THE SOUND of vibrating pulls me from a deep sleep. I groan as I flip on my side and try to fumble about, but a strong arm keeps me pinned in place.
A smile breaks across my lips as I slowly crack my eyes open. Asher’s unearthly face is a few inches away from mine, in a deep sleep. He probably hasn’t slept well since two days ago, and his thick brows are furrowed together.
I place a finger in the middle and try to alleviate the crease.
Isn’t it unfair for someone to be so handsome even when he sleeps?
The phone continues vibrating.
The clock on the wall reads eleven in the evening; we were so exhausted we fell into a deep slumber.
Asher’s face becomes peaceful again as soon as I relieve the furrow. I slowly lift his arm from my midsection and slip from the crook of his body.
The phone stops vibrating and I think about going back to sleep until I see the missed call.
Izzy.
She wouldn’t call me this late without a reason. Did something happen to Alex?
I run to the bathroom, put on a robe, and then go back in the room, grab my bag and phone, and duck to the other half of the room.
As soon as I’m out of Asher’s earshot, I call Izzy back. She answers after the first ring.
“What is it, Izzy?” I pant. “Is everyone okay?”
“I…uh…I’m sorry for calling this late. No one is hurt, don’t worry.”
Thank God. I flop on the couch, releasing a breath. “What is it then? Do you need anything?”
“I was wondering if you watched the video.”
“The video?”
“The one on the flash drive.”
Right. She gave me that yesterday. I got distracted by hiding my meeting with Cloud003 from Asher, so I forgot about it.
“Not yet.”
“You should,” she whispers. “Please watch it. And Reina?”
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the black screen for a second too long. Izzy has been acting strange since yesterday. Maybe if I watch this footage, I’ll figure out why.
I search inside my bag until I find the small black flash drive. I plug it into the hotel’s TV and keep the volume low as I open the video file.
The quality appears odd, the angle covert, almost like that video Jason showed me the other time.
Only now, the angle captures Arianna from the front. She’s looking up, probably at the person filming this.
Sitting on one of the cushions in the pool house, she twirls a bra on her finger and laughs. “Can you believe how that little bitch fell for a bra in Gray’s bag? She thinks she’s so smart, but she’s too easily manipulated.”
“Asher, too.” Jason—it’s his voice.
“Unfortunately, yeah,” she says with mock sarcasm. “All I had to do was threaten Stanford with exposing his pedophile picture collection and he called Reina’s name like a parrot when I was sucking him off.”
“Did it feel good?” Jason asks in a slightly thick voice.
“Good?” She laughs. “Nothing feels good to me, Jace. Everything is like a rehearsed play. It felt like sucking plastic. But since I knew the right buttons to push, I made him feel good. Besides, Gray believed it. Win-win.”
“You’re bad.” There’s a smile in Jason’s voice.
“Thank you.” She feigns a curtsy. “It’s getting boring playing with them, you know. Gray and Reina were these two people who looked at each other like they found salvation. It was interesting to watch them dissolve, to hold on to that something even though they keep hurting. I had to know what that infuriating connection was that I couldn’t understand. It helped that they cared for me. It made messing with their lives easier. A rumor here, some chaos there, and they just keep cracking. It’s fascinating. Gray even believed Reina was behind all those dares, and Reina thought it was Gray’s revenge against her so she kept her mouth shut when everyone accused her.”
A deep laugh comes from Jason. “Only you would ruin the two people who love you the most, Ari.”
“Love.” She cocks her head to the side like a maniac. “What is that? And why should I care about it? The only reason I keep Gray and Reina close is because it’s fun to toy with them. The king and queen of school are under the most insignificant student’s thumb. Hashtag fall of a kingdom.”
“Come on, you never cared about them?”
“No. They’re just there to serve a purpose I need and then they’re out. Mom used to teach me how to be caring and attentive and it was fucking annoying. I’m glad that bitch died and left me in peace. At least Dad doesn’t care for shit and Gray became easier to fool as we grew up.”
“And now what?” Jason asks. “You said something about Reina finding out?”
“Hmm, yeah.” She taps her mouth. “I think she figured something out after I confessed I love Gray today. He didn’t suspect anything when I confessed I loved Reina, but the bitch is smarter than I give her credit for. She ruined my plan, and I’ll make her pay.”
“How?”
She sighs. “It’s getting boring anyway so I might as well go for the grand finale.”
“What grand finale?” Jason asks.
“Breaking them up once and for all. And Jace?”
“Yeah?”
“Continue my legacy. I know you yearn for chaos deep inside, so once I make the fire, don’t let it burn out.”
“You mean keep Asher and Reina apart?”
“Yeah. After I’m done with them, they’ll never come together again anyway, but just in case, don’t allow them to reunite.”
“Why don’t you make sure of it yourself, Ari?”
She stares at the camera as if she knew it was there all along. My palms turn clammy at the vacant, empty look in her eyes.
That’s not a person; that’s a monster.
“This world is too small for me.”
The screen goes black, but I keep staring at it. A tear slides down my cheek, then another follows and another. I can’t stop them even if I wanted to.
I loved Arianna. I thought of her as some sort of replacement for Reina, but she never once cared for me. All she was interested in was proving herself by manipulating mine and Asher’s love for her.
And Jason…
Shit.
