Chapter 9 Asch #2
I’m quiet as we walk, and I unlock the front door without a word. My heart has started to race again, pummeling the inside of my chest, and I take her to my bedroom.
My cheeks heat up as I stare down at the chaos.
Clothes are strewn everywhere from where I haven’t bothered to put them up, and while I haven’t had enough time to accumulate stuff, there’s enough to where it’s clear I’m a total mess.
I’m still not as bad as my mother.
I close the door behind her and lock it.
“What do you want, Pandora?” I ask, sitting down at the desk. “You obviously want something from me. Or are you just getting off on torturing me?”
Pandora tilts her head at me. “Is that a trick question? Of course I’m getting off on torturing you.” She goes to sit down on my bed, on top of a pile of clothes. “But I figure, maybe you and I can get off on torturing Blaze together.”
I lick my lips, which are entirely too parched. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”
Pandora reaches for her phone again. After a few seconds, I hear a video start.
My own voice plays back at me.
“I… drugged Blaze last year.”
I’m going to throw up.
No one was supposed to ever hear that recording. No one was even supposed to know about that recording.
How…
I guess now I know what was in the basement.
The words play, but they’re hazy. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need the reminder. I know what I said.
I know what I did.
And now, so does Pandora.
“You gonna tell him?” I ask raggedly, staring down at one of the few bare spaces on the floor.
“Why would I tell him?” Pandora asks. “No, this was really hot. I jerked off to this three times already. I just think, why stop at touching his cock a bit? We can do way worse to Blaze.”
My head snaps up, and I stare at her. I can barely process that she masturbated to that bit of information, even though it doesn’t surprise me. The fact that she wants to do worse to him, though…
No. That doesn’t surprise me either.
“I don’t want to,” I say, watching her. “But let me guess. You’re not giving me a choice.”
“You don’t want to?” Pandora gives me a disappointed look. “Even after he called you his subordinate? He was a real dick to you, Asch. Treating you like you’re the hired help.”
I grit my teeth. “So what?” I ask her. “He’s always a dick. It just took him longer than usual to be a dick to me.”
It still fucking hurts.
I’d thought I was different, somehow.
“Yeah. You thought you were besties. But Blaze just uses and abuses.” Pandora lets out a small laugh. “I mean, it was really nice of his family to pay your tuition. I didn’t expect that of the Bouchards. Or… I guess that makes Blaze think he owns you.”
For the third time in the past hour, I gape at her like a landed fish. “What?” I shake my head. “They’re not paying for my tuition. I’m here on scholarship.”
Pandora gives me a condescending smile. “Sure. The very special Bouchard scholarship that got set up just for you. I’ve got the financial records, if you want to see. They’re covering all your expenses too, which is a pretty sweet deal. You should take advantage of it while you can.”
I shake my head again. “No. You’re wrong.
His dad is — was — paying me for…” I trail off.
His dad wasn’t really paying me for doing anything.
It was only pity money. Is it really a stretch to think that he wouldn’t go further?
It’s not like money matters to the Bouchards.
My tuition is a drop in the bucket to them.
But why?
Is he trying to build leverage over me? “That doesn’t make any sense. Blaze doesn’t even want me working for his family after graduation,” I tell her.
Pandora scoots farther up the bed and sits cross-legged. Her steel-toed boots end up on my clothes.
I guess it doesn’t matter.
Nothing does.
“It’s an interesting email chain,” she says as she scrolls her phone. “I didn’t know your dad was dead. Sorry he passed. Or not sorry, if he was a dick.”
I really can feel my heart thudding against my ribs now. “What…” I ask, hating how unsteady my voice sounds. “Why are you telling me all of this? If anything, it should just make me want to thank Blaze for everything.”
That’s not what I want to do.
I want to get up in his punchable fucking face and demand answers.
I want to find out what the hell he wants from me.
I want to know why.
“Arthur Alvarado, right?” Pandora looks up at me with a sly expression. “How did he die?”
“In… It was a work accident,” I say. “My mom has never wanted to talk about it, so I don’t know the details. But I know it has nothing to do with Blaze.”
“Hmm. I guess that’s the truth.” Pandora looks down at her phone again.
”’Dear Ms. Alvarado. I’m sorry for your loss.
Arthur was a great friend, and he will be missed.
The tragedy of his death weighs on me. I know money can never replace him, but I’m willing to ensure Asch’s future, in honor of Arthur. Regards, George Bouchard.’”
“No,” I say. “That’s not…”
My father had died when I was twelve, right before I’d been sent to the private school I’d met Blaze at. A scholarship, my mother had told me. She’d been so proud.
She couldn’t have faked that. I’d seen the letter.
More than that, she wouldn’t have lied to me like that.
