Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers, #3)

by Chloe Liese

For those who’ve lost hope, and those who’ve been to hell and back to find it again.

The day I met Freya Bergman, I knew I wanted to marry her.

My eyes scanned the field, then snagged on the tall blonde with a wavy ponytail, wintry blue eyes, and a confident grin tipping her rose-red lips. A shiver rolled down my spine as her cool gaze met mine and her smile vanished. Then she glanced away. And I swore to God I’d earn her eyes again if it was the last thing I did.

But Freya radiated the magnetism of someone who knew her worth, and in a flash of desperation, I realized I wanted her to see that I could be worthy, too, that I could keep pace and stick close and never tire of her raw, captivating energy.

Like the sun ripping a cold, solitary planet into orbit, Freya demanded my presence. Here. Now. Just a few dazzling minutes in her gravitational pull and that pervasive darkness dissolved, leaving only her. Beautiful. Bright. Dazzling. I was hooked.

To this day, Freya swears she was trying for the goal which was, ya know, twenty yards to the right of my head, but we both know that’s not what happened. The truth is, we both learned a lesson that day: Aiden can only push so far. Freya can only take so much. Before something breaks. Badly.

You’re sex starved. And just because you’re hurt doesn’t mean you can’t still want him. Marriage is messier and much more complicated than anyone warned us. You can want to rip off his nuts and miss him so bad, it feels like you can’t breathe.”

“Why doesn’t anyone tell you how hard marriage is going to be?” Mai sighs heavily. “Because I’m not sure we’d do it if they did.”

That’s how I feel about my husband lately. Like he walks around our house and I could be a ghost for all it matters. Or maybe he’s the ghost. Maybe we both are.

My husband is, at my request, one thousand miles north of me, licking his wounds with my brother and duly freaking out because I put my foot down and told him this shit would not stand. I’m home, with the cats, freaking out, too, because I miss my husband, because I want to throttle this imposter and demand the guy I married back. I want Aiden’s ocean-blue eyes sparkling as they settle on me. I want his long, hard hugs and no-bullshit musings on life, the kind of pragmatism born of struggle and resilience. I want his tall frame pressing me against the shower tiles, his rough hands wandering my curves. I want his sighs and groans, his dirty talk filling my ears as he fills me with every inch of him.

Crying isn’t weak. I know this. Rationally. But I also know the world doesn’t reward tears or see emotionality as strength. I’m an empowered, no-nonsense woman who feels all her feelings and battles the cultural pressure to contain them, to have my emotional shit in order. Even when all I want to do sometimes is indulge in a teary explosion of hugging my condiment-named cats while cry-singing along to my nineties emo playlist.

In a world that says feelings like mine are “too much,” singing has always helped. In a houseful of mostly stoics who loved my big heart but handled their feelings so differently from me, singing was an outlet for all I felt and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—hide. That’s why, last week, when I realized I’d stopped singing, I got scared. Because that’s when I understood how numb I’d become, how dangerously deep I was burying my pain.

I just wish I knew what to do. Aiden said, whatever it was, he wanted to fix it, but how do you fix something when you don’t even know what’s broken? Or when it feels so broken you don’t even recognize it anymore? How can he make that promise when he acts like he has no fucking clue why I’m feeling this way?”

Because the past six months, I’ve witnessed the core of my marriage dissolving, and now I don’t know how to build it back. Because at some point, critical damage is done, and there’s no returning to what it was before. In the human body, it’s called “irreversible atrophy.” As a physical therapist, I’m no stranger to it, even though I fight it as much as I can, working my patients until they’re sweating and crying and cussing me out.

Six months of slow, silent decline. It wasn’t one big, awful argument. It was a thousand quiet moments that added up until I realized I didn’t recognize him or us or, shit, even me.

It feels like that first glimpse of home after a vacation that went just a few days too long. I realize I missed him, that my impulse to turn and throw myself in his arms, to bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in, isn’t entirely erased. It’s subdued but not gone. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe that scares the shit out of me.

