Chapter 10
Ten
Asher
Ishould go to the hospital. Fuck what he said.
“It’s not sensible,” he’d murmured as the EMTs wheeled him out of my apartment over an hour ago.
Fuck him. ‘Not sensible’. He could be dead for all I fucking know.
Dead. And no one would call me. Because why would they bother letting the booty call know he’d fucking died.
I’d have to read it on CNN or something.
If they thought I was family, they’d let me in.
Could I pretend to be his son? I could go down to St. Joseph’s and pretend to be his son.
I could call and pretend to be his son. That was a better plan, less risky—for him.
In the morning, I text Cole to cancel our collab today.
It sucks because it’s one I’d been looking forward to and had been trying to arrange for a while, but my head (and my dick) would not be in it, so it would only be a whole waste of everyone’s time.
He’s cool about it, though he can’t commit to another shoot anytime soon because he’s way busier than I am.
I’m leaving the apartment—wearing the most normie clothes I own, jeans and a preppy T-shirt I found at the back of my closet—when Leah (the world knows her by Cleo now, but we’ll always be Thomas and Leah to each other) calls me.
Her weekly check-in. I debate ignoring it, but my sister only becomes more of a pain in my ass when I do this.
Ever since she found out about the porn thing, my sister, the rockstar, has turned into some kind of grandmother.
Checking in every week without fail to make sure I’ve not fallen to ruin.
After the article dropped, which, granted, wasn’t the best way for her to find out, she’d appeared in New York out of nowhere to stage some sort of fucking intervention.
It was laughable, because it was, apparently, okay for her to be making rock music and getting tattoos and doing drugs, but it was not okay for me to be doing sex work to pay my bills.
The hypocrisy had been staggering, honestly.
Which had only driven the wedge between us that little bit deeper.
So to say things have been tense would be an understatement.
“Hey, I’m just about to get into the car, so can this be quick?” I say.
“It can be,” she says, tightly. “How are you?”
“Good. No drugs. Still on PrEP. No STIs. That it?”
“Oh, fuck you, Thomas. God forbid I give a shit about my little brother.”
“God? Seriously?” I snort.
“Figure of speech, Jesus.”
“You really can’t help yourself, can you, sis?”
She makes a frustrated noise. “Look, I just… worry about you, okay.”
I bite my tongue at this because it’s easy to worry about me now. Easy to pick up the phone and ask how I’m doing now. Ask if I need money now.
“Yeah, and I told you, you don’t have to. I’m fine. And if I’m ever not, I’ll call. I promised you that in New York.” I’m pretty sure I never would, but the promise gets her off my back in the moment. I key myself into the car and hop into the driver’s seat as Leah thinks, loudly.
Sometimes I hate that it’s like this between us, but I’m not sure how to change it, or if I even want to.
Because I’m still pissed at her and I don’t think there will ever be a time when I’m not.
She left me. She walked out that fucking door without a word and left me there.
Yeah, I know why she did it. And I also know she couldn’t have taken me with her; I was fourteen, but she still fucking left.
And now she wants to make herself feel better by calling me once a week to check in?
Well, I don’t need it now. I needed it then.
Everything I’ve done for the last five years has been on my own, by myself, and she doesn’t get to swan back in here and start trying to play big sister because it’s fucking easy for her now.
“So you don’t need anything? Money, or whatever.”
“Yeah, wire a million over, will you?”
She sighs. “Asher.”
“No, Cleo,” I say firmly. “I don’t need money. I’m good.”
“Okay. Fine. Well, I’m going to be in New York next month. We’ve got a show; it would be good to see you.”
“You’re not splitting up then?” Her lead singer had been caught with a dude on camera, while still engaged to some actress, and I knew things had been rough for them since.
“Honestly, I think this might be the last tour we do.” She sounds half-sad, half-relieved. “It’s a mess. Rapha and Mase don’t speak at all now, so fuck knows how this will go. We’re all acting as go-betweens right now. So yeah, we probably are gonna split.”
“Sucks, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah… I’ve been talking to some friends, though, about other projects, so I’m excited about those.”
