Chapter 7 Jinx #2
Asher crosses back to the bed. Sinks into the chair beside me. Takes my hand again, and this time his grip is desperate, like I'm the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground.
"Don't be sorry for being alive." His voice cracks. "Don't ever be sorry for that. Dom told me to go. He told me to save you. If you apologize for surviving, you make his sacrifice worthless."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant." He lifts my hand to his lips, presses a kiss to my knuckles.
The gesture is so tender, so unexpected, that my breath catches.
"But I need you to understand something.
I chose you because the last thing he said, was that he saw what I was too scared to admit, and he pushed me toward it even though it meant dying without me there to help him cross. "
"What did he say?"
Asher's eyes meet mine. Dark and steady. Just like in the dream.
"That you're my future. And he wanted me to have one."
The words settle into my chest, warm and terrifying. Future. Like this is more than just sex and violence and two broken people crashing into each other. Like this is something that could last.
"I don't know how to do this," I admit. The words come out rough, dragged from somewhere deep. "Caring about someone. Being cared about. The Foundry trained that out of me before I was old enough to remember what it felt like."
"I know."
"The last time I let myself want something, they used it against me.
" The memory surfaces, different from the flashback but no less cruel.
Protocol Twelve. The final test before they declared you ready for deployment.
"I was thirteen. There was a girl in my cohort.
Subject F7. We weren't supposed to talk, but we found ways.
Notes hidden in food trays. Hand signals when the cameras weren't looking.
She was the first person who made me feel like a boy. "
Asher's hand tightens on mine. He knows what's coming. He's lived this story himself.
"They found out." My voice goes flat. It has to. If I let myself feel this, I'll crack. "They dragged her into my cell in the middle of the night. Two handlers held me down while a third... while he..."
I stop. Breathe. The walls I built start to shake.
"They made me watch. Said it was a lesson. Said attachment was weakness, and weakness had to be cut out." I force myself to meet his eyes. "When they were done with her, they gave me a knife. Told me to finish it."
"Jinx..."
"I did it. I killed her because they told me to, and because by then I was so broken that I didn't know how to say no. I cut her throat while she looked at me with eyes that still trusted me, that still believed I was going to save her, and I watched her bleed out on the floor of my cell."
The confession hangs there. The worst thing I've ever done, laid bare between us.
"They hosed out the cell the next morning. Brought me breakfast like nothing had happened. And I ate it. I sat in the spot where she died and I ate every bite, because if I didn't, they'd hurt me too. That's what they made me into. That's what Helena Cross designed."
I wait for him to pull away. To see me differently, now that he knows the full scope of what I am.
Instead, he leans forward and cups my face in both hands.
"You were a child." His voice is fierce. "A child who had been tortured and conditioned and given an impossible choice. What you did was survival. What they did was evil. Those are not the same thing."
"I killed her."
"They killed her. They used your hands to do it, but the murder belongs to them. To Helena Cross. To everyone who built that system and looked the other way while children were destroyed." His thumbs stroke across my cheekbones. "You are not a monster, Jinx."
"How do you know that?"
"Because you saved me." His forehead presses against mine. "In that pit, when you could have killed me, when killing me was the easy choice, you walked away. You chose mercy over murder even though they'd spent years beating mercy out of you. That's not a weapon. That's a man."
My eyes burn. My throat closes. The walls I built when I was eight years old, the walls that have kept me standing through everything, start to crumble.
"I don't know if I can let them fall." The words come out broken. "The walls. The armor. It's been so long that I don't remember what's underneath."
"Then we find out together." He pulls back enough to look at me. "I'm not asking you to fix yourself overnight. I'm not asking you to be someone you're not. I'm asking for a chance. Let me in, just a little. Let me help you carry some of this."
"Why?" The question tears out of me. "Why would you want that? I'm fucked up, Asher. I'm broken in ways that can't be fixed. Why would you choose this when you could have someone normal, someone who doesn't dream about torture and wake up reaching for weapons?"
"Because normal is boring." A ghost of a smile crosses his face. "And because I'm just as broken as you are. The pits did the same thing to me that the Foundry did to you. Different methods, same result. Two kids turned into killers who don't know how to live any other way."
"So we're both fucked up."
"Completely. But maybe..." He hesitates. "Maybe two broken pieces can make something whole. Maybe we can figure out how to be human together, since neither of us knows how to do it alone."
It's not a promise. Not a guarantee. It's an offer. A hand extended across the darkness between us.
I take it.
"Yeah," I say. "I want that."
His smile is like sunrise. Bright and warm and full of promise.
"Then rest. Heal. We've got time."
"The mission—"
"Failed. The kids were moved before we got there. Jagger's already working on new intel." He settles back in the chair, still holding my hand. "But that's a problem for later. Right now, your job is to not die. Think you can handle that?"
"I'll try."
"Yeah, you're gonna do, not try." He brings my hand to his lips again. "I didn't lose Dom just to lose you too."
The grief in his voice is raw. Real. A wound that will take longer to heal than the hole in my side.
"Tell me about him," I say.
Asher goes still. "What?"
"Dom. Tell me about him. Who he was. What he meant to you." I squeeze his hand. "I want to know the man you lost."
For a long moment, he doesn't speak. His eyes go distant, looking at something I can't see. Memories, maybe. Ghosts.
