Page 170 of Endless Anger
Only the sound of our breathing dominates the air for severalminutes as we come down from the high of climax. I collapse on top of him, fatigue finally catching up with me, and he lets me lie like that for a while, stroking my back in slow motion.
“Trouble,” he says after a while, voice low. “That’s what I should’ve nicknamed you when we were kids. You’re a terrible influence.”
I peek up at him through my lashes, not wanting to fully open my eyes. “You love it though.”
He taps my nose with his index finger. “I loveyou. I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d brought your corpse out of that cave.”
“Probably would’ve burned the school down.”
Silence. Then, “Did I ever apologize for the fire at Lethe’s?”
I snort. “You’ve apologized, like, once in your whole life, Asher.”
“Right. Well… I’m not sorry for smoking you out of that trashy place, but Iamsorry for the shit it caused after. If I’d known they were going to blame you, I?—”
“Still would’ve done it, because you’re a little bit of a lunatic when you’re angry,” I finish for him.
He doesn’t respond, so I sit up, pressing my palm to his cheek.
“I love you,” I say softly, tracing the outline of his mouth with my thumb. “I know you’d never do anything to actually hurt me. Your entire life has pretty much been dedicated to the exact opposite actually.”
“Bodyguard since birth,” he jokes, although there’s still some tension in his words. Between us. All the hurt and anger, the stupidity and the danger—I guess that doesn’t just magically disappear when you’re in love.
Trust and healing are still things you have to work at, especially when you’ve been burned before.
But there’s no one in the world I’d rather work through the bullshit with than him.
Asher Blake Anderson.
The angry boy who broke my heart when we were younger.
And the one who put it back together again.
EPILOGUE
ASHER
Weeks later,Foxe still looks like absolute shit, but at least he’s discharged and able to walk around, albeit with a bit of a limp.
His right arm is in a cast, and bandages cover a decent portion of his abdomen from where stab wounds and burns are still healing. There’s also a deep grooved scar between his eyebrows from where they did a skin graft to reconstruct part of his nose.
But…he’s here.
Sort of.
As he hobbles around his little apartment on the Aplana Island coast, I stand in the doorway, trying to ascertain what exactly is missing.
The light in his hazel eyes seems to have dulled. He doesn’t joke around quite as much, a somber expression having permanently etched itself onto his face. When he smiles, the gesture doesn’t quite translate.
“You want anything to drink?” he asks, leaning into his fridge. “My mom left some fresh lemonade when she dropped by this morning.”
My eyebrows quirk, and I glance around, noting the growing collection of potted plants covering nearly every flat surface of the living room and kitchen areas. “She come over often?”
“Jesus, twice a day every day. Like she’s afraid I’ll forget to take my medication unless she’s here to watch me do it.”
I’d say her bigger fear is him getting hooked on the pain pills, given his history, but I don’t mention that. I’m sure he already knows.
“But you love the attention, I bet,” I tease, flopping down on the dark green suede couch in his living room. I take the bag from my shoulder and settle it on my lap.
