Status: COMMENT SWAP: Please read the Prologue and Ch. 1 before commenting. -Thank you
Tremble
Six
The cover of the book was soft and indented with words and scribbled little sketches. Kaden’s fingers moved over the indents of the pictures and the words as she contemplated unleashing all that lay behind it. Asher had given her complete permission to search through the book, in fact, he had urged her to. This alone had the potential to frighten her more than he usually did.
As she situated herself on the couch in the comforts of her living room, she laid a throw pillow on her lap and placed the thick, jagged-edged sketchbook atop that. Her phone buzzed against her leg three times. When she opened them up, she looked at all three messages as mom, dad, and Cal were all bolded. Mom had wrote that she was working through to the last shift, dad said that he was on double work-shift calls at the office, and Callum had said that he was suspended and grounded because of it. All in all, she was utterly alone until further notice.
She hated being alone all of the time. She didn’t like to be alone with her mind lately. It was full of conflict between the growing feelings she had for Asher and the realization that nothing good came out of that infatuation. She was terrified of him, but she was so focused on the look on his face when he’d stated that he didn’t want to hurt her. The look on his face was stuck in her head, replaying and pausing long enough to notice the tears sticking to his eyes before they dried up as did his apologetic air.
“Stop it!” she screamed to herself as she slammed her hand down onto the black cover.
With a quick, supportive breath to clear her mind of her frustrations, she pulled the cover open and stared down at the first picture. Her left hand pressed to her mouth as she stared down at the picture. It was a sketch of Asher lying on hardwood flooring in a wall-less room. He was on his stomach with one knee bent up toward his chest and his other out straight. With him being shirtless, it was easy to see his cracked rib protrude awkwardly as it bent internally. His fingers pushed into the ground as long, slightly curled locks fell over his face. He used red Sharpie to emphasize the blood on his face and where his rib was cracked. He shaded his skin darkly where the bruises covered his body.
At the top of the picture, in red chicken scratch, read, “Just kill me already…”
The next picture that didn’t involve a beaten, defeated Asher was a picture of a long-haired woman who was fainted over the arm of a chair as Asher pressed himself against the wall. His head was bowed and the back of the woman’s hand was pressed against her forehead as tears streamed down her cheeks. Beside Asher’s head was a noose, his name written into the rope vertically.
Words were written in a giant air-bubble that connected back to the woman’s mouth. “How could I be so damned? How could God hate me so much? How could he hate me so much as to leave me with you?”
Tears stung at Kaden’s eyes as she turned the page, a letter covering the page instead of a picture. Her fingers moved across the page, touching the indents the words made into the page as she tried to dry her eyes up.
Kaden wiped a tear from her eye, her throat closing up as she tried to form a coherent thought to fit what she’d just read. He was dark – this was true, but he just as sad as anyone else could be. It was almost weird for her to be able to view Asher like a human being, capable of feeling and rejecting thought just like anyone else. He had potential and he had hardships as well as high points. He had contemplating thoughts and he had doubts. He felt hurt and sadness and anger just like she could.
She wiped her eyes and snapped her head up to stare at her door as someone knocked on it. She looked down at her phone, but found that she hadn’t any new messages since she last checked it. She hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten since she had started to thumb through and examine with depth all of his pictures. This passage was near the middle of the pile and she didn’t know how many pictures she had gone through to actually get to this entry.
Slowly, Kaden closed the sketchbook and buried it beneath the pillow as if she had to hide this from people like Asher silently expected her to. She was about to get up from her spot until she looked back down at the pillow and decided that burying it under the cushion was a better idea.
Pulling the door back and standing in the threshold, Kaden raked her eyes up the tall form of the owner of the sketchbook. With furrowing brows, Kaden cleared her throat, “What are you doing here?”
“Examining the sky at a different perspective – what do you think I’m doing here?” Asher cruelly joked through sarcasm as he gestured toward the sky and then back around Kaden.
Her eyes just stared at him as she pulled a smirk between her lips. Blinking, she bluntly replied, “I don’t need your sarcasm, okay?”
“Who says I was being sarcastic?” Asher braced his hand against the opened door, leaning into it as he leaned closer to her. There was a smirk present on his face as well.
“Oh, so this is you being charming?” Kaden blinked dramatically, opening her eyes up to stare at him with hardness.
That wicked smirk curled more around his lips as they parted to show perfectly white teeth. “I’m whatever you think I am, sweetheart.”
“And if I think you’re crazy?” she replied with a sense of challenge.
He chuckled slowly as his fingers fanned out against the wood of the door. A shrug lifted one of his shoulders before dropping it with a calming carelessness. “Everyone thinks that of me, I wasn’t expecting you to.”
