Page 58 of For Your Consideration

The relief in his eyes told me I was right about what he needed from me.

“Your turn.” He shifted Sophie in his arms, still sound asleep.

“Do you want me to take her?” My hand was still resting on his bicep and I made no move to change that. He scowled at me and I smiled, lifting my free hand in surrender. “I don’t really know much about my family. I don’t know who my father is. My mother abandoned me at a fire station when I was three with a very vague note about how she just couldn’t manage me on her own, that she was only eighteen and just couldn’t do it. I entered the foster system and bounced around homes until I aged out.” I rubbed my hand slowly up and down his arm a few times when the tension increased in his jaw. “It wasn’t terrible, nothing that bad happened to me. Sure, there were some not so great people but I was never abused. Every family I was placed with just had their own shit and after a while couldn’t take care of me too.

“The cop that picked me up from the fire station tracked me down when I was seventeen.” Since I was already on a roll I figured I would just get it all out there. “He said he was getting ready to retire and someone gave him a picture of him holding me that day and he decided to look me up. I asked him if he could track down my mom. I didn’t want anything from her, I just wanted to know where I came from. He told me she had been in and out of prison for most of my life for small theft and drug charges. He gave me her name in case I ever wanted to find her, but so far I haven’t reached out.”

“Do you still talk to the officer?” he asked quietly, his eyes focused on me.

“He calls me once a year, on the day he picked me up from the fire house.” I bit my lip, looking at Sophie and then back at Asher. “I never told him about Sophie.” My face flamed with embarrassment at my admission.

“Why not?”

“I’m not ashamed of her.”

This time he reached out with the hand that wasn’t cradling Sophie and grabbed my ankle, giving it a squeeze. “Never thought that, sweetheart.”

I nodded and gave him a small smile. I hadn’t told Iris this part of my story either.

“When he called last year, I had just found out my pregnancy was high risk, that I had to be more careful, and I’d been so sick. My ex had kicked me out and I was on my own, and even though I was older, I felt like I was reliving my mother’s mistakes. I didn’t want him to think I was just like her so I didn’t tell him.”

“And this year when he called?”

I looked down at the couch. “I didn’t have my head above water. I had just moved here and was working stupid hours at two diners. I didn’t want him to think I needed him or that I couldn’t take care of myself. I didn’t want him to offer me anything so I didn’t tell him anything other than that I’d moved and found a new job.”

“I didn’t know much about families growing up, and it sounds like you didn’t either, but Sophie won’t grow up wondering.”

I met his eyes with a frown.

“She has me now, and Quinn, and since the other five idiots come along with us, she has an army behind her. And believe me, we look after our own. We will look after her, if you let us.”

“Ash… I—” I was blinking back tears.

The idea that he would be in my daughter’s corner, and not just now but as she grew up, meant everything to me. And I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I’m adding you to the group chat,” he said with finality as he pulled out his phone. I think he did it so I wouldn’t cry. It seemed to make him nervous.

“What group chat?”

“The one with the guys. Don’t worry, Quinn’s in there too.” My phone started beeping from somewhere on the coffee table. “We took a vote on letting you in, and it was unanimous.” He put his phone down as he shifted Sophie up on his chest, then leaned back on the couch and smiled at me.

We spent the next hour talking. He told me stories about the trouble he, Noah, and Knight had gotten into as kids. He listened as I told him about adjusting to living with Sophie and being her mom. He asked a lot of questions about her being sick when she was born, like he wanted to make sure she was alright now. I definitely talked more than him but I knew that was the way he wanted it.

Sophie woke up after a while, her fever seemingly broken. She breastfed while Asher stared straight ahead and we kept talking. Afterward, he stood in the doorway as I changed her and put her back to bed, happier than she had been since yesterday, and then we moved back to the couch.

Before I knew it, it was somehow two in the morning, and I hid a yawn behind my hand. When we had sat down after putting Sophie to sleep, we’d ended up closer together. He reached out and brushed his thumb under my eye with a serious look on his face.

“I should go. You need to sleep.”

I liked that he said things as a command.

“Thank you for coming over tonight.”

I licked my lips under his intense gaze. He clocked the movement and his eyes dropped to my mouth. His hand moved from my face to my chin, and as he leaned in slowly, the movement seemed to send me back to my body.

“Asher, I can’t,” I whispered, feeling like I was in pain. But I knew what I had to do, because I wasn’t ready for him. Not by a long shot. I had a deep belief that anyone I grew close to would leave, so everything he’d said earlier had almost scared me, like he was dangling something in front of me that I’d always wanted and feared. He opened his eyes but didn’t move back, gaze roaming over my face, trying to figure out what had changed.

“That’s okay.” He gave my chin a gentle squeeze and then stood up. I felt uncomfortable and ashamed that I had turned him away. He didn’t say anything as I followed him to the door.