Chapter 124 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR

Chapter 124 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR


AVERY

I stood in front of Asher’s apartment door longer than I should have. My reflection in the narrow metal strip beside the frame looked too finished for the chaos in my chest. 
I had told myself on the way over that this was simple.
People said thank you for gifts. People delivered tickets information in person when the gift was impossible and expensive and far too exact to hide behind a text. 
That was all. 
A normal social action. 
An ordinary decision made by a newly eighteen-year-old girl who was definitely not overthinking every possible exit route.
I knocked once.
Waited.
Knocked twice.
Then I knocked a third time, harder, before pride or nerves or both could talk me out of it.
The door opened.
Asher stood there looking so surprised to see me that for a second neither of us spoke. Hair slightly damp, like he had showered not long ago. 
I would have been surprised too.
Apparently turning eighteen came with making decisions your former self would have mocked out loud. I had every option in the world. I could have gone alone. I could have taken Skyler and let her scream every lyric beside me. I could have framed the tickets as a miracle and kept the night clean, separate from him, safe from whatever this thing between us kept becoming. And instead, the one person I wanted in the second seat was Asher Whitlock.
Of course it was.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said. His eyes moving over me.
“Well.” I let out a short breath that almost passed for a chuckle. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to be here either. But here I am.”
His gaze returned to my face. Something in it softened, then sharpened.
“You look beautiful.”
My cheeks burned on contact.
Stop doing this, Asher.
Stop saying the right thing.
Be the asshole. Be arrogant. Be impossible. Give me something easier to fight than sincerity at your doorway.
I had dressed carefully without wanting to admit that was what I was doing. A black satin top with thin straps and a soft drape at the front, Dark jeans, small gold earrings with Jace’s bracelet still on my wrist because taking it off had felt wrong. 
“Well,” I said, forcing my voice steady, “are you going to let me in, or are you going to keep complimenting me in the hallway until one of your neighbors starts charging admission?”
The second it left my mouth, I nearly smacked myself.
Thank you. 
That was the normal response. 
Thank you would have been proportionate. Instead I had gone for deflection like a girl terrified of what might happen if she simply accepted a soft thing from him.
A corner of Asher’s mouth lifted. He stepped aside.
“Come in.”
I moved past him into the apartment, and the door clicked shut behind us with a finality I felt in my spine. 
The living room was dim, only a warm lamp on near the couch and the city glow pressing faintly through the windows. In that half-light, his body was impossible not to notice. He was barefoot. Wearing only dark sweatpants that sat low on his hips. No shirt. Just clean skin and the hard lines of his chest and stomach, still slightly damp near his collarbone where he hadn’t dried off completely.
I resisted every stupid urge in me to put my hands on him.
I swallowed nothing and pretended the action had been about nerves instead of want.
“You’re the last person I expected to see tonight,” he said. “I figured if you opened the envelope at all, you’d send a text. Or ignore it. Or burn it out of principle.”
“That did cross my mind.”
“Which part?”
“All of them.”
His quiet huff of amusement made the room feel smaller. 
“I got your gift,” I said, because if I did not start there I was going to start somewhere worse. “And thank you. Really.”
The thank-you came out softer than I intended.
Asher studied me for a second, then nodded once. “Happy birthday again.”
“Thanks.”
An awkward silence opened between us, thick with everything we were not saying. The match confrontation. Jordan. The journal. The fact that he had done something unreasonably thoughtful and I had shown up at his door dressed like the evening might become more than gratitude.
Maybe I should have left it there.
Maybe I should have told him I only came to say thank you, turned around, and preserved what remained of my pride. That would have been smart. 
Instead my mouth opened and the real reason I had knocked three times came out with it.
“Since it’s two tickets,” I said, “would you like to come with me?”
Asher went still.
His eyes stayed on mine, and for once there was no immediate joke ready in them. No easy arrogance sliding into place. Only surprise again, quieter than at the door and somehow more dangerous for it.
“With you,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“To Elliot Vale.”
“Yes, Asher. To the concert attached to the tickets you somehow pulled out of thin air.”
A beat.
Then, slowly, that familiar glint returned… not unkind, but distinctly pleased. “Are you asking me on a date?”
My face heated all over again. “I am asking if you want the second seat before I offer it to someone less exhausting.”
“That is not a no.”
“It is also not a speech invitation.”
He took a few steps closer, and the lamp light caught along his shoulder and the line of his throat. I hated that my attention tracked it. I hated even more that he could probably see me tracking it.
“You could take Skyler,” he said
“I could.”
“And yet.”
“And yet I’m here,” I said, lifting my chin. “Don’t make it weird.”
“It is already weird,” he replied, but his voice had gone lower. “You spent days angry at me.”
“I’m still angry at you.”
“And you still want me to come.”
I held his gaze and refused to look away first. “I want to hear Elliot Vale live. You made that possible. The tickets came in a pair. I’m being practical.”
“Practical,” he echoed, unconvinced and clearly enjoying himself now. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“If you say no, I will collect the remaining dignity I walked in with and leave.”
Asher’s smile edged wider. “I didn’t say no.”
Something in my chest loosened too quickly. I covered it by glancing around the apartment like the furniture had become newly fascinating. “Good. Because it starts at nine, and if you show up looking like this they’ll assume I’m dating a man who got lost on the way back from the gym.”
He looked down at himself, then back up, completely shameless. “You came to my door, Avery. At this hour. Looking like that. You’re lucky I’m wearing anything.”
“Please put on a shirt before I reconsider.”
“Before you reconsider the concert, or before you reconsider staring?”
“I am not staring.”
“You are.”
“I am making polite eye contact with a half-dressed person in a dim room. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
I exhaled through my nose, halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “Go get dressed, Whitlock.”
He searched my face once more, then nodded like he had decided not to push the better truth out of me yet. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Five.”
“Eight.”
“You’re negotiating getting dressed?”
“I’m negotiating,” he said, already turning toward the hallway, “because if I’m going out with you looking like that, I’m not throwing on random clothes.”
“It is not a date.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, eyes bright with challenge and something warmer underneath. “Keep telling yourself that while I get ready.”
Then he disappeared toward his room, leaving me alone in the living room with my pulse too loud in my ears and the unmistakable realization that I had not only accepted his gift.
I had walked straight into the night attached to it