CHAPTER 49
Asher
I ’m scared. He only gets really mad like this when she disobeys him, and when this happens I have to go to my hiding place.
I’m crouched down behind the toy box in my bedroom. I’m in my closet but I can still hear him.
“You think you’re gonna threaten me, Sierra? I’ll fucking destroy you.”
I flinch. I’ve heard him speak to her like this for the ten years I’ve been alive but I still hate it. I silently pray to Saint Michael to protect me and Mom, whispering the prayer she taught me for when Dad gets mean.
“She was my friend! You promised!” my mother cries. “You promised you wouldn’t—”
“My business is my business. She’s just a hole, I don’t give a fuck whose friend she is!”
I squeeze my eyes shut as I summon all my courage to run into the room. My mom is on the floor, cowering from him and covering her face.
“Why can’t you just behave?” I ask her as tears stream down my face. He wouldn’t get angry at her if she did.
“Aye, son, you tell the stupid little skank how to behave. He’s fucking ten years old and he knows you’re out of line.”
I ball my fists at my sides. I hate when he calls her names. He turns to go—anger radiating from him—and when I hear the front door slam shut, I follow in his footsteps to make sure he’s gone. When I can see his car lights through the window, my shoulders relax just a little. He’s gone.
My friend at school just has a mom. I wish I just had a mom. I take a deep breath and run as fast as I can back into the living room.
“Asher …” I hear her call me, though I can’t get to her fast enough. “My little hawk …”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” I tell her as I round the corner. “I didn’t know he would hurt you again. I was trying …”
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispers, holding my hand. “Get my ice and a cloth, okay?”
I nod and she flashes me a crooked smile. “Promise me, Asher. Don’t be a Donovan. Everything a Donovan man touches dies.”
She places her hand on my face as she mumbles in the weird way she does when she drinks too much wine.
“I’ll get you some ice,” I tell her, trying to hold in my tears the way Dad told me I should.
“Asher …” she calls as I run through our house to get her what she asked for. The house is very big, and it takes time for me to get to the kitchen. “Asher!”
“Asher.”
I sit up in a cold sweat to the incessant sound of buzzing and a warm hand on my arm.
I turn quickly to try to focus on the space around me.
“You’re shaking.” I realize the voice belongs to Olivia and the buzzing is my phone. I flip it over and see my uncle’s name on the screen. It’s as if he has some sort of direct connection to my brain; my past haunts me, whether I’m awake or asleep.
Olivia wraps her arms around me and I take a deep breath, steadying myself.
“You were dreaming. You were saying, ‘I’m not him.’” She kisses my head. “Are you okay?”
I grip her tight, burying my face in her hair, reliving my dream. The trauma of my early childhood and my father’s abuse is buried in the deepest parts of my brain.
Olivia moves to unwrap her arms, but I hold her tighter.
“Stay,” I tell her. “Please, just stay.”
Everything a Donavan man touches dies. I squeeze my eyes shut to push my mother’s words away. I don’t want to let her go.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ash. I’m right here.”
“Olivia,” I whisper, trying to catch my breath. I’ll never be the source of any pain for her. “I’ll never hurt you, I promise. I’ll break the cycle. I’m not him.”
There’s a burning need inside me to tell her everything, even if it means losing her. I look to her in the dark.
“My father, he’s not just a cutthroat businessman with a shady empire. It all runs deeper than that. Much deeper. The things I had to do, things for my fucking dad to keep him happy, things I need to tell you—”
Olivia places her finger to my lips, silencing me.
“I don’t want to know, Asher.”
I stare at her, stunned by her words. She doesn’t want to know?
“Is the man you were then the man you are now?” she whispers as she holds me. Her voice is soft and calm and soothes me as she traces the outline of my jaw with her fingers.
“What?”
“Is the man you were then who you’ll be in the future for me, or our baby?” Her eyes search for answers. “Are you still that man, Ash?”
“No,” I answer gruffly. “I’m not …” But I still don’t deserve to keep you.
“I don’t need you to confess all of your—or your father’s—sins for me to trust you. I only care about who you are now, who you’ll be tomorrow, for me and for little bear. If you want to talk about it I’m here, always, but I don’t need it. Understand?”
