I Love You, Always (28 page)

“Why?” she breathes out and I have to look away before I stop thinking altogether, step closer and just kiss her. I want to, so badly, but I know I can’t. I know it’s too soon and too much and I have to stop myself, no matter how much I want to do it. “Luke?” she asks.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. My heart’s racing in my chest, at the closeness of her, at the thoughts running through my head, at the memory of holding her in my arms. “Because of the things he said and did to you, Ash,” I say, knowing I can’t be anything more than a friend to her right now. “What he was trying to do, it’s not right, it wasn’t right.”

I have to look away again, because the way she’s looking at me right now, I can’t keep looking at her and
not
lean in and kiss her. Ash is looking at me like she not only understands what I’m really thinking, but she wants to know why. Why I feel this way, why I feel these things for her. And I’m afraid that everything I’m feeling is written all over my face and she can see it all anyway. And I don’t want to scare her. I can’t, not after everything else that’s happened tonight.

Finally I hear her whisper, “Thank you.” And even though I have no idea what she’s thanking me for, I turn back to her, watch as she stares at her feet as though she can’t work out if she wants them to move or not.

Her indecision slams me into action as I open my mouth and ask her again. “Do you want to go, Ash?” I mean next Saturday, but I realise she might think I’m asking about leaving tonight. Without even realising I’m doing it, I see my hand reach out and touch her cheek, hear my voice whisper, “Ash?”

She looks up at me, and something I don’t understand flashes across her face. “Let’s get another drink,” she says, and I actually exhale as I realise she’s going to stay. And if she stays tonight, then maybe she’ll also come and watch us play next weekend. And because I’ve apparently lost complete control of anything I’m doing right now, I don’t bother stopping my fingers as they move to tuck her hair behind her ear. I feel a jolt of electricity run up my arm as I do, see her eyes darken with my touch, and her lips ever so slightly part, as she exhales. God, does she actually feel what I feel? Is this thing between us, all of the feelings I have for her, are they what she feels too? I’m about to try and find out when Ash steps backwards, away from my touch, and whatever it was that was just between us
evaporates
.

I smile at her, my heart pounding in my chest, as I try to reassure her that she’s okay, that I won’t push any further. We both turn towards the door and as our hands almost touch, I step closer, opening it for her before we walk out and rejoin the party, leaving whatever was trying to happen between us, back in my room.

And as I take her into the kitchen to get us some more drinks, I can only hope that we somehow find our way back there again.
If not tonight, then sometime very soon.

Because this girl, Asha, has completely stolen my fucking heart and no matter what happens, I know, I am forever one thing.

Hers.

I can never forgive you

And I will never forget

But I’m letting it all go now

Because you’re not worth the regret

∞

“Did you get any sleep last night?” Ash asks me as I roll over, not realising she is already awake.

“A little.”

“Get any decisions made?” she asks, sliding her arm around my waist.

I exhale; closing my eyes as I wonder if I’m not about to make the biggest mistake of my life, undo everything I’ve tried so hard to forget by doing this. “Yeah…”

“And?” she asks as I open my eyes and see Ash staring at me, nothing but concern on her face.

“I’m going to go and see him,” I whisper, still not sure if this is the right thing to do.

“Good,” she says, leaning in to kiss me. “And I’ll be there with you, Luke,” she adds on before pressing her lips against mine.

“Thank you, Asha,” I breathe against her. “Thank you.”

When we get downstairs, we find Mia and Jared in the living room watching TV. “I’m going to go,” I immediately say, looking at my sister.

“Okay,” is all she says, as she gets up off the couch and heads
upstairs.

“Guess she’s coming too,” I say as I turn to look at Jared.

Jared’s staring at the stairs Mia has disappeared up. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure if she knows what she wants to do yet,” he says, standing up. “We’ve been talking about it all night.”

I run my hand over my head. “Yeah, I get that. I’m not hundred percent sure either.”

Jared exhales loudly, his hand running through his hair. “I don’t know man, I mean after everything he did to her, I feel like he doesn’t deserve her goodbye,” Jared says, turning to face me now. “Yours either.”

“No…”

“But,” he continues. “I do get why you’re both doing this, because at the end of the day, this isn’t really about him or what he wants, it’s about what you two both want…and need.” Jared is staring at me now. “And I think you both really need to let this all go. Say goodbye to everything that’s happened, not necessarily the man who caused it all.”

I’m shaking my head at him, smiling at the same time. “When the fuck did you get so smart?” I say, laughing a little.

Jared grins at me now, glancing at the stairs as Mia comes back down with her bag and shoes. “You’re not the only genius here, Luke,” he says before slapping me over the back of the head. I can’t help but laugh, knowing he’s absolutely right.

