One To Watch(94)

“That’s not true,” Bea protested. “You deserved so much better than that.”

“I didn’t think so.” He looked pained. “I wish I could tell you that I screamed at her, that I stood up for myself at all. But I did the opposite. I sat on our couch sobbing, begging her to stay. After everything, how angry I was, how much I hated her by then, how much I knew she hated me, I still couldn’t let her go. It didn’t matter. She left anyway.”

“Asher,” Bea whispered, and she pulled him into her arms, unable to hold back any longer. He tensed at first, but then he exhaled and let her hold him.

“Where is she now?” Bea asked, gently smoothing his hair. “Do the kids ever see her?”

“Last I heard, she was working as a diving instructor in Thailand, but we’ve barely talked since the divorce was finalized. I used to send her these emails, begging her to come home and see the kids, or at least call on their birthdays. Now I think it’s better that she doesn’t. It only gets their hopes up—it’s not fair to them.”

“Or to you,” Bea added.

“I only hope—” His voice broke. “I hope Gwen and Linus will be able to forgive me.”

“Hey, hey, no, for what?” Bea’s heart was cracking open. “You stayed, okay? You didn’t leave them. There was nothing you could do to control Vanessa, she made her own choices. You do everything you can for your kids, you came on this show for them, and I promise you, they know that. They adore you.”

Asher looked into Bea’s eyes; there was something desperate in his expression.

“Was this too much?” he asked. “Should I not have told you?”

“No,” Bea said fervently. “I’m so glad you did—it helps me understand you so much better.”

Asher looked at her sheepishly. “Like why I had a meltdown when I thought you’d spent the night with Luc?”

“Yeah, for one.” Bea laughed kindly. “And why you’re so fiercely protective. Of your heart, of your kids. Of me.”

“I wish I could protect you from ever getting hurt,” Asher said, his voice tinged with emotion. “If you want to talk about—what happened to you last year, I mean. You can. I’m listening.”

Bea sighed; she’d barely talked about this at all, let alone on television. But Asher had been so vulnerable with her, and she knew she owed him the same honesty. The same bravery.

“I’ve never had much luck with dating,” she started, her heart beating quickly. “Sometimes I tell myself that’s about my size, but of course I know that’s ridiculous, there are plenty of women who look like me in wonderful relationships. That’s just never been the case for me.

“But then there was—a man,” Bea stopped herself before she said his name. She couldn’t do that on camera; it wouldn’t be fair to Sarah. “We were best friends for years; he had this way of making me feel like I was the smartest, funniest, most interesting person in the room. And even though we were just friends, even after he moved across the country, I was so in love with him. He was kind of my escape, you know? A place where I retreated from how terrified I was of dating anyone else. For years, I compared every new man I met to him, which wasn’t fair to anyone. I had no real reason to believe it could actually work out between us, but I just kept holding out hope. Anyway, it’s not like anyone else was beating down my door for a chance to be with me. It’s not like I gave anyone the chance.”

Bea exhaled deeply, and Asher rubbed her palm with the inside of his thumb.

“Last summer, he came to visit me, and I don’t know why, but everything was different. It was like we were together, like we had always been together, like it was suddenly so obvious that there was nothing platonic about us. We had this one perfect night, and it felt like my whole life made sense. Like all the years of loneliness were finally going to be over. Except.”

Asher squeezed her hand. “Except what?”

“He left. He left before I even woke up, and then he was just gone. He wouldn’t respond to my texts or emails, ignored my calls. He wasn’t my friend anymore, he wasn’t my anything. I was despondent. I felt so weak that one night could destroy me like that, but to have dreamed my whole life of finding love, to experience it for a few hours only to have it snatched away …”

“Why did he disappear like that?” Asher demanded. “You two had all this history, how could he just abandon you without an explanation?”

He didn’t need to explain—he was engaged to someone else. But she couldn’t tell Asher that, not right after he’d told her how devastated he’d been by Vanessa cheating on him. So Bea shrugged.

“He never told me,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t what he wanted.”

“He didn’t deserve you.” Asher pulled Bea close, and she felt so good to be with him, so relieved to have told him about Ray, so guilty not to have revealed the whole truth about his engagement. But, Bea reasoned, disclosing too many specific details with the cameras rolling would be as bad as saying Ray’s name outright—it was only right that she should keep the story vague.

“So what do you think?” Asher asked. “Can we move past our ghosts?”

Bea looked up at him—was he asking her to spend the night together? She felt a surge of hope, and of certainty.