Her humor sobered into confusion and realization. She cleared her throat and leaned against the door, almost to the point of her leaning under his ever closer lurking form. “You weren’t?”
“No, I thought you’d be a little more creative than that.” Asher slowly whispered out as he leaned around her, his hand pressing beside her head.
“And what if I’m not what you’re thinking?” Kaden swallowed slowly as she stared deep into those dark eyes with a tremble climbing her spine.
Asher could easily feel the growing tension in the air, the need for him to kiss her was spreading across her cheeks in a soft rosy blush. “I know I’m not.”
Kaden’s breath hitched as Asher began to lean a little closer. There was a need to lower her voice, to speak in a whisper for him to lean closer to hear it correctly. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
Asher was now the one to swallow whatever taste was in his mouth as he slowly dragged his foot across the threshold and pivoted his body in front of her. He searched through her eyes and nodded once as he took in the beautiful cherry wood brown they were. “I do know that after you looked through my drawings you thought I was just as normal as you.”
Slowly, Kaden pressed her hand to his chest and curled her fingers around the fabric, dragging him closer towards her. Her lips were moving softly with the nighttime air and whispering just loud enough to pierce his eardrums. “What if I don’t want you to be normal?”
He gulped as he pressed his chest into hers, his head turning down as her head tipped against the door and stared up into his eyes. He gripped the wrist that was at her side and pressed it into the wood of the door, his other hand pressing with gentle fingers against her neck. “What if I told you there was no going back from this point? What if I told you I needed to have you?”
Kaden’s breath hitched in anticipation. She had literally no clue as to what was going on with her. She wanted Asher so much that it burned her stomach with eagerness, a building want she couldn’t control. She wanted him to claim her, but the only thing that was stopping her was that this wasn’t how she usually acted. She needed and belonged with the kind of person Callum was. Someone who was innocent and promised not to hurt her, promised to always be loyal to her and love her with all of the force in the world. Asher could never promise her any of those things. In fact, he could probably promise the exact opposite of all of those.
She figured that was why she wanted him as badly as she did. “What if I told you to kiss me, Asher?”
His breath hitched when she said his name, his body pressing more into hers as he rolled his eyes back for a moment. When he opened them up again, he pressed his body completely against hers and started to lower his mouth to hers. He stopped once he was a breath away, whispering just as equally with need. “What if I told you all it would take was a kiss?”
As she situated herself on the couch in the comforts of her living room, she laid a throw pillow on her lap and placed the thick, jagged-edged sketchbook atop that. Her phone buzzed against her leg three times. When she opened them up, she looked at all three messages as mom, dad, and Cal were all bolded. Mom had wrote that she was working through to the last shift, dad said that he was on double work-shift calls at the office, and Callum had said that he was suspended and grounded because of it. All in all, she was utterly alone until further notice.
She hated being alone all of the time. She didn’t like to be alone with her mind lately. It was full of conflict between the growing feelings she had for Asher and the realization that nothing good came out of that infatuation. She was terrified of him, but she was so focused on the look on his face when he’d stated that he didn’t want to hurt her. The look on his face was stuck in her head, replaying and pausing long enough to notice the tears sticking to his eyes before they dried up as did his apologetic air.
“Stop it!” she screamed to herself as she slammed her hand down onto the black cover.
With a quick, supportive breath to clear her mind of her frustrations, she pulled the cover open and stared down at the first picture. Her left hand pressed to her mouth as she stared down at the picture. It was a sketch of Asher lying on hardwood flooring in a wall-less room. He was on his stomach with one knee bent up toward his chest and his other out straight. With him being shirtless, it was easy to see his cracked rib protrude awkwardly as it bent internally. His fingers pushed into the ground as long, slightly curled locks fell over his face. He used red Sharpie to emphasize the blood on his face and where his rib was cracked. He shaded his skin darkly where the bruises covered his body.
At the top of the picture, in red chicken scratch, read, “Just kill me already…”
The next picture that didn’t involve a beaten, defeated Asher was a picture of a long-haired woman who was fainted over the arm of a chair as Asher pressed himself against the wall. His head was bowed and the back of the woman’s hand was pressed against her forehead as tears streamed down her cheeks. Beside Asher’s head was a noose, his name written into the rope vertically.
Words were written in a giant air-bubble that connected back to the woman’s mouth. “How could I be so damned? How could God hate me so much? How could he hate me so much as to leave me with you?”
Tears stung at Kaden’s eyes as she turned the page, a letter covering the page instead of a picture. Her fingers moved across the page, touching the indents the words made into the page as she tried to dry her eyes up.
[Entry 1]
People tell me every day that I should kill myself. People tell me every day that I should kill those who say that I should kill myself. My father contemplates killing me and my mother contemplates killing herself. There are even times she begs me to kill her instead, she says that’s the way she would see it going down. She says, my hands around her neck, clenching and stealing her entering breath with a malicious smile as she cried my name was the way she always imagined herself dying.
