Chapter 111: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN

AVERY

I groaned into my pillow like the universe had personally wronged me.

Of course.

Of course the first time all day I had managed to sink into something that wasn’t homework, guilt, or the sound of my own thoughts eating themselves, my phone would start screaming at me.

“Fuck,” I muttered, face still half-buried in the pillow. “Who could be calling?”

Elliot Vale’s newest release was still playing through my speaker — soft, aching, the kind of song that made the room feel smaller in a good way. I had been lying there letting it fill every quiet corner of me, pretending for five uninterrupted minutes that I was just a girl listening to music on a Friday night and not a walking collection of bad decisions in someone else’s name.

I did not want to be interrupted.

The phone kept ringing anyway.

I rolled onto my side, snatched it off the nightstand, and squinted at the screen.

The devil incarnate

I sat up so fast the blanket slid off my shoulders.

Asher.

Why the hell was Asher calling me?

It was past seven. The day was already supposed to be over. The world was supposed to leave me alone long enough to survive one song in peace.

He hadn’t talked to me in four days.

Not since the car. Not since the bakery. Not since he looked at me like he could see the future I was too much of a coward to plan and asked whether I intended to be my sister forever. I had spent those four days doing an excellent job of avoiding the entire subject of him…changing routes between classes, burying myself in enough routine to drown out the fact that something in me had shifted and I hated it.

I didn’t want to talk to him.

I especially didn’t want to talk to him while alone in my room with music still fading into silence and no witnesses to keep me from sounding as off-balance as I felt. Because the worst part wasn’t even the blackmail, or the arrogance, or the way he could turn a single conversation into a live wire under my skin.

The worst part was the newer feeling beneath all of that.

The one I refused to name.

The one that had started growing teeth. I stared at the screen until the call almost rang out.

Then, against every smarter instinct I possessed, I answered.

“What?”

There was a brief pause on the line, like he hadn’t expected me to pick up that fast  or at all.

“Avery,” he said.

My fingers tightened around the phone.

Apparently my carefully protected little stretch of peace was over.

“What do you want?” I asked, already bracing.

“Come to my place.”

I blinked. “What?”

“My apartment,” he said. “Now.”

A short, disbelieving breath left me. “What do you mean now? I can’t just—”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I can’t. It’s past seven. I have Jace. I have—”

“Avery.”

My name came firmer that time, but even then something about it sounded off. Less sharp than usual. Less controlled.

I stood up from the bed without realizing I had moved. “You don’t get to call me out of nowhere after four days of silence and start issuing commands like I’m on payroll.”

“Come over.”

“Or what?”

The pause that followed was thin enough to feel deliberate.

“Or we can talk about how many people would be interested in the things you wrote down and never meant anyone to see,” he said. “Your choice.”

There it was.

The journal.

Always the journal.

Anger flared hot and immediate in my chest. “You’re seriously blackmailing me into a house visit right now?”

“I’m telling you to come.”

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could put that demand and stopped.

Because something in his voice wasn’t right.

It wasn’t the usual smooth arrogance. It wasn’t even the cooler, needling version he used when he wanted a reaction. There was a roughness under the words. A drag. Like he had to push them out instead of letting them land the way they normally did.

“Are you good?”

The question slipped out before I could stop it.

Silence.

Then, quieter:

“Just come.” A breath. “Please.”

The call dropped.

I stood in the middle of my room staring at the darkened screen, heart beating too fast for a conversation that had lasted less than a minute.

Please.

Asher Whitlock had said please.

That alone was wrong enough to send unease spiraling through me. Add the strain in his voice, the abrupt hang-up, the fact that he had gone radio silent for four days only to summon me like this, and suddenly the anger in my chest had competition.

What was wrong with him?

Was he okay?

And worse… why was I spiraling over it like this?

I pressed my thumb hard into the side of my phone, as if that could anchor me back into sense. I owed him nothing. Not comfort. Not compliance. Certainly not the version of concern currently crawling under my skin against my will. He had my journal. He had spent weeks turning my life into a series of controlled detonations. Whatever was happening on his end was not my responsibility.

And still.

Please.

“Damn it,” I whispered.

I changed quickl… jeans, a hoodie, hair pulled up without ceremony and shoved my phone into my pocket before I could talk myself out of it. Downstairs, Ms. Rosa was folding a throw blanket over the arm of the couch.

“I’m going out for a bit,” I told her, aiming for casual and landing somewhere close. “I won’t be late.”

She glanced at the clock, then at my face. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah. Just need to handle something.”

Her pause said she didn’t fully believe me, but she nodded anyway. “Text if you’ll be late.”

“I will.”

Outside, the night air was cooler than I expected. I got into my car, started the engine, and sat there for one more second with both hands on the wheel.

This was a mistake.

I already knew that.

I drove to his apartment anyway.