Page 129 of The Influencer

“Asher…” I whine. “No.”

“Jade,” he sighs. The frustration in the sound surprises me.

“Hm?”

“Look, Gideon will be there, and Jax, and probably Vince and the rest of them. Please. I don’t want to be by myself again.”

“Then come back here,” I say. Sounds simple enough.

“But—”

“But nothing.” I extract myself from his tight grip and look up at him. He looks torn. It’s in the pinch of his forehead and the tightness around his eyes. “You don’t have to do everything Adam wants you to do. You just spent days with them. If you’d rather be with me tonight, then be with me tonight.”

“I would much rather be with you tonight,” he says.

“Was that so hard?”

“Telling Adam…”

I hold out my hand for his phone. “If you want, I’ll text him myself.”

36

asher

Olivia greets us at the door with a smile that quickly falls when she sees I’ve arrived with company. “What is this?”

“We came to pick up Asher’s things. He’s moving out.” That’s my brother speaking for me. In this case, I let him, because Olivia’s got me caught in a glare.

I mean—to be fair—I’m not glaring. It’s just her. “You can’t handle a couple of suitcases yourself?” she asks, full of the derision I used to interpret as concern.

“Olivia.” Adam steps around me to get between us. “I’m only gonna say this once. Sit down, be quiet, and let us do this. If you say one thing to Asher I don’t like, I’ll call the police, and you’ll be the one moving out. Understood?”

I sigh. “I can speak for myself, Adam.”

Olivia barks a laugh at that. “Can you, now? Your new girlfriend teach you how to use your words?”

Adam whips out his phone.

Liv knocks it out of his hand without a second thought, and he stares down at her in shock, walking right up on her and forcing her to take several steps back. “Pick up my phone,” he says icily.

I bend down and grab it. I don’t want to deal with this. Whatever beef my brother has with Olivia isn’t going to help anything today. I just want to get the fuck out of here. “I got it, Adam, come on. Back off.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her while you pack,” my brother says instead, not taking his eyes off my ex.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jax says, grabbing my arm and pulling me in the direction of the bedroom. I shake him off in the hallway. Fuck. When did everybody start treating me like I was helpless? Has it always been like this, and I was just too whipped to notice?

Jax heads straight for the closet and flings open the doors. I stand in the middle of what was once my bedroom, frozen and enraged.

“Stop,” I say.

He either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to listen.

I raise my voice. “Jax—stop.”

He turns to face me, looking every bit as intimidating as any A-list bodyguard. It’s obvious he’s on a mission, and I’m interrupting him.

“You and Adam can go. I can handle this myself.”

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