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I shouldn’t have taken that first snort of cocaine. I should have come to you. You would have kept me sane.
I made you and Vincent run. It’s all my fault. That this is happening to me.
He tells me the same. My fault. My fault.
Will you ever forgive me, Ash? Come back and be my friend again?
I wish to hold your hand, to see you smile, to hear your laughter break this silence that suffocates me. I want you to heal me.
But, could I even be healed?
He says, I must not fight to live; I must fight to die.
He says only death shall liberate me.
Will it, though?
Will he let me go if I die?
Riley.
8
PRETTY TRUTHS AND POISONED LIES
ASHER
Iwas furious, and I wanted nothing but to find Vincent and punch him in the mouth, or maybe his cock. It would be so satisfying.
Twenty-four hours. I spent twenty-four hours seething about it, even though I had much bigger things to worry about. Like how to kill Tomas Hannigan in his own club.
“How are your sessions with Doctor Sharma, Asher? She thinks you’re making good progress,” Becca said, patting my arm as I walked out of the cafeteria. “When will you be leaving us?”
“Soon,” I said, and she gave me a smile that was broken around edges.
“Good to hear. Doctor Sharma’s wonderful, isn’t she? She cares a lot,” the head nurse said. “Everyone likes her. Do you like her?”
I shook my head with a frown, and she chuckled.
“No? Why not?”
“Talks too much,” I mumbled under my breath, and she let out a hearty laugh.
“She still made you talk. You weren’t saying a word before she came,” she said with a smile.
I huffed.
“Asher, I was looking around for you,” one of the orderlies said. “Doctor Stanley wants to see you in his office.”
“Why?”
“Grief counseling. He’s been meeting with everyone,” Leo said.
Grief counseling? The irony was laughable. I didn’t need grief counseling for someone I had killed. Fuck no. There was no guilt gnawing at my conscience, no ache in my chest when I thought of his death.
He fucking deserved it.
I nodded with a frown, moving toward Doctor Stanley’s office.
