Chapter Eighty-One
Asher
The room is quiet again. My breath is raspy and strained. If I had any bandwidth left for the emotion, I’d worry.
I don’t know what time it is. I’ve lost that. But I know the message is still in my hand because I can feel the fold of the paper against my palm. My fingers are half numb, my arms stretched to their limit and my shoulders screaming.
But I focus on the edges of the paper, and I don’t care about anything else.
I’ve been trying to figure out why they let me keep it.
They took everything else. The empty water bottle.
Any hope of sleep. But they left this. Either it was an oversight—which I don’t believe—or Voss made a calculated decision.
Maybe he thought reading her words, words he thought meant she was abandoning me, would break me faster.
Or that watching me with it would give him something he could use.
It probably has.
I find I don’t particularly care.
It’s all I’m holding onto right now. The pain is just information at this point, catalogued and set aside. But the specific weight of folded paper against skin… It’s everything.
Follow my lead.
Phil said something on his way out. Offhand. Quiet. Something about damage control. Lawyers. A video watched by more than a million people.
A million.
I close my eyes.
Raine knows what she’s doing.
The paper crinkles slightly as a spasm tightens my fingers. I force them to loosen. Carefully.
My job is to give her time.
Have I given her enough? Because I don’t have much left.
But I can hold on a little longer.
Just a little longer.