Chapter Fifteen #2
He looks worse than I feel. He's pale, stone-faced, his suit rumpled, his hair wild, his hands twisted together in his lap as if the way he clutches them is the only thing keeping him together.
"Asher," I croak.
He startles so hard that the chair under him actually screeches across the floor.
"Jesus," he says. "Jesus fuck. You're awake.
" His voice is raw, frayed all the way down to the bone.
He leans forward, his hands hovering over my bandaged arms, then retreating, like he's afraid touching me will make it worse.
I try to sit up, but everything from my neck down openly revolts. My body doesn't even feel like my own. Why is it so heavy? "What…happened?"
Asher shakes his head, his eyes fixed on my face. "You don't remember?"
I try to think, dislodging fragments… Miles's face, the burn of humiliation, a flash of white, the feeling of flying without wings.
"Car," I rasp when a memory trickles in. "It hit me?"
He nods once, his expression savage. "You bounced off the hood.
You were…" His throat works. "You didn't move.
I thought—" He stops, pinching the bridge of his nose.
For the first time since I met him, he looks lost. Like he's standing at the edge of a cliff and all the money, power, and rage in the world can't do a damn thing to stop gravity.
Is this the way he looked when I nearly died five years ago? Is this how he hurt then?
The possibility breaks me a little.
"I'm here," I say, trying to soothe him. "I'm right here."
He barks a laugh that sounds more like a sob. "They threatened to call the police if I didn't stop yelling at the doctors. They said you'd be fine, but you weren't waking up. I thought—" His hands curl into fists on the rail of my bed, his knuckles white. "Christ, princess."
I don't know what to say. He's never let me see him like this, not once. Even before he turned into a monster, he was always in control, always the one who did the breaking. Now, he's the one coming apart at the seams. And just like back then, it's my fault.
"I could have lost you," he says softly, almost like he's afraid to say it too loud or it might come true.
For a second, the words hang between us. All I can think about is Miles, swearing that men like Asher don't fall in love. He said they use, they own, and they control. But this doesn't look like ownership. It looks like terror. It feels like love.
It hurts more than I thought it could.
A nurse comes in to check my vitals. Asher never takes his eyes off me. He doesn't even blink, not even after she leaves.
For long moments, we just stare at each other.
There's a knock, and then a doctor appears, a clipboard in hand. "Miss Dabry? I heard you were awake. That's excellent." He checks my pupils, asking the standard questions. "Any confusion? Dizziness? Nausea?"
"All of the above," I manage, and he gives me a tight-lipped smile.
"You're lucky," he says. "No fractures, just a concussion and some impressive bruising. We'll want to keep an eye on you for the next twenty-four hours, but I think you'll be fine as long as you rest and hydrate."
I nod weakly, too tired to argue.
He checks a few more things and then slips out, leaving me and Asher alone again.
"You should sleep," Asher murmurs, pacing restlessly. "You need it."
He's not wrong, but…
"Will you stay?" I whisper.
He turns, meeting my gaze. "Hell itself couldn't drag me from this room, princess."
I swallow hard, my eyes falling closed.
Miles was wrong about him. So damn wrong.
At some point in the middle of the night, Asher crawls into bed with me. We barely fit, but he makes it work, keeping his arms around me like he's scared I'll disappear if he moves even an inch.
My night nurse just sighs when she sees him, but doesn't try to get him out of my bed. I think she knows it'd be a losing battle. He has that look about him—like he'd defy hell itself if that's what he had to do.
By morning, I'm more exhausted than I was to begin with. They woke me up every two hours all night, flashing lights in my eyes, asking me questions. Asher is cranky as hell about it, like he's one word from erupting.
I decide not to push him. I doze instead, my dreams full of flickers that leave me more wrung out than I was to begin with. I don't even remember them. I just know that they were about Asher. I didn't like them.
"Everything looks good," the doctor says at a little after two in the afternoon. "We're going to let you go."
"What about long-term side effects?" Asher growls, pacing like a caged lion. "Shouldn't we do another scan?"
The doctor's expression tightens. "She's stable. If anything changes, call immediately, but for now, she's clear to go home."
The discharge process is a blur. There are instructions, prescriptions, and warnings about stairs and screen time. Asher listens to every word, growling twice as many questions as the doctor answers. It's overkill, but I don't hate it.
