Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
ASHER
I’d. Fucked. Up.
Somewhere between the cum shot and Blue leaving, I’d fucked up. Blue took off out of here so suddenly I could still feel his fingers tangled with mine and the press of his lips against my knuckles.
Every step Blue had taken away from me felt like a brick wall slamming down between us.
And when he left looking like a kicked puppy, he wasn’t the only one hurt.
Blue’s swift departure had left Jax standing alone by the door while I lurked in the hallway, my blanket wrapped around me like modesty was important when I was covered in drying cum.
“I think I fucked up,” I whispered, still not ready to admit where I’d gone wrong.
Jax deflated. His shoulders slumped forward, and he buried his hands in his hair. Then he dropped into a crouch and took a deep breath.
“Jax?”
“Don’t.”
“Jax, I’m sorry.”
“I said don’t, Asher.” Jax took another breath, and for a second I thought he might sit on the floor, but then he straightened up to his full height.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
Jax’s lips flattened into a thin line and his nostrils flared. For the second time in one day, I’d managed to be an epic fuckup.
“I think you know what happened. And, honestly, I’m more mad at myself than I am at you. I’m older. I should know better by now.” Jax’s eyes searched the room until he discovered his discarded shirt. He wouldn’t meet my gaze as he went to it and pulled it on.
“What does that mean? You’re older and you know better?” I hugged my arms tighter to my chest, clutching the blanket like it was a lifeline.
“It means exactly what it sounds like. I’m old enough to know that you were hurting about Lukas and needed an outlet for your hurt feelings.
Even if I think you’re not really in love with him, that’s neither here nor there.
The point is that I’ve known Blue for a long time, and today I put myself in a situation that made me partly responsible for hurting him.
Something I swore to myself I’d never, ever do. ”
Oh, wow. I was a bigger idiot than I thought. Jax had a thing for Blue. Lukas had Sawyer and Jax wanted Blue, and neither of them really wanted me.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, my voice cracking, not that Jax cared.
“I believe that you’re sorry, Asher. But sorry doesn’t fix what we broke today. Sorry doesn’t unmake mistakes.”
Jax shoved his feet into his shoes and then turned his attention back to me.
Jaw set, eyes flickering between anger and sadness.
I hated myself more than I’d ever hated myself.
All I’d done lately was step from one colossal mess into another.
If it were just me I was affecting, I’d have minded, but not as much.
Nothing was worse than seeing the look on Blue’s face when he left.
Except maybe the look on Jax’s as he stood there, staring at me like he was trying to figure out what the fuck he’d been doing with me in the first place.
The fact was that I was a mistake.
“Jax, wait.” I shuffled across the floor, the stupid blanket tangling around my legs.
The awful truth was that my only friends were Lukas and people who worked for him.
My social circle was small. People I used to talk to before Leo died had trickled out of my life one by one.
Grief had taken up a lot of space, and some people felt like it hadn’t left room for them.
Jax waited, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d fucked up again. Sex hadn’t been the answer. Or maybe it had, but I’d been asking the wrong question. Or maybe I was just a bad person, too wrapped up in myself to notice what I was doing to the people around me.
“I’ll find a way to make it right with you. And with Blue. I promise.”
Jax nodded, but he didn’t look like he had a whole lot of faith in me. And then I watched him walk out the door. The quiet click of the latch made me flinch like a gunshot had rung out.
My apartment was suddenly too quiet, and I hated it. I hated being alone. I hated how fucking lonely Leo had left me, but it wasn’t entirely his fault this time. I’d been the one to screw up with Lukas, and Sawyer, and then Jax and Blue.
If Leo were here, he’d know what to do. What to say.
How to fix things. Leo had always been better with people than I was.
We were basically opposites. Where I was flighty and emotional, Leo was steady and sensible, and I missed having that in my life.
That unshakeable presence. That person to anchor me and let me know that no matter what I did, no matter how badly I fucked up, I wasn’t alone.
But now I was.
The silence in my apartment was like an anvil sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe or move or think.
And then I turned and saw the bottle of wine and the snacks and my mistakes came into focus, every error another rock I’d smashed myself upon.
The wine called to me, and I padded over there, my blanket dragging behind me.
I grabbed the wine and sat on the couch, still naked under my blanket. Still miserable. Still without any clue of how I got here or where to go next.
The wine was sweeter than I’d expected, and it went down easy.