"He was forty-four," Asher finally says. "Started in the pits as a runner as a teen. Placing bets, managing fighters, skimming profits off the top. He got caught, and they threw him into the ring as punishment. Most runners don't last a week. He lasted twenty years."
"How?"
"He was smart. Smarter than any of us. He couldn't outfight most opponents, but he could outthink them.
Read their patterns, predict their moves, find their weaknesses.
" A ghost of a smile crosses Asher's face.
"He used to say the pits were just chess with blood.
He was better at chess than anyone I've ever met. "
"How did you meet him?"
"My third year. I was eighteen, cocky as hell, convinced I was invincible because I'd survived two years of fights without taking a serious loss.
" Asher shifts, settling more comfortably beside me.
"Picked a fight with a guy twice my size.
Not in the ring. Just in the mess hall, over something stupid. Pride, probably. A look I didn't like."
"What happened?"
"He beat the shit out of me. Would have killed me if Dom hadn't stepped in.
He talked the guy down, convinced him that killing me would bring too much heat, that I wasn't worth the trouble.
" A ghost of a smile crosses Asher's face.
"Then he dragged my broken ass to the infirmary and spent three weeks making sure I didn't die of infection. "
"Why? You were nobody to him."
"That's what I asked." Asher's voice goes soft. "He said everyone deserves one person who gives a damn. That the pits were designed to make us animals, to strip away everything human, and the only way to fight that was to keep choosing humanity. Even when it was hard. Even when it was dangerous."
"He sounds like a philosopher."
"He was. In his own way. Closer to being a father figure than any of us really had.
" Asher's hand finds mine again, fingers interlacing.
"He used to say that the pits didn't make us monsters.
They just showed us what we were capable of becoming.
The choice was always ours, to give in to the darkness or to fight against it. "
"Did you believe him?"
"Not at first. I was too angry, too broken.
I thought he was naive, that all his talk about humanity and choice was just weakness dressed up in pretty words.
" Asher's eyes meet mine. "Then I met you.
And I watched you make a choice that should have been impossible.
You chose mercy over murder, dignity over destruction. You proved him right."
"I didn't feel like I was choosing mercy," I admit. "I felt like I was failing. Breaking."
"That's exactly what Dom would have said." Asher's smile is sad, but real. "Breaking free of what they made us isn't failure. It's the only victory that matters."
"I'll remember," I promise. "Dom. What he believed. What he died for."
"Good." He lifts my hand, presses it to his chest, right over his heart. "Because he's not the only one who believes in this. Believes in you."
I close my eyes. Let the warmth of his hand, the steady beat of his heart, anchor me to this moment. To this man. To this fragile, terrifying, beautiful thing growing between us.
"Stay," I say.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I mean stay here. With me. Until I fall asleep."
He doesn't answer. Just shifts from the chair to the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle me, and stretches out beside me. His arm wraps around my shoulders, pulling me against his chest. His heartbeat is steady under my ear. His breathing is slow and deep.
Safe. For the first time in as long as I can remember, safety wraps around me like a blanket.
"Sleep," he murmurs against my hair. "I've got you."
I let myself believe him.
And for once, the dreams that come are gentle.
When I wake again, the room is dark.
Moonlight filters through the window, casting silver shadows across the walls. Asher is still beside me, his breathing deep and even, one arm draped across my waist. His face is slack with sleep, younger somehow, the lines of grief and exhaustion smoothed away.
I watch him. Eyes roaming the angle of his jaw. The shape of his lips. The scar through his eyebrow that I gave him six years ago. The scars across his knuckles that tell stories of a hundred fights, a hundred moments of survival.
He chose me.
Out of everyone, out of everything, he chose me. Left a man he loved to die so that I could live. Carried me through a warzone. Sat beside my bed for two days, waiting to see if I would wake up.
The old me would have run from this. Would have shoved him away, stayed hardened, convinced myself that his devotion was a weakness I could exploit rather than a gift I could cherish. The old me was a coward dressed in a monster's skin, so afraid of being hurt that he hurt everyone first.
But Asher has already seen the worst of me. He's seen me broken and bloody and cruel. He's watched me try to push him away with insults and violence and indifference. And he's still here.
Love.
I shift closer, pressing my face into the curve of his neck. The movement pulls at my stitches, sends a dull throb through my side, but I don't care. I need the contact. Need to feel him warm and alive and real against me.
His arm tightens around me, even in sleep. Like he knows I need the anchor. Like he's holding on as much as I am.
My brothers are out there somewhere. Jagger is probably already plotting the next move, analyzing intel, building contingencies.
Jace is sharpening his knives and brooding.
Jonah is making inappropriate jokes and secretly worrying about all of us.
Elliot is watching over Thiago and pretending he's not exhausted.
They're family. The family the Silent tried to break and couldn't. Family they gave to the Foundry to destroy and rebuild in a demon’s image. They failed and something about that gives me hope.
And now, somehow, there's Asher too. Fitting into the spaces between us like he was always meant to be there.
Tomorrow, we'll have to face the fallout. The failed mission. The children we didn't save. The grief that's waiting.
Tomorrow, the real work begins.
But tonight, just for tonight, I let myself have this.
Asher Madden.
The man who saw me at my worst and chose to stay.
The man I'm starting to think I might love.
The word doesn't scare me as much as it should. Maybe that's progress. Or maybe it's just blood loss making me stupid.
Either way, I'm not running. Not this time.
I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
This time, I don't dream at all.