Chapter 12 Ella
ELLA
I’m curled up in Asher’s bed three days later, carving my way through a pint of ice-cream at five o’clock, watching an old rom-com.
Asher texted me this morning to tell me that his trip had hit a snag and has been extended by four more days.
I almost threw my phone across the room.
Instead, I put on one of Asher’s T-shirts and decided that rotting away and eating my feelings was the only option left for my sanity.
I’ve been missing Asher like crazy, and it’s only been made worse by the fact that I’ve been holed up in the penthouse by myself.
Since he left, I’ve been living like a stir-crazy ghost, haunting the place.
I’ve mostly been moping around in a state of lonely depression between working from home and my training sessions with Waters.
I’m sure that makes me pathetic, but fuck, I didn’t realize how much I’d come to want and need Asher’s presence.
I’d known I was in deep with how much our mini breakup hurt, but this has proven to me that I’m even worse off than I thought.
Asher has been gone for ten days, and it feels like ten weeks.
One bit of good news is that I finally got cleared to go back into the office tomorrow, but now the excitement of that is tainted by the fact that I’ll have to work for four days without Asher there.
A knock sounds on the bedroom door.
“Ms. Hale,” Ms. Graham calls. “You have visitors.”
Visitors?
I roll out of bed, wearing only Asher’s T-shirt, and pad across the room.
“Who is here?” I ask Ms. Graham through the door.
“Ms. Wilson and Ms. Morozov. Security just let them up, would you like me to invite them in?”
Surprise flows through me. “Yes.”
A minute later, Zahra and Lucy, my two best friends, practically burst through the bedroom door and head straight for me.
“This is a surprise,” I say, just as Lucy says, “Well, you look like shit.”
“Luce,” Zahra reprimands. “Take it easy on her.”
“That’s why we’re here, to make her feel less like shit,” Lucy says, breezily.
“Get over here, Ella Bella.” Lucy opens her arms, and we end up in a three-way hug.
A sense of relief surges through me. God, I didn’t realize how much I missed my friends until right now.
With everything that’s happened in the last two weeks, I’ve been so stuck in my own head that I haven’t thought about anything but my situation.
“What are you two doing here?” I ask, happiness bubbling inside me. “I didn’t know you were in town, Luce.”
“I finally made it in. I’ve been meaning to come since the incident with Kyle went down. He’s lucky your powerful boyfriend made sure he couldn’t post bail, otherwise he would have had some of my Morozov cousins here in New York paying him a not-so-friendly visit.”
I chuckle. Yep, I’m becoming more and more sure that Lucy’s family is highly involved in the mafia, and though her immediate family is based out of Chicago, I know she has some cousins who live here.
It was the reason she was allowed to study at NYU in the first place; her father wouldn’t have allowed it without knowing she had not only a bodyguard, but also some family members who were always on standby if needed.
“Well, Kyle the asshole is firmly in jail, and we have some time before his case is brought before the courts, so for now, I can put it out of my mind.”
“I’ve been worried about you,” Zahra says. “You haven’t texted much, and the tone of your texts has become more and more morose. Since Lucy was finally able to make it to town, we thought we’d surprise you.”
“You guys are the best. Sorry if I’ve been a little distant. Things have been crazy here.”
“Asher has been gone for a bit on a business trip,” Zahra hedges.
I flop down on the bench at the end of the bed, and they sit on either side of me. “Ugh, I’m so pathetic. When did I become this girl? Asher’s been gone for ten days, but it feels . . .” I trail off, embarrassed to admit how painful his absence is.
Lucy raises a brow. “You miss him after ten days?”
“Like crazy,” I admit after a long pause, knowing I’m not fooling either of them. “And I still have four more to go.”
“But I thought this was an arrangement? I thought there were no feelings involved.”
“There weren’t supposed to be. But . . .” I let out a long breath, not sure what to say. “I feel like a fool in some ways, but I also feel like I can’t help it, so why fight it?”
“Are you falling for him?” Zahra asks.
“Fell is more like it,” I groan.
“You’re in love with him?” Lucy gasps.
I sigh. “Yes.” I fall backwards onto the bed and sling my arms over my face, hiding it from view.
“I tried not to, I really did. But he’s just so much more than people make him out to be.
He’s nothing like how he’s described in the media.
At least with me, he’s not. He’s really sweet and thoughtful, and we just have this insane connection.