I drank straight from the bottle and scrolled through my phone.
My lockscreen was a picture of Leo and me.
It was a few years before he died and I remember that on the day it was taken, someone had mistaken me for his son instead of his brother.
I didn’t mind, and Leo didn’t seem to either.
He’d ruffled my hair and said he was lucky to have such a good kid.
Leo’s death had sent me adrift. He’d been my anchor, and without him I’d been lost. And then Lukas had shown up.
He’d stepped in and rescued me. He helped me with all the legal shit, and he gave me a job.
He hadn’t chastised me for dropping out of college in the first semester.
I’d barely started going when Leo died, and when he was gone, I didn’t see the point.
Lukas had been saving my ass for the past two years, but he couldn’t, as it turned out, save me from myself.
I took another long drink of wine, wiping away some that dribbled down my chin.
I hadn’t eaten today, which I was now realizing was a mistake, because the wine was making my head all swimmy.
My hunger pangs would have to feast on fermented grapes because that’s all I was going to give them.
Did I know I was a mess? Yes. Did I think getting trashed on a bottle of wine would help?
Absolutely the fuck not. Was I going to drink it anyway?
It sure seemed that way. I’d done a bang-up job of making everyone hate me, and it only took a single day.
The way I saw it, I deserved to drown my sorrows a little.
If Lukas wasn’t such a good person, he’d have fired me today. Not only had I hurt him, but I hurt Sawyer too. And then Jax and Blue. I took a sip of wine and the world wobbled a little.
Fuck. I was crying. Now I was officially one of those sad, lonely drunk people who sat around wrapped in blankets, crying, feeling sorry for themselves. Did that stop me from crying? Of course not. It only made the tears come faster.
If Leo were here, he’d kick my ass. But Leo wasn’t here, and that was half the problem.
Maybe it was the whole problem. Maybe I’d relied too much on Leo to pull my head out of my ass and keep me acting right when he was here, and now that he was gone, I was just this messy little tornado, fucking shit up wherever I went.
The wine… the wine was gone now and nothing had gotten better in the whole time it took me to drink it. I was still hungry and naked and alone with all my mistakes. I scrolled through my phone again, this time paying more attention to the pictures I had of Lukas.
There used to be a certain kind of way his pictures made me feel, but that was different now.
The familiar swoop in my stomach wasn’t there anymore.
The butterflies didn’t erupt. I didn’t imagine what it would be like to kiss him.
Because I knew now. I knew that kissing him was like kissing nothing.
Like kissing no one at all important. Now all I could think of when I looked at his picture was how much I’d fucked up and how much I owed it to him to do better.
I had a few pictures of Jax and Blue on my phone from different events at Lukas’s house, and I almost didn’t want to look at those because I strongly suspected what I would feel. That my stomach would swoop and I worried that if it did, all my wine would come back out.
Suddenly too hot, I flung the blanket off myself and shivered at the sudden change in temperature. It was enough to make my brain think it sobered me up, but trying to move soon proved that I was still as trashed as I’d been ten seconds ago.
Too heavy for my neck to hold up, my head lolled back, and I found myself slumping over on the couch, curling up on the cushion, staring at the blank television screen.
I closed my eyes for a minute and woke up with my bladder screaming at me.
I sat up, intending to go to the bathroom and take care of that, but the room spun and I flopped back down.
After I located my phone, I checked the time and it was three in the morning.
Clearly I’d been asleep for more than a minute.
I rolled off the couch onto all fours, and leaving my dignity behind, I crawled to the bathroom.
The wine was still having its wicked way with me, but I could already tell that tomorrow was going to suck.
Climbing onto the toilet took Mount Everest-level effort and even after I was done, I contemplated just sitting there all night.
Bed felt like it was too far away. I tried to keep my thoughts off of Jax and Blue and how I didn’t want to get into bed alone, but my brain was running the show, not me.
It did agree to let me stumble back to the living room and wrap myself in the blanket I’d left there earlier.
And out of everything there was for me to hate, the fact that they weren’t in my bed long enough to make it smell like them bothered me the most. I didn’t know how I was going to fix it or even if I could.
But there was nothing drunk Asher could do at three in the morning that would be even remotely productive toward fixing things. Except maybe apologizing.
I found my phone on the coffee table and tapped out a message, and so I wouldn’t have to send it twice, I sent it to a group chat with Jax and Blue and then, for the second time that night, I passed out.