'I'm on my way

Driving at 90 down those country lanes

Singing to "Tiny Dancer"

And I miss the way you make me feel, and it's real

And we watched the sunset over the castle on the hill.'

*ASHER'S POV*

October 14, 2023.

'Meet me outside, in the parking lot. It's important.'

The tablet jumped out of my hands as the word Peachy popped on the screen—A reflex.

And that was nothing in comparison with my heart.

I hadn't thought her name would ever show up on my phone again, and it was even more surprising now that she knew the truth.

'Why don't you come inside?'

I quickly typed, abandoning the spreadsheet on the screen and blinking around the room to check for a possible mess to arrange. Though there wasn't much in the 250 square-foot, except my morning coffee cup and... me.

So seeing three dots floating on the screen, I put the cup away and grabbed a mint before heading to the bathroom, where I threw the cupboards open in search of my Axe and maybe some gel for the strands falling over my eyes.

I must have had some in here. Why couldn't I find it?

Oh right, I'd thrown it in the trash a few years ago, and as I caught my reflection in the mirror, I remembered why.

No styled hair could fix that. I was even tempted to throw the mirror to the trash too, when my tablet dinged with Althea's new text.

'No, we can't.' Along with a picture of Cucciolo's puppy eyes.

That was enough to pull me out of the bathroom, even if it wasn't the only brown eyes I had in mind as I rushed through the hallways—Okay, rushed as fast as I could with a wheelchair and one hand to steer it.

It felt like an eternity before I glimpsed Althea's slim silhouette in a flimsy black cardigan, dark jeans that hugged perfectly her thinner curves, and her hair pulled up in a ponytail.

She looked gorgeous and more relaxed.

I even glimpsed the hint of a smile as she babbled something at Cucciolo—before she noticed me.

Then, her lips fell into a line she rolled nervously. "Hi..."

I nodded as my right hand was occupied with the excited dog jumping at my feet, and the rest of her features crumbled down once Cuciolo had finished with his slimy greeting and I turned to the tablet on the side of my chair.

"Hey, so what's happening?"

"Cuciolo hurt his ear, and since Kylie and Paxton are working, they asked me to take him to the vet in LA." She shrugged, playing with the handle of the leash, as if Paxton hadn't told me just yesterday that Kylie was upset because Althea was still mad at them for the lie.

She was mad at me too, and still, she was here, offering me one of her coy smiles.

"You do realize they're trying to bait you? Because they could've asked my mom."

"Yes, but how could I say no to spending time with this cutie?"

That was what I asked myself as she pouted her plump lips, kneeling down to pet Cucciolo and looking up at me with her big doe eyes.

"So I thought you could come with us since you're his godfather apparently, and Cucciolo is more familiar with you. It'd be easier for him."

"You know I'm supposed to work?" I typed, even if half of me was already convinced, the half that could feel all these warm tingles from having her intense brown gaze so close.

"Just a few hours, please?"

And that was how I ended up riding shotgun while she was behind the steering wheel, her gaze focused on the road, and the wind from the windows down flowing between us.

Okay, not as smoothly, but I preferred to forget the mortification of refusing her help and pathetically limping my body through the inches between my wheelchair and the car seat to end up failing, she, catching me just in time with an 'already falling at my feet?'.

Just to be clear, the car she'd rented wasn't practical, and Cucciolo, squeezed up at my feet, wouldn't disagree. He was already growing tired of his chewy toy, and we hadn't even reached the halfway point on the GPS.

"Do you want me to take another road?" Her soft voice pulled me out of the map before my gaze could continue farther down that lane.

For all that, when I met her eyes, it was obvious our thoughts were already at that point. So I shook my head no.

"You're sure? Because we have the time." She kept her fingers on the blinker, already slowing down for the next exit when I typed.

"Yes, don't worry. I've already taken that road a thousand times since the accident."

Most of them in my head, replaying each second of that day. What would have happened if I hadn't been a stupid jerk that morning? If I'd given her that good luck kiss? If I'd turned back to check the front door at my parents'.

