With my shoulders hanging low, I head to the projector to switch it off. Since my room is so small, I’m already halfway there when Asher requests for me to leave it on. My already fast pulse quickens when he steps inside my room. I don’t know why it feels me with giddy gooeyness, but it does.
My inward grin fades when Asher asks, “When was this filmed?”
It’s still heard in my voice when I reply, “I don’t know.”
Asher gives me a look, one that announces his annoyance at my lack of knowledge. I’m not playing dumb; I just started watching this reel when he arrived, so I haven’t had time to evaluate the blurry date at the bottom of the screen.
“There’s a timestamp at the bottom.” I point to the date I thought was a smudge at the beginning of my mini movie marathon.
When Asher steps closer to the wall, the wide span of his shoulders hides my dislike of Vaughn hogging all his attention. “It was the Christmas before your mom died.”
Although shocked he remembered the year of her death by only seeing a date, I nod, acknowledging I heard him. Grief must impact you in ways you’d never suspect, as the months around her death are where things become hazy for me. I remember the date of her death, and how Asher held me at her funeral—more because of the video his mother played weeks ago than actual memories—but I don’t recall much after that.
I guess there isn’t much to remember. My incarceration didn’t start the day Asher shoved me into this room. It commenced many years earlier. I understand why my father locked me away. He was a feared man who terrified more people than he assured, but he loved my mother—so much so, he did everything in his power to ensure she was well protected.
It didn’t work.
My mother didn’t die of natural causes. She was murdered. By whom? We don’t know. All we know is that it had to be someone close to her, because my father never let anyone get near his beloved Ari. It wasn’t that he feared she’d leave him; he just knew his enemies would use his only weakness against him. His protectiveness of her shifted to me after she was killed. Some days, I wish it hadn’t. The life I was living before my father gave my hand in marriage to Asher wasn’t a life. I’ve lived more the past six weeks than I have the past six years.
I gasp in a sharp breath when the reason for Asher’s sour expression in the black and white footage pops into my head. It’s a little fuzzy, but a memory all the same. “Vaughn wanted the firetruck my mother gave you for Christmas. She hadn’t accepted that you no longer played with toys. Well, not kiddie ones anyway.”
For the first time in a long time, I see sparks of the boy I used to know when Asher throws his head back and laughs. “That’s right. Supposedly he had askedDed Morozfor that exact one. When he didn’t get it, he accused me of swapping the tags. I didn’t even want it, but since he did, I pretended I couldn’t live without it.”
The butterflies in my stomach fly away when my laughter joins Asher’s. “You always did tease him like that.”
There’s a much bigger age gap between Asher and Vaughn than me, so they’ve never really been friends. They had more the big brother/ little brother vibe going on.
Hoping to keep our conversation light, I murmur, “Vaughn will never admit it, but I swear he’s still hoping to become a fireman one day.”
Asher’s laughter stops, replaced with a much deeper, much more pulse-quickening growl. “Are you sure that is what he meant, Zariah? Perhaps your innocence had you misconstruing what he said. Men often hope women see parts of their bodies as hoses. Rarely are they referencing a job title.”
Feeling daring, I stick out my tongue. His reply was cheeky, so I’m confident I won’t get reprimanded.
I do, in a way, just not as I anticipated. “Poke it out again, and I’ll put it to good use.”
A normal person could misinterpret the innuendo in his reply as a threat. I’m not close to normal. He is being as playful as the havoc his naked torso is causing my lower regions. Not even the poor lighting from the flickering projector can detract from his physique. My eager eyes are happily drinking in the rigid cuts of his abdomen and the smoothly stretched skin of his pecs. He has bumps and veins sprouting in all directions, and a tattoo he never had when he was a teen covers a majority of his left shoulder. He’s always had a compact body, but now it’s more of a fighter’s build than a fitness fanatic’s. His muscles aren’t for show. He certainly knows how to use them.
When he steps closer to me, preparing to retaliate, I back away. I’d give anything to be brave enough to test the ambiguity in his tone a little further, but my trip down memory lane left me feeling a little defeated. Being forced back into living has rejuvenated my lungs with oxygen, but it’s been an extremely eye-opening few weeks. Things have certainly changed from when we were kids, and no, I’m not solely referring to Asher’s panty-wetting build and seemingly dark temperament. My mom brought out the best in people—Asher and myself included. No amount of polish could duplicate the shine she added to our lives. It feels bleak without her, almost empty.
Asher and I spend the next twenty minutes in silence. I stand to the side of my room, nervously tugging on the low rise of the shirt I’m daringly wearing as a nightie, whereas Asher maintains his stance just inside my bedroom door. We don’t talk. We just watch the soundless movie from a time when I was too young to understand why Asher so desperately wanted to be anything but the man he was born to be, and he had just reached the age where he realized that would never be a possibility. He was only a teen but was already expected to do so much.
The flapping of the reel coming to an end overpowers the frantic beat of my heart. I’m about to light a candle before switching off the projector, but Asher stops me. “Do you have any more?”
“Yeah.” I nod way too eagerly. “There are a bunch of reels in here.” I flip off the box’s lid before waving my hand over the bright silver reels that appear much newer than their rusty counterpart. The projector is so ancient, I have to manually feed the tape from projector A to projector B. “Is there anything in particular you want to watch?”
New butterflies take flight in my stomach when Asher steps closer to me. His freshly showered scent was already tightening my insides from a distance. I don’t know if I can handle it up close and personal. “Are there any prior to the one we just saw?”
I nod. “They all precede that tape. From what I can gather, we stopped being filmed after my mother died, then we lost contact only a few short months after that.”
When Asher smiles, I peer at him in bewilderment. Why is he smiling? Saying we “lost contact” was putting it nicely. Our families battled—viciously. We became mortal enemies within months. That’s nothing to laugh about.
I realize I have the situation all wrong when Asher murmurs, “Do you have my tenth birthday in there?”
As sassiness sizzles my veins, I spread my hands across my cocked hip. “The one where you ate so much cake you nearly vomited, or when Wyatt dared you to kiss Melanie Roderick in front of her father?” I’d give anything to sock him in the arm when he nods at my second question. Since I can’t, I use words instead. “No. I don’t havethattape.”
I’m lying. I know it, and so does Asher, but I don’t care. I’d rather be reprimanded for lying than recall how I cried myself to sleep that night because Asher’s lips touched Melanie’s. My seven-year-old self didn’t understand why I was angry, but I was certain I wanted to kill Melanie.
Mercifully, her father was just as mad. After a stern word with Asher’s mother, he stormed out of our house that afternoon with a crying Melanie in his clutches. Only a few short days later, Melanie was shipped to boarding school. Serves her right. She was fourteen. She should not have been flirting with a ten-year-old boy.
