Chapter 99

Asher wanted me to tell him that I wasn’t involved in a swimsuit contest. All I had to do was lie to him, and he’d calm down, but when I opened my mouth, the lie did not come out.

I said, “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

I hadn’t realized he was still holding the television remote with one hand, until the pieces of it clattered down onto the floor. The temperature in the room dropped.

If I didn’t do something, Asher would go ballistic. I hated to lie to him, but to protect him, I had to smudge the truth some.

“I’m wearing the one piece,” I said quickly. “And it’s at a nice location, not… a bar.”

“Where?” he asked, voice so deep and rough, he barely sounded like himself.

“A restaurant,” I said. “Mom and Pop place. Very tasteful.” I nervously hooked my fingers together. “The contestants are going to be me and the other cheerleaders. It will be, like, a bonding experience.”

His eyes narrowed, suspicious. “And the audience?”

“I’m not totally sure.” I tried to think quickly. “But in a place like that, it has to be okay, right?”

His mouth pressed into a hard, thin line. After a long moment, he said, “I don’t like it.”

That was obvious. “I know.”

“I hate others seeing you, but I…” He flexed and released his fists. “If this is something you want to do…” Another pause. “Is this something you want to do?”

He was so good to me. If I wanted to do this, even though it made him uncomfortable, he would let me. My heart ached for him. I wanted to hold him, but I still didn’t want him to touch me.

Hands near my stomach, I pressed against my growing baby bump.

Instead of answering his question, I asked one of my own.

“Asher, do think I’m disgusting?”

The anger deflated from him so fast, he wavered on his feet for a second. “Why would you think that?”

I tapped on my stomach. He followed the movement.

After another breath, he stepped closer to me. “You know I don’t think that.”

He had shown proof of the opposite, but…

“My body’s changing,” I said. “I’m going to keep getting fatter and fatter.”

“You are growing life, Cynthia. Not getting fat.”

I pouted a little. “That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“No.” He said it with such certainty, I nearly cried. “Who made you feel this way? Who made you think you are anything less than you are?”

He didn’t need me to say it. We’d only been apart the length of my cheerleading practice. If it hadn’t been Coach, it could have been Elena or the other girls…

It didn’t matter who he chose to blame from that pool of candidates. He’d always be right.

Asher’s voice went very quiet. “Is this why you won’t let me touch you?”

I blinked back the tears. “I’m ugly.”

Gently, he shook his head. “Put on the swimsuit. Let me see you, and I’ll show you how wrong you are.”

I obeyed, grabbing my bag and disappearing into Asher’s on-suite bathroom. I held the two swimsuits in my hands. The bikini was what I would be forced to wear to the contest, but I couldn’t let Asher know that.

I’d already lied to him.

So I put on the one-piece. I felt no less disgusting in it.

I thought of hiding from Asher, but eventually gave in. He’d already seen me, just earlier today.

He’d already helped me feel sexy. He could do so again.

With shaky, unraveling confidence, I opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

Asher leaned against his desk. Arms crossed, he glared hard at the floor tiles. As I walked further, barefoot, into the room, he lifted his gaze to me.

Immediately, his eyes softened, the blizzard within them thawing to a crisp winter’s day.

He walked the remaining distance to me, but stopped an arm’s length away.

“Cynthia,” he said, a quiet desperation in his voice. He wasn’t quite begging, but it was close. “Let me touch you.”

I still didn’t think I was worth it, but when he was like this, I was too weak to refuse him anything.

I nodded.

He inched closer. Slowly, like he’d stop at even my slightest discomfort, he moved his hand across the few spare inches between us, and pressed his palm flat against my belly.

He held my gaze with such intense, dedicated focus, that I had to close my eyes, overwhelmed.

His hand stretched around to my side as a second joined in, touching my other side. He stepped closer, until his flat abdomen pressed against my growing waist. His hands slid around to my back, where he rubbed gentle circles with his thumbs at the base of my spine.

I melted under his tender caress.

His breath was warm against my temple. “You are beautiful, Cynthia.”

A tear slipped out from under my eye. He tugged me closer, and I dropped my head to his chest.

He lifted one of his hands and gently brushed his fingers through my hair.

I felt so cared for, so sweetly adored, that gradually my self-loathing slipped away.

Asher was usually right about things. If he thought I was beautiful, how could I argue?

Instead I let my heart take flight.

Later, after we held each other for a while and finally separated, he asked me again, “Are you sure you want to do this contest?”

I didn’t have a choice, so I lied to us both. “I do.”

After class on Friday, I still dreaded the upcoming weekend. Yet all those worries fizzled away when I spotted a familiar figure outside of the athletes’ dorms.

Nurse Irene.

I was behind her, so she didn’t see me approach where she was talking to a student, an athlete I recognized seeing in the hallways of Brent’s dorm.

“So Brent shifted his attitude totally over the course of – what did you say – one night?” Nurse Irene asked. She scribbled something down in a tiny notepad.

“It was like he was a different person,” the athlete said. “He went from being Mr. Confidence to afraid of his own shadow.”

“And tell me what else you heard? Someone else mentioned something called a…” She checked her notes. “Ghost baby?”

My stomach hit the floor.

“He mumbled something like that, I don’t know.” The athlete shrugged. “He was pretty out of it.”

“I see.” Nurse Irene made another note.

Before she could ask anything else, I cleared my throat, deciding to make my presence known.

She looked back at me, stilled, then turned away again. “That’s enough, son. Thank you.”

“Anything for the documentary,” the athlete said. “Do you think I’ll make it on television?”

“We’ll see.”

As the athlete scrambled off, I lifted a brow at Nurse Irene.

“A trick I’ve learned over the years,” she said. “People are more willing to open up if they believe they’ll be famous.”

Fine, but that didn’t explain what she was doing here in the first place. Or why she was asking about Brent.

“Come now… Cynthia, was it?” Nurse Irene rolled her eyes. “You can’t have expected that I would believe all your questions to Nurse Nancy were hypothetical. How would you even know about projections if you hadn’t seen one?”

A chill shivered up my spine.

“No, I believe you are covering for someone,” Nurse Irene said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I read about projections in a book and –”

“Don’t waste my time. I have such precious little of it.” She flipped her notepad to a fresh page. “You can answer a few of my questions instead.”

I shook my head, argument ready on my tongue.

She spoke first, faster, “Tell me everything you know about Aimee.”

My mouth hung open, words forgotten.

Aimee?