And then I feel the salt in my wound—a deepening twinge of cramps that have wracked my stomach all day, the first signs of what I knew was coming but have been dreading all the same: another cycle and no baby. Another twenty-eight days gone with a husband who’s barely acknowledged it the past six months since we decided that I’d stop taking the pill. No caring inquiries about how I’ve felt or if I’m late or what I need. Just another month with a husband who’s home from work later and later, who’s always on the phone and pauses his calls when I walk into the room. A husband I barely recognize.

She’s a bit reserved with strangers, but once she’s comfortable around you, she’s affectionate and expressive, full of warmth and jokes and smoky laughter. Or, she was. That was how I knew something was very wrong. I came home, and it was like the sun had slipped behind a thick cloud, like every songbird within miles had left the trees. Freya was quiet. Very, very quiet. I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her sing in the shower or hum softly as she went through the mail. Then I glanced down at my feet. I saw a bag packed and a ticket with my name on it. That’s when I knew my world was falling apart.

I hang up and stare inside, steeling myself for the crowd and noise, the claustrophobic press of people when my mind’s already buzzing with too many thoughts, pulsing with nervous energy that has my body begging for a run that I haven’t had time for in too long. My anxiety is fucking terrible today. Not that it’s been much better otherwise lately.

I told him anxiety is like whack-a-mole. Unpredictable, always waiting beneath the surface. Sometimes it’s a trigger that you can pinpoint and deal with, but even then, unexpectedly anxiety rears its head and you’re spinning, wishing you could locate that thing, for there to be one thing, that makes you this way so you can isolate it and smack the shit out of it, or…more accurately, fix it. Somehow.

Anxiety isn’t always debilitating, and for me, more often than not, it doesn’t spiral into depression, because my meds seem to help with that aspect. But anxiety doesn’t leave, fully. It’s never out of the building. It lurks. It reminds you it’s there. Biding its time. At least, for me it does.

It took me a long time—and lots of therapy hours—to accept that my anxiety makes life harder, but it doesn’t make me wrong or damaged or…well, anything bad. It just…is. And sometimes it’s quiet and sometimes it’s loud, and no matter what, I’ve learned to cope. I’m tough. I push through a lot. And some days, I spend a lot of time wi...

She doesn’t know that my anxiety, which is sometimes high but generally managed with a generous dose of Prozac and periodic therapy sessions, is borderline debilitating right now. I’ve made sure of it.

Freya feels for me and other people too much as it is. I know more than anyone how it weighs her down, how when the burden becomes too much, she cries in the shower and sings sad songs when she’s working in the yard. How she crawls into my arms at night and sobs silently until her sadness bleeds into her sleep and her dreams are fitful. I know how she hums to the cats and holds them hard after a rough day with patients. Freya holds the world in her heart. All I’m doing is shielding her from the worst of it, compartmentalizing, so she has someone to lean into when we’re together. I thought I was doing a good job.

But I’m starting to wonder, since she drew a line in the proverbial sand, if I’ve been worse at hiding my struggles than I thought, if I’m not as good at shielding her as I wanted to be. I’m wondering if it’s blown up in my face, and I’ve been wondering that since I came home from work and she literally had a bag packed for me with a round-trip ticket sitting on top of it.

But I’m not letting that deter me. I’m going to fix the shit out of this. And my wife needs to see that—that I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

His stuff weirds me out. He weirds me out, too.” Freya grips her glass so hard I’m waiting for it to shatter in her grip. “Some of the art world’s most revered creators—their eccentricities and their visionary work—were misunderstood in their time. Van Gogh being a personal favorite.” George blinks at her, speechless. “Perhaps you might question your unease about my brother and his art and consider that, when yours and all these other paltry attempts at art are long forgotten, Axel and his work will be immortalized. Good day, sir!”