The hospital room is dark and the only light is a dim fluorescent above the bed. The whole place is quiet because it’s late in the afternoon and visiting hours haven’t started yet. I guess they make exceptions for the people who are dying.

“Can I get you anything?” Ash whispers to me, her fingers stroking my face.

I look down at the woman sitting in my lap. Being back in a hospital is harder than I thought it would be, because all it does is remind me of everything I nearly lost. It breaks my heart just thinking about it and I have to force the memories, the horrible images from that night, away. I can’t go down that path again.

I try smiling at her. “No, just sit with me for a minute, please.”

It seems stupid and pathetic, but I don’t want her to leave me. I just need to keep her close for a second. Even though this is a different hospital in a different city and she’s sitting right here with me, alive, this still brings back far too many bad memories.

Her hand steadies on my cheek now, forcing me to look at her. “Of course, whatever you need, okay?”

I know she knows what I’m really thinking about. She watched me have nightmares about it for weeks, so I know she knows seeing my father again is only half of it. She doesn’t say anything though, because she also knows there’s nothing to say. We both know what it’s like to lose loved ones, people who mean more to us than anything, and we both know there are no words to make that better. So she just sits with her head resting on my shoulder. I can feel her soft breaths against my neck and I have to close my eyes, try and remember that I’m not here because of her.

But I can still feel my heart pounding in my chest. God, I really don’t know what I would have done if I had lost her. I’ve never had anything like this before, never had this much of a connection with one person. Never had someone who does for me all the things she does, someone who’d do anything for me. I’d never been in love before I met her.

Jared is a friend and he really took care of me when I needed it the most, but Asha, she saved me. She saved me more than she knows and being with her, having her in my life, I feel like I can finally breathe. She is
everything
to me.

I tighten my arms around her, pulling her close. “Thank you,” I whisper in her ear.

She presses a kiss to my cheek, but I turn and kiss her lips now, desperate to be close to her, to feel her,
prove
to myself that she’s real. I feel her fingers lightly brush my cheeks. “It’s okay, Luke,” she whispers to me. I bury my face in her neck now, trying to keep my shit together. Losing it has nothing to do with being here now and everything to do with memories of that night so many months ago. “Shhh, it’s okay. I know, Luke, I know,” she whispers in my ear with no idea how much her touch and her words help me.

There are all sorts of crazy memories running through my mind right now, all of them from nearly a year ago as I sat beside her hospital bed. That was without a doubt, the worst night of my life. Nothing, nothing will wreck me like that night did.

I don’t know how long I hold her for, but eventually we pull back from each other. I watch as she leans in and gently kisses my cheek, then my lips. My arms tighten around her and I don’t ever want to let her go. “Thank you, Asha,” I murmur against her skin.

“Always, Luke, you know that.”

I crush her against me. My lips on hers again as I try to absorb her body in mine, pull her inside of me almost. “Asha…” I can’t even finish my sentence.

She holds me in her arms, kissing me back. “Luke,” she eventually whispers to me. “It’s okay. I’m here, I’m okay,
you’re
okay.
We
are okay.”

I pull back and look at her. She lightly brushes my cheek again and I lean into her touch. “It’s just bringing it all back,” I finally say, shrugging.

“I know,” she whispers. “But I’m here. I’m right here with you,” she says, her hand pressing against my chest. “Right now. And I’m never letting go.”

I try smiling at her and she leans in and presses a kiss to my lips without saying anything more, but knowing exactly what’s going through my head. We sit together like this, her in my lap, my arms wrapped tightly around her for a long time. A nurse comes in at some point and checks on him, only nodding to us before she leaves.

Eventually Ash says, “Would you like me to get you a coffee or something?”

I run my fingers through her hair. “Thank you, Asha, that would be great.”

“I’ll be right back, okay?” she says to me.

I pull her mouth to mine. “Yeah, I know.”

She stands up, running her hand across my shoulders as she pulls herself from my lap and walks out of the room. I miss her immediately, but force myself to turn back to my father, lying in the bed in front of me, dying.

There’s no escaping this one. He really is dying. But even still, this is nothing in comparison to what I went through with Ash. Nothing.

Because as much as I hate the idea of what this says about me, there genuinely was a time when I wished he was dead, I hated him that much. I don’t know what it is that I feel towards him now though, I’m not sure I have the energy to feel anything anymore. The anger has suddenly all gone, so has the regret. None of it feels worth carrying around anymore, not for him, and certainly not for me. I’m done wasting my time and effort with him and I’m done carrying this shit around with me anymore. Because I promised myself that when I left all those years ago, I would not let this man destroy me, and despite that promise, that’s exactly what he’s been doing, still.

