Chapter 21 #2
When Vernon retires for the night, the party is over.
Wesley’s parents and sisters are leaving, and the group decides to get back into the hot tub.
Everyone but Asher, who follows his dad down the hall and to the right, to the study.
I tiptoe down the hall after Asher and his dad until I stand in front of a small alcove with two large double doors.
One has been left open just a crack. I shouldn’t be spying on him and his dad, but the way Ben looked at him during dinner put a bad feeling in my gut.
The two of them are smoking cigars, drinking what looks like scotch. Asher sits on a long blue velvet couch in front of a
fireplace. I can’t see Ben, but I can hear him talking from somewhere in the room.
“What the fuck was that?” Ben says tersely. “You said he didn’t even want this place.”
“I did say that,” Asher says casually.
“Is this a game to you? This is our inheritance.”
“My inheritance,” Asher corrects him.
Ben comes into view now behind Asher on the couch and drives the hot end of the cigar into Asher’s neck. My hand flies up
over my mouth.
“What the fuck.” Asher swats the cigar away and it springs from Ben’s hand onto the carpet.
“Great, now look what you did,” Ben says, picking it back up. “The carpet is burned.”
“Yeah, fuck my neck, right?” Asher stands and sets down his glass.
“You are going to find a way to get this business from your cousin, or so help me, god,” his father threatens him with a pointed
finger in his chest, before picking up Asher’s glass and downing the rest of it. “If there’s one thing my brother is right
about it’s that you two need to be less focused on your slut girlfriends and more focused on your futures.”
“Don’t fucking call her that,” Asher spits back, and seems to brace himself for what he knows is coming next.
Ben moves quickly and backhands him hard across the mouth, then grabs him by the collar, saying something inches from his face that I can’t hear.
His dad lets him go and tells him to get out of his sight.
Asher strides toward the doors, and I don’t leave quick enough, still frozen in shock.
“Enjoy the show?” he says as he brushes past me. I open my mouth to say something, but what is there to say? I follow down
the hall as he trudges up the stairs and slams the door to our room. I can hear Dani laughing from outside in the hot tub
where our friends are and I wonder if I should just go back out in my dress. But something nags me to follow him.
Asher is on the love seat in front of the fireplace in the bedroom, a new full glass of scotch in hand, looking just as he
did in the study, but now with a bloody lip and burn mark on his neck. His hair is ruffled like he’s been running his hands
through it and his blazer is tossed on the ground, leaving just the white button-down, wrinkled and stretched from where his
dad grabbed him. He looks defeated and broken.
I shut the door behind me, but he doesn’t look at me, and I don’t know what to say. I slip off my heels and make my way to
the couch, where I sit on the stone floor in front of him. He still doesn’t look at me, just straight into the fire watching
the flames crack and burn, so I lightly place a hand to his knee, and then rest my head against his thigh. I look up at him,
and he looks away.
“Asher—” I start.
“Don’t,” he says, taking a sip of the auburn liquid in the glass.
So I don’t.
We sit like that for a while until I get up to join him on the couch, sitting with one leg tucked in so I can face him. From
this side I can see the small burn blister forming on his neck.
“Is he always like that?” I whisper to him.
He doesn’t say anything, just stares unblinking into the flames.
Everything in me is saying to comfort him, but I don’t know how. I think of Thanksgiving in his bedroom as I scoot closer
to him, leaning in slow and gently pressing my lips to the burn. I wait for him to push me away, but he doesn’t, he just sighs.
So I press another light kiss to the side of his mouth, where his lip is cut. He still doesn’t turn toward me, so I put a
gentle finger to the other side of his jaw to turn him to me. He goes along with it. The look in his eyes breaks my heart
a million times over and I want him to say something rude, I want him to give me that know-it-all smirk. Be an asshole, I
think. Make a snide comment. Just don’t be this.
I test the boundaries further when I lean in and bring my lips to his, soft, the way he kissed me in his bedroom. He lets
me do it, but he doesn’t kiss me back. Not at first. I hear him set his glass down on the side table, before he brings up
both hands to wrap around my waist and pull me to him. And I guess I could blame this on alcohol. I could blame it on circumstance.
Anything other than the truth.
Asher kisses me back now, like he did in the hot tub. Deeply, passionately. He leans back onto the couch and I crawl on top
and swing one leg over him to grind my hips into his, eliciting an immediate reaction from him. He slides his hand up my backside,
lifting the dress, as his other hand unties the silky fabric from around my neck. The dress falls down the front of me, exposing
my chest. Asher kisses down my jaw and neck as I unbutton his shirt in a frenzy.
“This is wrong, isn’t it,” he says in between kisses.
“Yes,” I breathe, but I hardly know what I’m agreeing to, and the yes sounds more like a moan. I think he likes the way it sounds because he lays me down, continuing the trail of his lips along my skin. His fingers trace my inner thigh, moving dangerously up, and I arch my back in a silent answer.
His breath is hot on my skin when he says, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“We—” But I don’t finish the sentence as his mouth moves over my nipple and his fingers are pushing my underwear to the side.
I suck in a breath. “We . . .” I try again but I don’t even know what I’m saying. What did he say? Why are we even talking?