SLAYYYY

“Did you just throw Willie Wonka at him?” I ask. Her mouth quirks, and my heart skips a beat. Freya just almost-smiled for me. It feels like the first drop of rain in a drought. “He’s lucky I didn’t throw him a Frankie curse.” Ren’s girlfriend, Frankie, has a witchy vibe and a colorful penchant for pointing her cane like a wand at offending parties and tossing hexes their way. I was more expecting Freya to toss her glass of whatever she’s drinking right in his face.

I’ve had a hunch about those two, Ax and Rooney. I have a good sense for chemistry, which is, of course, why I’m a good matchmaker.

The past few months flash before my eyes, nailing me with stunning, convicting clarity. I’ve been distracted with work, hustling for the app’s funding, revising our presentation for potential investors, doing everything I can to make the future feel financially secure, ever since we decided she would go off birth control and we’d stop preventing pregnancy… Six months ago. It’s been six fucking months, and I can’t remember the last time we talked about it, the last time I noticed if she’d gotten her period or missed it. I felt the weight of our lives double with the impending promise of a baby—a baby that I want, yes, but that I feel an enormous responsibility to make sure doesn’t have the childhood I had—and I’ve been consumed with what that entails ever since. Oh, God. I have no clue how far along she is, how she feels. Why wouldn’t she tell me? Because you haven’t asked, dickhead. Fucking hell. No wonder she kicked my ass out.

I remember how I felt two months into being with Freya, like she was air and sunlight, water and life, like if I lost her, I’d just stop existing. And I’ve never stopped seeing her that way. I just got better at worrying about losing her—so worried, it started robbing me of the hours I used to devote to soaking her up, basking in her joy, her passion and laughter and kisses.

Frankie, like the youngest Bergman, Ziggy, is on the autism spectrum—bright, unfiltered, and quickly overwhelmed by busy, loud spaces like the Bergman house or a bustling art gallery. My anxiety’s not a huge fan of those spaces, either. “Smart lady,” I mutter. Ren nods. “Yep. So she’s having a quiet night in at home.” Rooney smooths back her dark-blonde hair and smiles gently. “Well, I’m glad she felt comfortable doing what she needed, but I miss seeing her. I really like her, Ren.” Ren grins again. “Yeah. She’s the best.”

His eyes are back on Rooney. “Mhmm.” I pause, waiting for him to give me his attention. He doesn’t. He watches Rooney as she laughs with Freya, as they turn and smile for someone from the gallery asking to take their photo. “Ax, you’re not subtle,” I whisper. “True,” he says, still staring at her. “No one’s ever called my work subtle.” Freya and Rooney are being photographed. Ren’s on his phone, probably texting Frankie. It’s just us. So I take a risk and say, “You could let the matchmaker try his hand—” “Aiden,” Ax cuts me off as his eyes meet mine again. There’s the tiniest bit of red on his cheekbones. I fight a grin. “Yes, Axel?” “Isn’t there a proverb along the lines of ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’? Deal with your own life before you start trying to orchestrate mine.” My smile fades. She has told him.

I stand quietly and sip my drink, more than ever a stranger to myself, to people who once felt like mine.

I’m not concerned from a fertility standpoint. I know things take time and conception is quick for some, not for others. I just want it so badly, it hurts. It’s an ache that never leaves my chest, with every mom I see, whether pregnant or with children in arms or running ahead of her, the nagging question in the back of my head, When will it be me?

Even though she came to us through Willa, Ryder’s girlfriend, and Willa isn’t here, it wouldn’t have been strange for Rooney to attend anyway. She’s become so ingrained in the family it feels weird when she doesn’t come to Bergman functions.

But she declined our invite tonight because she’s studying for the bar. Which I found out from Axel. Who turned pink in the cheeks when I grinned and asked how he happened to know that. To which he had no reply except to tell me I had lipstick on my teeth. That had me scrambling for my phone’s camera to check, but by the time I realized I didn’t, he was on the other side of our table, in conversation with Dad.

