Chapter 114 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

Chapter 114 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN


ASHER

In the mirror was a younger version of me.

Four, maybe five… all scraped knees and too-big soccer , laughing with his whole body as he chased a ball across sunlit grass. His father ran beside him, still solid, still alive, still real enough to reach out and ruffle blond hair when the shot finally thwacked into the back of the net. 

They looked so happy it hurt to watch.

So full of ordinary life that I couldn’t look away. I stood on the other side of the glass watching the boy. My father’s hand settled between his shoulder blades, proud and steady. The afternoon gold around them never dimmed.

I wanted to freeze it.

If I could have reached through the mirror and stopped time right there…locked that boy inside a day where his father stayed, where the house stayed whole, where nothing ugly had a name yet…. I would have. Let him live there forever. Let him never learn the version of life waiting on the other side of that sunlight.

Then something shifted.

The color drained first. Then the sound. The boy’s laughter cracked in half and fell apart. When he turned, his face was wet, eyes red, mouth trembling around a grief too big for his body. The ball sat forgotten in the grass. My father was already walking away from him — no, not walking.

Vanishing.

Fading at the edges like smoke losing its shape in wind.

“Keep playing with him,” I said into the mirror, palms flat against the glass. “Don’t let him go.”

The boy didn’t hear me.

He only stood there crying harder as the space where his father had been emptied out completely.

“Hold him!” My voice rose, sharp with a panic that didn’t care how useless it was. “He’s right there…just hold on—”

Nothing.

Only the boy, smaller by the second, breaking open in silence.

Then he looked up.

Our eyes locked through the glass.

For one suspended second, younger me only whispered it.

“It’s your fault.”

The words slid under my skin like a blade.

Then his face twisted, and the whisper became a shriek that shattered through the dream—

“IT’S YOUR FAULT!

A cold compress gently pressed against my forehead.

The mirror broke apart. The boy vanished. The accusation still rang in my ears as the present rushed back in.. dim bedroom light, the dull ache behind my eyes, the soft weight of a damp cloth being adjusted against my skin.

I blinked.

Avery was leaning over me.

Close enough that I could see the focus in her expression, the careful way she held the compress in place like she had been at it for a while. Her hoodie sleeve was pushed up to her elbow. A few strands of hair had fallen loose near her cheek. She looked tired. Not a dream.

Not a mirror.

Her.

For a second I couldn’t speak. The last echo of that child’s voice still sat too heavily in my chest, and the sight of her — here, still here made the residual panic feel even more exposed than it already was.

Her eyes met mine as soon as she realized I was awake.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “You’re up.”

“You’re still here,” I said, voice rough from sleep as I flicked my gaze toward the wall. The clock on the nightstand read past ten.

“Yeah.” She adjusted the compress once more before setting it aside. “You fell asleep after eating, and I couldn’t just leave you here. I…” She hesitated, searching for a cleaner version of the truth. “I wanted to make sure you were okay first.”

Something about the simplicity of that landed harder than it should have.

I pushed myself up slowly against the headboard. My body still felt heavy, scraped out from the inside, but the worst of the earlier spiral had passed. What remained was the quieter aftermath… exhaustion, exposure, and the uncomfortable fact that she had stayed through all of it.

“You didn’t have to,” I said.

“I know.”

Silence settled between us for a moment, not sharp, just uncertain. Shadow jumped up onto the edge of the bed, circled once, and settled near my leg like the evening had asked far too much of everyone involved.

Avery glanced at the cat, then back at me. “How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.”

“That tracks.”

I huffed once under my breath. “You’re enjoying this.”

“A little,” she admitted. Then softer: “Not really.”

I studied her face in the low light…. the stubborn set of her mouth, the leftover worry she hadn’t fully managed to hide. It would have been easier if she had left. Easier to rebuild the distance. Easier to pretend none of this had happened once morning came.

Instead she was still here at 10 p.m., in my room.

“Thank you,” I said.

