Shit.
I wanted to hurt Asch, to make him leave and be safe, but not like this.
“Asch…” I sigh loudly. “You’re worth more than all the fucking douchebags in Kappa Alpha. You work harder than any of them. Any of us. Even Zayden was a C student at best.” I shake my head. “Why the fuck was he studying botany? To be part of the flower mafia?”
“The flower—” he repeats, and this time, his grin is crooked, almost normal. “I forgot about that.” He sobers. “It’s hard, Blaze,” he says quietly. “Finding out everything was based on a lie… Did you evenwantto be my friend?”
“Uh, duh?” I finally step back and sit down on the bed. “If I didn’t want you around, why the fuck would I have pushed you to come with me to Dyschord? I bet your mom suggested you study at some school on the west coast, right?”
He crosses his arms against his chest, then exhales slowly. “Yeah. But I wanted to be here. Not because it’s fucking Dyschord, but because you’re my best friend, man. At least, that was what I thought, but it got so damn twisted in my head.”
He means that Pandora twisted it up in his head.
She twisted me up, too.
“Pandora said she was going to steal you from me,” I say quietly. “Because she knew it would hurt me. She wanted to destroy something important to me.”
“She wanted to destroy both of us,” Asch replies. He closes his eyes, letting his hands fall back to his sides. “I guess she sort of won, didn’t she?”
I let out a bitter chuckle. “Yeah. And despite all that, I still jumped in to help her the moment she needed it. Fuck, how does she do that?”
“I don’t even know.” Asch takes a few steps closer, hesitates, then sits down next to me on the bed. “I’m sorry. For what we did, I mean.”
“What you did?” I repeat, unsure of what he’s referring to. “Going clubbing without me?”
He fidgets, stretching his fingers and staring at them instead of looking at me. “No. The other thing.”
The other thing.
It still takes me another few seconds for it to sink in.
“Oh.” I scratch my chin. “The tying up and fucking me thing?”
Asch winces. “Yeah. That.”
I try to figure out what I should say about that. I end up shrugging again. “It’s fine. It’s not like it was your idea. Andwe’ve done similar things before. I mean, not the cocksucking, but everything else…”
He huffs out a laugh that I can’t quite read. “Yeah. Similar stuff. I guess.” He turns his head, meeting my gaze. “Maybe Pandora and I should make it up to you.”
“Yeah?” I lean back on my hands and grin. “Like how?”
“Well, I DP’d her with a dildo,” he replies. “It’d only be fair for you to get to feel the same thing, right?” He smirks. “Except not with a dildo.”
I groan. “She told me about that! Fucking teased me with it while I was fucking her in the shower.”
“It’s definitely something we should’ve tried sooner,” Asch says. “Then again, I don’t know if anyone we fucked would’ve been up to the challenge of taking both of us. Except that one chick. Um. What was her name?”
“Janice?” I hedge. “But there’s no way she would have done it. She wanted you alone, without me.”
“Pandora wants both of us,” Asch replies. “Plus River. She may have ripped us apart, but I think she’s getting bored of that. Maybe.”
I lie back on my bed and fold my hands over my stomach. “Guess so. She makes about as much sense as nuclear physics to me.”
Asch laughs again, but this time it’s a nicer, more familiar sound. “I think nuclear physics makes a lot more sense than Pandora. It’s got rules. I don’t know the rules, but the rules are there.”
“Yeah. Pandora plays by her own rules, and they change every minute.” I sigh loudly. “No wonder she needs three of us, right? A single guy would get too exhausted dealing with her.”
“Just as long as she doesn’t get any ideas about a fourth,” Asch says. “She was going to fuck some rando in the bathroom at the club last night.”
