Page 35 of Billionaire Unbroken - Asher
He’d obviously brought my clothing from my apartment.
A sense of gratitude flowed over me as I turned on the shower.
Living with someone like Asher wouldn’t be a sacrifice.
It would probably feel more like a dream come true.
Asher
“How long have you had the migraines?” I asked Sierra as I tucked into my chicken fried steak at Charlie’s.
It wasn’t quite peak dinner hour, so the place was relatively quiet.
Charlie had greeted us like we were long-lost friends, and that friendliness had gone a long way toward making me feel more comfortable.
I watched as Sierra picked up her fork and looked at her plate longingly.
Hell, she was probably on her second day without food.
Maybe I should have tried to get her to eat earlier, but Reese had told me to let her sleep unless she needed meds.
The chicken fried steak was the special, and she’d ordered the same thing.
The portions were huge, but I didn’t think she was going to have a hard time finishing it.
“They started about the same time as my PTSD,” she explained. “They called them post-trauma migraines. I had them pretty often at first, but they eventually started to come less and less frequently. It’s been almost a year since my last one. I was hoping they were over. The emotional stress was usually a trigger, and that trigger isn’t really there anymore.”
Hell, what if…
“Do you think it was that incident down by the river?” I asked gruffly.
She shook her head. “No. I think I ignored the earlier signals. I get really fatigued before they happened, and I have some mood shifts. The signs were there, but I attributed them to lack of sleep because it’s been so long since I’ve had a migraine. I should have listened to my body. It hit pretty hard and fast. I was seeing the aura early yesterday morning, and I was unable to function well a few minutes later. I didn’t answer your call because I didn’t take my phone with me when I crawled into the closet. Lucky was upset because I wouldn’t let her into the closet with me, but I knew seeing me like that would worry her. She’s been through the migraines with me before, and I didn’t want to keep her enclosed in that small space.”
“I don’t think it helped much,” I informed her. “She seemed pretty distressed when I got there. Lucky? Because she’s a black cat?”
Sierra shook her head. “I got her when she was a kitten. She was on the freeway, and she managed to dodge every car until she got to the side of the road. She really was lucky that she didn’t get hit.”
Hell, I thought the feline was pretty lucky that Sierra had adopted her, too.
She’d obviously been dumped on the freeway by her previous owner.
We were silent for a few minutes while we devoured our food.
I watched her while she ate, satisfied that she was getting a meal she obviously enjoyed.
From the sounds of it, she’d had a pretty difficult life, but I was determined that was about to end for good.
I’d decided that as soon as I’d seen how she was living and what a struggle she was enduring.
She needed someone to give a damn about her, and I was happily volunteering for that job.
I had no idea why I was suddenly eager to have her living with me.
Maybe I was just fucking tired of being alone.
Maybe I wanted to feel needed and useful.
I’d spent way too much time thinking about myself.