Axel’s love life is none of my business anyway. But Aiden’s an unapologetic matchmaker, and in the decade we’ve been together, his tendencies have started to rub off on me. I see pairings and chemistry, couples and possibility, all the time now. Unlike Aiden, though, I have the common sense to leave people alone, for the most part, to figure it out themselves.

“Why are you so worried about pregnancy?” Ziggy asks. “You take the pill, right?” Frankie laughs emptily. “Yes. But I’m still paranoid that by sheer force of giant ginger will, Ren is going to knock me up. He stares at babies like I stare at burgers—like there’s never enough of them and they’re vital to existence. The man thinks he’s subtle, but he’s not.”

If we were closer, I’d hope she’d feel comfortable confiding in me, particularly as she grows out of adolescence into womanhood. But she’s just a teenager, I’m almost twice her age, and because of that, we’ve never been close, even though I love her and couldn’t get enough of her as a baby. Mom’s said I should try to hang out with her more, but Ziggy’s always playing soccer and I’m always working. Gelling our schedules is virtually impossible.

Aiden’s as reliable for these family functions as the sun is in the sky. He’s always with me. He keeps his promises and shows up. Until now, it seems.

And you don’t say no to fika with Elin Bergman. It’s a pause in the day that’s a fixture of Swedish life, integral to my mother, who only left her home country when she married my dad. Our traditions, my upbringing, many of my parents’ philosophies and rituals are infused with her culture. Fika is ingrained in us. In Sweden, business pauses, life rests, and just briefly, you have coffee and a treat with friends or coworkers around you. It’s about resetting and connecting, refreshing before digging back into the work of your day. And in Mom’s house, shit gets dealt with over fika.

“You were distracted. You’ve always handled it, and that’s not fair to you. So the brothers took care of it.” “And how are we affording this?” Ryder glances at Ren. I blanch. “No,” I mutter. “He’s not paying for everyone—” “It’s decided already,” Ryder says. “He’s a professional hockey player, Freya. This is a drop in the bucket to him. Besides, Ren’s generous, and it makes him happy. The house is his teammate’s, and he’s opening it to us for the week, free of charge. Ren’s contribution—which, I’ll acknowledge, is not small—is financing airfare when we settle on a week that everyone can do. We agreed we’ll pay for our own food, drinks, and anything else once we’re there.”

She’s probably angry. Definitely hurt. I don’t blame her. Family’s the heart of Freya’s life. Her parents mean the world to her—shit, they mean the world to me—and I missed their anniversary dinner, which I’ve always loved because it’s a family celebration, not just a celebration between the two of them.

“Ren,” I say pleadingly. “I thought I could count on you, man. What is this?” Ren’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, uncharacteristically cool. “I’m giving up a night with my girlfriend, I’ll have you know.”

What is this even about?” As if you don’t know. This is how bad you’ve fucked up. The Bergman brothers are trying to save you. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

“When you and Freya started dating, Dad sat us down and made something very clear.” “‘Leave Aiden out of it,’” Viggo says. “That’s what Dad told us. ‘None of your brotherly tricks or hazing, no sinister gang-ups. Be kind to him. Most importantly, stay out of his relationship with your sister.’” “And?” I ask. “And that worked,” Ryder snaps. “Until you started fucking shit up.” “Jesus.” I scrub my face. This is re...

I can’t pretend I haven’t considered what kind of life I could give Freya if I were like Ren. He makes in a year what I’ll make in my lifetime. Unless this app takes off.

“I’m not discussing it,” I snap. “It doesn’t affect you.” “There you’re wrong,” Ryder says. “Anything that affects you and Freya, affects us. We’re family.”

“Aiden,” Oliver says, “I know the Liam Neeson angle sort of undercuts this, but you can trust us. I love you. We all do. You’re our brother.” Bittersweet pain knifes through me. He has no idea how much that means to me, coming from this man who was just a boy when I met him, all white-blond hair and knobby knees and better skills with a soccer ball than me. It’s strange, how you can know something cognitively—that the Bergman brothers love me—but how different, how powerful it can be to be told, to feel, even in this warped way, how much they care.