Each mile down that highway. If I'd stopped to check her texts? If I'd driven a few mph slower?

Each gesture I'd made. If I'd just thrown a glance at the opposite lane? If I'd gripped the wheel tighter to turn? If...

"Were... Were you looking at your phone when..."

All the spiraling ifs froze with her pending question, only one possibility remaining, and I wouldn't let it pass her trembling lips.

Never had I been that fast to turn to my tablet.

"No, my eyes were on the road. I was at full speed, the truck too. There was nothing to do, and it was no one's fault."

Especially not hers.

"But you replied to my text just before, right?" She threw me a glance, her gaze already ahead again before I could move an inch, and I didn't like where she was going as her fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and the words fired out her lips fast and cracking like a tape that had been rewound too many times.

"And if we hadn't fought, if I'd stayed in bed with you, if I hadn't had my flight, if we'd gone together later—"

"Althea, no," I growled, so low and dark that even Cucciolo cowered at my feet.

It was probably the first time he was hearing my voice, and the poor dog would soon learn that for Althea, I would have done anything—Within the limits of my possible, which wasn't much now.

I couldn't even reach out for her whitening knuckles on the wheel, no matter how much will I put into my left hand.

It was already a great effort to unclench my right fist, which was wrapped around a phantom steering wheel, and move my fingers on the tablet.

"The ifs don't change the end result. What happened happened, and even if I could turn back time, I don't want to even think about the possibility of you being in that damn car at any moment."

Like to lay the words onto the thick silence, when I blinked away the blur of wrecked metal imprinted as much in my memories as on a three-year-old newspaper, my gaze landed on a bleak bouquet through the windshield.

Though the real impact in my chest was when Althea swallowed harshly, not uttering another word.

She kept opening and nibbling her shaky lips like I clenched and unclenched my right fist over the tablet, and every breath sounded more and more like a crash.

Until I couldn't take it anymore, and I put on the radio.

"To help Cucciolo relax." I shrugged as Althea glanced at me questioningly, ignoring the dog's judging stare the rest of the outward and especially return journey.

It didn't help him relax once he had a pet cone around his neck—poor puppy, I knew too well what it was.

However, the music's effect was showing on Althea's features, and if her lips were still rolling together, it was to hum the melody of 'Castle on the Hill' by Ed Sheeran, the corner of her mouth twitching up as she slowed the car, probably calculating to be sure we didn't arrive before the end.

She loved that song.

Not that I would complain. It gave me more time to imprint every detail of this instant in my memory: the wild curls that had fallen off her ponytail with the wind, the glow of her dark skin, and the sparkle shining in her brown eyes that could never have been so bright under the white lighting of the clinic.

"Um, I was thinking..."

Okay, it wasn't only the sun reflecting in her gaze, but an idea, and as she cleared her throat, I knew I wouldn't like it.

"We could take Cucciolo for a walk before bringing him to Kylie's bakery. He deserves it after what he got through, and there's a place I'd like to see. If you want?"

That was a trick question.

Did I want to spoil Cucciolo? Yes, always.

Did I want to spend more time with Althea? Fuck, yes, always.

But did I want to get in and out of that car one more time and have people staring at the poor disabled man walked by his nurse?

"Please?"

She already turned off the car, Cucciolo yapping excitedly as my gaze slid to the window, and I could have recognized those treets among a thousand. I didn't even need to look farther down for the cemetery gate.

"I saw that Rohan Build'Inc made a parking lot and all-access path here, but I didn't want to come here alone..."

"Fine, but not long because I have work to do." I typed before checking the time.

All I caught was the empty parking lot, meaning we could avoid people and their bulging looks. I'd got far enough with the old bags in the waiting room, and the vet's wondering eyes staring between Althea's peachy booty and her diamond ring.

What I couldn't escape though, was her too-patient gaze as she opened the door and the wheelchair for me.

