He watches me, and for one impossible second, I think he might actually crack. That he might say something kind. Something human.
His mouth softens. He leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek—not my mouth, not my body, but my cheek, the way you'd kiss a bruise or a scar.
"Maybe so," he whispers, then lets me go, striding out of the office like the walls are closing in on him.
I sit there, shaking, waiting for the echo of his touch to fade.
It doesn't.
He keeps his word. Every night for the next week, he comes to my apartment at an almost normal hour.
Sometimes I hear him at the door. Sometimes I wake to his heat pressed to my back. Sometimes I find him standing at my window, staring out like he wants to raze the city.
He doesn't always fuck me. Sometimes he just sits on the bed and watches me sleep, as if he can't believe I'm real. Sometimes, when he thinks I'm not awake, he strokes my hair, traces the curve of my hip, or kisses the old scars on my side. Sometimes, when the nightmares are too brutal, and he can't help himself, he comes apart beside me, trembling and silent, burying his face in my neck like a man who's just barely holding it together.
And sometimes, I wake up with his hands tangled in my hair, his mouth on my throat, and his cock already hard and desperate between my thighs. Sometimes, I don't wake up at all when he's inside me. I think we both love those times just as much as we do any other. Some sick, twisted part of me loves being used while I'm asleep. I love being the one thing he wants softness from badly enough to steal it.
He always acts like showing up is a favor, a punishment, or a game. But I know better because every morning, no matter how brutal the nightmares or how hard he fucks me, he's still there, lying beside me like hell itself couldn't drag him away.
He needs me the same way I need him. He just hates himself too much to say it out loud.
So I don't make him say it. I simply stop fighting him.
I let him fuck me, ruin me, love me—if that's what this is—and I let him pretend this isn't real. I pretend I don't wait up just to see if he'll come.
But I do.
God help me, I do.
Chapter Eleven
Brielle
"Tell me something about you that no one knows," I say, staring up at the ceiling on Saturday night. Sweat is still cooling on my skin, and my toes still tingle from the way he fucked me. But I'm…restless, not content to simply sleep beside him tonight.
I feel his eyes on me in the dark, an impossible weight that tightens my chest. It's wild how he has that effect on me, like I'm afraid he'll see too much, even in the dark.
But if he does, he doesn't comment on it. He doesn't shoot me down either. "What do you want to know?" he asks instead.
"Anything. Something real."
"You first."
"Fine." I roll toward him, curling up on my side. He's just a thick shadow in the dark, but I sense his eyes on me, the curiosity burning behind them, as if he's dying to know what I'll reveal. I hesitate for a moment, trying to think of something real.
It's almost sad how long it takes me to come up with anything, like I've buried all the human parts so deeply I barely remember them anymore.
"I've always hated it when people compare me to my mom," I finally say.
"Why?"
I shrug, even though he can't see it. "I guess because they look at me like they're expecting me to be her when they say it. They expect me to step into her shoes and become the perfect little sweetheart movie star they lost. They never actually see me, just the woman they lost and their own hope that I'll fill the gap."
"I see you," Asher says.
I swallow hard, pretty sure he's always seen me. Isn't that part of what I hate? That he sees me in ways no one else ever has? He knows what makes me tick, what makes me hurt, and what makes me hope. He knows me, sometimes better than I know myself.
I feel real with him, in a way I don't with anyone else. Even when it hurts, even when we're fighting, even when it's hell, I'm free with him. After spending a lifetime hiding behind fake smiles and armor forged in grief, being real is the hardest thing I've ever been.
