Present
I’M TREMBLING, my limbs, my fingers, and even my lips.
Silent tears stream down my cheeks as I listen to Asher’s retelling of Arianna’s death.
He’s been standing in front of me the entire time, but he hasn’t once looked at me, as if I’m invisible.
As if I don’t exist.
His entire attention is on the edge where I stood and threatened to throw myself off not long ago. It’s like he can see his sister, as if she’s still there and he can catch her.
Or at least I assume that from the way his hands clench and unclench on either side of him.
His bare chest muscles contract, rippling and never once relaxing. My hands itch to reach out for him, to hold him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault.
But that’ll only backfire.
No wonder he’s hated me all this time. No wonder he planned to kill me. Arianna and her destructive lies have turned him into a killing machine, a hollow existence without a heart or a core.
That doesn’t mean what he did to me is acceptable, but I can’t leave him drowning with no way out.
Asher might have held a grudge against me all this time, but I don’t think I ever felt any hate toward him.
If anything, my feelings have only intensified, turning hotter, brighter, and scarier.
And for that, I need to fix his misconceptions, even though it’ll destroy everything he knew about his sister, the person he considered his only family.
“Do you see now? Do you see how you fucking ended mine and my sister’s lives?” He speaks low and threatening, almost like he’s on the verge of acting on his destructive emotions.
That’s the thing about Asher. Since Arianna’s death, he’s only survived on the thought that one day he’ll bring her justice by eliminating me.
But he hasn’t.
For three years, he hasn’t managed to act on his promise.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” I murmur.
“Death is too lenient for you.” He glares down at me so harshly I feel it to my bones. “You have to suffer.”
“I think I’ve suffered enough.” I keep my voice neutral. “Why don’t you kill me?”
He reaches me in two long strides and wraps a hand around my throat. His squeeze isn’t threatening or erotic. This one is meant to suffocate, to kill, like in that classroom when I lay on the ground.
Even though my body revolts, begging for life, I don’t fight him. I just look up at him as my lungs burn with the need for air.
I don’t mean to, but a tear falls down my cheek and onto his hand.
“Fuck!” He releases me with a shove. “Don’t fucking tempt me, Reina. I’m this close to killing us both.”
I massage my neck, wheezing for breath. A small part of me is rejoicing at the fact that he didn’t kill me.
He can’t.
I can see that torment in his eyes; it’s as clear as the feelings I have for him.
“Why both of us?” I whisper. “You only need to kill me.”
“Shut the fuck up, Reina.”
“Why?” I cry. “Just why? Because you don’t hate me as much as you tell yourself? You can’t hate me? You want to be with me?”
He crouches in front of me and traps my jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Because I can’t fucking live without you. I tried it and it was hell.”
“But Arianna…”
He closes his eyes for a brief second. “That doesn’t mean I stopped hating you.”
“Then you hated me for the wrong reasons.” I swallow. “I think we’ve been both played.”
“Played?”
“I remember the day Arianna talked to me.” His jaw clenches but I stop him with a hand on his arm. “Let me finish.”
I go on and tell him what Arianna told me about her feelings for Asher and how she asked me to leave him so she could have him.
For a second, Asher watches me intently, his fingers still clutching my chin as if he needs the connection as much as I do.
Before he can say anything, I blurt, “I didn’t make up the memory. Dr. Anderson said it’s not possible.”
“I know.” His voice is quiet, pained even.
“You…do?”
“Yeah, I speak to your doctors.”
He does? How come I didn’t know that?
“Besides,” he continues, “that’s similar to how Ari told me she loved you the night before. Fuck.”
“Was she…mentally unwell?”
“Yes, depression mostly, but she had that type of behavior, the lying and scheming, but why the fuck would she kill herself if she made it all up?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think either of us had the full gist of her state of mind. I think she had more problems than depression. She might have been a pathological liar and well, something else.”
“Something else like what?”
“It takes so much to plot all that. It was just a pure masterminded plan to keep us apart.”
His eyes rage. “You think my sister killed herself just to keep us apart?”
“I know this pains you, Ash.” My palm cradles his cheek as if the touch will take the torment away. “But you have to keep an open mind if you want to learn the truth. It’s clear she relied on our lack of communication, knowing full well we’d never sit down and talk about this. From what I’ve learned, we did have communication problems, right?”
“And whose fucking fault was that, Reina?”
“Fine, it was mine, but you didn’t help either.” I pause. “I tried to talk to you, right? After I figured things out, I remember thinking I’d talk to you.”
He’s silent for a bit. “After Ari’s funeral, yes.”
“And what was your reply?”
He remains silent.
“What did you tell me?” I insist. “And don’t lie to me.”
He sighs. “The exact words were, You’re fucking dead to me. Don’t let me see your face again.”
His words stab me deep and hard even though I don’t remember them. They must’ve hurt a lot more back then.
Maybe that’s why I pulled back and preferred to take his cold shoulder instead of having him hate his dead sister.
Old Reina sacrificed too, maybe too much, even.
I drop my hand from his cheek and try to turn away but he holds my face hostage, making me look at him. “That was right after Ari’s death,” he repeats slowly. “All I could dream about were her last words.”
It’s his indirect apology, but it’s not enough. I might have had something to do with the way we are, but Asher never fought for me.
Not even once.
Yes, he beat people for me, but he never stood up for me or with me.
I guess that was all I needed from him. If he’d done it back then, if he hadn’t been too proud to stalk away every time I pushed him, maybe none of this would’ve happened.
But it doesn’t matter now.
“If we’re going to investigate this, I’ll do things you might not like.”
He narrows his eyes. “Such as?”
“Jason. He could be our only bridge to the other Arianna we didn’t know.”
My fingers shake at the thought. Jason is also Cloud003. He befriended me, fucked me, and was there for me in the most convenient times.
He was also there right before Arianna killed herself.
It can’t be a coincidence, right?