When he runs a finger through me I’m on fire and I hear him curse under his breath. He starts for the buttons on his pants
and says again, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Yes,” I breathe again, because that’s all I can manage in this state.
He stops moving. “Yes, we shouldn’t be doing this?”
The sound of his voice, no longer heady but clearer, makes me focus. “No.” I shake my head, trying to think of what the right
answer to that question is.
“No?” He sits back and looks around like he just woke up from a dream.
“Wait,” I say, sitting up too, but he’s already moving to get up off the couch. I reach for him. “Asher—”
He catches me by the wrists. “No, I don’t want your pity fuck or whatever this is.” He gets up, his shirt now completely unbuttoned,
showing his bare chest.
“It’s not that at all. I—”
He grabs his jacket from the floor. “I have to go.” To the resort. He doesn’t have to say it; I already know.
“Asher, wait!” But he’s already gone.
I feel a cold chill wash over me as a slight headache begins to form in my temple. What the fuck was that, Sloane. I put my head in my hands, trying to breathe, but with him gone, all the thoughts of Miles and murder drift
back and the room begins to feel like it’s closing in on me. I can feel my hands become wet with tears and I can’t take another
night in here alone. Before I know it I’m down the hall, knocking on the door.
“Sloane?” Wes says when he opens his bedroom door. His green eyes take in my tearstained cheeks and red running nose. “What’s
wrong?”
“Can I stay in here with you tonight?”
There are two knocks on the door in the morning, followed by Annica’s voice. “Wes, your mom wants to know what time our flight
is today.” She lets herself in and I don’t even have time to hide under the covers before she spots me and stops in the doorway.
“Oh.”
I jump up quickly, still in Wesley’s T-shirt and no pants. “Annica,” I start.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she says in a low voice.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say, because it’s not. Wes gave me one of his oversized shirts and let me cry until we fell
asleep. But Annica is not in the mood for an explanation. She goes to turn around. “Annica, wait!” I follow her into the hall.
“Nothing even happened!”
She whirls around to me. “You’re in his bed, wearing his shirt, with no pants on. How could you even continue lying to my
face right now?”
“Annica, seriously, nothing happened,” Wes says, coming out into the hall after us.
Annica narrows her eyes, looking between the two of us before landing on me, and there’s realization there. “You’re the girl,
aren’t you?”
I shake my head, confused. “What?”
Dani and Jake have come out of their rooms now to see what’s going on.
“The girl! The one him and Marissa are always fighting about, the one he slept with last summer. It’s you, isn’t it? And don’t
even fucking lie.”
“Annica,” Dani says, trying to calm her down.
Annica shakes her off, still looking at me. “Answer!”
“I—” I look around to the rest of our friends now gathered in the hall. “It was an accident. It was just one time.”
Dani’s mouth falls open as I hear one of the boys let out a low whistle.
“An accident? What, did you trip and fall into his bed, Sloane, what the fuck? How could you keep this from us, and then lie
right to my face about it on Halloween!” Annica fumes. Asher groggily comes from his room to see what the commotion is, his
split lip bruising over now. “Ah, perfect timing, here’s your cheating boyfriend! I guess you two have that in common at least.
Asher, do you not even care that she’s sleeping with Wes?”
Asher only shrugs.
“Oh my god, what is going on in this group?” Annica throws her hands up, defeated.
I try to reach for her. “Annica, I’m sorry, okay—”
“No, don’t touch me. We are not friends. Friends don’t lie.”
She turns on her heel and strides for her room, slamming the door.
Dani gives me a sad smile, touching my arm, before following Annica to their room.
I let out a long, shaky breath, trying to process what just happened.
Asher turns to go back to the bedroom, and Wes grabs my hand, but I pull away, intent on going after Asher.
“This is all your fault,” I say, storming after him.
He turns when we get into the room. “My fault?”
“Yes! I never would’ve gone in there last night if you would’ve just stayed here! Why couldn’t you just stay here?”
He shakes his head. “Because this”—he motions between the two of us—“isn’t the plan. We can’t . . . be that way and I just . . .
I needed to get out of here. I needed—”
“What, what is it that you needed?” I bite out.
“Someone else,” he says quietly.
My arms go slack at my sides and my voice cracks. “Well, I needed you, Asher. My life is falling apart and you are the only person who knows it. I needed you.” I can feel the tears streaming
from my cheeks again as I so desperately cry over him, of all people.
He looks away like he doesn’t want to watch me cry. “This is all going to work out, Sloane. Whatever just happened out there
was for the best. Okay? Wes will probably have to break up with Marissa after this, we’ll call off our fake thing too, and
you’ll have Wes. You want Wes, remember? You want Wes.” I can’t tell if he is trying to remind me or himself, as he keeps
repeating it.
“I’m glad you have this all sorted out,” I say bitterly through my tears.
“You saw what happens to me if I don’t.”
I clench my jaw and I think about his teary green eyes last night.
And it all makes sense to me now. The way he is, and why he does the things he does.
The way Wes is always watching him when he’s near me.
I thought it was jealousy but now I think it was partially out of fear that Asher would turn out to be like Ben.
And god, I want to hate Asher so badly still, but I just can’t.
I take a moment to calm down. “I will help you get what you want, but we can’t do this anymore. I don’t want your help and
I don’t want to be your fake girlfriend anymore.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine.”