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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Melody
I was rocking, gently. Lying on something, drifting with the current. No. No. Asher had found me. I was safe. I think. Dreaming maybe? A child’s voice called to me. “Mommy!” That was impossible. My baby wasn’t born yet. I wasn’t even very far along. “Mommy!” My eyes shot open. I looked up to a ceiling I didn’t recognize. I glanced around. The room was dark, and I struggled to move, but my legs were weighed down with something heavy or secured somehow. Panic took hold and I thrashed my arms to try to free myself.
“Hey,” Asher whispered close to my face and grabbed my arms, gently tugging them down onto the bed. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“Asher?”
He smiled at me and I swallowed. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital. You were so cold and lethargic; the doctors wanted you to stay overnight.” I looked at the blue mittens on my hands and pulled them off. I didn’t know why I had mittens on, and I wanted to see my fingers, to make sure they were all there.
My palm instantly went to my abdomen as I thought of the baby. “The baby? What about the baby?”
“Our baby is fine.” He smiled. He’d saidourbaby. Had I heard him correctly? Okay, that did not slip by me.
I closed my eyes with relief.
“Asher, I…”
“Shhhh. Rest.”
“Is it tomorrow?” I asked, not wanting to stay in that bed any longer, but all I got was a puzzled looked from Asher. “You said overnight. So is it morning?”
“Almost.”
“You stayed here all night?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that all you can say is, ‘yeah?’”
He laughed. “Yeah.” He placed his hand on top of mine and looked down at our hands.
“I’m just so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done if something happened to you. I know this isn’t the best time…”
“No, don’t. I’ve been stupid.”
“Maybe.” He chuckled. “But let me finish. I’ve been sitting here all night thinking about things. Thinking about you, aboutus. I thought I’d lost you, Mel, and I couldn’t bear it. So, though this might not be the best time, I need to say this now, because I’m learning that you need to live life as if it’s your last day, last hour, last minute on earth, making the most of it, living it moment by moment, because you never know when it’s all going to be over or someone you love is going to be taken from you. Ever since you and I made love that first time, I’ve had trouble getting you out of my head. I mean, you’ve always been there, but it became different for me after that night. You had me completely undone. I became jealous about Alex to the point where I couldn’t think straight. After you’d gone to the concert with him, I saw the way he treated you the next night and I knew he’d hurt you.”
“He did, but not the way you think.”
I shook my head. “I know that now. I should have known then, but love has a way of blinding you sometimes.”
Did he just saylove?
“And it makes you do and think things that you normally wouldn’t. The last time you and I made love…before we found out about this”—he splayed his fingers gently over my stomach and smiled—“I wanted to keep you there in bed with me forever and never let you go. I realized then how much I needed you in my life. I didn’t just say I needed you, I meant it. That night after we’d talked to Jackson and Brodie and revealed who I was, I had planned to tell you that I loved you, but then, when we found out about the baby, it just seemed like the wrong time and I didn’t know how to deal with it. The thought of Alex touching you turned me into a green monster, and I had horrible thoughts, to the point of forgetting thatIwas the one you slept with first. I hadn’t even taken into consideration the fact that you had the good sense not to be with Alex. I should have realized that when I knew you were home early from your date with him, but the news of Ted made things all messed up, and I didn’t even think about it. Then, when I saw him in the club, I knew he was crass, knew he didn’t give a fuck about the women he’d been with. But the more I remembered about watching him that night, the more I realized that I never saw him look at you, which if he had slept with you, he would have. So, I should have realized then that you turned him down. So, I’m sorry for acting like a jealous imbecile. I love you, Mel. Can you forgive me?”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks. The three little words coming from Asher’s lips were so unexpected. I knew he cared for me, we were very close, but love? He actually loved me? Only in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined hearing those words come from his mouth. Words I’d dreamed of hearing so many times. I bit my bottom lip.
“Mel? Do you forgive me?”
I nodded. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Baby, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“Yes, I do. I’m sorry I treated you like shit all week and never let you explain your feelings to me. I was so hung up on my own that I forgot about yours and that’s inexcusable.”
