Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ASHER
She’s still asleep.
Blanket twisted around her legs, my hoodie swamping her frame, and my old sweatpants bunched around her ankles.
A tiny puff of air escapes her parted lips every time she exhales, lashes barely fluttering.
Her breath is soft, even. No dreams yet.
Just that rare kind of stillness that only comes after a storm.
God, she looks perfect like this.
Like a painting.
Like something too delicate to touch—but I will.
Again and again.
Because I didn’t shatter the life I had, didn’t set fire to everything that tethered me to the old world, just to worship her from a distance. I didn’t slit my brother’s throat and disappear into the woods like a ghost just to be her shadow. I did it so I could have her.
So I could own her.
Mind. Body. Soul. Every last trembling breath.
She’s here now. In my home. In my bed. In the world I built with blood and the kind of madness that doesn’t go away.
And she’s perfect. Even when she’s quiet.
Especially when she’s scared. Because that fear?
It means she knows—on some level—that nothing will ever be the same again. That she belongs to me now.
Not the version of her she gave to him.
Not the watered-down version she gave the world.
The real her.
The one who bites when cornered. Who burns like a fuse waiting to catch. Who stares at me with fire in her eyes and tries so fucking hard not to flinch.
She’s mine, and I’ll carve it into her soul if I have to.
One touch, one kiss, one broken moan at a time. Until there isn’t a single part of her that doesn’t bear my fucking name.
She’ll fight me for a little while. But eventually, she’ll see it.
Sloan was always meant for me, and I was built to ruin anyone who ever tried to take her away.
I sit quietly in the corner of the room, elbow hooked on the worn armrest, fingers brushing the sharp edge of my jaw.
I haven’t taken my eyes off her since I carried her in.
She was half-frozen, soaked, and barely conscious.
I watched as the cold drained from her limbs, as the fire bled warmth back into her skin.
She’s breathing evenly now. Safe and mine.
She didn’t have the strength to fight me when I found her in the snow. But before that? She ran, convinced she was fleeing for her life. Into a death trap of her own making, all because apparently she’d rather freeze to death than stay with me. That truth should devastate me.
Instead, it makes me want her more.
Her fight doesn’t scare me. It never has. Hell, I welcome it.
Sloan doesn’t swing her fists—she bites with her eyes and cuts with her tongue.
Every glare, every insult, every breath that isn’t a sobbed apology just makes me harder.
Hungrier. She thinks she’s hurting me with those sharp little barbs, but all she’s doing is feeding the part of me that’s been starving for something real. Something fucking worth it.
Let her spit. Let her curse and twist and snarl like a feral animal—I’ll take it. I’ll take it all. Because that rage? That fire? That’s her truth. And I don’t want her broken. Not really.
I want her wild. I want her whole. I want her exactly as she is—just mine.
Every piece she gave to him, every piece she kept locked away, every trembling, snarling, screaming, bleeding part—I’ll take it. I’ll rip it from her inch by inch if I have to. Or she can hand it over willingly. Either way, I’ll get it.
All of it.
She thinks I’m the villain in her story. The monster dragging her to hell.
Good. Because even monsters know how to worship. And I’ll worship her the only way I know how—with blood, with devotion, with total fucking possession—until she stops fighting the truth.
She’s not meant for a golden boy with a good name and a God complex. She’s meant for someone who sees her for what she is.
A fucking masterpiece carved out of spite and survival.
Alex never got it. Never even tried. He wanted her soft. Quiet. Polished enough to parade around at Sunday brunch. A woman who’d stroke his ego and never raise her voice.
But Sloan? She came from fire. From scraped knuckles and sharp edges. From shit that doesn’t wash off with money or prayers.
And my stupid fucking brother—he tried to prune her.
Me? I’m gonna let her grow wild.
Then I’ll wrap her thorns around my throat and thank her for every drop of blood she spills. Because sooner or later, she’ll see it.
Not just what I did, but who I did it for.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. My eyes never leave her face. The fire crackles behind me, casting shadows across her cheekbones. She looks warmer now. Stronger.
Safe.
I haven’t felt safe in years.
Not since I was sixteen and my parents decided I was defective.
They called it a breakdown. Sent me away.
An “inpatient treatment center for troubled youth.” That’s what the glossy brochure said.
In reality? A fucking prison. Padded walls.
Screaming down the halls. Needles in my arm.
Silence drilled into my skull until I stopped asking for help.
Alex never visited.
No one did.
When I got out at nineteen, the house didn’t look any different, yet everything about it had changed.
The porch steps still creaked under my weight.
The rust stain under the gutter was still there, bleeding down the siding like the house was crying.
I stood there with nothing but a hospital-issued duffel bag slung over one shoulder, unsure whether I wanted to scream, knock, or run.
The cold bit through my sleeves, but I didn’t feel it.
I just stared at the front door and waited.
Waited for someone to notice me. For something to click behind the curtain.
For someone inside to recognize me as theirs.
But nothing came.
No porch light flicked on. No door creaked open. No voice called my name with the kind of tremble that says we thought you were gone.
Instead, I saw the curtain twitch. A glimpse of my mother’s shadow moving just out of view. But they didn’t come to the door. Didn’t open the damn window.
They just peeked through the curtain, and then went about their day like I was something from a dream they didn’t want to remember.
They turned away.
I stood there for what felt like hours, ice crusting over my boots, watching the place I used to call home and the family I was born into pretend I didn’t exist.
That’s when I understood; they hadn’t mourned me. They didn’t actually want me to get better.
No. Sending me there was their way of erasing me.
Like I was a smudge on their family portrait. A fucking glitch they could delete without consequence.
It wasn’t like they told people there was an accident, or that I was dead.
