Page 68 of Creatures Like Us

“Do you want to leave me?” There it is. I know I’ll regret even broaching the subject, but here we are. “You can, you know. I won’t kill myself.”Lie.

“Do you really think I believe that?” he says, voice shaking. “Besides, I don’t even fuckingwant to. There’s nothing out there for me. No one cares about me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“At least, they don’t care about me like you do.”

The thought makes me smile. He said he liked it when I smiled, but it seems like the wrong expression to make in this situation. His eyes go dark, and his fingers tap sharply against the marble slate top of the kitchen island.

“What, you like that, do you? You like that you’re the only person in my life who cares about me? Is that fun for you?”

“Ash?…” I reach for his hand again, and again, he rips it away. “I don’t have anyone else either.”

“Yeah, but up until recently, you did. I’ve never had that, you know, what you had with your aunt. She was like a mom to you, right?”

“Yes.” More than that—she was my whole world.

“Well, I have a mom, a dad, and a brother, but since they don’t give a shit about me, it feels like I don’t.”

“How about your friends?”

He gestures sharply to his phone, teeth gritted. “Some friends. No one’s tried to contact me since New Year’s. I disappeared, Ifucking got kidnapped, but still, they haven’t cared to check in on me.”

“You’re not kidnapped any longer.”

“Yeah?” His voice sharpens. “Well, sometimes it still feels like I’m stuck here. With you.”

“But you’re not. You’re free to go.”Please don’t go.My hands start shaking along with my voice, and I swallow against the lump in my throat.

“I’m not leaving, Noah,” Asher says, and I cling to the sudden softness in his tone. “I’m staying. Please stop looking like that.”

I meet his gaze with tears burning behind my eyes. I open my mouth to speak, but in that moment, the timer rings. The cookies are done.

Asher licks his lips. “Finally.”

They’re perfect—crispy on the outside and warm and gooey on the inside. Asher rolls his eyes, moaning as he eats. Maybe now that he’s gotten what he wants, he’ll be more inclined to listen to me.

“I don’t have any friends either, Asher. I’ve never had friends.”

He hums with his mouth full. “What was that like in school?”

“Lonely. I took refuge in the forest, like I told you.”

“Sounds pretty fucking miserable.”

“It was.”

He shrugs, and after devouring one cookie, he grabs another. “Well, we went to the same school, didn’t we? If I’d known about you, I’d have been your friend.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I say with a joyless smile.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he agrees.

From everything I know so far, Asher was a regular kid. He had a social life, and he was compatible with the world and what it expected him to act like, whereas I was a social pariah, an alien. It must be fate that we met at the time we did, now thatwe’re old enough for our timelines to converge and our interests to align.

“Are they good enough?” I ask after he’s devoured his third cookie.

“Huh?”