I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Oh my god.
I lean over and vomit all over my arm, chair and floor where it splatters at my feet.
I keep hurling as the others jump back to avoid the spray. The gurgling soon turning into cries as I let it all consume me. Marlowe was a part of this. She was the insider luring girls to sell into sex trafficking. She did this to Piper.
I gasp, the shock rocking through me like a tsunami. The room frozen.
“You didn’t know?” Asher finally voices. It comes out as a bewildered whisper as I hiccup through my tears. When I look at him, I finally see some of that emotion, but it’s too late.
“No, I didn’t,” I close my eyes to shield myself from him. “My father sent me to find her or what happened because the faculty gave the same excuses as they usually give. Every person he hired to find any information came up blank when all the firewalls and gates kept them out. The best way in was as a student. He promised me he would let me go if I found her. Give me enough money to start off somewhere new,”
“But you started finding out about the other missing girls?” Daylan steps forward and when I look at him, he softly wipes my chin with a towel he must have picked up from the washingbag.
I nod. “Then everything I found with Piper meant that we needed to work quickly to protect her, I didn’t want anything else to happen and the bonus was that it could possibly lead to Marlowe,”
“Why didn’t you tell us who you really were?” Daylan asks bending down and cutting my hands lose. I rub them as the pins and needles start to dissipate. Jacob gazes out the window, his fingers rubbing at his temples and the gun that was once pressed against my forehead, safely put away.
“My father can be quite persuasive,” I shrug, my voice still uneven with the exertion from throwing up and crying.
Daylan nods as though he knows I mean with his fists.
They both stand back, and I see Asher frozen in place. A man completely devastated.
He finally steps forward and goes to touch my face.
“Rue, I’m so sorry. I thought you knew,”
I flinch. “Don’t touch me,”
He freezes and his shoulders drop along with the hand he tried to touch me with, eyes blinking fast.
“I just…” He grabs at his hair and pulls. “I am trying to protect everybody. My sister. My family. Trying to stay afloat while I figure everything out and then I see…” He gestures to the photos on the floor by my vomit and closes his eyes as if it offends him.
His hand comes to his mouth, breathing hard through his nose before reopening with new focus as he takes in the room and my shaken form.
“I am so fucking sorry,” His eyes take on a sheen as his head shakes side to side, but I can’t bring myself to care at the moment. I would never have done to him what he did to me, my body and heart wouldn’t have allowed it even if my mind was shouting at me to get the information out of him. He had no such issues.
“I need you to get out,” I say with a steady voice.
He shakes his head faster. “Baby, please. Let’s talk this out,”
I open the door and wait beside it. “I want you to leave. All of you,” Daylan and Jacob glance to Asher before listening to me. They leave without a word, and I am glad. What can you say after holding someone at gun point and scaring them half to death.
Asher takes the steps towards me, and I move back. Even when all I want to do is cry in his arms, I can’t love a man and fear he might pull away when he sees the parts of me he doesn’t particularly like.
“Ruella, I am so sorry. Please think of it from my point of view here. We can’t trust anyone; we have already been betrayed by friends and then I find that,”
I look at my feet, the socks stained with my vomit. “I was going to tell you. All weekend I tried to explain yet things kept popping up. But, even if I put myself in your position, I don’t think I would have been able to do what you just did to me. I couldn’t watch as someone held a gun to the head of someone I love and act like it wouldn’t affect me for them to pull the trigger,”
“You love me?” Asher asks completely ignoring what I said.
I push against his chest and close the door slowly as I speak.
“I do and I thought you maybe loved me too. Turns out I was wrong. Goodbye Asher,” Then I close the door to his pleading face and mouth ready to argue.
My back slides down the door until I collapse in a heap on the floor. My cries too guttural to keep silent. How did the night turn into this. How did it change so fast.
I finally hear his feet scuffling as I curl up into a ball on the floor and wish I was anyone else. A girl with at least one person who cares, no matter what.