Walking into the hospital tonight, I know that these feelings have now all gone. Coming here was the right thing to do, and Jared is right. This isn’t about saying goodbye to him; it’s about saying goodbye to everything that happened. It’s about saying goodbye to my past and all of the things I’ve been hanging on to.

I stare at his hand as it lies against the white sheet. It’s the same hand that hit me, but now it looks like it could barely form a fist. There’s no jewelry on there, only the ageing lines of a man getting old, dying before he’s supposed to.

I don’t know what makes me do it, but for some reason I see my own hand reaching out to touch him. I’m not sure what I intend to do, but for just a second I rest my hand on top of his. They are both the same size, but where mine is firm, his skin is fine, so thin it could almost tear. And it’s cold, cold enough to remind me of Asha’s hand that night. I have to snatch mine away. I cannot go back to those memories.

“Luke?” I hear him whisper.

My eyes snap up to his face. I see his eyes are half open, a little dazed, but he seems to recognise me. “Yeah,” I whisper back.

I watch as he tries to swallow and without thinking about it, I grab the water off the side table and hold the straw to his mouth. He takes a small sip before dropping his head back on to the pillow, exhausted.

“You’re here?” he finally says to me, his words a little slurred.

I run my hand down my face. I wonder if Mia is ever going to come in here and see him. “Yeah, I am,” I say.

“Why?” he asks, and I can’t stop the half laugh that falls from my mouth.

“I really don’t know,” I tell him truthfully.

He coughs suddenly and it sounds so unbelievably painful that I’m on my feet, not sure what to do. He shakes his head at me and after a few minutes he stops, but his breathing is a little more laboured now. “Is someone here with you?” he rasps.

I take a deep breath. I never told him about Asha, much less introduced them. I never wanted her to see this man because I was so ashamed at the kind of man he was, at everything he’d done to me, at the fact that we could possibly be related. And even though she knows everything and is here with me now, I never wanted her to actually meet him. “Yeah,” I finally get out.

“Who?”

I run my hand over my face. “My girlfriend,” I answer, although that word isn’t anywhere near enough to describe what Ash is to me. But I’m not going into that with him, he doesn’t deserve to know anything about her, much less what she means to me. “But Mia’s here too,” I say and then for unknown reasons, I add on, “With Jared.”

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he whispers, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Mia and Jared are together.

I exhale loudly, talking more to myself as I say, “Yeah, me either.”

He takes another struggling breath. “Why are you here, Luke?”

I look up and meet his eyes. They aren’t cold anymore, not like they used to be. They’re just nothing. Empty, lifeless almost. I guess that’s to be expected, and it’s not like I ever expected to see anything in them, not anymore. “Honestly, Dad, I don’t fucking know,” I breathe out. “I really don’t know.”

And then he falls asleep.

I stand up from the chair now, hands behind my head as I walk around the room. I have no idea where my mother is; although it’s hardly surprising she’s not here. She doesn’t do particularly well with a crisis or something that actually requires emotion. Her solution to that was to always pour another drink and ignore it. It feels strange to be here though, to watch this man who was once such an authoritative figure in my life, now lay helpless on this bed. And it’s strange to feel absolutely nothing about that either. Not only is there no anger anymore, there’s just…nothing.

I will never forget what this man did to me, all the times he nearly broke me, and I’m not sure I can ever forgive him for it either. But somehow, now, none of that seems to matter anymore. Now, he is dying and I’m left to live, and absolutely none of it matters anymore. And it’s a huge relief to know that, to feel this way after so long.

“Luke?”

I turn and see Mia standing in the doorway. I smile at her, walking over as I pull her into my arms. “Come and say goodbye, Mia, it’s okay, really,” I say, knowing she’ll regret it if she doesn’t. As I glance out in the corridor, I see Ash and Jared sitting on the floor, drinking coffees. Ash looks up at
me and smiles, nods
as if to say it’s okay.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Mia whispers and when I pull back, I can see the fear on her face.

“Yeah, you can,” I tell her. “You’re not afraid of him anymore, remember.”

She smiles up at me and I watch as she squares her shoulders, as though she’s remembering this. “No, you’re right, come on then.”

We walk into the room together, my arm around Mia’s shoulders, her arm around my waist. We both stand beside the bed of the man who ruined so much of our lives and we silently watch him. He’s sleeping still and who knows when he’ll wake up again, if he’ll wake up again. Mia’s head falls onto my shoulder and I rest my cheek on the top of it.