Page 27 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

Once we’re in the student parking lot outside the front gate, I clutch my biceps tight, trying to warm myself. It isn’t that cold out, but I can’t seem to get the goose bumps on my arms to go away.

“So…” Aurora begins. “What did happen last night?”

“Nothing,” I tell her, though the lie feels like cinder blocks filling my body. “I got lost looking for more drinks, and then?—”

I’m cut off as I collide with a massive wall of flesh and muscle, clad in a soft cashmere sweater. My grunt is swallowed by his chest, and two big hands come up to steady me.

“ Asher ?” Aurora gasps, immediately trying to tug me away from him.

He doesn’t release me though. I lift my chin, meeting those tumultuous brown eyes, and regret it instantly .

In the daylight, I notice things I didn’t see hours ago: the hint of gold circling his pupils, which seem to dilate in the sun, and the jewelry adorning his left ear.

They mirror the piercings on mine, though his are just plain silver hoops in his lobe and cartilage. He didn’t have those three years ago.

“What are…” Aurora trails off, as if at a loss for words for the first time ever. She reaches up, rubbing her eyes with her fists, and then shakes her head. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just returning Lucy’s cardigan,” he deadpans. He lets go of my arms, holding up a scrap of black fabric I don’t remember taking off last night.

Aurora’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline. “Is that the one from?—”

Not bothering to stick around and answer, Asher shoves the piece of clothing into my hands and then continues on his way through the front gates. I wonder if he’s serious about being here now.

One more person I’ll have to try and avoid, I guess.

Aurora’s mouth gapes when I turn to look at her.

“Please don’t ask,” I say, tying the cardigan around my waist. He must have washed it in the Erebus basement, because it’s not dirty at all. “It really isn’t what you think.”

“Yeah, right .” She laughs, looping her arm through mine as we begin walking toward her bubblegum pink BMW. “The boy you’ve been crying about since graduation suddenly shows up with your clothes, and I’m supposed to believe nothing happened?”

“Does that mean when I found you and Foxe naked in my pool four years ago, you guys were definitely screwing around?”

“Screwing around?” Again, she laughs, and I hate the little stab of envy I feel in my gut. She clearly has no clue what went down last night, and I refuse to be the one to ruin that for her. “No, babe, we fucked for sure. He was my first, you know?”

My eyes shoot to hers. “What the hell? Why are you just now telling me this?”

“Well, it wasn’t a particularly good time.

He’d had way too much to drink, and neither of us knew what we were doing…

” The lights on her vehicle flash as she unlocks it, and she slides away from me.

“Besides, what’s it matter when he’s probably out fucking the whole world on tour these days?

We’ve both moved on, and that’s where I’d like to keep things. ”

I stare at her across the hood, running a finger over the car’s shiny coat of paint.

It would probably be in our best interest if I gave her a heads-up that Foxe is, in fact, on campus with Asher, but there’s a difference in her eyes when she talks about him versus the one I know I get when I think about Asher.

If there’s unfinished business with them, she doesn’t care. It can stay in the past as far as she’s concerned.

Maybe she already had her closure.

Should I have sex with Asher?

Horror—and something else, something sort of magical—pulses through me with that thought, and I shake my head, trying to clear my foggy brain of all its chaos.

Why in the world would I have sex with someone who made it clear years ago that he wasn’t interested in me?

The shame from how he acted after I kissed him still burns bright in the back of my mind—as bright as that fucking fire he set at Lethe’s because he was mad at me. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself, and I don’t want to get tangled up in that sort of mess anymore.

I flop into the passenger seat, squeezing the cardigan in my lap. Aurora slides in beside me, checking her lip gloss in the rearview mirror.

“ So ,” she says, drawing out the o . “Are you going to tell me what else happened, or do I have to wait for the next holiday back home to get the deets from my parents? We both know our dads are going to be talking about this forever.”

“He just showed up, all right? I don’t know why or how or…anything, really. One second, I was lost, and the next, Asher Anderson was manhandling me back to my dorm.”

“Classic Ash-tree. Did he even try to cop a feel at least?”

I shoot her a look. “Why is everything about sex with you? ”

“Not everything is about sex. Just the important things, if Shakespeare and Victorian lit have taught me anything.” Grinning, she jabs me with her elbow. “Besides, you two are just a long time coming?—”

“Please stop.”

“All right, but I demand to know the second it happens so I can tell you I told you so.”

Gritting my teeth, I clench the cardigan in my fists, ignoring how his scent clings to the fabric. Almost like he sprayed his fucking cologne on it.

Sex is off the table. I don’t even know him anymore.

Last night, he was covered in blood and showed up out of nowhere, somehow just happening upon the exact place where Celeste was being gangbanged and dumped into the lake.

If I believed in coincidence, maybe that wouldn’t bug me so much. But at Avernia, I’ve learned that everything is calculated or purposeful, and coincidences only seem that way when someone wants them to.

Nothing is left up to chance or accident. Our fates are written in the stars, the mountains, and the bathroom stalls.

Often in blood.

I spent my whole childhood thinking Asher Anderson would always be at my side. Something in me died a bit when I realized he hadn’t been planning the same. There’s no way I’ll believe now that he just decided to change his mind.

Aurora shifts gears, backing up. “We’ll stop at Lethe’s and then head to the diner. Please don’t make me try their vegan bacon again though. I almost threw up last time.”

I roll my eyes. “Why Lethe’s?”

She smirks. “After the night you probably had? Getting drunk is the only solution. We need hard liquor.”

She has no idea. “It’s morning. Isn’t day drinking kind of…pathetic?”

Aurora considers this. “It’s only been a few hours since we left the party. We’ll just pretend we never stopped drinking in the first place.”