It’s palpable. Resisting it feels like burning myself with hot pokers; it’s just not possible. ”
“Oh, Ella, what are we going to do with you?” Lucy says, half smiling, half grimacing.
“And when it’s all over, what happens then?” Zahra asks.
I groan again. “I’m not sure. We’re taking it one day at a time with that. We’re not sure that there will be an ‘over.’ But we’re also not sure that there won’t be. Asher has some issues with the limelight of his life, so we’re working through those.”
“What kind of issues?”
“Mostly involving safety. Asher is paranoid about how big of a target his family is. He’s got me learning self-defense from my bodyguards, and next week I have firearm training.”
Lucy nods in approval, which is a bit surprising. She doesn’t often give props to people. “You should know how to defend yourself. Look what happened with Kyle.”
“That was different.”
Lucy raises a sardonic brow. “Not really. He threatened you because he thought he could extort money from Asher. You just happened to know Kyle instead of the extortioner being a stranger.”
“Well, shit. You’re right.”
“I’m not saying you should carry a gun, but knowing how to use one in your situation isn’t a bad thing.”
Zahra shudders. “Guns freak me out.”
I nod wholeheartedly. “Me too.”
Lucy ignores both of our misgivings. “If you want to get out of this penthouse and get your mind off how much you miss your not-boyfriend boyfriend, we could head to the range right now. I know everything about guns. I could teach you.”
I raise my brows, considering. As of a few hours ago, the security team cleared me to leave the penthouse now that they have tails on several known associates of the Antonovs, but since I was brooding and depressed and had nothing better to do, I decided to stay in.
“It’s not like you’re doing anything pressing,” Lucy says, noting the melting pint of ice cream on the nightstand and the paused movie on the TV.
“I am waiting on Asher’s call. He should be leaving for his early morning meeting any time, and he usually calls me while he’s in the car.”
“Waiting on Asher to call you?” Lucy says through narrowed eyes. “Ella.”
“I know, I know. But I can’t help it.”
On cue, my phone rings, and I smile from ear to ear as I answer it.
“Good morning, baby,” Asher says. “Or wait, it’s good morning for me. It’s good evening for you.”
“Hey,” I say, practically swooning.
“God, I miss you. How are you?”
My smile widens even more at his words. It’s not just me who’s suffering at being apart.
“I’m good, but I miss you too. So much.”
Lucy rolls her eyes as Zahra herds her out of the room to give me privacy.
“I’m going crazy. I can’t wait to be home.”
“I can’t wait for that, too.”
“What have you done to me, Ms. Hale? I never used to struggle with travel like this.”
“What have you done to me, Mr. Langford? I never used to sit at home and mope like this.”
“It seems the solution is that you should travel with me in the future.”
“You want me to go with you on your business trips?”
“I do.”
“What about my work?”
“I think I can talk to your boss about being flexible with your schedule and a remote work situation.”
I snort.
“You said yourself you haven’t seen much of the world. And I’ve seen so much of it by myself that it’s kind of lost its luster. I’d rather see it with you by my side.”
“And when you’re working? What will I do?”
“You can still work remotely. But besides that, you can tour, shop, go on adventures, whatever you like. And I can plan my trips with some extra time built in to spend time with you.”
“That sounds like a dream.”
“It’s going to be our reality.”
I swoon at the thought.
“I almost forgot,” Asher says, snapping me back to reality. “Declan will probably be over later this evening. There are some documents I need him to look over, and the only copies are in my home office.”
“Okay. Is he going to be here a while? I can have Pierre make enough dinner for him if he’d like to stay.”
“I’m sure he’d like that. He told me our mother is having some of her friends over, and I know at least two of them are trying to get Declan to date their daughters.”
I chuckle. “I still don’t get why Declan doesn’t just rent another apartment in the city. It seems like he is constantly trying to evade your parents in some way or another.”
“Well, when my parents aren’t throwing little get-togethers where he’s seen as a prized horse by the guests, he likes it. Declan doesn’t do well with solitude. He’d rather live in chaos than quiet.”
“What will he do when his apartment is finished being remodeled and he’s back to living alone?”
“He’ll do what he always does; throw parties and surround himself with people.”
“That still sounds lonely, unless he really cares about the people at the parties.”
“Which he doesn’t. So, yes, he’ll still be lonely. But I didn’t call you to talk about the grim realities of my brother’s life. I called because I’m going crazy without you.”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely. And I see you’re wearing my T-shirt,” he purrs. “What do you have on under it?”