Page 25 of Creatures Like Us

I shake my head. “No.”

“Or kill yourself for all I care,” he spits.

My hand clenches around the knife handle. I’m shaking all over, heart pounding. But I say nothing. I can’t talk. I can hardly breathe. Did he really mean what he said?

“You should have left me there,” he says suddenly, eyes filling with tears.

“L-Left you?”

“In the snow.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?” he says, laughing and crying all at once. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my life.”

“So tell me.”

“Why?”

“I just?…?I just want to know you, Asher. I want to see you.”

“See me?” He gets down from the bed, on his hands and knees, chain dragging across the floor as he crawls toward me, the towel hanging precariously around his hips. “Go ahead—take what you want from me, Noah. Take everything, until there’s nothing left.” He kneels before me, and when he looks up, his face is streaked with tears.

“Ash?…” I try to back away, but he grabs my hand that is holding the knife.

“Can you at least give me this?”

“It wouldn’t be a gift. I would never hurt you like that.”

“Stop,” Asher sobs. He holds my arm in a weak grip with both hands, head dropping to the floor. “Stop lying. Just kill me.”

My jaw tightens. “Fine. Get back on the bed.”

He flips his head up, staring at me in fear and disbelief, as if he didn’t just beg me for this. Slowly, he crawls back across the floor and up onto the bed.

“This?” I advance on him, raising the knife. “Is this what you want?”

“W-Wait?…”

I straddle his hips, fitting the blade to his throat.

“No, wait!” he croaks. “Noah.” He’s sniffling, panting, eyes blown wide.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” My face is a blank mask as I play the villain he wants to paint me as. “What you begged me for?”

“No! Please, I don’t want to?…?I don’t want it to hurt!”

I blink. “You don’t want it to hurt? But you don’t mind dying?”

Asher just stares at me, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. Knife still by his throat, I bring a hand up to stroke his hair. I meant it as a soothing gesture, but I don’t think it’s coming across the way I intended.

“Don’t,” he grits out.

“Don’t what? Don’t touch you? Don’t kill you?”

“All of the above,” he snaps, glaring at me again as he realizes I probably won’t stick the knife into him—that if I wanted to, I would have done it already.

“I already told you I won’t hurt you,” I mumble. “Don’t you think killing you would involve pain?”