He'd gone beyond his player ways for her.
She'd grown beyond her traumatic past for him.
Together, their love was beyond.
Until one fatal accident.
__________
When she loses the love of her life in a car crash, Althea has nothing left in California...
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*ASHER'S POV*
October 30, 2023.
There was no way I was falling asleep tonight. Not that I was trying. How could I count sheep when I was lying next to the woman of my dreams?
Even staring at the ceiling above me, all my nerves were fully aware of each of her uneven breaths beside me, still tingling, left and right, from the way she'd touched me in the shower.
Fuck, she'd awakened sensations that I'd thought I'd lost forever with her featherlike caresses.
Her fingers had been so soft, tracing down the lines of my chest—mostly the scars because I didn't have much muscle left. Still, her soft brushes could have almost made me believe she found the wobbly heap of skin and bones I was now attractive. Or at least, not too repulsive.
She hadn't flinched when I'd cleaned her either, and god knows my left hand wasn't smooth. I'd left two scratches on her soft back.
Sure, it wasn't the first marks I'd left on her body, but here, I couldn't kiss it better, no matter how tempting it had been with my lips so close to the delicate skin at the nape of her neck.
Just a tiny inch, maybe even less... Like the razor blade had been from her skin.
That was the other thing prickling my nerves and preventing me from sleeping.
Every time I closed my eyes, the image flashed more and more vivid.
I'd almost lost her.
It wasn't part of the plan. I'd done all of that shit for her to realize her dream, and even if I'd known it wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows, I had never meant to hurt her to that point. I'd thought no one could push her to that point. Not my Althea.
She'd always been so strong, yet this afternoon, I'd glimpsed a new crack in her dark eyes, one that made all my assurance about my fucked-up plan crumble down.
I'd been so haunted by the hypothetical scenario of me ruining her future with my disability. However, when she'd told me she'd understood what her mom could have experienced, never had I felt more useless, a different kind of numbness spreading through my muscles, while my nerves were still zinging with harrowing impulses to stop her shaky hands and hold her in the past... Or now, to make sure she was really there with me.
