Asher (Ashes & Embers 6)

He takes off his jacket, leans back against the couch and puts his arm around me, gently coaxing me to nestle into his side. I wonder if he feels the subtle tremor of comfort and familiarity thrumming through us like I do.

It’s these moments of déjà vu that give me hope, no matter how fleeting and minuscule they are.

We watch lightning bugs flitter around in the bushes, and he sighs contentedly, pulling me closer. I feel it too—it’s a beautiful night. The solar lights scattered around the flower gardens glow like random hidden stars. The trickling water of the fountains calms my discomfort from dinner. Asher presses a kiss to the top of my head, his lips lingering in my hair, his breath warm against my scalp. He caresses my fingers with his, his palm engulfing my small hand.

Fascinated with the tattoos covering his arms and hands, I follow the designs with my fingertip, inching over his wrist, up to his taut forearm to where his sleeve is rolled up.

The tips of my fingers skate over small dents in his muscular forearm, and like a magnet, they pull my hand back. A tingle burns in my skull as I squint at his arm in the candlelight.

Hiding beneath the inked dragon portrait are five concave dimples in his skin, each fading off into thin, two-inch-long lines of raised flesh.

“How did you get these?” I ask, preparing myself to hear about a horrible dog attack.

“Let’s not talk about that now.” He gently moves my hand away.

Maybe it’s the amnesia—the constant need for life information—or maybe it’s the burn in my head that I can’t deny is usually a sign of some kind of memory trying to squirm out, but I need to know what those scars are.

“Tell me.” I touch his arm again. “Please.”

“Em, it’s nothing. Just old scars. Let’s enjoy our night. Look how pretty the stars are. You used to call them the diamonds of the dark. You wrote a song about them—”

I can’t think about songs and music now.

“Asher, don’t distract me.”

“I’m not.”

I turn to face him. “You are. Didn’t we talk about everything? Before? You said we were best friends.”

He nods, his dark eyes meeting mine. “Yes. Always.”

“Then why won’t you treat me that way now? You say you want me to remember. You say you want ‘us’ back, but how can we if you won’t answer questions I have?”

His jaw muscles twitch, and he lets out a deep, defeated breath.

Taking my hand, he positions my fingers over each scar, and my blood goes cold before I even fully understand why.

His voice is low, pained, dredged up from a dark place. “The scars are from your fingernails.”

I quickly pull my hand away. “I hurt you? Why?”

He told me we never fought. Why would I gouge my nails into his arm deep enough to inflict permanent scars?

“No, baby…you’d never hurt me. It happened the day you fell. You were walking too close to the edge, and you got dizzy. I grabbed you when I saw you go down, and all you could do was grab on to my arm.” He swallows hard. Tears form in the corners of his eyes. “I tried to pull you up. I tried so fucking hard.”

My heartbeat reverberates loudly in my ears as the tears slide down his cheeks.

“You kept slipping…I couldn’t pull you up. There was nothing for me to grab on to. You were so fucking scared. I’ll never forget how you looked at me, how much you trusted me to save you.” He sucks in a tortured, ragged breath. “I begged you to hang on to me—I didn’t care if you pulled my skin off to the bone as long as you didn’t fall—but everything happened so fast.” His voice cracks over the last word, and it tears my heart to tattered shreds.

Envisioning the accident, piecing it together from his words, is making my entire body tremble. “Oh my God,” I whisper. “I didn’t know.”

I never realized he was right there when it happened, trying to save me. Or that he had to watch me fall.

“It’s my fault,” he rasps. “I should’ve—”

“No,” I say quickly. I won’t let him say such horrible things. “It’s not your fault. Have you been thinking and believing that all this time?”

His hands shake as he grabs a napkin off the small table and wipes his face.

Yes. He blames himself for what happened. To Ember. To me. To himself and his daughter.

God. How awful to be missing his wife so much while she lay in a coma for years, all the while blaming himself. It’s unthinkable the pain and grief he must have been living with.

“Is that why you never gave up?” I ask as delicately as I can. “Because you felt responsible?”

The color drains from his face. “I never gave up because I love you. But I didn’t just feel responsible. I am responsible.”