8. Chapter 8
Noah
Asher’s hand. Asher’s hand is on my cheek, and he’s gifting me with his first genuine smile that he hasn’t immediately tried to hide.
This is it. A moment in time I’ll remember forever, even in death.
Everything I’ve been through leading up to this point has been worth it.
Oh, how a few seconds can feel like hours, with Asher’s wet hand on my cheek and his eyes searching my face, and that flicker of empathy I didn’t even realize until now how much I craved.
Auntie never knew the true extent of my troubled mind. She provided me with her own brand of comfort but never comfort like this.
If it’s even real.
Any second now, Asher will withdraw his hand and laugh at my blatant hunger for his affection.
How obviously starved I am for his skin on mine.
It was his choice to touch me though—I didn’t do anything.
Didn’t threaten, didn’t command. My knife lies abandoned on the floor.
Asher could bend down right now, clutch it in his hand, and sink it into my throat before I even have time to understand what transpired.
But as long as he’s still looking at me the way he is—as long as his hand is damp and warm on my cheek—I don’t even care.
His thumb slides over my cheekbone, catching a stray tear, and?…?It’s gone. Back into the water.
“Bath’s going cold,” he says, gaze dropping.
Has it been that long? Talking feels strange, and I have to think for an extra-long time to find my words. “Are you ready to get dressed?”
Asher glances at his pile of dirty clothes on the floor. “Not in those rags, I’m not.”
“I could?…?bring you some of mine. Once you’re back by the bed.”
“Once I’m back with the chain around my wrist, you mean?”
“Yes,” I say, barely a whisper. Get a hold of yourself. He’s clearly over that moment, and you should be too.
He looks at me with his familiar, suspicious glare as I rise and bring him a towel. When he unplugs the drain, water swirls in tiny rivulets, and all our previous emotions spiral down with it.
“Well?” Asher says. “Are you going to watch me?”
“Oh.” I avert my gaze and close my eyes as well for good measure. Asher turns on the shower nozzle, and I hear him standing up and rinsing himself off before he wraps himself in the towel.
“Well?”
I snap my eyes open. “Yes?”
He stands there, torso bare, with the towel around his narrow hips. “Don’t you need the knife to escort me back?”
“Right.” I bend to pick it up from the floor.
I’m cutting it close, I know. Giving him too many openings to strike. Were he of sound body and mind, maybe he would have, but as luck would have it, he’s not; he’s sick. And something about me picking the knife up seems to have made him angry too.
I motion at the brand-new toothbrush packet by the sink. He glares at me in the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth. To be fair, it’s hard to look intimidating with foam dripping down your chin, but he keeps up his glaring act when I motion for him to exit the bathroom as well.
His footsteps are heavy as he makes his way back to the bed. He holds his arm up without me having to say anything, allowing me to wrap the chain around his wrist and fasten the padlocks.
I watch him lie down on his back, the reattached chain clinking and rattling. I’m not sure what I did to make him so upset with me again.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he asks after a while.
“How?”
“Like you’re?…?disappointed or something. What did you expect would happen after you chained me back to the wall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you want me to smile at you?”
“No,” I mumble, and my throat thickens again. Asher is doing something weird to my insides.
“This isn’t right, you know.”
“I know.”
“You do?” He glares at me, eyes blazing. It hurts, his fury. More than I’d like to admit. “Then why are you doing it?”
I swallow thickly. “You know why.”
He points at the knife. “Go ahead—slit my throat and be rid of me. Or give it here, and I’ll do it myself.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Or kill yourself for all I care,” he spits.
My hand clenches around the knife handle. I’m shaking all over, heart pounding. But I say nothing. I can’t talk. I can hardly breathe. Did he really mean what he said?
“You should have left me there,” he says suddenly, eyes filling with tears.
“L-Left you?”
“In the snow.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” he says, laughing and crying all at once. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my life.”
“So tell me.”
“Why?”
“I just?…?I just want to know you, Asher. I want to see you.”
“See me?” He gets down from the bed, on his hands and knees, chain dragging across the floor as he crawls toward me, the towel hanging precariously around his hips.
“Go ahead—take what you want from me, Noah. Take everything, until there’s nothing left.
” He kneels before me, and when he looks up, his face is streaked with tears.
“Ash?…” I try to back away, but he grabs my hand that is holding the knife.
“Can you at least give me this?”
“It wouldn’t be a gift. I would never hurt you like that.”
“Stop,” Asher sobs. He holds my arm in a weak grip with both hands, head dropping to the floor. “Stop lying. Just kill me.”
My jaw tightens. “Fine. Get back on the bed.”
He flips his head up, staring at me in fear and disbelief, as if he didn’t just beg me for this. Slowly, he crawls back across the floor and up onto the bed.
“This?” I advance on him, raising the knife. “Is this what you want?”
“W-Wait?…”
I straddle his hips, fitting the blade to his throat.
“No, wait!” he croaks. “Noah.” He’s sniffling, panting, eyes blown wide.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” My face is a blank mask as I play the villain he wants to paint me as. “What you begged me for?”
“No! Please, I don’t want to?…?I don’t want it to hurt!”
I blink. “You don’t want it to hurt? But you don’t mind dying?”
Asher just stares at me, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. Knife still by his throat, I bring a hand up to stroke his hair. I meant it as a soothing gesture, but I don’t think it’s coming across the way I intended.
“Don’t,” he grits out.
“Don’t what? Don’t touch you? Don’t kill you?”
“All of the above,” he snaps, glaring at me again as he realizes I probably won’t stick the knife into him—that if I wanted to, I would have done it already.
“I already told you I won’t hurt you,” I mumble. “Don’t you think killing you would involve pain?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what you’ll do. You’ve already drugged me once with that sandwich. Who knows what fucked-up shit you’re capable of?”
“That was only for necessity,” I mumble. “To get you to stay.”
“But I don’t want to stay.”
“It’s for your own—”
“My own good,” Asher snaps. “Yes, you’ve said that about a hundred times already, you psycho.”
My jaw ticks. I don’t want to end this conversation in this manner, but I can’t figure out how to resolve it without escalation. Asher is too unstable from his withdrawal. The cravings are making him irrational.
I was just trying to show him that he doesn’t really want to die, but it doesn’t seem like the message came through. Instead, I just made him afraid of me— more afraid of me.
I heave myself away from him and tuck the knife into my belt. “I’ll bring you some clothes. After that, you should sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” Asher says, voice small and shaky again. “I can’t do anything.”
As I walk upstairs, I hear him crying behind me. Heaving, hulking sobs. Crying like he’s hurting. Like I hurt him.
I wish nothing more than to make things right between us, but maybe it’s already too late. Maybe that moment in the bath is the first and last connection we’ll ever have. If so, what point is there for me to go on? What point is there to keep him here, if he’ll never bring me anything but pain?
Kill yourself for all I care.
I know he said it in the heat of the moment, but part of him might’ve truly meant it, and if so, he’s not much different from my middle school bullies.
I really wanted things to work out between us.
I really hoped that eventually, he’d want to stay by choice, but that foolish wish of mine is slipping further away with every passing second.
Letting Asher go means letting go of any and all hope. It means letting go of everything, and I’m not quite ready to do that just yet.
Something happened between us in the bath, and if it can happen once, it can happen again. If I could only feel like that again—that minuscule sliver of understanding, like a missing puzzle piece clicking into place—all my pain would be worth it.