Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
ASHER
“ B aby, come back to me, I’m here. It’s okay,” I whisper in her ear.
“What happened exactly? I mean, something triggered it.” I look over and see Jax pacing the floor.
“I don’t know, I was talking her through what happened with Nate.” I see Brooke flinch out of the corner of my eye. She has been taking this hard, though she has been trying—she’s still here with us, but I don’t think she’s truly forgiven us for taking away her best friend. After all, she is who she is now because of that…because she believed he had died. We made her a murderer.
“Well, I can sympathize there. It was a shock to me too,” she says a little too sarcastically for my liking. I love this girl I do but sometimes she has a habit of making everything about her when we need her to think more logically.
“No, B, she already knew about Nate. She saw him when he got her out. I was talking about what he was doing. Wait. I mentioned Deacon’s name. It was when I said his name that she started having a panic attack.”
“Well, that’s not a good sign. She obviously recognized his name,” Chase states.
“Hm.” I look down and see my girl stir.
“Harps…” I sit down beside her, pushing her hair from her face and caressing her cheek. “That’s it, come back to me, sweetheart.”
I see Jax and Chase exchange a surprised look, but I don’t care. I can’t be bothered to hide how I feel anymore. I was too busy putting on a show for everyone and that’s the reason they were able to slip past me and get my girl. If I had just been honest from the start, maybe things would be different. “C’mon Harper, open your eyes for me.”
“What, what happened?” Her eyes flutter open before she tries to sit up quickly, making her eyes blink again.
“Easy, Harper, you passed out. Here…” Jax kneels down, opens a can of soda, and hands it to her. “Slowly, you need to get some sugar in you.”
She takes a small sip, thankfully taking the advice Jax just gave her, this time sitting up more slowly.
“Bab… Harper. Are you okay?”
She nods, “I think so, more embarrassed than anything.”
Brooke comes close to her. “Harper, you had a panic attack, do you remember?”
Harper shakes her head. “I remember us talking and then it felt like I couldn’t breathe. We were talking about… Deacon…” She grabs my arm, “Ash, you have to stop this. You have to leave it alone.”
“I can’t do that.”
“We can protect you,” Jax says, and my girl starts laughing hysterically and a little manically.
“You can protect me? Against him? You have no idea who you’re dealing with, Jax. None of you do.”
“Then tell us, Harper, tell us so we can get him,” Brooke pleads. “We just want to stop this from happening to anyone else. You need to talk to us.”
“Brooke. Leave her alone,” I snap.
“No, we need to know what we’re up against.”
“You’re not going to pressure her. She’s not ready to talk about it yet.”
“I get it.” Brooke stands up, “I get what she went through, but…”
I lose it, growling at her and now getting into her face, standing up myself. “You get it, do you? You understand everything she went through? You know what it’s like to be her? To be Ellie?”
Chase steps forward.
“Asher.” His voice warns me to stop talking to Brooke like this, but I don’t care.
“You get nothing, B. You have no fucking idea and if you keep saying you do, then you can get the fuck out of my house.”
“Don’t talk to her like that.” Chase pulls Brooke behind him.
“Or what? What are you gonna do about it? She’s being fucking selfish. I get it. We pissed you off; your feelings got hurt because Nate stepped up and we didn’t tell you.”
“Asher, I swear to fucking god you better stop talking to her like that. She has a right to be angry.”
“She doesn’t have a right to fucking pressure Harper. She doesn’t fucking know a damn fucking thing and she needs to stop acting like a goddamn child.”
“Ash,” Harper whispers.
“No, Harps, you’ve been through enough without her interrogating you.”
“She’s not interrogating me. She just doesn’t understand.”
“Exactly.”
“But maybe it’s time for her to, for you all to.”
“Baby, you don’t have to talk about it.”
She exhales slowly. “I do. You need to understand why you need to leave this alone, why no matter where you are, he will find you and he will make you pay. You can’t win this.”
She looks up at me, her fingers curling against mine, pulling me down to the chair with her. My girl looks frightened, and I mean, I see true terror in her eyes. “Harper, you don’t need to relive this.”
A tear falls onto her cheek, and she wipes it away.
“I relive it every second of every hour. I see him every time I close my eyes. I feel all of them, every touch, every hit, every moment they caused me pain.”
More tears fall and I reach out, catching one with my finger.
“I have to do this, Ash. I have to tell you. If I didn’t have to, then I wouldn’t because I know once I do, you’ll never look at me the same.” She lifts her head up, looking around. “None of you will.”
“Harper, what you tell us will never change anything between us,” Brooke says, and I just glare at her. How is she making this about her again?
“Everything’s changed between us, Brooke,” Harps says quietly. She’s still mad at her, I understand.
“I’m still your friend.”
“I don’t want to talk to you about that right now.”
Brooke’s fingers go to Chase’s, and he wraps his arm around her, pulling her back to the sofa opposite.
Harper exhales, her breathing shaky as she looks back at me. “Promise me, Ash, no matter what I say, you won’t leave. You won’t do what you said before. You’ll stay and talk to me.”
I can’t promise that , I think. If she’s that frightened, then it means it’s more horrific than we could imagine, but I nod all the same because I need to hear this, to understand what happened to her.
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
She shakes her head. “I know I’m not, but you have to hear this. You need to know who he really is.”