Page 52 of When I'm With You
I lower my forehead to hers, breathing her in, my heart expanding with love for her, knowing how monumental it is for her to say those words. “I’ll never call you anything else, ever again,” I murmur.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She pulls away a bit then, leaning her head back so she can look at me. “But the texts. The phone calls. Asher, I really need to know what they’re all about because my mind is going to some pretty bad places.”
I take a deep breath, because here goes nothing. “It has to do with football, and it’s a long story. I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. Will you come upstairs with me, out of the snow, so we can talk?”
She smiles.
Fuck I’ve missed her smiles.
Then she steps into me and puts her arms around my waist, leaning her head on my shoulder. I wrap myself around her, holding on and letting out a breath I feel like I’ve been holding since yesterday as the snow falls all around us.
“Let’s go upstairs. Tell me everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Julie
Our room is warm when we get back. Shirley must have seen us go outside and assumed we would be freezing because a fire is roaring in the giant fireplace and even with the god-awful wallpaper, the room is inviting.
Asher closes the door behind us before unzipping my suitcase and handing me the pajamas he somehow knows are always on top. “Go warm up in the shower. We can talk afterwards.” He kisses my forehead again and pushes me gently towards the bathroom. I sense he needs a minute to gather his thoughts, and now that I know whatever is going on is career related, I’m happy to give him whatever time he needs.
I come out of the bathroom to a bare mattress and a nest of pillows and blankets on the floor in front of the fire. Asher is sitting in the middle of the pile, wearing gray joggers and a navy hoodie. His light brown hair is disheveled, like he has spent the last ten minutes running his hands through it, and he looks so cozy I want to curl myself into him and never let go.
I take a seat across from him, cross-legged so our knees aretouching, and he immediately takes both of my hands in his, holding them tighter than necessary, like he needs a touchstone for whatever conversation we’re about to have. His face, normally so open and cheerful, is tense, and his sky-blue eyes look troubled and anxious. I’m suddenly almost desperate to put him at ease. To calm him the way he has done for me so many times over the last few weeks. I pull one of my hands out of his and lay it on his cheek. He leans into my touch immediately.
“Asher. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I’m a little afraid of this conversation.” His admission comes in a raspy whisper.
“Tell me why.”
“I’m afraid you’ll walk away once you hear what I have to say.”
“I won’t.” I’m starting to think there is nothing on earth that would make me walk away from this man. He could tell me he killed someone, and I would grab a shovel to help bury the body, law license be damned. “I swear I won’t. You’re safe with me too, you know. We can be safe with each other.” I feel the truth of those words more deeply than I have felt anything in my life. I want to be his safe place, because he is absolutely, undoubtedly mine.
He leans into my hand for another minute before he recaptures it with his and starts to talk.
“Okay, so it started about five years ago. It was the first home game of my fourth season on the team, and I dislocated my shoulder in the third quarter.”
I narrow my eyes, thinking back. “I was at that game. It was a bad sack, right?”
“Yeah. You were really there?”
“I go to a lot of home games. My dad’s company has a bunch of tickets, and when he’s not using them for business, hegives them to us. Ben and Hallie and everyone were there too. I remember when you went down.” And I do. I remember him laying on the turf, holding his arm close to his body so it stayed immobile, and I remember thinking I could see the pain in his eyes as the trainers helped him off the field. Weird to have such a vivid memory of a single football game from years ago.
“So, you might remember that I didn’t come back to the game. Not that day and not for eight more weeks. It was my first real football injury, and I didn’t need surgery, so everyone expected a quick recovery. They kept saying I would be back to practice in a month and then back to the game after six weeks. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I missed more than half the season. For some reason, the pain wouldn’t go away, and no one could figure out why. I did intense physical therapy and got cortisone shots that let me play the second half of the season. I was never pain free, but I got good at hiding it. As far as the coaches and trainers knew, I was healed. But I wasn’t.”
He stops then, taking a breath. He looks at me, as if he’s asking for permission to keep going. To tell me whatever comes next. I say nothing, just squeeze his hand and give him what I hope is a reassuring smile. It must work, because he continues.
“I was worried enough about the pain that when I was in Boulder that offseason, I went to see a close family friend who is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine. He did an MRI and diagnosed me with post-traumatic arthritis. He couldn’t tell me why it happened—it was mostly just bad luck. He kept the appointment completely off the books as a favor, and no one ever found out. As far as anyone else knew, I healed fine, and the injury was forgotten.”
The pain in his eyes when he took the hit in the playoff game. The way he rolls his shoulder. His discomfort when I mentioned his post-football plans yesterday. My logical brain slots these pieces right into place to form the whole picture.
“But you didn’t forget about it.” It’s not a question. Asher clearly lives with at least some pain, and the thought of this sweet, strong, confident man being in any kind of discomfort kills me.
“I didn’t. Post-traumatic arthritis can be temporary, but my job literally requires the near-constant use of my shoulder, so it wasn’t temporary for me. That first season after my injury, I was in pain all the time for the first few weeks. I could get through the games, but practice was excruciating, and off-days were terrible. But I still didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want them to pull me from the game.”
He stops then, taking his hands from mine and running them down his face before he continues.
