"Why didn’t you tell me? If you were dying, didn’t you want to be with us?"
"I didn’t want to let my poison touch you. I-I spent weeks high, Keira. Those days passed in a blur. It was the only way I could cope." When tears pricked my eyes, he reached up, rasping, "Hey, what is it?"
"I-I went to the clubhouse," I told him softly, "the day after you missed a parent-teacher conference at the school. Kendra came and talked to me. Fed me a lot of bullshit. Said…" I gritted my teeth, but I was determined to get this out. Determined to lay this all on the line so there was nothing, no lies, between us. "She said that you’d had a kid together, that you’d been trying for years, that you didn’t trust me to have another baby because I was too weak. Said that you’d had sex while I was bedridden—"
Rage had him turning to stone beneath me. "I wish I could kill her again."
Me too.
"She seemed to slip into every single crack in my confidence, making me think I was like my mom. I-I had no choice but to react, Storm. I needed to make sure I did right by Cyan when she never did that for me."
"And to my dying day, I will never stop being proud of you for doing that," he rumbled, his assurance filling me with relief. He didn’t hate me for believing her lies. "Baby girl, this is the last time we’re going to talk about this because it’s in the past, and we have a beautiful future ahead of us.
"Do you remember the day you almost miscarried?"
"I do. I’d left you," I told him in a small voice.
"Yeah, and I couldn’t fucking find you. Where did you hide?"
"I went to Verona, stayed in the motel there."
He closed his eyes. "‘Course you did. Dumbass—why didn’t I look there?"
"It was twelve years ago, Storm, I think you can cut yourself some slack."
"No. I can’t." He shook his head. "I couldn’t find you, so I fell back on old habits."
"You got high," I said softly, reaching up to pet the cross he always wore.
"I did. I could only get LSD and it always fucks me up, and when you came into my room, I never questioned it. I was just too happy. Just too fucking relieved." I tensed. "Then I woke up, and it wasn’t you."
"She pretended to be me?"
"I believed it was you. She just never said anything to break the belief." Guilt had him gulping. "I threw her out, told her if she came near me again I’d kill her, then I stormed off, determined to find you and to confess, but… you called and you were on bedrest from that moment on."
"You never slept with her again?"
"Never."
"When I was bedridden?"
"No. I swear." He hunched his shoulders. "You left me, I got high. That was when it usually happened."
The truth settled into my bones, filling up all the places Kendra had corroded with her lies.
"If you go on Ross’s logic in Friends, you didn’t cheat."
"I did," he said firmly, taking full accountability. "You deserved better from me, and I let you down; well, I won’t do it again."
"What about after what happened with your mom? Did you cheat then?"
"No! Hell, no. I thought I had HIV! Christ, I never touched any of the clubwhores while I waited on the results, and only touched any of them after you threw me out and I started hardcore with the drugs again. I need you to know that. I also need you to know that I’m clean now."
"You really didn’t have to tell me that, Storm. You wouldn’t have gone down on me if you had an STD. I know that you think you’re the villain, but have you ever thought that, to me, you might be the hero?"
"Don’t think I’ll ever believe that, baby girl."
"Then, it’s on me to spend the rest of our lives proving that you are."
Storm slid his hand around my cheek, tilting my chin down. "That sounds really fucking good. ‘The rest of our lives.’" His smile was shaky. "I remember thinking that I wouldn’t get to see you when you’re old and gray, and that I’d never walk Cyan down the aisle, and just… for a long time, my head was whirring with what I was going to lose and getting high seemed to be the solution to that. It was my only escape.
"I never imagined that Mom would have just been messing with me. I truly believed I’d be sick. And by the time I got the results, I’d already lost everything that mattered to me anyway."
"I love you, Asher. I’ve always loved you, and I know that I always will. We’ll work our way back to each other, no matter what’s thrown in our path because now that we’ve survived this, we’ll survive anything."
The most joyful of smiles creased his jaw, making those eyes of his gleam with it and prompting me to realize I’d been waiting to see this ever since the first day I’d met him.
He went to push his forehead against mine, but I slipped out of his hold before he could. Kneeling between his thighs, I reached for his fly and carefully unzipped it.
As I did, his cock surged out, like he’d just been waiting for me to do this.
The gauge was thicker than before, and I glowered at the sight. "No more making this bigger. Jesus, Storm. In fact, you don’t have to wear it—"
"I’ll always have to wear it. I just won’t up the gauge anymore."
Was that supposed to be a concession?
"I want you to always know that I’ll be true to you. I need you to know that."
"What about when you go for health checks?" I joked. "Will you wear it then?"
He snickered. "Look at you, deciding to forget that I’m a lion not a pussy cat."
Wow.
My pussy clenched at that, which completely changed how I thought this would go.
But, by God, I needed it.
Just us. Always us. Perfectly imperfect.
I stroked the leather necklace I wore, watching as his nostrils flared as I rolled the key between my fingers, then I drew it over my head and moved over to the padlock to release him.
"How do you change the padlocks?" I questioned as I slipped the key into the lock. "And why do they always use the same key?"
"They’re custom built by this guy online and my piercer down here changes it. He has a master key." He gave me a severe look. "Not once did I own that key. You’re the only one who possesses it."
I tried not to feel a flare of delight at that, instead, grumbled, "Why did you have to make it bigger?"
"Because I started to like the pain. That was when I had to increase it."
"You know how messed up that sounds, don’t you?"
"More messed up than jacking off twenty-five times a day just to forget about needing to get high?"
His arched brow called me on my bullshit. "True," I said on a huff as I unclicked the lock and freed him.
Carefully, I slipped the shank out of his glans, and when the heavy weight was gone, we both released a relieved breath. The tip was distorted now with a hole that I could peep through if I tried—which I so wasn’t going to—but I guessed if this was a scar he wore that was proof of his sobriety, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t too bad.