That gets me the weight of Asher’s stare. “Where’s Forsyth?”
What good would it do if he was here?“Please tell him not to worry if he asks about me.”
“If?” Asher sniffs disapprovingly. “Fine.” He studies me.
I’m not sure what he’s seeing—a woman in a wrinkled evening dress. A woman whose new husband might not even come check on her.And who signed up for two more years of this.No, Brayden and I have been married for a bit more than a week. So only a hundred and three more weeks of this.
My shapewear suddenly tightens. I want out of this dress. Out of this room. Possibly out of the entire state of Georgia. I grope behind myself, trying to inch down my zipper. If I can just get a little more air… My fingers land on the zipper pull. I tug. It doesn’t move. I tug again, this time more forcefully. Nothing.
“You need a hand?” Asher asks, clearly watching me try and fail to loosen this dress.
“I should tell you to leave.” Somehow my voice is breathless. It’s the shapewear, the migraine. Definitely not anything else.
“Youshouldtell me,” he says. “Or youaretelling me?”
“What would you do if I did tell you to leave?”
“I’d leave.” Asher shrugs, easy as that. “Are you telling me to leave?”
Yes. “No.” The word slips out.
Asher nods but doesn’t quite ease back onto his sofa. “You want out of that dress?”
Desperately.“If it’s not too much trouble.”
He gives me a long look. “No, unzipping your dress isn’t too much trouble.”
Though this entire thing istrouble. That doesn’t stop me from getting up and turning around. I gather my hair up on the back of my neck, so it won’t get caught in my zipper. Cool air blows across my skin. Somehow, I’m overheating.
Asher comes up behind me, fabric from his suit rustling, shoes heavy against the floor. Each step ratchets up my pulse. I should tell him to stop. I should tell him to get out. I should tell him that I am married to a man who could come through that door at any moment and who, based on that on-field fight they had, might be looking for a reason to punch Asher in the face.
Finally, he pauses behind me, voice close to my ear. “I’m going to have to touch your dress,” he says.
“Of course.”
“And maybe your back.”
Oh. “That’s, uh, fine.” Though I don’t feel entirely fine. Light-headed in a way that has nothing to do with champagne.
Asher doesn’t ask again. One of his hands braces the fabric, the points of his fingers two light pressures against my back, impossible to ignore even through layers of dress and lining and shapewear. The other grasps the zipper, lowering it, tooth-by-tooth, the way Brayden had.
I crane my head to watch him. His eyes are trained on my back, hair falling in a scatter across his forehead. What I’d taken for one scar—a jagged line cutting through one of his eyebrows—is actually a cluster of them, including a web of pale lines at his temple. He catches me watching him. His lips twitch. What passes for an Asher smile, apparently.
“That better?” he asks.
“Better than what?” Though maybe I should be asking,better than who?
He lowers the zipper by an inch and then another, readjusting his hand clearly trying to keep the zipper taut. His fingers brush the elasticized top of my shapewear. “You have red marks.”
“Yeah.” Because the shapewear often leaves dents, reminders that, for other people to think my body is acceptable, I have to mold it into a different shape.
“I can probably get it from here—” I begin, just as Asher says, “You don’t need to wear?—"
We both stop short.
I spin around, clutching my dress shut from the back, just as Asher steps away, hands up as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be. I’m breathing as hard as my shapewear will allow me. He isn’t, but there’s something in the rise and fall of his shoulders and the slow expansion of his ribs as if he’s purposefully modulating his breath.
“I should get undressed—changed,I mean.” Despite the blasting Atlanta air conditioning, my skin goes hot all over.