"I let you guide me, since you've probably been here many times," she suggested, going to stand behind me—and the handles of my chair.

So subtle... If she thought I didn't know where she was going with this, she was wrong.

"Never," I mumbled with my voice, as my hand was already busy propelling the chair and making sure I didn't only 'guide' while Althea pushed me.

"Never?"

"Not the ti–e."

"Let me guess... Too much work?"

Look who was talking... Miss 'I was forced to take vacations and used them to do charity work'?

Though that was too many syllables I could mess up. So I stuck to a nod.

"By the way, you didn't tell me what's your job and this boss making you work all the time?" she pushed, in every sense of the word as the paved path started to slope up, and between her and Cucciolo calmly toddling ahead, I was getting useless—more useless than usual.

Still, there was no way I would let go of that wheel and let Althea do all the work.

She knew it too, and that was why I could hear a hint of cheekiness in her voice with each question she asked.

Until I replied, "Rohan & Son Build'In, desk w-work and all."

She stopped in her tracks, and I soon did too, taking in how much she was pushing the chair as I put the brake, sadly for my maimed ego.

"You... really?" Her large eyes blinked at me as if she'd lost her contacts, except she was searching all over my face for the guy who'd used to say he would never ever work for his father's business.

That guy had gone astray long ago.

"People who can do nothing else sit behind computers all day, you know."

I couldn't even find the lightness of his words through the tablet, my shoulders falling in a heavy shrug at the same time as her frown.

However, she still had the same smoothness to her tone as she grabbed the handles of my chair again and whispered near my ear.

"I know it's a rumor spread by people with no brain."

Fuck, I loved that woman, and as her warm breath tingled goosebumps down my neck, the three little words were on the tip of my tongue, right behind the chuckle tickling my lips.

Lucky that talking was such a concentration effort for me; otherwise, I would have already blurted it out a thousand times in the past days.

And still, I didn't know how she hadn't heard the bangs of my heart threatening to jump out of my chest every time she was near yet.

"Oh, we're here already?"

"Yeah, the path doesn't reach Lotus Hill." I turned to my tablet once the wheels were on the flat, and I'd taken a quick glance around, enough to catch the aforesaid hill and the scarp that led to it.

I would have easily climbed it before. But that was before.

"There's still the fields, the sea, the sky, and... there's even a rainbow-colored picnic table!"

Yeah, that was what my mom preached almost every Sunday to make me come here. However, there lacked my favorite color on the wooden planks, the one more dazzling than a whole rainbow, the one that shone only in those dark doe eyes and that kept my heart rate up even as she stepped away, near the shade of trees and the picnic table..

"Since you're technically the boss, I guess we can stay a little bit."

"'Technically', my parents are the bosses." Not my best argument, as I rolled towards the table, and she sat down on the low bench, pulling a bone out of Cucciolo's small bag.

Yes, Kylie and Paxton had a changing bag for their dog. I couldn't imagine what it would be when they would have kids.

"Well, you can tell them it's my fault. It'll give them one more reason to hate me."

"Hate you?" I chuckled, the three little words not far behind again. "You should've heard how excited my mom was when she video-called me after Kylie told her she'd seen you."

She smiled shyly, the kind of perfect daughter-in-law smile she'd replied with to the question 'so you're my son's girlfriend?'. After that, my mom had welcomed her into the family instantly, while my dad, always more rational, had waited until the end of the dinner to take me aside and tell me she was a keeper and I better not let her slip through my fingers.

"By the way, you're officially invited to my birthday next weekend," I added, and for a second, I wondered if I'd let out a word while typing as her smile fell into an O.

"Next Sunday?"

"Yeah, it's just a small dinner at my parents with Kylie, Pax, and Grandma Liz. But you don't have to come if you don't want to. That's—"

"No, I'll be there." She stopped my hand, the tingles of her soft skin on mine short-circuiting my breath with it. "I want to see them again."