Olivia places my hand over the life growing inside her. She’s radiating strength and resolve, and this mercy is greater than any other. She accepts me, sins and all, and the sheer relief of that is damn near overwhelming.
“I want to be … the best man that I can be for you and our child,” I tell her before dropping my lips to hers and kissing her with a passion I’ve never felt in my life.
“Your father has nothing on you now,” she says as she strokes my hair. “He can’t touch this life you’ve built.”
Suddenly, something in me breaks for this woman. Olivia could push me, could ask me to talk more about how I feel, but she doesn’t. Instead, she simply holds me in the dark and smiles, the smile I already know I don’t want to go a day without seeing.
“You’re fucking incredible,” I tell her, not knowing what else to say because this feeling is fucking overwhelming me. I can’t live without you. I love you.
This isn’t a matter of allowing myself to speak these words. It’s a matter of being unable to. It’s years of mistrust and trauma and abuse, but I know I’ll get there. For now, all I can do is show her every goddamn day how much I love her.
“You know what always makes me feel better when I’m thinking of my parents? How I lost them? How I can’t change where I came from?”
“Hmm?” I ask as I tighten my hold on her, drinking her in.
“Rom-com-athon.” She smiles.
I look at the clock. “It’s four a.m.”
This woman is a lunatic, but she’s my lunatic. And oddly enough, the idea sounds good. Because anything sounds good with Olivia Sutton.
“Perfect time for a little … hmm … let’s see.” She picks up the remote. “Ohhh, I know, The Proposal. ”
She starts prattling on about the plot as she selects the film and presses play.
Less than an hour later, I smell my coffee-maker brewing its daily fresh pot.
The sun is just starting to rise, casting a warm glow through my balcony doors, and I’ve forgotten all about my dream and my uncle calling me.
I’m completely satisfied and whole with Olivia in my arms as we watch Sandra Bullock realize Ryan Reynolds is the richest guy in Alaska.
Okay, maybe these rom-com movies aren’t so bad after all.
We both doze off toward the end, and it isn’t until after seven, when we wake up and Olivia hops in the shower, that I read my uncle’s message.
P
Your father has passed on, son.
P
We still need to talk.
I stare at the message for a long moment, letting it register how unaffected I am to hear that the man who made me, the one I lived under since the day I was born, has died.
I don’t have one cherished memory of him.
Not one pang of grief for him. All this means is that maybe I’m finally free of the shadow that has haunted me for years.
I can’t bring back my mother, but maybe now I can just live my life as my own man and finally make Olivia mine for good.
Maybe the deep, dark sins of my past can be buried with my father.
Rising out of bed, I leave Duke snoozing at the foot of it as I toss on my sweats and move quickly through the dewy morn ing grass into my workshop, placing my phone on the top of the butcher block work desk.
P
I’m meeting with Cale McAllister this morning. You really should call me and we can discuss arrangements for your father’s service.
P
Come home, Asher.
Pete was my safe space when I was young, but I can feel his fingers trying to pull me back in, and I want nothing to do with it. Letting him go is how I protect Olivia and the baby. So no trace of my former life can touch either one of them.
As I pick up a hammer from the hooks above the bench and bring it down harshly, striking the screen of my phone, I feel fucking free. I’ll have to get a new one, with a new number, later. But for now, I can say goodbye. My father is gone.
I strike again as memories run through my head—of every time he screamed at my mother, struck me, or made me watch him beat somebody without remorse.
Of when he paraded his mistresses around like my mother wasn’t watching, like she was nothing.
Of the nights I slept on that cold, hard cot in prison, realizing my family caring about me meant making sure I had enough in commissary but never coming to visit me as I rotted for them.
I remember them all as the phone turns into dust, my chest heaving as I stare down at the remnants.
Tossing the hammer down, I swipe the broken glass and components into the trash before steadying my breath, feeling better than I have since I arrived in Laurel Creek.
Because I’m no longer running from my past. I’m saying goodbye to it.
James Ari Donovan, good fucking riddance.