No, that would’ve required acknowledging I ever lived.
No, what they did was worse. They made me vanish from their narrative entirely.
My name never came up in their smiling social media posts.
Not even by accident. There were no “prayers for Asher,” no quiet tributes or framed photos left on dusty mantels.
It was as if I had never drawn breath under that roof. Not once.
I found their accounts, studied the faces of the people who gave up on me like it was easy, like it was necessary.
I memorized every filtered selfie, every brunch post, every glass of champagne raised to the life they got to live without the burden of a son who didn't fit their version of perfect, and I cursed them for every goddamn second of it.
For laughing. For smiling. For moving the fuck on.
But it wasn’t until I saw him that it really started to burn. The twin who found it so easy to forget me.
I started tracking everything I could. I watched Alex’s uploads first—self-obsessed, predictable, lazy with his security.
His passwords were weak. His cloud backups weren’t encrypted.
He hadn’t even changed his recovery questions since high school.
Pathetic. I didn’t even have to try. I found hundreds of pictures.
Some of her alone. Some with him. A few where she didn’t even know she was being captured—through mirrors, through windows, asleep beside him.
There were even videos, ones he took during sex, like trophies of his own arrogance.
But even those told me everything I needed to know.
He never looked at her. Not once. Not in the way someone should.
Not in the way she deserved. The sex was selfish, rushed, and impersonal.
Every thrust about his own release, not hers.
She could’ve been anyone. A shadow. A doll.
A background prop in the movie of his ego.
He didn’t care about her pleasure. He didn’t care about her.
But I do.
Even in those stolen, blurry frames, I saw her.
I watched the tension in her jaw. The way she tried to keep her eyes open.
The way she flinched when he touched her like she wasn’t something delicate.
I memorized the shape of her mouth when she wasn’t smiling.
The way she curled slightly inward, always protecting herself, like she never fully relaxed around him.
Like she didn’t trust him. And that’s what hooked me.
Because trust is sacred, and she was trying to give it to someone who didn’t deserve it.
Someone who didn’t see her.
I watched her at work, too. The salon had a basic camera system, easily breachable through an old backdoor exploit on a server no one had updated in years.
It was almost insulting how easy it was.
She had a routine. Always opened at 7:58 a.m., two minutes early like she was trying to prove something.
She brewed the coffee even when no one came in.
Did inventory like it mattered. She stocked lemon balm and rosemary shampoo because she said it calmed the elderly clients—and she said it with this little smile, like maybe it calmed her too.
She was kind.
Exhausted, but kind.
Burnt out, but still trying.
Alone in ways most people didn’t notice. Except me.
I watched her forget to lock the back door twice. I watched her walk home with her headphones in—too trusting. I watched her smile at customers who didn’t tip, and clean up after coworkers who left their stations a mess.
She had no idea someone was watching.
Someone who had already decided she was his.
That was when I knew I wasn’t going to just haunt the edges of her life.
I was going to carve a place right in the center of it.
Because if no one else could see how extraordinary she was, then fuck them.
She belonged with someone who could.
And I was done being erased.
This time, I’d be the one who couldn’t be forgotten.
I push off the chair slowly, feet soundless against the wood floor. She stirs under the blanket, a small noise in her throat, but doesn’t wake. I smile to myself.
She trusts me enough to sleep.
Good.
She’ll need her strength.
I move into the small kitchen and reach for the pan.
She’ll be starving. That trek through the woods nearly killed her.
I wrap my fingers around the coffee tin.
Kenyan blend. Dark roast. No cream. I drove four hours last month just to find it.
She mentioned it once in a comment—buried in a thread where a client complimented her taste. Small things. But I remembered.
I always remember.
The bacon goes in first. Slow and steady. Let the smell seep into the walls. Let her wake to comfort. To care. To the kind of peace she hasn’t known in years.
Because here, she’ll never have to hide again.
Not from fists. Not from expectations.
Not from me.
I plate the eggs next. I don’t talk. Just think. About the café. About the slap that ended his life. The moment Alex’s hand cracked across her cheek and she didn’t even flinch—just blinked, stunned, like she couldn’t believe someone she loved had finally crossed the line.
He left her sitting there. And I followed.
That’s when the plan became action.
That’s when I stopped waiting.
The rest? Blood, snow and silence. A body that no one will find, and a future that begins right here, right now.
I pour her coffee. Place the mug beside the plate. The bacon’s perfect, all curled at the edges, and crisp the way she always orders it for breakfast at that little café.
This isn’t just breakfast.
It’s a promise.
She’ll wake soon, and smell the food. She’ll feel the warmth, and she’ll know she’s safe. That for once, someone finally thought about her enough to remember the little things.
I head into the bedroom to glance at her one last time. She’s still curled beneath the blanket in our bed, my hoodie swallowing her frame. Only the edge of her face peeks out—cheek pressed to the mattress, lips soft and slightly parted. She looks angelic like this. Mine.
I kneel beside her, just for a second. Brush a strand of that copper hair from her cheek with the back of my fingers. She stirs slightly, but doesn’t wake. Her skin’s warm now. Her pulse steady. And her lashes—long and dark—flutter slightly like she’s dreaming.
I want her to dream of me.
The fire crackles low in the main room just outside the bedroom door, its warmth starting to fade. Looking toward the hearth, I can see the flames are dying.
I stand and shrug into my coat.
She’ll be cold if I don’t fix that.
I grab the axe on my way out, sparing one last look at her over my shoulder. The breakfast is set. The cabin is quiet. And she’s still right where I left her—wrapped in my clothes, in my world.
“You’re mine now, Sloan,” I murmur, voice barely above a whisper. “You always were.”
Then I step out into the morning chill to keep the fire alive. For her. Always for her.