Page 7 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

ASHER

SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD

“Do you think our parents have ever fucked?” Lucy asks.

Foxe makes a gagging noise from one corner of Lucy’s bedroom, where he and Aurora are taking shots of tequila and attempting to use a Ouija board.

I’m seated on the counter in Lucy’s bathroom, swinging my legs while she steps between them with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, swiping it over my nostril with a shaky hand.

“Why the fuck are you thinking about your parents’ dirty business?

” Foxe calls, running a hand through his disheveled brown locks.

His shirt is off, displaying the recent muscular definition afforded him by being promoted to quarterback of Aplana Academy’s football team, and Aurora can barely disguise her drooling.

I pretend not to notice though, because I don’t want them calling me out for my own inability to rein in my emotions. With Lucy between my thighs in a low-cut tank top, it’s nearly impossible to keep my stare above her head.

“Hold still,” she orders me, scrubbing at a particularly raw cut on my cheekbone.

The fight I was in this afternoon was with some asshole who didn’t like Lucy’s science project on the alternatives to fossil fuels, so she doesn’t admonish me for the fact that I showed up tonight bloodied and bruised .

They called her stupid. I broke their jaw.

She quietly cleans me and then marks my nose with a purple felt-tip marker, moving on to the task we had planned.

My hands flex against the granite counter, gripping tight as I ignore the effect her bossiness has on me.

“But also answer the question,” she says, lowering her voice.

“Do I think our parents have ever fucked? Like, each other?”

She nods, and I lift my shoulders.

“I can’t say I’ve spent much time thinking about it. Most days, I consider myself lucky that my mom and dad seem to keep their sexual weirdness to their bedroom after dark. I don’t really want to wonder if they’re bringing in others to watch.”

Lucy’s blue eyes widen. “Oh my God. That’s what they do, isn’t it? They just have orgies together. I knew our moms were too close.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Foxe chimes in, leaning away from the board as he reaches for a vodka bottle on the floor. He unscrews the cap, taking a huge gulp without wincing. “You and Ash-tree are close, but you’re not fucking. Right?”

My throat constricts, and Lucy’s mouth drops open. She whirls toward him, hurling the bottle of rubbing alcohol in his direction.

It smacks Aurora in the back of her blond head, and she groans, glaring at her cousin. “Hey! I didn’t do anything.”

“Jeez, Lulu, work on your aim,” Foxe snickers. “And learn how to take a joke.”

Aurora kicks his shin. “Don’t be a dick.”

“That’s my drum-pedaling leg,” he tells her, passing the drink. “You break it, you’ll have to explain to my dad why I didn’t get to follow in his musical footsteps.”

“He’s a professor,” she replies.

“A music professor.”

“So? It’s not like you’re on track to follow in those footsteps. You’re closer to becoming a washed up rock star like your uncle.”

“Aiden is not washed up. He retired to produce. ”

Aurora waves her hand dismissively. “Basically the same thing.”

“Okay, well, let’s not forget how your dad spends all his time at his bar?—”

Bringing my gaze back to Lucy while those two bicker, I note the fuchsia color staining her cheeks. “What’s wrong with you?”

“ Nothing ,” she snaps.

“You look like you’re about to pass out. Are you hot?”

“I don’t know, Asher. Am I?”

“What?”

Scoffing, she reaches for the piercing clamp on the counter and shakes her head, clutching my chin again as she positions the metal prongs over my nostril. “Forget it. Just hold still so I can do this.”

“But I want to know?—”

She slides the needle in so quickly, I barely even register the bite of pain before she pulls it back out, quickly filling the hole with a small sapphire stud.

My skin vibrates a little at the foreign sensation tickling the inside of my nose.

“There,” she says in a monotone voice. “The deed is done. You now have a hole in your face, just like my mom.”

Foxe whistles. “Your mom is smokin’ , so by default, this is too.”

“Gross,” Aurora complains. “He’s your cousin, weirdo.”

“I can’t appreciate an attractive person if they’re related to me?” He huffs, leaning back against the poster-covered wall. “I mean, we’re all practically related. Our parents are closer than most cults.”

“Not sure that’s a great comparison,” I note.

He rolls his hazel eyes. “Back me up here, Lulu. You think Asher’s attractive, right?”

My pulse mobilizes, ratcheting to extreme levels in my chest.

I don’t want her to answer.

No. Not true. I just don’t know why I want her to answer.

Or at least I don’t want to admit that I do.

