Forever Yours

Chapter 19

"I'm so sorry about your father, Hailee," Asher said, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.

"No need to be sorry, it's not your fault," I smiled weakly. I never really understood why people say that. It's stupid.

After I told him about my father, I couldn't help but let my tears flow freely. Asher had hugged me close to him and let me cry as much as I wanted to. I had let it all out, crying till the point my eyes were puffy and my nose turned red. After my breakdown, we had walked down to Georgia's for ice cream, Asher's attempt at cheering me up.

I took a bite of my mint-chocolate ice cream, swirling it in my mouth. I looked at Asher who was sitting across from me, digging into his chocolate ice cream. He looked up from his cup to find me staring at him and gave me one of his infamous smirks.

"Giving your eyes some eye candy, eh?" he winked and it's safe to say my heart fluttered.

"Shut up," I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he suddenly asked me, his chocolate eyes searching my hazel ones. "About your dad," he clarified.

"I don't know. I have tried not to think about it for so long now. It just hurts to think about it you now," I replied, feet shuffling, hesitant to approach the topic.

"It's better to let it out, princess. You don't need to bottle it up inside of you. It will only hurt you more." He said, mater-of-fact-ly.

I thought about what he said. It's true that bottling it up will hurt me more. But isn't the pain going to be the same if I talk about it now or sometime in the future? How does it even matter? Why revisit those memories which cause me so much pain, when I can just sit here having my ice cream with Ash and forget about them?

I looked up into Asher's eyes. There was no sympathy or pity in them. They were full of support, empathy and reassurance. He brought me comfort and made me want to open up to him and tell him everything. So I did.

"It was four years ago," I started, fidgeting with my now empty ice cream cup. "My father was a detective, a damn good one at that. He was working on a case of his, one about a drug ring in the city. The dealers were smuggling drugs into the state and they were in association with a gang whose leader was a very dangerous man. Somehow, my dad crossed paths with Elliot Rodriguez, Derek's father."

At this, Asher's eyes seemed to harden the tiniest bit and he clenched his jaw.

"Are you okay Ash?" I asked, concerned. He just nodded and motioned for me to continue.

"Anyways, turned out Elliot was a friend of dad from college and they started hanging out, growing pretty close. Dad was having trouble with his case so he started working day and night, determined to take down the drug ring. After a lot of efforts, he had finally got hold of the time and location of the final big deal and he reached there with his backup team. He reached the location with his team, and they raided the place."

"Go on," Ash urged me.

"There, in the midst of the raid, he saw Elliot. My dad was shocked and thought Elliot was an innocent man caught in the midst of it. Dad approached him, telling him to run away, but then Elliot pulled out a gun and aimed it at dad. My dad was unaware of the fact that Elliot was the leader of the gang. Elliot knew that he would be arrested as it was, so he didn't think twice before pulling the trigger."

A single tear trailed down my cheek and Ash wiped it off with his thumb.

"Elliot and his men that the cops managed to arrest were put behind bars. They won't be out for a long time now," I scoffed. "My father, on the other hand, was put in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital where he went into surgery immediately. We had rushed to the hospital as soon as we had got the call. The wait was torturous. We waited for hours, anxiously pacing, hoping to soon receive good news. When, the doctor finally came out of the operation room, we all gathered around him and looked at him hopefully. He just shook his head and apologized for not being able to save him."