And here, I had my birthday gift, and for the first time in years, a tiny fizz of excitement bubbled in my stomach at the thought of unwrapping my surprise. Not literally, because it wouldn't have been just a 'tiny fizz of excitement', and I couldn't let my mind wander there, not when her piercing brown eyes were so close.

She might have already caught a glimpse of my thoughts actually, as she quickly pulled her hand away, shaking her head.

"How about we do some physio exercises while we're here?"

And that was how you turned off the dirty thoughts.

"Come on. It'll be fun," she pleaded as I narrowed my eyes at the bag she put on the table, way too large for a purse.

How did I not notice it before?

"We don't have the same definition of 'fun'."

Although the first item she took out got me interested: a vibrating massage wand.

If only the blindfold that followed hadn't been the same kid unicorn mask as yesterday...

"Did you plan that?" I lifted an eyebrow at the tracking sheet she added on the table.

"No! Well... I told you I'd come back for more physio. That's why Mrs. Elmer lent me the gear. I just didn't plan we would be here." She shrugged, handing me the eye mask. "But I promise it'll be fun. We'll start with the same exercise as yesterday, except here, we only have, um... a bag of M&M's, Cucciolo's cuddly toy, some fallen leaves, and..."

"You."

The brush of her soft fingers was all I was waiting for through the darkness, where everything she rubbed on my forearm felt the same, and it was all she avoided as she repeated the same items again and again, never touching me.

It made her nervous. That, I could feel it. It was even what had allowed me to guess it was her so easily yesterday: the shallow breath she had taken, the tensions of her body switching something in the air, along with her intoxicating perfume invading all my senses as she leaned closer. And not some miraculous spark of true love that cured everything.

We weren't in one of those fairytales I read to the kids, although I did feel the tickle of her touch like a tiny soothing flame melting through all the painful strains of my muscles.

But it was nothing in comparison with what she set off in the other half of my body when she fully leaned over the table, her fingers slipping through my hair to take off my blindfold and check if it wasn't see-through.

"How?" she breathed out, her big eyes traveling between the eye mask and my half-smile as I simply shrugged. "Fine, then if you're so good at this, we'll pass to the second exercise."

Proprioception and movement. I'd failed these exercises enough to know them by heart. Still, as she pulled her lips together in reflection, I was quite curious about what she would invent.

"This time, you touch me."

Ooh, so here was the fun part...

"I mean your left hand reaches out for mine," she quickly added, as if reading my thoughts. All my thoughts, as she continued, "You did it the other day, remember?"

"It's diff'rent."

I hadn't managed to do it again. Not that I really tried.

"Adrenaline..." she muttered under a sigh, and before I could ask what she meant, she found back her smooth smile. "It's fine. You can just poke my hand. First, situate your arm and try to move it towards where I tell you."

Easy... when I could see.

Once I had the blindfold over my eyes, it was a whole other story—not a funny one.

"Focus on your sensations... where your arm is..." she started softly, after placing my arm somewhere...

"On the table?"

That was a wild guess. To be honest, I could have dropped it along the way, and it would have felt the same—Kinda.

As the medical reports called it, my proprioception was 'pretty low'. I wasn't aware of the positions on the left side of my body, especially my arm.

"My hand is at about 30 degrees from yours."

Knowing she was in front of me, and my arm movements were limited, mine must have been at 60 degrees then?

Fuck, I hated maths.

An equation, that's what reaching out my hand had become, and I would've already all given it up if it hadn't been Althea's hand waiting for me.

The image was my motivation and my point of reference.

I could easily picture her extended palm up while she absent-mindedly traced the tiny sewing scars on her slender and bare fingers—it was probably her right hand. Then there was the soft skin of her arm, all the way up to the arch of her neck, where the skin was even more delicate, higher to her peachy lips rolling together, the attentive crease indenting between her eyebrows... and every inch of her, like a puzzle I'd built too many times in my mind.

That was how I managed to get an idea of where my arm was and slide it toward her, touching what I imagined was her hand, after a few attempts.