But certain things are starting to make sense, and…
The knife twists in my gut. Were Blaze and I ever really friends at all? Or was that just another illusion?
“You’re lying,” I tell her, getting up from the chair and storming over to her so I can grab the phone from her. She lets me take it without a fight, and I almost hate her for how easily she lets me have it.
I’m looking at a screenshot of an email, dated eight years ago.
“This was faked,” I say, gripping the phone tight.
“Check the next pic,” Pandora responds.
I shake my head and tap to the next image. This time it’s a letter from the private school, confirming payment—addressed to both my mother and George Bouchard. I tap over to the next one, with similar details about my high school, and then Dyschord University.
Then I get to the email from my mother to George Bouchard. It’s dated a day before the email from George Bouchard she’d read to me.
With Arthur gone, I’m going to have a hard time keeping things afloat. I don’t need anything for myself, but Arthur has a son. Asch needs a good education so he doesn’t need to follow in his father’s footsteps.
I swallow hard.
She’s been lying to me.
So has Blaze. There’s no way he didn’t know about this.
How long has he been letting me humiliate myself, thinking I’ve earned everything I’ve gotten? The scholarship, the stipend, all of it?
I didn’t do anything except exist.
“Why are you showing me this?” I demand, resisting the urge to throw her fucking phone against the wall. “They did good things for me? So what? This is supposed to make me hate Blaze?”
Except it does.
The fact that he’s been in on the joke all along makes me resent him so deeply that I can’t even make sense of it.
Because that’s all it’s been to them: a joke.
“I thought you deserved to know,” Pandora says. She gets up on her knees and plucks her phone out of my hand. “I mean, it is nice of them. They were really looking out for you. Huh, does all this make George Bouchard your sugar daddy?”
“Don’t,” I snap at her. I can taste the bile threatening to rise up as my entire world is shaken and shattered, and the worst part is that I can already hear Blaze telling me it’s not a big deal. That it’s fine. That it’s just money, that it doesn’t matter.
But it does.
It matters so much.
My pride has been ripped to shreds.
Pandora wraps her arms around my shoulders from behind and rests her head against my back. “Blaze is your best friend,” she says. “The guy who’s always been there for you. It makes sense he’d pay for all your stuff, too. He can’t really have a best friend who can’t afford to keep up with him.”
Best friend.
That’s not what I am to him. I’m his subordinate; he’d made that perfectly clear. All of this time, I’ve thought we were friends, that this was somehow genuine. I’ve thought so many things that clearly aren’t true, and I don’t know what to make of any of it.
But the idea of getting payback against Blaze is sounding better and better.
“No,” I say, my voice dull. “He can’t.”
“He’s so hot too,” Pandora says. “You agree, right? And can you imagine what he’d look like, tied down, writhing in pleasure? Completely at our mercy?”
“Didn’t you stab Declan for roofieing that chick?” I ask her, fighting back a hysterical laugh. “But it’s okay when it’s you, when it’s Blaze?”
“Is Blaze completely innocent?” She digs her nails into me. “We don’t need to roofie him. It’ll be just as hot if he’s fighting us the entire time. Screaming, crying, begging for us to stop, but who’s going to save him? You?”
Blaze had made it clear he doesn’t need me to protect him.
Not from anyone else… and not from me.
“He would destroy both of us,” I tell her unsteadily.
Then again, he’s already devastated me — both in what he’s said and what Pandora has revealed to me.
What’s a little more? I’m already going to be kicked out of Dyschord.
I might as well get some sort of revenge before I end up back in New Valence.
Part of me knows that it’s stupid to want to get revenge on someone who’s made it possible for me to go places, to do things.
But fuck, it hurts to know I’ve been made a fool of, over and over again, and I want him to feel the pain and the shame, too.
Pandora moves off the bed to stand in front of me. She reaches up to stroke my jaw. “You’re with me, right, Asch? Because Blaze will get home any minute. We can give him the surprise of his life.”
I inhale slowly, shakily. I don’t know how she can want to do this to someone else, but then…
She did swear revenge.
Besides, he started it. It would only be fair.
Right?
“So this is your revenge on Blaze,” I tell her. “What’s your revenge on River? On me? What do I have to look forward to next, Pandora?”
Pandora grins at me. “You’ll have to quiver in anticipation to find out.”
“No,” I say, grabbing her by the throat to pull her closer, and I have the sudden, most irrational urge to kiss her. “We do this, we’re even.”
Pandora’s pupils are wide, and her lips part in a silent moan. “Then you’d better make it very, very good, boyfriend.”
I squeeze tightly, then I can't help it: I lean in and crush my lips against hers in an urgent, deep kiss. I shouldn’t be entertaining this thought.
I shouldn’t be planning on doing this to my best friend.
But he fucked with my head.
The least I can do is fuck him right back.