Page 7 of From Asher, With Love

Asher is here.

In New York City.

In this bar.

Sitting at a table with a drink and his perfectly folded red scarf.

I instinctively take a step back, convinced this is a mistake. Holt’s friend must be someone else. Julianna must have sent meAsher’s picture by error. Her sending him to me is a mere coincidence.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his perfect eyebrows raised, revealing his familiar, kind eyes. Everything about him has changed since the last time I’ve seen him. Everything but those.

“Oh, um, I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”

“Huh.” His eyes narrow. The corner of his mouth twitches. “Like a date?”

Again with that voice.

I hate the way it makes my heart race and my thighs clench in response.

But his words quickly register, and my cheeks redden. I cut him a glare. “No, not a date.”

“Okay.” He nods, looking from the top of my head down to my toes before meeting my gaze again.

His stare is intense but, for the most part, unaffected. His lips press together, with three lines creasing his forehead. He’s the same man I knew at eighteen, only he isn’t. His features are more prominent, fuller, and more defined. He looks his age—closer to thirty than twenty. A sharp nose is set between two piercing eyes, filled with years of silence, and the echo of a life we both once lived.

My nostrils flare from the anger bubbling inside me as he continues to size me up. The arrogance dripping from him is suddenly so blindingly obvious.

I cross my arms over my chest. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs. “Nothing. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Well, you were looking at me in a way that suggests something.”

“I wasn’t suggesting anything.” He frowns.

I tighten my arms around myself to keep me grounded. Slowly, pieces of my previous life in Connecticut begin to resurface,chipping away at the new life I’ve built around it to protect myself. I feel vulnerable and exposed, as if Asher can read every thought creeping in my mind.

By this point, I’m thoroughly convinced Julianna has made a mistake. In her delirious, food poisoned state, it’s completely plausible for her to have sent me Asher’s picture by mistake.

“Well…” I nervously unravel my arms and clap my hands together. “This has been fun, but I’m going to get going.”

His stare burns a hole in my chest, and I want to rewind to thirty minutes ago before I allowed myself to step out of my apartment. No business deal is worth spending time with Asher when it’s clear we’re not happy with seeing each other.

I wouldn’t expect it to be, considering how our relationship ended years ago.

But I can’t ignore the prick to my chest when realizing how he’s treating me in this moment. As if I were the one who hurt him. As if he weren’t the one who tore my heart out and disappeared as though he’d never existed.

He lifts the glass to his mouth, his lips uncurling, then he shrugs before swallowing the rest of whatever liquid remained. He slams the empty glass down on the table, making the half-melted ice rattle against the sides.

I’m fully prepared to walk away, but something in the way he moves makes me stay.

For nearly a year since the last time I saw Asher, I imagined what it would be like if I ever saw him again, but never did I imagine a moment like this one. I can’t pinpoint the way I feel. Seeing your first love after ten years is surreal, but seeing Asher has also opened a chest I locked and shoved in a corner a long time ago.

I bite the inside of my cheek. The remnants of ash left behind from all those years ago are nothing but a ghost of a memory.

Now, we’re simply two strangers standing in the middle of a bar in New York City.

I watch him carefully as he walks around the table to move past me. He’s taller than I remember—or maybe he isn’t. The faded memory I have of the boy who stole my heart before burning it to nothing more than a pile of ash rests in the back of my mind. I also can’t ignore how good he smells or how expensive his clothes look. His hair is longer on top, cut shorter on the sides. What used to be hints of dull blond in his hair have now faded to a light brown.

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