Page 88 of Creatures Like Us

“I said I was staying with you, didn’t I? I said I never want you to leave me, and I meant it. However, and I think this goes without saying: If you ever imprison me again, if you ever even consider it, we’re done.” He squeezes my throat then, thumb digging into the edge of my jaw.

My throat clicks under his palm. For several seconds, minutes, hours after that, I try to calm down and go to sleep, but I can’t.

Because Ihaveconsidered it.

Chapter 23

Asher

Noah’sbeenactingweirdever since the night he cut me. I thought it would solve things between us, or at least make me feel better, but the opposite is true.

He tiptoes around me. Does everything I wish in a moment’s notice. He ordered groceries with my card the other day, and now he cooks me whatever I want. It was nice at first, but today, I kind of regret asking him to make lasagna, because it means I’ll be spending all that time upstairs.

I pull restlessly on my fingers as I wait for Noah to finish cooking, glancing out at the oppressive sunlight of the yard outside the window.

“I don’t want to be up here, Noah. Let’s go downstairs.”

“I know,” he says. “I just need to finish this. We can eat downstairs.”

“Fine.”

As soon as we’ve plated the food, we descend the stairs once more and eat dinner in bed, quietly chatting about unrelated stuff. At times like these, our relationship seems normal, but the thing is, it can’t ever be normal, and there’s no use in trying to wrangle it into something it’s not.

Not being normal isn’t necessarily bad, but I figure one of the ways to make it better is communication. I have to at least try.

“What’s going on with you?” I ask. Our food is finished, the plates empty—or at least, mine is. Noah is a slow eater.

He licks his lips and looks at me, eyebrows raised in question.

“You’ve been acting weird lately,” I explain. “Weirder than usual.”

“Weird how?”

“You’re quieter. You won’t top me, even when I ask you to.” I pull my legs up, hugging my knees. “Are you freaking out about the knife thing?”

Noah shakes his head.

“Then what?”

“I want?…” He closes his mouth. Opens it again, frowning. Finally, he sets his plate aside and says, “I want you to feel safe with me, Asher.”

My mouth tightens. So that’s what this is about—my confession about not feeling safe around him. I never knew it would affect him this much. If I knew, I never would’ve said it.

I suppose, in some sense, we needed to have that conversation though—and this one, and every one hereafter, if this thing between us is going to have any kind of chance to work out. And I want it to work out. I don’t want anything more.

I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to stop my desires to hurt him, and I don’t even know if Iwantto stop them. There are some things that might never be fixed, like the way we started. The way Noah imprisoned me and made me feel worse than I ever have in my life. Humiliated. Powerless.

I think I deserve to remedy that somehow—at least try—and if I can make us feel good in the process, why not? As long as I don’t go too far. As long as it still feels good for us both.

I think Noah wants it, same as me. I think he recognizes that, at some level, he owes me this. He owes me to let me do some fucked-up things to him, and I think he likes it too. It doesn’t need to be bad, right? It just is. It’s all we can manage for now.

“That’s what you want, huh?” I mumble. “For me to feel safe around you?”

“Yes. More than anything.”

I slip a finger into my mouth to dig out a stray piece of food stuck in a molar. “Well, how are you going to manage that?”

“I don’t know.”