Fuck. I can hardly stand to hear her answer.
She reaches for my hand, and both her gesture and words settle me. “I think a part of me was still in love with the memory of him. I’ll always care about him because of our history, but I’m not in love with him. I’m in love with you, Asher. You. I was wrong to keep all this from you, but it was just too painful to even put a voice to it and after I saw him at the bar that night, I just…I didn’t know what to do. What to think. I had to understand what was happening first before I could even attempt to talk to you about it.”
“I get it, Alyse.” And I do. I don’t like it, but I do get it. “I understand how hard some things are to talk about.” I reach for her, needing her in my arms, my mouth on hers. She stops me.
“There’s one more thing I have to tell you.”
Her nervousness makes me nervous, too. “You can tell me anything, Alyse. Anything.”
She swallows hard. “When I lost the baby and I thought Beck had died, I went into a very deep depression.”
“Understandable,” I reply softly, aching to hold her to me, to ease her discomfort.
“I…I didn’t want to live. I felt like I’d lost everything and I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. Neither Livia nor my father knew about Beck…or the baby. The pain was so vast and so deep; I felt completely and utterly lost. I would lie in bed at night and wish I were the one who had died instead of Beck, instead of our baby. I was in so much emotional pain, I literally couldn’t function. All I wanted was to be with Beck and my baby, even if it wasn’t in the flesh.”
She flashes a look of embarrassment before continuing. “The first time, I took an entire bottle of ibuprofen, but all I managed to do was make myself sick for three days. The second time, though, I got smarter. I took a handful of Cymbaltas and pain pills and as much whiskey as I could drink until I blessedly passed out.”
I literally cannot breathe when Alyse pauses, biting her lip. Her gaze shifts away again. This time I don’t give her a choice. I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms tightly around her, all the time thinking fuck fuck fuck! I could have lost her. Forever. The only woman who was meant for me could have been taken away before I even had her. I squeeze tighter, relishing in the warmth of her body bleeding into mine.
“Livia found me,” she tells me quietly. “I’d stopped breathing and she did CPR on me until the ambulance arrived. If she’d been even two minutes later I would have died. After three days in the hospital, my father admitted me to an inpatient psych ward where I spent the next thirty days in intense therapy and another year after that in outpatient care.”
My eyes prick as irrational guilt assaults me. None of this would have happened either if she were mine back then. If I’d never let her go.
“Jesus, Alyse. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you went through all of that by yourself. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“Asher, you have no reason to be sorry. It’s just…my path, I guess.”
“I should have never let you go. It is my fault.”
“Stop. It’s not. You don’t…think any less of me because I had a little psychotic break?” she asks tentatively.
“Christ, why would I, Alyse? I can’t even imagine what you were going through. I’m in no position to pass judgment on something that I can’t possibly understand. If anything I’m proud of you.”
“Proud of me?” she asks disbelievingly.
“Yes. I’m not sure I could have been as strong as you were to get through all of that.”
“I wasn’t strong. I was weak.”
“No, baby.” I tilt her face to mine. “A moment of weakness doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. You’re here and you’re an extraordinary woman. The strongest I know.”
Her smile is tired and sad. “After I recovered, that’s when I got the tattoo. To remind myself to believe in hope and life and me.”
“I figured it was something deep and meaningful,” I say, stroking her hair.
“Yeah.”
She looks away again, going silent. I have to wonder why she was so nervous to tell me something like this. As far as I’m concerned, the whole dead/not dead boyfriend is a far more important part of what shaped Alyse into the woman she is today.
“Your mother’s very wise, you know,” she finally says.
“Yes she is,” I numbly agree, unable to think about anything but the fact that I almost didn’t get the chance to sit here now with her. I could have missed the smell of vanilla in her hair or pressing my lips to her warm temple or the feather of her fingers down my spine as I rock inside of her. My arms tighten. She squeaks so I loosen them, but only slightly.