Page 5 of Fatal Vengeance

Ultimately, I deicide that choosing between them is never going to happen. Gun to my head, someone forcing me to pick, and I’ll just end up dead, because that choice is impossible. I’ve gone through too much — we all have — to settle for anything other than exactly what we want.

And fuck, I want both of them.

Mind made up, I push off the bed, a towel still wrapped around my waist from the shower. I’m going to go talk to Asher. I can’t force him to be on board, but I can at least lay everything at his feet and try to make him see this is the only way I’m happy. I take a deep breath, nodding to myself to try and build up the nerve. Before I can actually put on clothes and barge into his room, though, there’s a knock at my door, and I know immediately that it’s just the man I was going to find.

Prudence would knock softly, hesitantly due to the weird space we’re still in. And I don’t blame her at all. I fucked up massively and I hurt her, so I know that my job moving forward is proving my devotion and building our trust back up. And Creed, as he’s already proven, would just jimmy his way through the lock as if he has every right to invade my space. The fucker. Asher, though, knocks like the impatient, bossy asshole he is, like the door has personally offended him and he’s seconds away from kicking it down.

I have a second of panic that I’m only in a towel and the cotton fabric won’t do a single thing to hide my erection if I get hard, but then I remember his lips around my shaft, sucking me down deep and dragging me over the edge, and I decide that I don’t really care if I pitch a tent with this towel. Maybe it’ll cement my attraction to him, just in case he’s not already aware of how badly I want him.

Crossing the room as I push my wet, loose curls off my forehead, I pull open the door. Asher’s eyes drop down to my bare torso and he shifts on his feet a bit, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. When he reaches my eyes again, there’s a little flicker of heat in his gaze that settles the nerves in my chest.

He clears his throat, which is so unlike his usually overly-confident and cocky attitude. “Hey,” he says.

I nod in greeting, stepping aside and pulling the door open wider, a silent invitation for him to come inside. When Asher frowns, peering past me into the room beyond, I roll my eyes. “She’s not here,” I rasp. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the rough, unused quality of my voice. Will that ever go away, smooth out? Or did my year of not speaking ruin my vocal cords or something?

Asher presses his lips together and nods, finally walking forward. As he passes me by, he says, “Wasn’t sure. I saw Creed collect her from your room this morning on my way back from the hotel gym.” He pauses and looks right at me. “I’m guessing you smoothed things over with her and now you’re, what, a couple?”

If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I wouldn’t pick up on the thread of loss that laces his deep voice. If I were a stranger, I’d just assume he’s being an emotionless dick with the way his question tumbled out of him. But since I know Asher — the real him, not the version that got brainwashed by The Celestials — I know he’s hurting at the thought of me choosing Prudence over him when we’ve finally come together again. If I wasn’t sure that he wanted me before, this settles it for good. He may not be able to admit as much out loud yet, and we have a lot to work on, but I feel like this is a step in the right direction.

Instead of answering with words and my fucked up voice, I curl my hand around the back of his neck and pull his face close. I don’t kiss him, not right now. I just drop my forehead to his, close my eyes, and tighten my hold on him, hoping he feels the meaning behind my actions. He should. He spent a good chunk of time learning sign language and how to read my expressions and actions just so we could communicate efficiently. Another reason I couldn’t stop loving him, even when he was spiraling and becoming a fucking dick. But we’ll fix that. I can fix everything.

“Griff,” Asher breathes heavily, lifting his hand and holding the back of my neck in return, keeping us close together. "Everything is so fucked up. I fucked up, and now that I know— Fuck, I don’t know what to do or if making things right is even possible, but… That’s why I came to you. We need to talk. And if anyone can help me sort through the mess in my fucking mind right now, it’s you." Fuck me, his voice cracks at that last bit, and I swear, I almost throw my arms around him to try to absorb some of this pain he’s feeling.

I open my eyes to find his green ones searching my face frantically, like he’s lost at sea and in desperate need of a lighthouse to lead him home. I stroke my thumb over his neck as I mutter, “I’m here. We’ll work through whatever this is. We’ll all be okay.” And I don’t just feel that way. I’ll damn well make sure of it.

I won’t lose anyone.

We release each other after he swallows roughly, as if he can’t quite believe my words right now, but he doesn’t want to say it. I follow him inside as he goes, shutting my door and sliding the chain lock in place for good measure. I have a feeling this conversation is going to be hard, and privacy is a must. So even if Creed somehow has an extra keycard to my room, that oughta keep him out.

When Asher sits on the foot of the queen bed, looking like a mess as he glances over at me, I go to him. I’ll always go to him. Sitting next to him, leaving only a few inches between us, so my cock doesn’t get any ideas, I nod for him to start. To just let everything out and spill whatever dark secrets are plaguing him.

Asher sighs heavily, raking his hand through his chocolate locks. “I don’t even know where to start,” he murmurs, dropping his gaze to his feet on the beige carpet.

“Start with the biggest threat to us,” I offer quietly. “We’ll work backward from there.”

He blinks over at me, his brows furrowed with tension and his lips turned down. It’s not so much like he’s angry, just overwhelmed in every sense of the word. “You and Prudence—“

“That’s not a threat. Move on and we can circle back to that later,” I say, cutting him off firmly. I’m still not sure how he’s going to take my confession of wanting to keep both of them, and I don’t want this conversation to get off track before it’s even begun.

Asher raises his brows and blows out a breathy laugh. “You’re fucking bossy, you know that?” he jokes, even through the heaviness weighing on him.

I shrug with a smirk. This time, I just sign rather than say, So are you. Good match.

He smiles a bit at that, nodding and murmuring, “Yeah… I think so too.” Blowing out another heavy breath, he drops my gaze once more and finally divulges what’s on his mind. “When we were all searching for Prudence and I went to my dad’s office to see what I could find… Fuck… My dad has files on all of us. And I read them.” Asher stops, closing his eyes with a disgusted shake of his head. “It’s probably a gross invasion of privacy, reading everything in there about you and Creed and even Prudence, but I did it anyway, and now… I can’t sleep with all that sick shit in my head. I’m fucking haunted by it all, Griffin.”

An ominous shiver rolls over me, goosebumps scattering across my skin.

Fuck. Things are about to get a whole lot worse, aren’t they?

5

Asher

My hands are fucking shaking while I think about everything I found, so I fist them in the white comforter to conceal it. I’ve never second guessed myself. Never felt so fucking lost and confused like this before. But now that Prudence is relatively safe and we’re far enough away from The Celestials for the time being, it’s as if all the horrors I read about and promptly suppressed from those files are flooding me now, begging and screaming to be set free. The injustices I wish I never knew about are pleading with me to be made right.

Griffin must notice my freak out because he puts his big palm on my thigh, giving it a squeeze as if to tell me to take my time and breathe through this. It makes me feel like a fucking piece of shit. I spent months going after Prudence, butting heads with my oldest friends because of it, and losing sight of the man I was beneath it all. I don’t deserve his kindness and patience now… Only, I won’t say that to him because I’m also drowning and desperately hoping Griffin can keep me afloat.

“He raped her,” I croak out a few moments later, barely getting the words out through the nausea creeping up my throat. Griff stiffens next to me, going from gentle teddy bear to feral grizzly in under a second, and I know that if I let him, he’ll rage out of this room and rush to Prudence to check her over. I’d be right there with him too. For both of them. But my words are a little misconstrued, so before anything can get out of hand, I quickly add, “Not Prudence. She’s— I mean, she was kidnapped and almost slaughtered, so I’m not going to say she’s okay, but she wasn’t hurt like that. I got to her in time… I mean her mom, Irene. When she was a student at Blackwood.”

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