Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers, #3)

by Chloe Liese

“Maybe he still does get stage fright, and he’s a nervous wreck, but he’s doing it anyway.” “Why would he do that?” Viggo tips his head. “I wonder.”

The visceral sensation that I can feel Aiden again—his nerves, his intensity, his love—bursts, white hot and crackling, a straight shot through that connection rocketing beneath my skin.

Everything but Aiden disappears. The world becomes soft and unfocused, a blur of night sky and warm wind and torchlight.

Aiden’s eyes still hold mine as the softest smile tips his mouth. I smile back. And a small bud of hope blossoms in my chest.

I hope they see the thick wedding band on his hand. I hope they know he’s mine.

I want to grab my brothers and knock their hard heads together until they finally listen to me when I say to keep their noses out of my business.

The softest kiss sweeps over my lips, warm and gentle, the whisper of mint leaves and rum. It’s reverent. Careful. Like our first kiss, which I still remember because he kissed me like he couldn’t believe it was happening.

“It’s called grand gesturing. And groveling.” A surprised laugh jumps out of me. “What?” “Music speaks to you, Freya. It makes you feel. And it’s something we used to share, a way we connected. I wanted…I wanted to show you what you mean to me. I wanted you to feel that again.”

I’ve been trying, but in my way, I realized, not yours. All my work has been for us, but it came at the cost of doing what makes you feel loved.

It’s every word I wanted. Everything I hoped I’d hear. But how can I know? How can I trust that he won’t hurt me again?

I have to see past what Aiden’s done and believe what he says he will do. I have to choose him, to take a risk, not because of what the recent past dictates, but because of who I believe Aiden is, truly, at his core—his best self.

I can’t explain why I do it, what makes me brave enough to wade into waters that already nearly drowned me once. Except that I look into his eyes and there’s a glimpse of the man I married as much as the promise of a man who’s grown and changed, who I’ve barely begun to understand.

Our vows echo inside me, and I clutch them tightly for courage. I promise to hope all things, believe all things…

I want to do filthy, worshipful things to my wife’s body, and none of them are possible right now.

My mother-in-law shifts in her beach chair and smiles over at me. “You’re reading a romance, Aiden?” Freya tips her head and peers up at me. I slap the book shut, caught red-handed—minded?—as a blush heats my cheeks.

“Ah. Kleypas. She’s good.” My eyebrows lift in surprise. “You’ve read her?” He grins. “I read romance to Elin every night.” She smacks his arm. “You’ll scar them.”

Freya and I are such opposites, the remark catches me completely off guard. “How are we similar?”

“You both love deeply and live out your convictions from that. Yours braids with pragmatism, and of course, yes, your anxiety. Freya’s tangles with her need to please, her desire to heal. It’s just like the flower and leaf of a plant can be entirely different but grow from the same soil, the same root system. That’s how I see you two.”

“I…never thought of it that way. But that’s the deepest compliment, that you think I’...

“And that’s when I told Elin that even though a big family had been my grand idea, she was the one who fell in love with it, and if she so much as looked at me like she wanted more, I’d go hiking in the woods and not come back.”

if I could ask him, I think I would. How do you do it? How do you love so openly? How do you do it without fear tainting…everything? How do you work so hard and love so hard and juggle it all? How did you learn to do that? Can I?

“It sounds like you’re carrying a lot, Aiden, but you don’t have to carry it alone. I’m always here. While I know I’m not your father, I love you like you’re my own. I’m proud to call you son.”

He’s shown me strength lies in how openly you bare your heart, not how deeply you guard it.

Oliver pops up beside me out of thin air, like a creepy blond poltergeist.

“You’re well aware there isn’t a woman on this beach who hasn’t noticed you and liked what she’s seen.” “I don’t care who noticed me,” he says, yanking me by the ankle across the water and into his arms. “Unless it’s my wife.”

“Don’t make plans tomorrow night.” I frown. “What?” “I have something for us to do. Just the two of us.” I try to swallow the happiness bubbling up inside me.

“I’ll take it that you like the swimsuit?” “Like?” He groans, pulling me into his arms again. “When you wore it the first day we were here, my jaw dropped. You’re so beautiful.”

“I don’t know how to explain it. It just feels like I can’t simply eat and exercise and look how I look. I have to love that I’m this way and make sure other people know, too. Otherwise, they think I’m trying to lose weight, that I’m not happy with how I am.”

I feel guilty. Really guilty that I haven’t made more time for my only sister, the other bookend girl in a house of wild boys.

Sometimes love is a splint, an arm to take, a shoulder to cry on—helpful but not the healer itself.

“Don’t worry about it, Zigs,” Frankie says. “We’ll take it from here.” Ziggy shrugs. “Don’t have to tell me twice. I have a book calling my name.”

That is, until the parrot catcalls him. He glares at her over his shoulder. “Behave yourself.”

“That’s not all she says, either.” “Really?” His cheeks pink. “She’s got a mouth on her, let’s leave it at that.”

“Sorry,” he says, meeting my eyes. “I was distracted.” “That’s okay,” I tell him hoarsely. “Me too.”

“Did you know you were humming?” I freeze, halfway done drying the plate. “I was?” Aiden nods, smiling faintly as he steps closer. “You were.”

As Aiden wipes down the sink and the water drains in a slow, lazy spiral, it dawns on me— Somewhere along the way, he started humming, too.

“I’d go through it a thousand times.” “Why?” she asks. “Because it was part of what led me to you. You’re worth all of that.”

You sang constantly. You sang in the shower, in the ocean, in bed, over breakfast, wrapped in my arms. I loved that…that I knew, by how you sang and what you sang…I loved that it told me what you felt. That so often it told me you were happy.”

I remember how hard it was. I empathize with that.” Her smoky laugh jumps out. “Unless they’re D-1 athletes.” “Entitled little shits.”

“You didn’t see them pining over each other in my classroom. They just needed a little nudge.” “A little nudge.”

“I couldn’t take the thought of them missing the love of their lifetime. Because I have that. And I can’t imagine a world without her.”

“Every day, I wake up scared that I won’t love you how you deserve to be loved.

“I’ve always struggled to admit my fears and my failures to you because I never ever want to disappoint you, Freya.”

You hurt me when you pulled away, yes. But you never disappointed me.” “Tell that to my brain. He’s a lying asshole.”

“Can I read it?” “Only if you read it aloud to me. In a British accent.”

Those words. I haven’t heard them in too, too long. I love you.

She said it. She loves me. Still.

“Can I touch you, Freya?” She blushes prettily. “How?”

“I want to kiss you.” “Better brush your teeth, then—oh.” She shivers as I kiss my way down her chest. “That kind of kissing,” I tell her.

“Why?” “Because I miss you,” I whisper against the soft curve of her stomach, lifting her tank top. “Because I want you to feel good.” One gentle kiss, as I nuzzle the satin-smo...