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.

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.

I remember marveling at the power of her long, muscular legs that made me daydream about them wrapped around my waist, proving her endurance in a much more enjoyable form of exercise.

Already, I knew I wanted her. God, did I want her.

In Freya’s aura, I forgot every single thing weighing on my mind—money, a job, money, food, money, my mother, oh, and money of course, because there was never enough, and it was an ever-present shadow darkening moments that should be bright.

“Don’t you have someone else to bother?” she said, even as she glanced over her shoulder and those striking eyes said something entirely different. Stay. Try. Prove me wrong.

“I’m having fun messing with you.” “Fun, eh?” Freya stole the ball off of me too easily, pulled back, and cracked it so hard, straight at my face, she snapped my glasses clean in half.

“I’m so sorry. I have a short fuse, and it’s like you’re hardwired to push every button I have.” I grinned up at her, my eyes watering. “I knew we had a connection.”

“I’m not going on a date with you just to make up for accidentally busting your glasses.”

“Just one small kiss.” I tapped the bridge of my nose, then winced at the pain, where a bruised cut stung from the impact of my glasses. “Right here.”

“I don’t give out kisses, four-eyes,” she said over her shoulder. “But I’ll buy you an apology beer after this, then we’ll see what I’m willing to part with.”

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.

Aiden can only push so far. Freya can only take so much. Before som...

“I think there’s something wrong with me. I’m so pissed at him that I’ve fantasized about sticking chocolate pudding in his business shoes—”

“I definitely have a few wires crossed. I’m thinking about resurrecting some of my most sinister pranks, and I’m so horny, I’m staring at his closet, huffing his scent.”

You haven’t had a lay in…how long, again?” I grab the bottle of wine sitting on my dresser and take a long swig. “Nine weeks. Four days—” I squint one-eyed at the clock. “Twenty-one hours.”

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 don’t they warn us?” “What?” “Why doesn’t anyone tell you how hard marriage is going to be?”

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.

Freya: 1. Wine: 0.

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.

“Fuckety shit tits!”

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.

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.

“Marriage counseling would be wise to try. If you’re willing…if you choose to. You’ll have to decide if you want to, even if you think it’s too far gone.”

I don’t know if I have anything left to choose with. I’m scared we are too far gone.

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.”

It’s not my favorite part of the job, when they hit their low point, shaking and exhausted and spent, but the truth is, that’s good pain—pain that precedes healing.

for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The less you demand of something, the less it gives back, the weaker it becomes, until one day it’s a shadow of itself.

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.

But when things deteriorate like this, how are they happy?” “I can’t say they’re happy. Complacent, maybe?” “Complacent,” I say, tasting it sour on my tongue. “Fuck that.”

There’s no way Aiden’s happy with this corpse of a marriage, is he? And complacent? That’s the last word I’d ever use for my husband.

We used to have such fire for each other, such passion. And I know that dims with time, but we went from a blazing roar to a steady, warm glow. I loved that glow. I was happy with it. And then I realized one day it was gone. I was alone. And it was so, so cold.

I almost wish Aiden were here to cringe at the mess I’ve turned the house into. I’d watch his left eye start twitching and derive perverse satisfaction from actually eliciting some kind of response from him.

Horseradish and Pickles leap off of me, bounding out of the room and down the hall. “Should have named them Benedict and Arnold,” I mutter. “Traitors. I’m the one who feeds you!”

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. Maybe I’m drunk.

I want that feeling of coming home, I want him to look into my eyes the way he used to, like he sees me, like he understands my heart.

My brother, Ren—thirdborn after me, then Axel—has been at the family A-frame cabin in Washington State for a few weeks, nursing a broken heart. I figured if I sent Aiden there, too, they’d at least have some camaraderie.

I smile faintly, picturing my brother’s relief, even though in a small, sad corner of my heart, I’m jealous of him. That possibility feels so far for Aiden and me.

“I’ve never seen Ren smiling like that.” Which is saying something. All Ren does is smile. He’s a ray of freaking sunshine.

“I know you said you’re not sure if this can be fixed, Freya,” Aiden says quietly. “But I’m here to tell you I will do everything I can to make it right. I promise you that.”

I blame being tipsy and hungry, relying on muscle memory, for why I walk right into the bathroom without considering that my semi-estranged husband is much more than semi-naked in the shower.

Just as I’m about to speak, I hear it—his soft, hungry growl. Every hair on my body stands on end.

Aiden’s long body. His back to me. The tight muscles of his ass flexing, the divot of his hips deep and shadowed, droplets of water sliding down. One hand splayed on the tiles while the other is hidden, his arm moving.

Another low growl punctures the quiet, another broken, swallowed sound, and then, “Freya,” he whispers.

My name on his lips echoes around us. He calls my name quietly again and again, then drops his forehead to the tiles as he groans.

My body responds obediently, remembering what it’s like for every tender, sensitive corner to burn awake, for my hands to run down his back, then lower, to pull him close, as I beg him to give me everything.