Asher fixed his mouth over mine again, slipping his tongue between my lips. My little voice of reason silently screamed at me to stop, but with every stroke of his tongue, every press of his lips, it grew quieter and quieter until all the reasons why this was a bad idea melted away.
I let my hands glide over his shoulders, tangling my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. Asher broke the kiss, brushing his nose over mine, before tracing his lips over my jaw and down the slope of my neck. Sucking and nibbling and grazing his teeth against the sensitive skin, sending thousands of tiny shivers rippling through me.
“I want you, Mya,” he rasped. “I need you.”
The sheer desperation in his voice had me gripping his chin and lifting his face to mine. “What happened yesterday, Asher?”
Indecision flickered in his eyes. He wanted to tell me, but something held him back.
“What happened with your ex?” he countered.
Damn him.
We were back to this. Both of us needing more, neither of us willing to share. But one of us had to make a move, to give an inch.
Something told me it wasn’t going to be him.
Taking a deep breath, I started. “Jermaine is... was my best friend.” I pushed Asher off me gently, needing air. He sat back, raking a hand through his perfectly messed up hair.
“We grew up together, were in the same class at school. Our mamas always used to joke that we were two halves of the same whole.” Asher let out a small breath and my eyes slid to his. “I won’t lie to you, Asher. He was my everything.”
“What changed?” His voice was tight.
“I don’t need to tell you that where I come from, it isn’t like Rixon. When you’re a kid it’s easier to ignore what happens on street corners, but once you hit high school it’s reality. Drugs, gangs...” I hesitated, unsure of how much to tell him. Not because I was protecting Jermaine, that ship had long sailed, but because I was protecting myself.
If I told Asher, if I let him into that part of my life, there was no undoing it. I’d forever be the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
“He fell in with some bad people. Things got out of control and he got hurt.” I got hurt, the words teetered on the tip of my tongue.
Asher’s brows bunched together as he studied me, seeing right through my defenses. “And...”
“And I knew I’d lost him. Next time it wasn’t going to be a gang jumping him, roughing him up. It was going to be a car rolling by with a gun. My mama wanted me out of there and my aunt was all too willing to let me stay with her. Your turn,” I said, wavering under the intensity of his stare.
Asher, like Felicity and Hailee and everyone else at Rixon High, knew one version of Mya. Sure they saw the military boots, the denim overalls, and plaid shirts, but she was still a tamed down version of herself. Because I knew the other version of Mya, the real version, and this place, these people, wouldn’t mesh.
“My dad is an asshole,” Asher deadpanned, his face devoid of emotion.
“Okaaaay. I don’t really know what to say to that.”
“Everyone thinks he’s this awesome self-made man who provides for his family but he’s a mean son of a bitch. A real devil in sheep’s clothing.”
“No one else knows this?”
He shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “Money talks, I guess. And don’t get me wrong, on the face of it, he’s generous. He donates to charity, helps out my friends’ families. Supports the team. But everything comes with a price where Andrew Bennet is concerned.”
“And you have to pay it.” I whispered.
“Four years.” Asher tugged at the ends of his hair. “He gave me four years of high school, but senior year is almost up.”
“What happens after high school?” Dread slithered up my spine.
Asher ran a hand down his face, his expression contorted with pain. “I become his puppet.”
I didn’t know what that meant but I could feel the torment radiating from him.
“My father was never the athletic type. He didn’t play football or run track or anything like that. His talent was computers and tech. Figuring out how things work and making them work better. I was never interested in that stuff and I was always a big disappointment to him. Football... that was my passion, and I was good at it. Not as good as Jason,” he gave me a wry smile, “but I could have had a good college football career. So the deal was I got to play at Rixon if I walked away from football in college and focused on academics.”
“Asher, that’s not—”
“Fair?” he scoffed. “My old man doesn’t care about that. All he cares about is his business and making sure I’m ready to take his place and finally become the son he’s always wished he had.”
“What about your mom? How does she feature in all this?”
His expression darkened and I knew I’d hit another chord. “She’s the reason I got four years.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before high school, Dad tried to make me quit football, said it wasn’t becoming of a Bennet. He’d never hid the fact he resented he got me instead of a carbon copy of himself. When I was a kid, Mom sheltered me from a lot of that, but I didn’t realize just how much she protected me until I got older.” His eyes settled on a spot on the floor, his fists curled tight and rubbing against his thigh.
I reached for him, uncurling his fingers and sliding them between mine. Asher looked at me and I smiled. “I’m right here,” I whispered.
“Mom knew how important it was for me to play with Jason and Cam. So she sacrificed herself,” he almost choked over the words.
“I don’t... what do you mean?”
It was her husband, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal for a wife to support her husband, unless… “Asher?” I said when he didn’t answer. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling with his ragged breaths.
“When I say he’s mean, Mya.” Asher’s eyes opened. He looked broken and it made my heart ache. “He isn’t just mean with his words.”
“Oh.” The unspoken words hung between us.
“Did he ever… hurt you?”
“When I was younger, he’d get so mad at me. Mom always stepped in though. I thought she tempered his anger, but he’d take it out on her when I wasn’t around. She was good at hiding it but there’s only so much makeup can disguise. Thankfully, he was away a lot for work so it was just the two of us and Serena, the housekeeper. But then the summer before high school he started going on about how it was time for me to learn the business and show more interest in my future.
“We got into a big fight when he said I couldn’t try out for the football team in high school, but Mom intervened, made me leave the house. When I finally returned, they sat me down and told me that they had come to an arrangement. Mom would start accompanying Dad on his business trips and I got four years of football with my friends. He’d always wanted her to be more involved, but she wanted to raise me.”
There was so much I wanted to ask. So much that didn’t make sense. But I could see the emotional toll it had taken on Asher to finally tell someone the truth.
To tell me.