Still, every atom of my being strains to hear the slightest shift in Lucy’s breathing or to see the blush staining her face darken. She turns away from me, cleaning up the tools she purchased specifically to pierce my nose.

No eye contact is made. It’s almost as if I’m no longer here to her.

And she doesn’t answer at all.

“ Boring ,” Foxe says, staggering to his feet.

He glances around the room at her desk and bookshelves cluttered with pet paraphernalia—dog tags, collars, leashes she and her younger sister, Logan, have crafted into key chains—and a raw mineral collection, finally finding his T-shirt on top of a pile of discarded clothing.

Bugs in resin line Lucy’s white dresser, next to a bottle of perfume and a picture from the day she buried her first dog.

It’s the three of them on the beach behind my house, plus her brother Lachlan. I’m nowhere to be seen, though Foxe’s nose is swollen and packed with cotton, so my legacy is unmistakable.

Still, I can’t help noticing it’s the only picture in Lucy’s room, aside from a few of her immediate family and the many animals the Wolfes have fostered over the years.

Almost like I don’t exist at all.

I’d expected there to be a disconnect once I graduated, because Lucy is the kind of person to withdraw when she feels too much, but I hadn’t planned on the erasure happening before then.

“We should head home,” Foxe tells me, tugging his shirt on over his head. He smirks at the piercing as he gets closer, nodding once. “Yup, just as I suspected. Hot like Aunt Cora.”

“If you want to bang Lucy’s mom, you should just say that,” Aurora grumbles from the bed. She’s fuming, even as she pulls up a random compilation video on her phone.

“Everyone in Aplana wants to bang Lucy’s mom.” Foxe shrugs, slinging his arm over my shoulder and dragging me from the bathroom. “Except Asher, who doesn’t want to bang anyone, ever. Right?”

I stare at him, resisting the urge to look at the raven-haired girl to his right .

“My dad would hunt you down if you even looked at her for too long,” Lucy says finally, washing her hands in the sink. “So I wouldn’t suggest trying anything.”

There’s a hint of wistfulness in her tone, a reverence she keeps in place for the few people she admires.

Is that the kind of thing she’s into? Extreme jealousy and overprotection?

Have I not been doing enough?

Internally, I shake my head. It’s not like it fucking matters. None of this means a damn thing, because I’ll never act on it anyway.

Not in this lifetime at least.

Some people are simply destined to watch greatness from the sidelines. I’m a man cursed by his own want, a slave to captive desire.

She’d never go for it. For me.

I wouldn’t even know how to ask.

“Yeah, yeah.” Foxe rolls his eyes, pulling me toward the door. “The fantasy’s always better anyway.”

That, at least, I can agree with.

The fantasy is all I’ve fucking got.

“What made you decide not to continue school?” I ask Mom a few days later, aware that she doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s in the middle of a project deadline but willing to risk her wrath anyway.

The thing with Mom’s anger is that it burns out quickly, whereas Dad’s is a quiet flame that builds and consumes slowly.

Mine is…eternal. That’s all I know about it.

It’s this disease that pulses inside my stomach on a constant rotation, ready to push me into action no matter the circumstance. I can’t seem to ever let it go, ignore it, or move on.

It’s just there.

It is .

Mom glances up at me from her laptop, a thoughtful expression on her angular face. Her golden-hazel eyes are soft at the corners, and she purses her pink-painted lips as if genuinely contemplating her answer.

“Well, I married your father, for one.” She leans back from her desk, folding her hands in her lap. “And I was really into him. At that point, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving him.”

My face screws up, and I close the tattered copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls resting on my knee. “Didn’t he force you into the marriage?”

“Force is a strong word. Your father is a man of action, and I like to think he just didn’t know how to ask back then.”

“You’d have married him if he asked?”

“Probably. I had a fiancé, and he was terrible. I’d been infatuated with Kallum for practically my whole life. The decision would’ve been an easy one.”

“But he didn’t let you make it.”

“I suppose that’s where the force comes in. Not that I minded.” She grins, seemingly at the memory, pushing some dark brown hair from her shoulder.

“Ew,” I mutter, resting my head on the back of the armchair I’m in.

The library at the Asphodel, our family home, is huge . Dad had it renovated before I was born to accommodate his and Mom’s love for literature, and the built-in mahogany shelves stretch all the way to the ceiling, with attached ladders giving access to the books out of reach.

“A library is a place of worship,” he told me at one point, and I often wondered if that was why we didn’t go to church. If my parents found religion within the pages of these bound masterpieces.