Chapter 32
THIRTY TWO
ASHER
“You look like crap man,” Daylan slaps me on the shoulder as we get off the bus out the front of Marrowton Academy.
We just won our away game and thankfully I have no more for over a week.
My head is pounding and my joints ache, but it isn’t like the usual aches and pains from two games in a row. This is something else.
“I feel like it,” I grunt as I pick up my bag from the floor where the driver threw them out, but the action makes me a little lightheaded and I stumble.
Jacob catches me and takes my bag before Daylan rushes to grab my other side. “Shit Ash what’s going on? Have you eaten today?” Jacob asks as I grab my pounding head. I want to be in a dark room with my eyes closed, my little vixen snuggled into my side.
I shake my head softly as to not tousle my brain. “I felt sick, so I chugged an electrolyte,”
“Let’s get you to your room,” Daylan grunts as they both help me move.
Each step feeling heavier and heavier, my eyes clenched so the lights from the corridors don’t make my head worse.
It feels like forever before Jacob opens my door and helps me to my bed.
I don’t even remove my clothes or shoes and crawl with a wince onto my bed.
I crack one eye open and scan the room for my white-haired menace, but she isn’t here.
I have never felt this ill in my life. The last time I was sick, I was ten years old, and my mother was too high to care, the nanny got me what I needed, medicine, wet towel and soup.
But all I really wanted was my mother to hug me and tell me I was going to be okay, that never happened.
This is a billion times worse than that.
Daylan closes the curtains, basking the room in darkness. I try to thank him, but everything hurts too much.
Jacob places my bag down at the door before coming to stand before me. “What do you need mate? What can I get you?”
“Where is my girlfriend?” I whisper into the covers. “I only need Ruella,” I murmur as sleep takes me under.
***
RUELLA
I am just about to leave my room and head to Asher’s when someone knocks on my door. I pull the door open, expecting the face in all my wet dreams, but I am met with two concerned ones.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my attention flitting between Jacob and Daylan.
“Asher needs you. He’s not feeling well and is running a temperature,” Daylan announces. I grab my key card from the side table and shut the door behind me. The fact that Asher never needs anyone, or anything tells me he feels really terrible.
“What no questions asked. Someone says Asher needs you and you go running?” Jacob asks as I quickly take the stairs.
“Yes. For him I will,” I don’t look back at the men walking behind me.
“You are both so fucking whipped,” Jacob’s voice a little disgusted.
“Little hypocritical coming from you,” I snap back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If Piper says jump, you say how high. You are both as whipped and obsessed with each other as we are,”
I thought I shut him up, but I hear his whisper through the echoey corridors. “Not when she finds out what I did,”
My feet stumble and I turn locking eyes with him.
“What did you do?” I ask and his brows furrow. Shocked I heard him over the sounds of our rushing feet and that I would confront him about it straight away.
“None of your business,” He scowls.
I move closer, prodding him in the chest with my finger. “It is if you have anything to do with what happened to Piper and the others,”
He looks away. “It has nothing to do with the missing girls. I’m the one that helped find Piper, remember,”
“Yeah, all those bratva ties found her pretty quickly,” I whisper. “The same criminal style gang that runs this operation in the first place,”
That makes him mad as he pushes further into me, Daylan places his arms between us attempting to block his friend.
“I had nothing to do with Piper going missing. I love that girl. I would rather die than hurt a single hair on her head,” He growls in my face.
“Dude, calm down,” Daylan pushes him away from me, but I still see the guilty look in his eyes.
“Jacob, what did you mean then. What have you done?”
Jacob is a very quiet individual, even around his friends he only inputs when asked a question or when it has to do with Piper.
This is the most emotion I have seen on him, and words spoke around me.
I can see the panic and guilt eating away at him, and if he doesn’t let it out, then it will eat him alive.
“Jeez Jacob, what the fuck is going on?” Daylan joins in, noticing the change in his friend. “You have been off all week, then you started that fight today on the field and now this,”
Jacob starts to pace in the empty corridor, pulling on his hair.
“I fucked up,” he begins. “I know we aren’t together, but I think it’s safe to say that I have been in love with Piper my whole life,” He stops and takes a deep breath.
