Page 67 of Burn It Down

My worry was that, this time, he might not make it through to the other side.

“Hey.”

I spun to see Caleb coming out onto the back porch and firing up a smoke.

“He’s not stable enough to do this,” I blurted out in an insistent rush.

“I know you’re worried.”

“Worried doesn’t even cover it, Cal. Fuck, you told me yourself that he spent all that time with you away from us because he was in such a state that he actually considered himself dangerous to us. To us. You undo all those blocks now, can you fucking imagine what’s gonna happen?”

He leaned against the porch railing and took a harsh drag of his smoke. “If I don’t do it, he’s going to drown, Jonah.”

“What? No. He’s… he’s getting through it one day at a time, bit by bit.”

“He’s not. He’s pulling on you. Hard. You feel it… his intense affection, his need, now requiring your help with every little thing—”

“He’s injured.”

“It’s more than that. He’s becoming completely dependent on you. And that’s not Ash. He hates it. You must see the struggle all over him.” He took another drag, then stared out at me. “Look, I get how much you’ve wanted this closeness from him, but it’s not all real. And it’s not all healthy either. It’s quickly crossing the line to toxic. He knows that. That’s why he’s asked me to do this. He knows if this continues on any further, you’ll be the one getting hurt. He’ll drain you.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“I do.”

I spun to see Asher staggering out onto the porch.

Fuck, he looked so exhausted. His normally perfectly styled hair was wild without any product whatsoever, there were bags under his eyes and they were reddened and half-glazed over. He’d come out here in just a pair of his black pajama pants and the same tee he’d been wearing earlier before he’d napped for a couple of hours. The thick stubble on his jaw that had been moving into beard territory was gone now because I’d helped him shave it earlier this morning just after Kill and Aaron had taken off on-mission.

“How was the nap?” I asked.

“It served its purpose.”

I studied him and how much he was staggering, how much strain it was clearly putting on him just to walk out to us on the porch. “Did you hurt yourself? Fall, or something?”

“No. I missed a dose of the painkillers. With prepping Aaron and Killian, it slipped my mind.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Things don’t slip your mind.”

Not speaking to it, he stepped up to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you go inside, take some rest time as well? You haven’t stopped since I came back.”

“Asher,” I grumbled, grasping his hand on my shoulder.

He blew out a breath. “I need the pain for what Caleb and I are about to do here.”

I pulled my hand away and scrubbed it over my face. “This is fucked-up, the dangers piling on by the second.”

“It will be well beyond dangerous if I’m down when the Head Infidels descend upon us.”

“Why does the price for our victory always have to be you?” I yelled, right on the verge of losing it.

And, fuck, it was even more than what I’d voiced to him and Caleb.

It was… doing what they planned to… there was a real strong chance that it would mean me losing Asher. Losing that connection with him, something that had taken so long to come about on his end. Going down this road now, shutting down a big part of him, it could cut him off from me.

His hand was gliding across my cheek then, startling me.

“It’s not permanent,” he was telling me then, obviously having read me.

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