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It wasn’t like I’d been able to hide any of it from my face or my demeanor.
I fucking couldn’t.
Not when it came to the notion of losing him.
I already had in that fucking cell for days on end.
In truth, a part of him had still been left behind there.
And now this? Fuck. It was all too much.
To finally have this with him, only to have it taken away?
It was beyond brutal.
And it was absolute bullshit too.
“You don’t know that. What if you like the freedom of it? What if you don’t want to come back to yourself to deal with the emotional pain and the psychological turmoil you’ll be putting on hold through doing this? What if you decide it’s better for you to stay shutdown?”
He smiled and stroked my cheek, trying to soothe me. “I’m coming back.”
“How can you be so sure? I mean, I get it. All the pain and shit, wanting to keep that out forever—”
“For you, Jonah.”
“What?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I’ll do it for you.”
I curled my hand around his nape and brushed my lips over his. “Fuck, you keep saying stuff like that and I’m gonna kidnap you to a deserted island somewhere and leave this entire shitshow behind.” I nuzzled against his cheek, wrapping him up in my arms, smiling when he let me and actually sank into me too.
That smile was short-lived when I realized that this was likely gonna be the last time in a long time after he and Caleb went through with this shit today.
“All right,” I said, forcing myself against all my instincts to pull back and extricate myself from Asher. “Do what you’ve got to, brother.” I walked away to the back door, then eyed him over my shoulder. “See you on the other side.”
“It will be okay,” he assured me.
But those words were just to reassure me.
Because it wasn’t true.
He didn’t even know if it would be the case.
I gritted my teeth against the urge to stop this right now, to shut the whole thing down.
Caleb had been right, Asher was drowning.
If this could save him, pull him from the undertow, I had to let him do it.
I managed to force a smile and even a, “Yeah, I know it will.”
And then I headed back inside the house.
It had been my intention to head to the gym to work off some of this worry and frustration, but I couldn’t make myself walk away.
Not yet.
I turned back and watched covertly from the edge of the door.
