Chapter 113: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

AVERY

After twenty minutes of nonverbal silence between us, I finally broke it.

“Have you eaten?”

Asher was still on the floor with his back against the bed, head tipped back, eyes half-lidded in the aftermath of everything his body had just put him through. For a second I thought he might not answer at all.

Then, quietly:

“No.”

Not clipped. Not defensive. Just small.

I hesitated. “Do you want me to get you something? I can order—”

“No.” His voice was rough. “Make me something.”

I stared at him. “You want me to cook for you?”

He nodded once.

“What do you want?”

His eyes opened just enough to find mine. “Figure it out, Avery.”

I sighed, long and low.

Under any other circumstance I would have told him exactly how unimpressed I was by that answer. But looking at him now… pale, spent, still sitting on the floor like his bones hadn’t fully decided to hold him up again… I couldn’t refuse. Not after what he had just gone through. Not after what we still hadn’t talked about.

I didn’t want to ask.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

“Fine,” I muttered, pushing to my feet. “Don’t pass out while I’m gone.”

He made a faint sound that might have been agreement.

The kitchen was as sleek and impersonal as the rest of the apartment…clean counters, expensive appliances, the faint lingering scent of coffee that had probably been made hours ago. Shadow trailed after me and leapt onto one of the stools like he expected to supervise.

I opened the fridge.

And stared.

Almost nothing.

A near-empty carton of eggs.

Butter.

A heel of bread that was still edible if I was optimistic.

A half jar of shredded cheese.

One apple that had seen better days.

A bottle of water.

Condiments that looked decorative more than useful.

The freezer wasn’t much better…ice, a frozen pizza box so long neglected I didn’t trust it, and a bag of coffee beans for reasons that felt personally offensive in the moment.

“Of course,” I whispered under my breath. “Of course you live like this.”

Still. Eggs. Bread. Butter. Cheese.

It was enough for a quick scrambled-egg melt on toast. Nothing impressive. Nothing that required energy neither of us had. But warm, fast, and better than the nothing currently in his system.

I pulled the eggs out, set a pan on the stove, and let the ordinary rhythm of cracking shells and finding a spatula steady my hands. Behind me, the apartment stayed quiet. No footsteps. No sharp Asher commentary from the hallway. Just the low hum of the building and the soft sound of butter beginning to melt.

I didn’t let myself think too hard about why I was still here.

Or why the idea of leaving him alone in that room felt impossible.

The food was ready in less than ten minutes.

I scraped the eggs onto a plate, set the toast beside them, and carried it back to the bedroom before I could overthink the fact that I had just cooked in Asher Whitlock’s kitchen like some kind of temporary domestic hostage.

He was still on the floor, though he had shifted enough to lean more fully against the bed. He looked marginally less wrecked. Marginally.

I held the plate out.

“Eat.”

He looked at it. Then at me. Then back at the plate like it had personally offended him by existing.

“No.”

I stared. “I did not just raid your depressing bachelor fridge and make you food for you to not eat it.”

“I’m tired.”

“That’s nice. Open your mouth anyway.”

His head tipped back against the mattress, eyes half-closed. For a second I thought he was ignoring me on purpose.

Then, quietly, ruinously:

“Feed me, Avery.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. You should what?”

“Feed me.”

There was a beat of pure silence in which I genuinely considered walking out, getting in my car, and driving into the nearest lake.

“You have two working hands,” I said.

“Barely.”

“Asher.”

“Avery.”

He wasn’t even smirking properly. That was the problem. If he had said it with his usual arrogance, I could have thrown the plate at him and left with my dignity intact. Instead he just looked exhausted and stubborn and slightly pathetic in a way that made anger feel suddenly inefficient.

I exhaled through my nose. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am.”

“I’m not feeding you like a toddler.”

“Then the eggs die for nothing.”

I looked down at the plate. Then at him. Then at Shadow, who had followed me in and was now watching the exchange with open judgment.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered.

But I still sat down on the floor in front of him, dragged the plate onto my lap, and stabbed a fork into the eggs with more force than necessary.

“If you tell anyone about this, I will end you.”

A faint ghost of amusement touched his mouth. “Noted.”

“Open.”

He did.

I fed him the first bite like I was performing community service under protest. He chewed slowly, eyes on me the whole time, which somehow made the entire thing worse. I stabbed another bite onto the fork.

“You’re enjoying this,” I accused.

“A little.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re still feeding me.”

“Because if you pass out again, I’m not dragging your body anywhere.”

“Very caring.”

“Shut up and chew.”

By the fourth bite, the absurdity of the situation had fully settled over us. Me on his bedroom floor, fork in hand. Him accepting eggs like a disgraced prince.

“This is the peak of my life,” I said flatly, lifting another bite. I shoved the next bite at him a little harder. “Eat your sad eggs and recover so I can go back to disliking you properly.”

He did.

And somehow, against every natural law I believed in, the silence that settled between us after that didn’t feel unbearable.

I set the fork down once half the plate was gone and leaned back on my palms, eyes drifting anywhere that wasn’t his face for too long.

I should have left already.

That thought arrived right on schedule, neat and reasonable, and then sat there doing absolutely nothing useful.

Because no matter how many times I tried to stay away from him, I always ended up here. In his orbit. In his car. In his apartment. In the middle of moments that made no sense on paper and somehow still kept happening. I could draw the cleanest boundaries in my head…ignore his texts, change my routes, remind myself of the journal, the pool, the public humiliation, every sharp edge he had ever pressed against my life and still, somehow, the path bent back toward him.

It was infuriating.

It was exhausting.

It was starting to scare me in a quieter way than anything else he had done.

He was the flame, and I was apparently the idiot moth who kept mistaking the burn for gravity. Every time I got close enough to get hurt, I told myself that would be the last time. Every time I left, I swore I would be smarter about the next distance I put between us. And every time, something pulled taut again… a call, a threat, a look, a please in a voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to him and I showed up anyway.

What did that make me?

Stupid?

Lonely?

So starved for something real that even the wrong person started to feel like a place to stand?

I glanced at him before I could stop myself. He looked softer in the aftermath, stripped of the performance he usually wore so effortlessly. Still pale. Still drained. But present in a way that made it harder to reduce him back into pure villainy, no matter how convenient that would have been.

That was the real danger.

Not the blackmail.

Not even the way my body reacted when he got too close.

It was this. The slow, unwilling accumulation of human pieces I could no longer pretend I hadn’t seen. Panic on the floor. A text he couldn’t answer. A boy who said please like it cost him something. A silence that didn’t immediately demand armor.

I dragged a hand down my face and exhaled.

Stay away from Asher.

It sounded so simple in theory.

In practice, I was already wondering whether he would finish the rest of the eggs if I left the plate within reach.

God.

I was in so much trouble.