Page 223 of Lau Ahi
“Smart man.”
“And even though it’s been my job to look out for your wife and make sure she’s good while you’ve been out, I know if I tried to intervene between the two of y’all only one of two things would happen.”
I couldn’t wait to hear what he thought the consequences would be. “Hit me.”
He ticked off the first point on his finger without hesitation. “One, you’ll kill me for moving wrong with her.”
I pointed to him because he wasn’t wrong. “True.”
“Two, your boys would’ve killed me for moving wrong with her.”
I smiled because, again, he wasn’t wrong. “Also true but you forgot one.”
“Which is?”
I stretched prepping myself to go because I knew now was the time to face my consequences. Talking about her made me miss her too much and I could no longer fight my desires.
“That Asha would’ve killed you before any of us had the chance.”
I braced myself as I opened the door to the penthouse. The place was exactly as it had been when I left months ago. I could see it on the cameras as I studied them while we were apart but nothing would beat being here physically. Taking an inhale of the smell of Asha’s perfume and the gourmand and pistachio room scents that she always used.
Home.
It was one thing to see it but to physically be here, to smell this place, to know I’d made it back to her was something that almost took my breath away. Despite what I knew would be an immense amount of anger, I couldn’t help but walk the familiar path down the hall to where I knew she would be. It was the place that she’d made her own since I’d been gone. The place she apparently felt closer to me since I’d been gone.
I took a deep breath before I stopped just short of the doorway and watched her. I didn’t think she was sleeping, although she’d done a lot of that when I’d first gone away. An ache had settled in me that only observing her could ease but then that stopped being enough. Her grief at my being gone too much for her to handle and I wasn’t there to carry it for her.
Asha shifted in the bed and sighed and I found it funny that this was the room she chose. The one where I’d ended a man’s life for daring to think he could violate her or our home. In its own twisted way, it was romantic.
She was probably taunting the hell out of his ghost.
She looked up and instead of being shocked she shocked me as her face broke into a smile and then a scowl.
“It’s about bloody time you got your arse here.”
I stared at her wondering what the hell she was talking about. And didn’t know if she had figured it out all this time and felt that I’d taken too long to get to her.
I mean she is a genius.
Cautiously, I watched her not wanting to spook her by coming closer.
“You expected me to get here quicker than I was?”
She sat up her face relaxing and I watched as the light blanket fell off her body. She rolled off the bed and stretched and she was smaller than before I left.
Damn, she really has been going through it.
“Did they have you waiting in a vestibule in heaven or something? I’m sure that whole being morally gray thing was probably the hold up but I assumed the ancestors would’ve been happy to welcome you to the other side.” She smiled but it was sad still filled with the loss of me and not the joy I expected.
Wait.
I took a step forward my foot scraping the floor as I held my hand out to her. Her eyes shot to the floor and then back to my face and the richness of her skin fled as all the blood seemed to drain from her body.
“Asha—”
“No. You’re not real.” She took a step back and put her hand to her head, tapping it like she could somehow stop herself from the reality that was staring her in the face.
“You’d rather me be a ghost than be real?”
