"I said, you missed my turn." I raise my voice, a hard, hysterical edge to it.
"I heard you."
"Then what the fuck—"
"You're not going home," he says, cutting me off.
The words are so matter-of-fact, it's like he's telling me the goddamn sky is blue. I clench my fists in my lap, feel my nails dig crescent moons into my palms, and try not to panic. I can't go home with him. Iwon't.
"I'm not going home with you. Turn around, Asher."
He ignores me.
I reach for the door handle. We're doing forty on a service road. It's not fast, but it's fast enough to break a leg. I think I'm willing to risk it if it means not spending the night in his bed. If it means not walking into places in his life that feel a little bit like intimacy.
He must see something on my face because he curses, an edge of panic in it.
"Don't," he says. The word isn't a command or a threat. It's a plea.
I pause, my hand on the latch, and stare at him.
There's real fear in his eyes, not for himself, but for me. It's the same way he looked at me the night of the accident, right before the garbage truck slammed into us. And right after, when he was trying to pull me out of the wreckage, his breath a wild, panicked rasp. He was scared that night, in a way I'd never seen fear before.
I guess maybe I can still make him feel something other than hatred.Fear.The realization makes my stomach churn.
He pulls over with a screech, the car jolting as he wrenches it to the shoulder. We're half on the grass, half on the gravel shoulder. He leans over, his arm a bar across my chest.
"Don't," he says again, quieter now. "I can't—" He swallows, stops himself, and then starts over. "Don't do that."
I want to kiss him. I want to cry for him. Mostly, I want to crawl out of my skin and never look back. Maybe then the shame of that night will stop burning. Perhaps then we won't both stay broken, bleeding over something we can't go back and undo.
He watches me, waiting to see what I'll do.
I let go of the handle, flexing my fingers.
He exhales a long, uneven breath, like he's been holding it for a year. His hand drops to his side.
"I'll take you home," he says, almost to himself.
He pulls the car back onto the road, this time making every single turn that leads to my apartment. The rest of the drive is silent, except for the click of his blinker and the distant sirens that always haunt this city.
When we reach my building, he parks in front. He looks at me, but I refuse to meet his eyes.
"I won't allow anything to happen to you," he says, so low I have to strain to hear him. "Not if I can help it."
I want to believe him. I really do. Maybe that's why he's so dangerous. I want to believe there's softness and goodness and love in him. I want to believe that I matter to him. And every single time I let myself believe it, even for a second, he does something monstrous to prove me wrong. He does something awful, just to remind me that he'll never forgive me for what I broke the night I decided to take both of our lives in my hands.
So I do what I always do: I hurt him before he can hurt me. "What could possibly happen to me that's worse than you, Asher?" I ask, hating myself for saying it even as the words leave my lips.
He doesn't answer. He just sits there, his hands locked on the wheel, his face a mask, as I open the door and step out.
I turn and walk inside, counting each step until I'm out of sight. Only then do I let myself breathe.
Only then do I let myself cry.
I don't remember riding the elevator up, or walking down the hall, or fumbling to type in my lock code. It's not until I'm inside, with the lights blazing, that I can even breathe.
I stand in the entryway, my chest heaving, pain and shame crawling under my skin. My hands shake as I peel off my blouse, careful not to tear the buttons. I glance at my reflection in the mirror over the credenza and catalog the damage. There are already bruises in the shape of fingerprints on my hips, another on my throat. My thighs are still red and sticky, dotted with bite marks where his teeth caught my skin.
