CHAPTER 26
Olivia
W hat the hell just happened?
One minute I’m helping him plane my oak boards, the next I’m almost kissing him on that damn table, and that is not the way to keep the lines between us clear and let him be just a father to our child.
How can I keep things uncomplicated if I’m the one rocking my ass against him and practically begging him to touch me?
He may not believe in love or relationships, but he is still a man.
And there’s clearly a physical pull between us.
As we got ready to leave, Asher was a perfect gentleman, gathering my things for me and asking me if I wanted to stop anywhere on the way back. What I wanted was him. What I wanted was to feel his hands running through my hair as he groaned into my lips.
“I think we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves,” I say when we pull up to the cabin and he cuts the engine.
“So we almost had a slip-up. This is a lot to be going through together, and we’re gonna be spending a lot of time in each other’s company.
But I want you to know I don’t, um … expect that from you. ”
Asher’s silence is stifling in the darkness of the truck.
“It’s not about what you can expect,” he says finally. “It’s about what you deserve. I can’t be the shining knight you have in your head, Liv.” His hand covers mine. “That Prince Charming you want. I’m not him. I’ll never be him.”
He takes a deep breath as I sit quietly, unsure how to respond. I already knew this about him, but the words still sting.
“It’s not just that I didn’t come from a good place.” His admission takes me by surprise. “Where I came from is unthinkable for someone like you.”
A shiver runs up my spine as he turns to face me. I can see it. I can see the demons he harbors deep inside.
“I swore I would never look back. I changed my last name to Reed, my mother’s family name. But the curse of the man my father raised me to be still haunts me. Because I was almost him.”
My mouth falls open as I register what he just told me.
“What was your last name … before?” I ask cautiously, still in shock at his openness. I get the feeling he doesn’t do this ever, and I don’t take it lightly.
“I was born a Donovan.” He says the name as if it pains him to admit it. “I come from generations of men I’m not proud of. But I can promise you now, that cycle ends with me. I’ll always be there for you and our child. I’ll never hurt you. You both are my priority.”
“I know,” I admit. We sit quietly for a moment; it doesn’t feel as though either of us wants to get out of his truck just yet.
“Can you tell me more about your father?” I say softly. Another beat of deafening silence passes.
“He is …” Asher pauses. “A ruthless businessman. No one crosses him and everyone is at his command. Even me for a time. The world was whatever I wanted under him: drugs, women, money. And then, I went to prison for thirteen months for him, Liv. And that’s what finally changed something in me.
It’s what made me realize I needed out, but still it took me years to do so. ”
I think I make a weird kind of squeaking noise as my mouth falls open again. Prison? The father of my child was in prison ?
“Why were you in prison?” My voice is a shaky whisper.
“Assault. It wasn’t my crime, but I claimed it was to protect my father.
It’s what we did. My world was hard as fuck to survive in.
I was young and I took one for the team to save him.
The men who caused the assault got away; I didn’t.
I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough.
I told the police that I was responsible for hurting a man very badly in one of my father’s warehouses. ”
Shame lines his face, and my heart hurts for him.
“It was my choice to take the blame.”
“What kind of world is this?” I ask.
“The kind where the lines are very, very blurred between my father’s ruthless business empire and the criminal world.” His throat bobs as he swallows, and my stomach drops. My hand instinctively moves to my low belly to cover it. His eyes follow, then return to mine.
“So he what? Took bribes? Worked with criminals in exchange for the growth of his business?”
Asher grips the hand that rests against my belly, and I feel the scars that line them in a new way.
“Yes. Among other things.”
“How could your father let that happen to you?” My brain can’t wrap around this. My father would die before he’d let anything happen to me. Yet his father let him take the fall for something he didn’t even do?
“I don’t let myself think about that,” he replies.
“Going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me. It pushed me to listen to my mom and finally escape my dad. When I was in jail, my ‘family’ was nowhere to be found. After, I knew I needed a career, one that could help me leave his world be hind.”
He runs a hand through his hair.
“I know this is scary to hear. But it’s not who I am now. It’s not the man I’ll be for you and the baby.” His thumb strokes against mine. “But I need you to understand why talking, expressing, feeling … it doesn’t come easy for me.”
“It is scary,” I admit. “But we have no choice about who we’re born to or the path their lives take, Asher. I know that better than anyone. Is your father still alive?”
“Barely,” he says. “He’s been sick for years.”
His brow knots and I can tell there’s more he isn’t telling me, but I don’t push him.
Maybe I should be more afraid. I don’t know the details of his horrors, but I do believe him when he says he wants to be different.
He’s here, a fire chief in a small Kentucky town, and he’s been disconnected from that dangerous world for over two years.
The thought of him being some dark prince?
What he could be but chooses not to? His honesty matches his strength of action, and it makes me respect him more.
“Does anyone else know this?” I venture now.
“No.”
I look down at my hands in my lap. “Why me?”
“Because I need you to understand why I am … how I am.”
I say nothing. Asher is right; just because I’m having his baby doesn’t mean he can simply change his mind on relationships. And why would he? After a life like that? How could he ever trust another person when his own parents let him down so badly?
“We can do this.” I move the conversation on. “Maybe we make a pact?”
I need to set boundaries because, when there aren’t any, I’m tempted to cross them. Especially now, when he’s been so open and honest with me.
“A pact?” he repeats, a hint of curiosity in those charcoal eyes.
“Yeah,” I answer. “We strictly stay friends. Co-parents. And we always put the baby first. We still get to know each other, but for the pact’s sake, maybe we stay out of your woodshop?”
His jaw tenses but he nods slightly in agreeance.
“And … a safe word? Something to signal if we notice that we’re, you know, looking at each other like we might want more …” I offer.
Asher’s eyebrows shoot up in question. “A safe word?”
God. He must think I’m some sort of horny, sex-crazed lunatic. He pulls his hand back into his own lap, and I hate that I feel the loss of his warmth so much.
“I don’t need a safe word, Liv. I don’t want to fuck this up.”
Glad he’s got lots of willpower because I’m fresh out.
“So it’s a pact.” He states evenly. I still have so many questions, but I don’t want to push Asher tonight.
He already seems a little lighter, more relaxed, than I’ve ever seen him.
I want to tell him that I want to know him, the real him, that he isn’t a shadow of his father.
That all that trauma is what makes him who he is.
But I can already tell that will take time for him to see.
So instead I just give him a small smile, letting him know I’m grateful for his honesty.
“A pact,” I repeat as I pray to the pregnancy gods to help me resist those eyes, those hands, and that body that I’m almost positive will make me wish more and more every day that the line we just drew didn’t exist.