Prologue
Asher
Over the years, I've grown to learn the fact that life doesn't politely ask before it flips everything upside down. It happens in an instant—in the space of a heartbeat, with the snap of a finger.
One moment, you think you're standing on solid ground, and the next it crumbles beneath you, crushing you like a weight you never saw coming.
The first time I truly understood that was the night my mom told me my dad wasn't coming home.
At first, I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the words didn't feel real coming out of her mouth.
She said it so flatly, so cold, like she was announcing the weather or reminding me to take out the trash. I sat there staring at her, waiting for the smirk, the cruel little glint in her eyes that usually meant she was playing one of her twisted games. But there was no smirk. Just silence.
I remember wrapping my jacket tighter around myself that night, sitting out on the porch steps in the freezing air, waiting. I stayed there for hours, staring down the empty street, convinced I'd hear his footsteps or see the glow of his headlights as he pulled into the driveway.
But the street stayed dark. The hours stretched on, and with every tick of the clock the truth hit harder.
He wasn't coming back.
I would never see my dad again.
The man who used to scoop me up when the world felt too heavy.
The man who always knew how to turn my tears into laughter.
The man who made me feel safe, even when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
My best friend.
Gone.
And when he left, so did the best parts of me—if there had ever been any.
After that, everything spiraled. I was nine years old when grief hollowed me out and left me with nothing but anger and pain.
My grades plummeted. I started fights in school with anyone who looked at me the wrong way.
Teachers whispered about me like I couldn't hear, writing me off as another lost cause. By the time I was old enough to know better, I was already sneaking alcohol, numbing myself with things I couldn't even pronounce, cutting into my own skin just to feel something that belonged to me.
I hated myself. I hated the world. And most of all—I hated her.
My mom.
Truth be told, we never did have much of a relationship, even before my dad died. She was a stranger living under the same roof, someone who fed me and clothed me but never really saw me.
She didn't ask about my day, didn't care about my grades, didn't know who my friends were. It was like I wasn't her kid at all, just some burden my dad had chosen to carry that she had to put up with.
When I was younger, that neglect cut deep. I wanted her to notice me, to love me the way Dad did. But as time passed, I got used to it. Eventually, the emptiness stopped stinging and just became part of my life, like a wound that never healed but stopped bleeding.
It wasn't until after Dad's funeral that I saw the ugliest parts of her.
She didn't even wait a month before parading men through our house—different faces, different bodies, but the same hollow routine. Night after night I lay awake, listening to her laugh and scream and moan through the thin walls, wishing I could claw the sounds out of my ears.
She took a no more than a month off work, not to grieve or take care of me, but to indulge in her selfishness, hiding her shame behind my father's death like it was an excuse she could cash in.
That was when my grief twisted into hate.
Years passed like that until, oddly enough, she slowed down. Around my fourteenth birthday, the parade of strangers stopped. She started trying—at least on the surface. Small talk over dinner, dragging me along on errands, pretending like she cared. I never questioned it, never trusted it. I knew better by then.
She didn't change for me. She changed because something about her life demanded it.
For three years, the house stayed quiet.
No strange men, no late-night noises, no reminders of how little I mattered to her.
And then, right after my seventeenth birthday, it all suddenly shifted again.
I still remember the night she came through the front door, holding hands with a man I'd never seen before.
He was tall, handsome, towering over her at six-five, his build lean but strong, his presence filling the room in a way that made me uneasy. He looked young—too young, honestly. Maybe twenty-two, twenty-three at most.
Definitely not much older than me.
At first, I thought he was just another fling. That soon she'd disappear down the hallway with him like she used to, leaving me alone with my disgust.
But instead, she led him into the kitchen rather than bedroom or the living room.
It was strange—unsettling, to say the least—I didn't fight it. Truth be told, it was better than listening to her stumble through the door with a stranger every night, better than lying awake while the walls shook with sounds I could never erase from my head.
At least this was quiet. Controlled. Almost ...normal.
The visits from this man didn't stop though.
They came like clockwork, week after week, month after month, until his presence in the house no longer felt temporary. He sat at our kitchen table. He laughed at jokes I wasn't part of. He left his shoes by the door as if he belonged there.
And over the months, something shifted. My mother, who once treated me like I was nothing more than an obligation, suddenly had this glow about her.
She smiled more.
She fussed over dinner.
She talked to me—not because she wanted to know about my life, but because she wanted me to like him.
But I didn't.
I couldn't.
Every time he walked in, it felt like he was taking more space than he should have. Like he was replacing something, or someone—my father—that was never supposed to be replaced.
And the worst part?
My mother just let him.
He tried his hardest to get close to me, to build some kind of relationship but I wasn't too willing. He'd drop me off to and pick me up from school. Take me to museums, arcades, amusement parks— any place he thought I'd like.
He'd even try to help me out with things that we both damn well knew I didn't exactly need help with. I admit, he was starting to rub off on me but not in the way you'd think.
It was like having to get used to a pet that you never really even asked for. I was used to him being around but I didn't care about him. Nor could I ever fully accept him, no matter how good he treated me or my mom.
Of course that all sweet act didn't last long once he saw that I'd never take him seriously.
There was a night, not long after, when she suggested we all have dinner together—her, him, and me.
She'd even cooked, which was rare enough to make me suspicious.
A full spread sat on the table: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, even a bottle of wine. She kept smiling like she was waiting for the perfect cue.
I remember sitting there, fork in hand, not eating much, my eyes shifting between the two of them. He looked too comfortable in our house. Too natural, like he belonged. And she just kept laughing at his jokes, reaching across the table to brush his hand like I wasn't sitting right there.
Finally, she cleared her throat, her fingers tightening around her glass. That smile tugged at her lips again, rehearsed and sharp.
"Asher," she said, and my chest tightened. "There's something we want to tell you."
I didn't answer. I didn't move.
Her eyes flicked to his, and then back to me. "We're engaged."
The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. I felt them crush down on me, pressing into my chest, stealing the breath from my lungs.
It suddenly made sense.
Every laugh, every date, every glance between them, every moment he spent trying to build a relationship with me—it was leading up to this.
He wasn't just another shadow passing through our doorway.
He wasn't just one of her flings I could wait out, counting the days until he disappeared.
No. This man—Kyle Nelson— was staying.
He was about to be tied to us, to me—in a way I wasn't ready to accept, in a way I couldn't stop. In a way I couldn't escape.
And whether I liked it or not...
He was going to be my stepfather.