The words felt strange in my mouth. Insufficient. Necessary anyway.

Avery blinked, clearly not expecting them. For a second something vulnerable crossed her expression before she covered it with a small shrug.

“Don’t get used to it,” she said. “I still don’t like you.”

A faint smile pulled at the corner of my mouth despite everything. “Obviously.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

She exhaled and looked toward the window, then back at me. “Do you… want to talk about it?”

The question hung carefully between us.

For a moment, the day rushed back in pieces. The match I had no business playing that badly. Oliver’s text sitting unanswered on my phone like a live wire. My mother. The word sick. The drive home with my pulse already climbing until my body finally stopped cooperating and dragged me under.

The panic attack had felt like hell.

Like drowning on a dry floor. Like every nerve had decided at once that survival required more oxygen than I could take in. I had known, somewhere under the terror, that I wasn’t dying. That knowledge hadn’t helped. It never did. And through all of it…through the shaking and the useless control and the feeling of coming apart in my own skin…the only person my mind had reached for was Avery.

Just Avery.

I wasn’t ready to hand her that truth whole.

“I had a panic attack,” I said finally. “It happens… sometimes.”

She watched me for a second longer, like she could hear the omissions, then nodded once.

“Okay.”

The quiet after that threatened to thicken again, so I seized the first available exit from it.

“You fed me eggs,” I said.

Avery blinked. “What?”

“Earlier.” I tipped my head slightly against the headboard. “With a fork. Like I was in assisted living.”

Color rose immediately into her cheeks. “You asked me to.”

“I was compromised.”

She pointed a finger at me. “If you ever bring that up again,I will deny it. I did it because you were dying. So save it”

““True,” I conceded. “Your cooking, though—”

Her eyes narrowed. “Finish that sentence carefully.”

I let the smile pull fully this time. “Adequate.”

“Adequate?”

“Generously adequate.”

She grabbed the nearest pillow and shoved it halfway into my face. Not hard enough to mean damage. Hard enough to make her point. I let out a rough breath of laughter and pushed it aside, the sound surprising even me with how easily it came.

“You’re lucky I don’t revoke my emergency services,” she muttered.

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her. For a few minutes the room held something almost light. The panic still existed somewhere behind my ribs. So did Oliver’s message. So did everything I hadn’t said.

But right then, with Avery still sitting on the edge of my bed arguing about eggs and dignity, the night felt survivable.

Avery shifted, starting to rise from the edge of the bed. “I should probably head home before Ms. Rosa files a missing person report.”

My hand moved before I fully decided to let it.

Fingers closed around her wrist and pulled her back enough that she lost her balance and landed softly against my chest with a quiet sound of surprise. 

“Stay with me tonight,” I said softly. “Please.”

Avery went still in my arms. Close enough that I could feel the faint rise and fall of her breathing. Close enough that her hair brushed my jaw when she turned her face slightly. She smelled like vanilla and clean cotton and something faintly sweet beneath it… like sugar left on skin. Like warmth. Like the first place all day that hadn’t felt sharp around the edges.

Like home.

The realization hit with uncomfortable clarity.

I had known I wanted her. In the abstract. In the restless, competitive, can’t-stop-looking way that had been building for weeks beneath every argument and every stupid power game. But I hadn’t understood the scale of it until now — until she was here after seeing the worst of me, until the thought of the door closing behind her made something in my chest pull tight with an almost physical protest.

I didn’t just want her in the ways that were easy to dismiss.

I wanted this.

My hand eased from her wrist to the curve of her back. Beneath my palm, I could feel how carefully she was holding herself. Torn between sense and whatever had kept her in this apartment past reason already.

I closed my eyes for half a second and breathed her in.

I had spent so long controlling every version of wanting that this one— unarmored, exhausted, honest  almost scared me more than the panic had.

Almost.

Because beneath the fear was something simpler and far more dangerous.

I think I like her.

No.

I like Avery Voss.