He’s been in on it since the beginning. He shared Ari’s brand of crazy and made me think Asher was my worst enemy, and while he was in some ways, it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do it because he truly hated me; he did it because he was compelled to.
I would’ve done the same if I were in his shoes.
It’s such an ugly position to be in.
I reach for the remote to turn off the TV then a large presence appears in my peripheral vision. I gasp, the remote falling from my fingers and clattering to the ground.
Asher stands at the entrance of the bedroom, only wearing boxer briefs. He’s still staring at the blank screen like I was a few seconds ago.
From his blank expression, it seems he watched it—or at least most of it. He continues focusing on the TV as if Arianna is still there, saying she never cared for us, saying her brother who sacrificed his youth for her happiness and matured early to become her parent and her support was easy to fool, saying all she cared about was destroying him.
God, he’s not reacting—not at all.
It’s even scarier than if he trashed the place.
Even his hands fall on either side of him like lifeless body parts. There’s no clenching of his fists or ticking of his jaw.
He’s gone numb.
No, I won’t let her take him away from me. Not again.
Arianna won’t peek her head out from the grave to ruin our lives once more. She succeeded in the past, but that won’t be happening again.
I stagger on unsteady feet and tiptoe toward him as if afraid he’ll snap any second. He doesn’t move, not even when I stand in front of him, my toes almost touching his.
“Ash…” I coax.
No answer.
I take his hand in mine. It’s heavy and unmoving and…cold. So damn cold.
“Ash, look at me.”
His gaze strays from the TV to mine. There’s so much pain in there, so many years lost on hate, revenge, violence.
So much missed time.
“It wasn’t your fault.” My voice is emotional despite my attempt to speak in a neutral tone. “It wasn’t our fault. We just loved her too much to notice it.”
He says nothing, but his jaw tightens so hard I’m scared something will happen to him.
What if I lose him?
What if she succeeded and this is the end?
What if—
“I’m so sorry.” His voice is barely above a murmur.
My brows furrow. “What?”
His arms wrap around me in a tight hug that nearly cuts off my breath. “I’m so fucking sorry, Reina.”
If possible, his hug tightens more around me. It says so much more than his words are telling me. It says how much he regrets the past, how much he wished to never let me go.
So I hug him back because I have those same regrets.
We lost so much time. We floundered and drowned and couldn’t come up for air for so long.
All that pain fades away now, almost as if it were never there.
I let him carry me back to bed. We don’t speak after that.
We just watch each other, limbs wrapped around one another as we fall asleep.
We’re both wounded and need to recuperate.
A tear slides down my cheek as I open my lids. A thumb wipes the tear away.
Those dark green eyes collide with mine as he slowly wipes the tear. His hand doesn’t leave my face even after all the tears are gone. His strong hand cradles my cheek as he watches me intently as if I’ll turn into smoke and mirrors.
It’s late, like two or three in the morning late, but it seems like he slept too little, if he slept at all.
Seeing him in so much pain and not being able to talk about it kills me slowly. Asher has always been the silent type who directed his pain inside instead of purging it, and that killed him, slowly but surely.
I can’t have him keep all of it in, not after what all we’ve both been through.
“Trouble sleeping,” I murmur as if a louder voice will lift the cloak surrounding us.
“I can’t get her voice or face out of my head.” His words are low and filled with so much pain, they gut me. “I can’t believe that’s my baby sister, the same Ari I sacrificed so much for. I should’ve seen the signs, or stopped and questioned when I saw those fucking signs.”
“Hey.” I snake my palm up his naked chest and rest it against his calm heartbeat, his almost dead pulse. “We couldn’t have known, she was too strategic about it, and we were too young and with too many communication issues.”
“Communication issues she fed on and used against us.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” His voice rises a little. “I think this calls for a stronger word than that. Our lives were broken to fucking pieces.”
“Not all our lives,” I say hopefully, almost pathetically.
“Not all our lives.”
My heart thunders so loud, it takes me a moment to gather my wits around me and ask to be sure. “Just the past?”
“Just the past.”
“I missed you so much, Ash,” I confess and another tear slides down my cheek. “Those three years were hell, absolute emptiness. I hated you so much for leaving me behind, for never looking back or trying to get me to you. Arianna might have killed us but you killed me by abandoning me. You were the only thread I had in life after Dad’s death and you just cut me off so brutally.”
“I’m sorry.” He wipes my tear with the pad of his thumb. “If it’s of any comfort, I killed myself, too. There hasn’t been a moment I haven’t thought about you.”
I can’t stop the tears even if I want to. The more he wipes them away, the harder they fall.
“Reina…” he murmurs my name like a prayer he’s been dying to say.
“I don’t want to fight. Not tonight.” I wrap my arms around his midsection and bury my face in his chest.
His strong hand covers the small of my back as he buries his nose in my hair, inhaling me in. “I don’t want to fight either. Not tonight, not ever.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” His grave voice pulls me from my sleep-induced haze.
I jump out of bed, wrapping the robe tight around me.
“Get out of here.” Asher’s voice turns lethal.
I peek out and pause. Detective Daniels stands in the middle of the living area wearing a smug grin and flashing a piece of paper at Asher.
“Not today, Carson. I have an arrest warrant for Miss Reina Ellis.”