“Last term we kissed but she panicked. Told me it was a mistake and that we can’t ruin the friendship.
She wouldn’t return my calls or texts, wouldn’t open her door to me to fix it.
I got black out drunk the same night,” He pauses and drops his gaze to the floor.
“I woke up to Stacey in my bed,”
“Ah shit man,” Daylan shakes his head.
“There’s more,” He shakes his head almost in disbelief.
“What woke me up was Asher banging on the door screaming that Piper had been taken,” He peeks up eyes full of anguish.
“I punished her for rejecting me by sleeping with Stacey, and all the while she wasn’t ghosting me, she was fucking kidnapped,”
I suck in a breath as Daylan murmurs profanities.
“You have to tell her Jacob. It’s eating you alive. I’m sure she will understand. You were drunk and hurt,”
He looks at me and pauses.
“Stacey’s pregnant,”
My heart drops.
He was right, this is going to destroy Piper. She may have not wanted to ruin what they had before, but that girl thinks he hung the moon, she is in love with him as much as he is in love with her.
“You have to tell Asher,” Daylan eventually says.
“I will, just not right now,” Jacob swallows but it seems painful. “I will tell Piper as well, I need her to be okay first, I want this all to be over before she inevitably cuts me out of her life,”
“I’m not sure I can…” I start to protest. I may find it easy to lie, but this is different.
“Please Ruella, I need to be the one to tell her. I still can’t believe I blurted that out to you in the first place. I don’t even like you,”
I take a deep breath. “Fine. I won’t tell her, but you have seven days to do it,”
“What. No,”
“You want to wait till this is all over, but that could take months. Do you really think seeing Stacey with a bump will not set off alarm bells, or even worse, she blurts out who the father of her unborn child is in front of an audience. I think that girl has suffered enough don’t you?”
Jacob is silent for a long time. “You’re right,” He hangs his head.
“I usually am,” I shrug. “Now, let’s go sort out my boyfriend”.
***
When I walk through the door into Asher’s room, the darkness blinds me momentarily, I have to stand and blink until I can make out the huge lump of man draped across his bed haphazardly.
It’s only me now as I sent Daylan off with Jacob to try and figure out what the hell he is going to do and how to tell Piper.
It seems like we all have difficult conversations to be having, but I can’t very well do it now with Asher feeling the way he is. I will tell him when he feels better.
I place my phone on the bedside and slowly slide my hand up Asher’s back, speaking as softly as I can. The heat emanating from him makes him feel like a radiator at full blast. He needs medicine and a cold towel.
“Asher,” I whisper. “It’s me. I’m here,” He murmurs something into the duvet I can’t make out.
“What was that?”
“Finally,” he says turning himself over, eyes still closed.
“You need to take off these clothes, you have a temperature,”
He grunts. “I can’t move,”
“Can I take your clothes off?”
“If I ever say no to that question, take me out back and shoot me,”
I laugh and it makes him chuckle, then wince.
I slowly take of his trainers and strip him down to his underwear, it takes a while with the size and weight of him compared to me, but it’s worth it when he climbs under the covers and sighs in relief.
“Where do you keep your paracetamol?”
“In the drawer in the bathroom,” He mumbles, sleep almost taking him again.
When I get back to his bed, I hand him the tablets with a big glass of water that I tell him to sip on, before wetting a towel and placing it on his forehead.
“Do you need anything else?”
“Just you next to me,” His voice is low and smooth like whisky. I kick off my shoes and slide into bed with him, careful as to not add to his aches.
“Argh my head,” His face screws up and his pain hurts me. I wish I could take it all away.
I sit up slightly, resting my back against the headboard and take my fingertips to his temples, rubbing in circles trying to ease the pressure.
“Ohhhh.,” He groans and if he wasn’t ill, the sound would make me jump him immediately. “That feels amazing,”
His head relaxes back into the pillow as I massage into his hair and around the back to the base of his skull. “Go to sleep handsome. I’m not going anywhere,”
“Promise,” he whispers, and it almost breaks my heart. From what he has told me of his past, I don’t suppose he has had much of this in his life. Always the one fixing things and making everyone else feel better, but never for himself. I vow to always be there for him for as long as he wants me.
“I promise”.