“Love you,” he mouthed back, then blew Cameron a kiss.
When the warning came that they would resume filming in sixty seconds, Meredith took her seat, perching on the edge of her chair with her ankles crossed and her hands folded neatly in her lap. Asher adjusted as well, sitting up a little straighter. Across from him, his parents shifted, leaning closer to each other, and his mother’s eyes instantly turned wet and shiny.
Asher snorted.
A harassed-looking man with a scruffy beard and disheveled hair began the countdown at the ten-second mark. Once he’d reached three, he went silent, using only his fingers to count down to one, then pointed that same finger at Meredith.
Here we go, Asher thought.
“Welcome back, everyone.” Meredith beamed into the camera, showing every one of her impossibly white teeth. “We’re here with bestselling author Asher Dare.” She spared him a brief look before turning to her right. “As well as Asher’s parents, Lawrence and Suzanne Derringer. Thank you all for being here.”
“Thank you for this opportunity,” Suzanne simpered while her husband nodded beside her.
Asher only smiled.
“Now, earlier in the show, you spoke a little about what Asher was like as a boy.” Meredith’s smile was still impeccable, but her eyes narrowed a fraction. “You painted a picture of a typical, happy family.” Suzanne opened her mouth to respond, but Meredith angled away from her, focusing her attention on Asher instead. “Is that how you remember your childhood?”
Asher pretended to consider the question for several seconds, but in reality, he was relishing watching his mother struggle to keep her composure. Finally, he shook his head.
“I don’t really know what would be considered ‘typical,’ but I wouldn’t describe my childhood as a happy one.”
Meredith smiled encouragingly. “Can you elaborate on that?”
“For me, it was…lonely.”Tell the truth. Keep it simple. “I don’t remember a lot of laughter in our house. We didn’thave family dinners around the table where we talked about our day.” He let a little of his whirling emotions seep into his voice. “My parents didn’t really care what I did as long as I stayed out of their way and didn’t do anything to embarrass them.”
“And if you did embarrass them?” Meredith pressed.
When his parents had noticed him, it had always been to belittle him, to tell him what a disappointment he was. Every infraction, no matter how small, had been met with swift and brutal punishments. He remembered having to wear long sleeves in August to hide the bruises after bringing home a B on a math test. He remembered the stinging welts on his back after he’d accidentally broken a glass in the kitchen. He remembered the taste of blood that filled his mouth when he hadn’t made the junior high football team.
The audience gasped as he divulged just a small sampling of what it had been like to grow up in the Derringer household. Asher felt a little lightheaded as he concluded. He’d never told anyone those things before, not even Luke. Not Cameron.
Meredith smiled and touched his arm briefly before shifting her focus to his parents. “Suzanne, Lawrence, how do you respond to that?”
“I probably wasn’t around as much as I should have been.” Lawrence spoke slowly, his tone considering. “I worked hard to make sure we had a roof over our headsand food on the table. That meant a lot of late nights, and I admit I was quick to lose my temper back then, but—”
“We’ve always loved you,” Suzanne broke in, speaking directly to Asher. “We weren’t perfect, but we did the best we could.”
Her words weren’t as prepared or polished as they had been in earlier interviews. Maybe she hadn’t expected him to be so blunt, or possibly, she hadn’t expected him to talk about his childhood at all. To be fair, he hadn’t planned on sharing quite so much, either. He did, however, find it telling that neither of them tried to deny the allegations, just excuse them away.
Inwardly, Asher smirked as listened to them scramble to justify what they’d done. On the outside, however, he kept his expression perfectly impassive when Meredith turned back to him.
“Asher, tell us about the day you left your parents’ house. It was right after you were caught kissing another young man, correct?”
Asher nodded. The story wasn’t particularly salacious, but it also hadn’t happened how his mother had described it to Landon Dwyer. He never would have been bold enough to bring anyone back to his childhood home, especially not a boy he’d been crushing on for almost a year.
“I don’t know what happened to him, and I won’t embarrass him by saying his name, but yes. It was my firstkiss, and it wasn’t a very good one to be honest.” He paused while the audience chuckled in amusement. “It was in the park after school. I don’t know who saw us, but my mother was waiting for me on the porch when I got home.”
He’d known immediately that something was wrong, but he hadn’t yet guessed how much worse it would get before the end. Suzanne had been crying, but unlike now, the tears hadn’t been for the world. They’d been entirely for herself, because Asher had embarrassed her. He’d brought shame to their family. She’d screamed at him, calling him a filthy, disgusting freak and telling him he would surely burn in hell for his sins. She had then continued her tirade by proclaiming that she’d always known there was something rotten in him and that she wished she had never given birth to him.
It had gone on in the same vein for more than twenty minutes before his father had pulled into the gravel driveway in his old, rusted Chevy pickup. Asher could still remember the look of abject rage on Lawrence’s face as he’d thrown himself out of the cab and charged across the lawn. Asher had managed to duck the first blow his father had aimed at him, but he hadn’t been so lucky the second time.
Or the six times after that.
Asher lowered his head and stared down at his knees. He couldn’t remember what he’d been saying, and he definitely wasn’t faking feeling “overcome by emotion.”
“It’s okay,” Meredith said, her voice soft and coaxing. “Take your time. What happened after your parents found out?”
Asher took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, then recounted the events of that afternoon, pausing intermittently when he thought his voice might break. Shocked gasps echoed around the studio again, followed by a chorus of angry muttering that grew louder as he neared the end of his story.
