It wasn’t until he placed me in a familiar bed—my bed—and left me to sleep that I felt the pain filter through me again. It was sharp and fast, and with it came the familiar nightmare, the one where Asher exploded in front of me, only to reform in the same breath, made purely of gold. His skin and hair and eyes, everything about him, was powerful, strong, and cold as the Antarctic.
A living, breathing statue.
The dream caught me and didn’t let go. It never let me go, making me relive every fucking moment of my pain. My mourning. Over and over. I cried out, thrashing across the bed, desperate for anything to pull me from this agony. Asher had left me long ago, but somehow he was back again in that moment, his arms around me, jolting me from the dream. Finally I was able to wake.
I gasped. “You left,” I said roughly, trying to get myself under control. “You left me.”
Asher’s arms tightened. “I never left you. I was outside your door, sitting on the floor, waiting for you to wake.”
“Why?”
His face was hard for me to read, but his eyes were blazing. “I can’t sleep without you, and … I just couldn’t go home to an empty bed tonight. Not tonight.”
My Asher.There he was again. The more he came around, the harder it was to distance myself from him. The harder it was to remember everything he’d put me through. The harder it was to remember that maybe I shouldn’t place all my trust in him.
“You should go,” I said finally, the words burning because they were the last thing I wanted to say.
I thought he was going to fight me, but he stood, his eyes caressing me in the darkness as he reached out and brushed a fingertip across my cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow, water baby.”
Then he was gone. Taking my fucking heart with him.
40
The next couple of weeks at the Academy were … weird. The Atlanteans and I fell into some sort of truce where I started to slowly hang out with them all again, mostly swimming, but none of us were quite comfortable letting our guard down. No matter how many times Jesse, Axl, Rone, and Calen apologized, I kept holding them at arm’s length.
“I can’t let them have that sort of power over me again,” I told Ilia at breakfast the morning of Supernatural Day. It was early, and only a few lingered in the commons, giving us a semblance of privacy. “I’m not sure I want to be around them today.”
I’d been dreading this day. I’d had such high hopes of being at Supernatural Day with Asher this year, and I would be, but we were in an awkward place.
“They don’t deserve you,” she agreed, a loyal-as-fuck friend. “But—” I stilled because she hadn’t added any buts before today. “But … maybe it’s time to consider that the five of them are absolute dumbass dickheads with their heads up their own asses”—she was probably setting a record for the use of ass and head in a sentence—“and that in their own stupid way they were acting in your best interest. Calen told me how devastated he’s been … how crushed they’ve all been. They’re up all freaking night trying to find a way to destroy the gods. Or at least protect you all from them.”
“You made up with Calen?”
She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip. “He’s like an addiction for me, Mads. As much as I try and distance myself, I keep falling back into him.” Her eyes held mine, begging me to understand. “I promise I did not go anywhere near him while they were being assholes, but since you’re all friends again…”
I waved her off. “It’s fine. Don’t even worry about it. You’re allowed to see whoever you want. Just…” I trailed off and she lifted an eyebrow at me. “Be careful, okay. We shouldn’t blindly trust them again. They cut us off so easily, like we were nothing to them. It’s the Atlantean-five, and it always has been.”
Even if for a brief time there had been an Atlantean-six.
Thankfully she changed the subject. “So … have you figured out who your dirty-as-fuck secret admirer is?”
My eyes went to the phone, silently mocking me on the table. I’d gotten a few more texts from the unknown number, each more sexually explicit than the last, and despite my constant demands for them to tell me who the hell they were, I had no idea.
When I shook my head, her expression darkened. “You should tell someone,” she said again. “If not Asher, then Princeps Jones at least. He might be able to figure out how to trace the number.”
Trace the number.Axl could probably do that. That boy was the genius of all geniuses, and he was always up for a challenge. “I’ll be right back,” I said suddenly. “Don’t start Supe Day celebrations without me.”
Ilia waved me off, her mouth full of bagel. I grabbed my phone and sprinted for the library, more than a few eyes on me, but I didn’t care. “Where are you going, Mads?” Calen called, and I knew Asher was watching me, but I just gave them a quick wave, not stopping. Axl wasn’t at the table. I had a strong suspicion I knew where he was.
The library was brightly lit inside, and quiet, especially after the noise of the commons. Axl was exactly where I expected him to be, at his usual table, surrounded by books. When I dropped into the chair across from him, his head jerked up, and I was somewhat surprised when I got all of his attention. Axl found it hard to stop when he was in the middle of a project, but since we’d started being friends again, he’d made a real effort to push everything else aside for me. Of all the guys, I had forgiven him the most because he’d fought against the rift.
He’d tried even after Asher told him not to. He was devastated. I’d known from that first day I’d gone back to their house and he’d hugged me for so long.
“Maddi, is everything okay?” he asked, pages falling from his fingers as he dropped the book.
Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “I need your help, but I also need you to promise not to tell Asher.”
Axl was immediately uncomfortable. “You know I’m terrible at keeping secrets. Especially from my brothers.”
