cheek. He brushed away my drying tears with his thumb.

“I’m safe,” I told him. “You kept me safe.”

The reassurance seemed to work. His eyes softened. He exhaled and his whole body relaxed.

Not long after, a nurse came into the room to reattach the heart monitor and recheck my vitals. She offered no explanation as to why the hospital staff did not help rescue me when the initial hookups had ripped away from my person, when my dad yanked me from the bed.

She didn’t say much of anything at all. Other than to ask me to stay calm.

When she left, I felt empty and alone. Asher quickly returned to his place beside me, and I tried to draw comfort from his presence.

“Asher. If I asked you to hold me, would you?”

He nodded at once. I scooched over in my bed and he joined me in it. It was a small bed and a tight fit, but with me in his arms, resting my head against his chest, we made it work.

Safe in the comfort of his embrace, I felt more tears well under my eyes. I tried to blink them back, but a few still fell.

I didn’t know why I was so sad. It wasn’t like my parents attitudes and persistence was shocking, exactly. They had never treated me with kindness. They’d always been selfish.

But I’d always hoped that if I tried hard enough and proved myself to be as strong as my older siblings, that they might eventually come around to loving me just as much.

Now that dream seemed impossible.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this,” Asher said. His words rumbled in his chest under my ear. I felt them as much as heard them.

I appreciated his words, and snuggled closer. I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

He seemed to be able to tell, because he continued speaking all on his own.

“I understand how you feel, more than you know.”

My heart raced. I knew so very little about Asher’s past. I never wanted to press, but here he was, opening up to me all on his own.

“My parents were contractually married. They didn’t love each other. They barely even knew each other. But that didn’t stop my father from forcing his way into my mother’s bed.” He swallowed hard. “He wanted another child, whether my mother agreed or not.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Asher was a child of rape? I held him as close as I could, offering him the comfort of my closeness. He brushed his fingers through my hair.

“After I was born, my mother ignored me. Sometimes I wonder if she hated me. I was alone most of the time. Chase and I spent some time together, but he lived with his own mother in a separate house. I didn’t see him all that often. He was the only person who ever really talked to me.”

“Oh, Asher…”

“But then I met your brother Dylan. He was so warm and cheerful, and so easily accepted me as a friend, even though I’d never really had one before. And then I met you…”

He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “Now I can’t imagine a life without you.”

I lifted my face toward him and he kissed me gently on the lips.

“You are my family now,” Asher said. “And I wouldn’t trade it.”

I kissed him next.

He’d bared a piece of his soul to me, and I felt closer to him than I ever had before.

I was in love with him, there was no denying it. I never had any chance of anything else. And here, now, especially, with him showing me his own internal scars – rejected by his mother, ignored by his father, distant from his brother – I wanted to melt into him and become one inseparable person.

“Just because you aren’t blessed by your parents, does not mean that you are undeserving,” Asher said. “In fact, I think it’s the opposite. You’ve worked hard to become the wonderful person you are, and you did it all on your own. That’s admirable. And irresistible.”

He kissed my nose.

“Irresistible?” I asked, lifting a brow. My tears had long since dried up. My heart ached for the pain of his past, but his growing smile helped ease that hurt.

He hummed and kissed me again. His kisses had started soft, but were not beginning to linger.

“Cynthia,” he began, when we broke for air. “I can be your family, too.”

I opened my eyes wide and stared at him. That sounded so romantic, so… committed. He’d said that I was his family, but I wasn’t sure he’d meant it like a husband would want a wife. But here, with him suggesting we be family to each other, it seemed much more definitive.

He wasn’t proposing, I didn’t think. But it sounded something like it.

“We’re already mates,” he continued. A light blush dusted his cheeks. He averted his gaze away. “And you agreed to let me be godfather to your baby. We live together. Would it be such a far stretch for us to consider each other family?”

It wouldn’t. No really.

But I was still scared everything would blow up in my face. What if he changed his mind? What if he cast me aside like my parents did? I would never be able to handle that.

“I don’t know…” I said, hating the sound of my own uncertainty, my own heartbreak. I loved him and I wanted him to love me.

But in all his talk of family and togetherness, he never once mentioned love.

I wanted someone who loved me.

And I knew that might never be Asher.

“If you aren’t ready…” he said.

“I don’t know, Asher.”

“That’s okay,” he said, but his body was tensing. I hated that I did this to him, but I didn’t know how to explain. I feared I would only make everything worse.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and in an instant, his face crumpled. A moment later, he recovered, hiding himself behind his emotionless façade.

And I realized I had just made a grave mistake.