Woo-hoo.

"Perfect. Now... how about we try to move your fingers?"

"We?" I breathed out, hoping the waver of my husky voice could pass as skepticism, and not because of how much I liked the sound of this word on her sweet lips.

However, when she lifted off my mask, it was harder to hide it from her deep brown eyes dancing all over my face.

"Yes, like I unclench one of your fingers, and you do the rest." She turned to my distorted fist, half of her body still over the table as she tried to open my tight hand. "You'll have to help me with this though, because I'm not that strong. So relax your muscles."

I was trying, but when her request was followed by a huffed groan that sounded too much like a moan, it had the opposite effect, and between her perky chest popping forward and her lips she was biting as she pulled on my fingers, the electric signals for movements were sent to other parts of my body. And not only my right hand which I held back from reaching out and crashing these tantalizing lips on mine.

"Yes, just like this."

It took me a few seconds to realize those words weren't from another of my fantasies, and she was really preaching the feat of my hand.

My left hand, whose fingers were stretching, following the lead of my index she was holding until they were extended wider than they had been in three and a half years, and enough for her own fingers to slide in between before my hand closed again.

"You did it!" she exclaimed, her features lighting up with the kind of smile I'd thought I would never see her wearing again. A proud smile.

"You did half the work."

"But you did the other half."

Fuck, and here were those three little words again, tickling from the warmth of her hand to the ablaze tingles in my chest and until my half struck-dumb smile.

"The bad news is that I don't think I can move it anymore." And looking at her fingers feather-likely brushing my twisted knuckles, I didn't even want to try.

"Aw, it's too bad 'cause I'd planned to make you reach for my boobs for the next exercise."

My hand reacted instantly—my right hand jumping to unclamp my fingers from hers, so fast that I sent her pen flying on the ground.

"Really? You're a..." Her laugh died down as she kneeled under the table, and I tried to pull my chair away.

Too late, though, according to the thud of her head hitting the wood.

"Ouch!"

"You okay?" I glanced down to find her on all fours in front of me, which didn't help to hide the bulge of my sweatpants.

But something told me she'd already caught it anyway as she stammered,

"Yes-yes, I'm fine... I just hit the hard-on—my head on the hardwood."

All these years, and she still was as flustered in front of a woody, her doe eyes running everywhere around but always sliding back to my groin, as if she didn't know exactly what was under the black fabric.

She was as cute as the first time she'd touched me, and Mamma Mia... I was even more turned-on than seventeen-year-old me, and more frustrated because I couldn't kiss these plump lips she was wetting.

I could make them part into a perfect O though.

"You look like you' seen a snake?"

"You're a perv." She found her comeback again.

Still, the laugh was on my lips as she grabbed the pen at my feet, instantly jumping away as if there were really a snake.

"What'd you expect?" I asked, straightening to meet her gaze above the 'hardwood' table before turning to my tablet to continue, so I would be sure she couldn't pretend to not understand my mumbled words. "When you're offering me to grope your boobs? After blindfolding me? And let's not even talk about your vibrating machine."

And here was the O of her delicious mouth. She was so fun to tease.

"Just so you know, everything is fully functional down there." Even if I had to admit my dick had found much more sensations since she was back.

"Glad to hear..." she mumbled, avoiding my cocked eyebrow as she glanced at her bare wrist. "Now, it's getting late. Kylie must be waiting for Cucciolo, and you have work to do... So um, the other exercises will be for another time."

"Sure." And for the first time, I was really getting excited for physiotherapy.

Who else is excited? I know you all have been wondering about this part of him, so now, you're rassured. 😉

I hope you liked this chapter and the rollercoaster of emotions! With Asher, you must be prepared for the thrilling rides! 😉

So if you're excited for more, don't forget to vote ⭐and comment as always!

Your feedback are always making my days, and they are my best motivation when I doubt, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. 🥰💕😘

I love you, my little Peaches! 😘🍑