Page 26 of Age of Shade

She turned down the money.

Holy shit.

It hadn’t even occurred to me to hope for this. After all, three thousand dollars must have seemed like a miracle for a broke college student with two jobs. Her turning it down means that she valued me—us—over financial stability.

All my instincts about Adina were right. She’s incredible, the kind of woman you bend over backwards to keep, and I reduced her to a one-night stand.I fucking lied to her.

Through the end of my relationship with Lindsey, it somehow never crossed my mind that maybe the reason I couldn’t commit was because a part of me knew we werewrong. It’s a dangerous train of thought, one that means accepting the possibility that the too beautiful, too kind, too young, and utterly wrong for me Adina, could beright.

Which is—obviously—a completely insane thing to consider about a woman you barely know.

Liam pauses beside me on his way to the door, and I start, so lost in my own head that I’d somehow forgotten he was here.

“I know we don’t say shit like this because we’re emotionally stunted men with some fairly obvious abandonment issues”—his hand finds my shoulder, and he grips it bracingly—“but for the record, you’re a good person, Ash. Great, even. You deserve to be happy.”

My chest is tight as I nod jerkily, staring at the floor. “Thank you.”

He’s right, we don’t say shit like this, but now that we are… I look up to find his expression is uncharacteristically grave. “For the record, you’re a good person too, Liam. Obnoxious”—I smilewryly—“but good. You deserve more than people who are only interested in your money.”

My best friend of two decades grins and lets his hand fall, already moving toward the door. “That’s what I have you for, Roth.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ADINA

The sleep situation is getting out of hand. Not only have I increased my allotted sleep time to six hours, I’m drinking so much coffee that my heart has begun doing this (probably bad) fluttering thing, and I’mstillexhausted.

I know the whole medical community seems to be in agreement about the whole eight-hour thing, but obviously none of them have been a homeless college student trying to break out of her family’s cycle of generational poverty, mental illness, and addiction. I can’t get eight hours. I just can’t.

Further complicating matters is the dreams.

Not nightmares—fairly surprising given my personal history.Nope. My subconscious isn’t interested in reliving trauma or manifesting deep-seeded fears.Every night, no matter how dead tired I am, I dream about being fucked by Asher Roth.

Sometimes the dreams are hazy and slow, a man’s hands roaming over my body, leaving prickly heat in their wake. Other times it’s so real and vivid that I get swept away, only to wake up panting and hollow with my panties drenched.

It’s a problem.A real freakin’ problem.If I were really so tired, it seems pretty counterintuitive for my brain to be drumming up sex dreams instead of resting. Unless this is all some biological clock thing, in which case it can chill, becauseI’m twenty-one. Also, the Collier family tree hasn’t exactly produced a lot of stable, undamaged fruit as far as I’m aware, so maybe I’d be better off adopting.

Come to think of it, the fact that my brain is using precious energy to tell me to get laid rather than function at maximum capacity is pretty convincing evidence that this particular branch of the evolutionary tree needs to end with me.

It’s been four days since I left The Witt, and so far, I’ve managed to avoid Ruby. We have classes together, but I’m always hurrying off somewhere afterward, and she hasn’t had the opportunity to corner me. There’s no way around it now, though. We have a presentation for our ethics class first thing tomorrow morning, and she’s my partner.

I feel like I’m marching to the principal’s office, a red-hot ball of dread sitting in the pit of my stomach and a certainty I’m about to get a proper scolding. Ruby isn’t one to mince words, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of me meeting Asher again. Or of the not so insignificant fact that I returned the three thousand dollar “gift” from Liam Witt, which appeared in my Cashed app halfway through my shift at the coffee shop on Saturday.

That’s the part that would send up about a hundred red flags for Ruby, because who in their right mind would turn down three thousand dollars? She doesn’t even know that I sleep on a dentist’s couch every night and shower at a fitness center, but she’d still be appalled. Hell, I’m a little appalled at myself. That money would have been a godsend, yet every time I opened the app, convinced I was going to hit that glowing green ACCEPT button, I just felt sick and small.

Asher Roth saved my life; he’s the only person in the world who could connect the person I was then to whom I’ve worked so hard to make myself become. I couldn’t live with myself ifhe ever found out his friend paid me to act interested in him. I wasn’t acting, so I didn’t deserve that money. Simple(ish).

Not that I can explain any of that to Ruby Johnson.

The woman isscary. She can detect bullshit with all the accuracy of a bomb-sniffing dog and has made it no secret she finds my lack of personal life boring as hell. The events of Friday are unprecedented, and undoubtedly she’s been waiting to get me alone and find out what happened. I’m not excited about trying to pass this whole business with Asher off as nothing, and I have no idea how I could tell her the truth without divulging a whole lot more of my shitty life than I want to.

Sure enough, when I get to the library, Ruby’s bright eyes are like twin lasers, boring into me as I wind my way through the maze of study tables. “Well, well, well,” she says, barely able to contain her glee as I slide into the seat across from her.

Even the way she closes her laptop is smug.

Valiantly attempting to ignore her and pretend my faceisn’tred as a tomato right now, I focus on pulling out my battered computer and English textbook.

When I’ve successfully located a plug for my charger and there’s nothing left to do, I’m forced to peek up at her. “Good morning.”

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