He's determined to carry me to the car, but I refuse to be carted through the hospital like a helpless little girl, so I make him settle for pushing me in a wheelchair. He's pissed about it, but he holds my hand the whole time, like if he lets go, I'll vanish.
By the time we get to the parking lot, my head is pounding. The world is too bright, too loud. I squint against the sun, clutching the edge of the blanket around my shoulders.
Asher helps me into the back seat of the Escalade, buckles me in himself, then circles around and climbs in beside me, his thigh pressed to mine, his arm across my shoulders.
He doesn't say anything. He just holds on, like he's never letting go again.
I think I sleep, or maybe I just dissociate the same way I did after my parents died, after the accident, after every ugly, awful thing that ever happened to me.
It's what I do when I can't cope—I just pretend that I'm a pebble on a mountain, too insignificant for big things to happen to me.
All the bad shit disappears when you pretend you don't matter enough for bad shit to find you.
But every time I blink, Asher is there—his hand on mine, his voice in my ear, his scent filling the car with salt and smoke and something that smells a lot like panic.
By the time we get to his place, it's almost dark. He lifts me out of the car like I'm glass, sets me down in the entryway, and leads me up to the penthouse with a hand braced around my waist. Every step hurts, but I don't let him see.
He takes me straight to his bedroom, and when he tucks me in, he does it like he's afraid I'll slip through the sheets and disappear.
"I'm not dying," I mutter, half-drunk on exhaustion and painkillers.
He sits on the edge of the bed, his face shadowed, his eyes fixed on my bandages. "Don't joke like that."
I try to reach for the water on the nightstand, but my hand trembles so hard I knock over the glass. He catches it, cleans up the mess, and then refills it, holding it to my lips like I'm a child.
"Drink," he says, his tone gentle.
I do, then cough. The pain in my head blooms, then recedes.
He watches me for a long time before sighing. "You ever going to tell me what happened?"
I almost laugh. "I got hit by a car. Pretty sure that's obvious."
"No," he says. "Before that. Miles was there."
I turn my face away, embarrassment burning through the haze. The accident itself is still a little hazy, but unfortunately, Miles isn't. I remember every damn word. "I didn't invite him, if that's what you're asking."
"That's not what I was asking, Brielle. I want to know what happened. Why did you walk out in front of that car?" His jaw ticks, his eyes flat, but his hand is steady on the glass he's still holding. "What did he say to upset you so badly?"
The question is a loaded gun. I don't want to answer it. I do anyway.
"He saw the bruises on my neck," I whisper.
"Ah, I see." He nods like he understands, but I'm not sure he does. How can he understand how it feels to have people treat you like you need protecting from the one person you'd kill to keep?
Miles acted like I'm breakable, like I can't possibly enjoy Asher's hands around my throat or his teeth in my skin, or the filth he whispers into my ear…
like I'm not allowed to enjoy how it feels to be owned and dominated and fucked into oblivion.
He acted like only broken things welcome pain with pleasure.
Asher won't ever face the same questions or scrutiny, simply because he's male. When people see the bruises I leave on him, they grin. But when it's my skin that's bruised? When it's his fingerprints around my throat? It's wrong then. Or I am. Or we are.
According to the world, women are only allowed to enjoy sex in specific, predefined conditions.
If we hang onto our virginity, we're wrong.
If we sleep around, we're wrong. If we like it hard, we're wrong.
If we don't like certain things or like them too much, we're wrong for that, too.
God forbid we be allowed to decide for ourselves what's right for us.
Everyone else always thinks they know best.
"Do you?" I ask him.
"The hospital staff made a few assumptions of their own," he says.
"Does it bother you?"
"I don't care what they think, Brielle. I care what you think."
"I hate it," I whisper.
"What I do to you?"
"No. That people like Miles think I shouldn't enjoy it," I mutter. "That they think they should have a say. I'm not broken just because I like…whatever this is between us. I resent being treated like I am."
"I assume you told him as much?"
"More or less." I should leave it there, but I don't. "He said that I'm just another thing for you to break. That men like you aren't capable of love. That all you know how to do is own and control."
Asher looks away, swallowing. "Do you think he's right?"
"I don't know," I say. "Do you?"