“Well, that’s cool.” And it is. I’m happy for her, really. She is still my sister. I can hate her ass and still want the best for her. “Look, I don’t know about New York. I’ve got a friend who’s really sick right now, and I kinda wanna be around for him if he needs me.” If he’ll let me.
She doesn’t press on the word friend. Which I appreciate.
“Is he gonna be okay?”
“I think so. I’m actually on my way to the hospital now to see him.”
“Oh, shit. Okay. Well, I’ll call you in a few days. I hope your friend is okay.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Bye, Thomas.”
“Bye, Leah.”
??
The only other time I’ve been in a hospital was when I ‘accidentally’ hammered a nail through the palm of my hand.
I was helping to build one of the new ‘habitats’ and, as usual, feeling an affinity for the son of God.
Normally, we’d be patched up in the main house by Blake or Alex or one of the elders, depending on what it was, but when my hand was still bleeding a couple hours later, and when Blake expressed concern that I probably needed a tetanus shot, my mother insisted we go to the emergency room.
Jeremiah hadn’t been happy. With me or my mother.
But she’d been persuasive that day, and he’d relented, handing her the key for the truck and watching us drive off down the dirt road.
The doctor had stuck me with a needle, sewn me up with butterfly stitches, called me a good boy, and sent me home to receive my punishment.
A week of painting the communal bathrooms while reciting Proverbs 21:25 aloud to one of the elders every hour on the hour:
He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honour.
A wise man scales the city of the mighty, and brings down the trusted stronghold.
Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles.
A proud and haughty man—“Scoffer” is his name; He acts with arrogant pride.
The desire of the lazy man kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.
It hadn’t been an accident, and Jeremiah knew it, but it hadn’t been laziness, either.
I’m not even sure what it had been. Something to make me feel alive?
This had been about a year after seeing the porn and a year after Leah had left, and I was so fucking alone and so fucking scared.
I understood that I was wrong. That I was a demon in the eyes of the Lord because I was gay.
I’d thought about running away at the hospital, but I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t know the first thing about life outside HHM.
Plus, I’d loved those stolen hours at the hospital with my mom, just her and me in a way it had never been.
She’d been worried about me, she’d spoken in panicked little sentences all the way to the hospital, bitten her nails and listened carefully as the doctor told her how I should be looked after.
She looked relieved as she brushed a hand through my hair, and then, before I had time to think about it, we were in the truck on our way home.
You can still see the scar now. I rub at it sometimes, as though if I rub it hard enough, I can still feel my mother’s love from that day.
The woman at the desk of St Joseph’s lifts her head and gives me a motherly kind of smile.
“Hi there,” she says.
I contemplate putting on a British accent, but the only other time I’ve done a British accent is when imitating the girls from Love Island to make Amata laugh, and I really don’t think this is the audience for it.
“Hi, I’m here to see Christian Darling, he was brought in last night. He’s in recovery,” I say confidently.
“You family?”
“He’s my dad.”
She doesn’t even blink before moving to her computer and tapping on the keys. “He’s in cardiology, it’s on four. You’ll need to check in at the desk up there.”
“Will do.” I skip away from the desk like I’ve just pulled off a jewel heist and take the elevator up to level four, following the signs for cardiology.
It’s less hectic here, less chaotic, and I feel less like I’m committing a crime as I walk up to the desk.
This time it’s a guy, dark skin and dark eyes that trace over me as I get close.
“Hi, I’m here to see my dad, Christian Darling. They told me he was up here.”
“Your dad?” he says slowly. It’s the first alarm bell I get. The second is the way his eyes narrow a little, head tilting sideways. “Didn’t I talk to you on the phone last night?”
Fuck. I have like a second to decide since any delay whatsoever is likely to ruin this even more. “Oh, I think that was my brother,” I say smoothly. It settles him a little, and he nods, moving to stand.
“Right, okay, cool. Well, all guests need to sign in here and wash their hands over at the station.” He points at a sink by the side as he comes around the desk. “I’ll go make sure he’s awake.”
“Amazing, thank you so much. Um, can you maybe not tell him it’s me. We, uh, haven’t spoken in a bit and I don’t wanna shock him…” I didn’t want Christian to think his son was here, and then it’s just me.
He frowns at this. “Um, I think I have to…”
“Yeah, okay then, sure. Do what you have to do.”