Chapter 45

Up until the night of the carnival, I tried desperately to keep my mind from thinking about Asher dating someone else. I had pushed him to this by even suggesting that he should date again, and I hated it.

So I kept myself busy with studying and practice. In my free time, I hung out with Nicole, or talked to Joseph. I avoided taking Asher’s calls, though I knew that made me a bad friend.

I was a bad friend. I should have felt glad that Asher was trying to find someone to make him happy, but all I felt was hurt.

Before the night of the carnival, I had made Joseph promise me three times to help me forget Asher, and each time, he insisted that he would.

Now that we were at the carnival, with Joseph leading me by the hand, I realized there was nothing Joseph could do. Nothing I could do either.

I just kept wishing Asher was there.

Joseph tried his best, however. He won me a stuffed bear at one of the games, and was only a little annoyed with me when I gave it away to a little girl who stared at me with wide, hopeful eyes.

“I’ll win you another one,” Joseph said.

We shared a funnel cake, and watched a magic show. I clapped, amazed at the disappearing act, but kind of wished it was me the magician made disappear.

The carnival was fun. I was having a good time.

But not as good of a time as I would have had if Asher was there.

Joseph led me away from the wilder rides without comment, but we did stand in line for the carousel.

“I told you I could show you a great time,” Joseph said as we selected horses beside each other.

“You were right,” I said, half-meaning it. It wasn’t his fault that I wanted Asher.

Joseph really had been a gentleman this entire date. When he was like this, I could almost believe he was trying to be better for me, even with his feud with Asher.

After all, he could hate Asher and still want me and our baby.

Clutching the reigns of my fake horse, I looked at Joseph and tried to imagine this as our future. If he stayed this way, this kind, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

It wouldn’t be prefect, of course. My heart longed for another. But I could do worse.

Yet, was settling for second best really fair to either of us?

As the carousel slowly turned, I looked out among the crowd bustling between the rows of food and game stalls.

I spotted a familiar head of windswept hair instantly. All of my senses were so attuned to Asher, I could have spotted him in a crowd three times this size.

But my mind went blank when I saw a woman standing very near him, with her arm wrapped around his.

One of the girls from the tennis team asked Asher on a date.

He said yes.

Elena’s words rattled in my mind. Was this Asher’s date?

The carousel turned and they disappeared from my view. I waited with bated breath for the ride to come back around.

Joseph noticed. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

Asher hadn’t seen me yet. He was saying something to his date.

On the third go-round, Joseph finally saw what I did. “Oh. Asher’s here.”

As if he heard the name, Asher glanced over at the carousel and looked straight at me.

My heart thundered wildly.

“Ignore him,” Joseph said.

I tried. I failed. Asher’s icy gaze was insistent. I couldn’t look away.

Only when the ride turned, and Asher was out of sight, could I look back to Joseph.

“You’re forgetting he exists, remember?” Joseph snatched my hand in his. It should have felt like an anchor, grounding me in our date. Instead, if felt like a chain keeping me prisoner there.

“Right,” I said. To keep myself from looking again, I dropped my gaze to where Joseph held my hand and didn’t dare lift it.

When the ride was over, Joseph excused himself to find the bathroom. “I will be right back,” he said, leaving me beside a game stall. “Stay right here.”

After he left, I did as he requested. I didn’t move one inch from my spot. I couldn’t help my gaze from drifting though, searching for that windswept hair and piercing blue eyes again.

Wherever Asher was, however, he wasn’t in my line of sight.

I sighed, simultaneously disappointed and relieved. I always wanted to see him, but seeing him with a date would only hurt me.

Suddenly, someone clasped my arm and tugged me back into the narrow place between the stalls, then further still until we around the back of them, cloaked in shadow

. No one walked back here, only the carnival workers going to and from their shifts.

No one was shift-changing now.

“What are –”

Asher covered my mouth with his hand as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

Sunset had come and gone, and now only string lights and the bulbs from the rides illuminated the darkness.

The light highlighted the hard plains of Asher’s face, somehow making him look both dangerous and incredibly sexy.

When he saw I recognized him, he lowered his hand to my waist. He boxed me in to the back of the stall so all I could see was him.

Like I would look at anything else.

“Why are you here with Joseph?” he said, voice low and gravelly, like it always got when he was in protective mode. A lonely bit of my heart caught fire, pleasantly warming.

I had missed him.

“I wanted to come to the carnival,” I said. “He was the only one to ask me.”

“You could have come with me.”

Even with the heat of his closeness, the remembrance of his date chipped away at me.

“You are here with someone else,” I said.

“You told me to date. You haven’t answered my calls.”

He moved in closer, backing me against the flimsy plywood wall of the stall behind us.

His torso pressed to mine. One of his thighs slipped between my legs. When I looked up at him, my mouth was so near his collarbone, visible thanks to the v-neck of his t-shirt.

His eyes were darker in the shadows, like frigid waters of the artic. Yet they dared me to dive in, to lose myself.

I wanted him closer. I wanted his mouth on mine and on my neck. I wanted him to leave marks, and I wanted to leave some too.

Then his date and Joseph and everyone else would know that we belonged to each other.

I flashed back to when he held me to the floor in warrior training, his body so sturdy and powerful. His lips had barely brushed mine then and I’d nearly ignited.

If he kissed me here, would I combust?

“Asher,” I whispered.

“There you go.” His voice was throaty, breathless. “Say my name again.”

Like this, I was helpless but to obey his demands. How I wished he’d make more.

“Asher.”

Humming in satisfaction, he leaned his face down into my neck. He nosed at the sensitive skin behind my ear.

“Cynthia!” called Joseph. He sounded so far away. “Where are you?”

I should have answered him. He was my date. Yet.

Asher’s hands gripped my waist, holding me still.

I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want to.

Especially when Asher whispered, “Stay here with me.”