My father says that he imagines killing me with his hands. He says that he’s just waiting for his opportunity and when it strikes, not even the power of God will stop him from killing his anti-Christ son. He stares at me and waits for me to lose control of my mind, and lately it’s been happening more and more. Mother, as much as she says she loves me, says that she’s going to send me off to live with this Aunt Katherine that I’ve never met before the day Ben tries to kill me.
I find myself thinking and pondering and questioning every time she tries to reassure me with this thought: If you wait until the day he tries to kill me, wouldn’t the opportunity to save me already have passed? And then I remind myself: She wants you to die. They both want you to die. Of course the opportunity will have passed. They’re waiting for it to pass. They want it to pass so you’re not a problem in their perfect existence anymore.
People say I should kill myself. I’ve tried. Sadly, as Ben puts it, if I can’t even kill myself, then what the fuck do I have to live for? And if I can’t kill those who scorn me, then why can’t I stop thinking about it? I spend the majority of my time plotting and writing it all down, but I never get around to actually executing the act.
Maybe I’m thinking too hard into it. Maybe I’m looking for some sort of relief. Maybe I’m waiting for the perfect time. Or maybe I am just a waste-of-space, freeloading son of a bitch.
People tell me every day that I should kill myself. People tell me every day that I should kill those who say that I should kill myself. My father contemplates killing me and my mother contemplates killing herself. There are even times she begs me to kill her instead, she says that’s the way she would see it going down. She says, my hands around her neck, clenching and stealing her entering breath with a malicious smile as she cried my name was the way she always imagined herself dying.
My father says that he imagines killing me with his hands. He says that he’s just waiting for his opportunity and when it strikes, not even the power of God will stop him from killing his anti-Christ son. He stares at me and waits for me to lose control of my mind, and lately it’s been happening more and more. Mother, as much as she says she loves me, says that she’s going to send me off to live with this Aunt Katherine that I’ve never met before the day Ben tries to kill me.
I find myself thinking and pondering and questioning every time she tries to reassure me with this thought: If you wait until the day he tries to kill me, wouldn’t the opportunity to save me already have passed? And then I remind myself: She wants you to die. They both want you to die. Of course the opportunity will have passed. They’re waiting for it to pass. They want it to pass so you’re not a problem in their perfect existence anymore.
People say I should kill myself. I’ve tried. Sadly, as Ben puts it, if I can’t even kill myself, then what the fuck do I have to live for? And if I can’t kill those who scorn me, then why can’t I stop thinking about it? I spend the majority of my time plotting and writing it all down, but I never get around to actually executing the act.
Maybe I’m thinking too hard into it. Maybe I’m looking for some sort of relief. Maybe I’m waiting for the perfect time. Or maybe I am just a waste-of-space, freeloading son of a bitch.
Kaden wiped a tear from her eye, her throat closing up as she tried to form a coherent thought to fit what she’d just read. He was dark – this was true, but he just as sad as anyone else could be. It was almost weird for her to be able to view Asher like a human being, capable of feeling and rejecting thought just like anyone else. He had potential and he had hardships as well as high points. He had contemplating thoughts and he had doubts. He felt hurt and sadness and anger just like she could.
She wiped her eyes and snapped her head up to stare at her door as someone knocked on it. She looked down at her phone, but found that she hadn’t any new messages since she last checked it. She hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten since she had started to thumb through and examine with depth all of his pictures. This passage was near the middle of the pile and she didn’t know how many pictures she had gone through to actually get to this entry.
Slowly, Kaden closed the sketchbook and buried it beneath the pillow as if she had to hide this from people like Asher silently expected her to. She was about to get up from her spot until she looked back down at the pillow and decided that burying it under the cushion was a better idea.
Pulling the door back and standing in the threshold, Kaden raked her eyes up the tall form of the owner of the sketchbook. With furrowing brows, Kaden cleared her throat, “What are you doing here?”
“Examining the sky at a different perspective – what do you think I’m doing here?” Asher cruelly joked through sarcasm as he gestured toward the sky and then back around Kaden.
Her eyes just stared at him as she pulled a smirk between her lips. Blinking, she bluntly replied, “I don’t need your sarcasm, okay?”
“Who says I was being sarcastic?” Asher braced his hand against the opened door, leaning into it as he leaned closer to her. There was a smirk present on his face as well.
“Oh, so this is you being charming?” Kaden blinked dramatically, opening her eyes up to stare at him with hardness.
That wicked smirk curled more around his lips as they parted to show perfectly white teeth. “I’m whatever you think I am, sweetheart.”
“And if I think you’re crazy?” she replied with a sense of challenge.
He chuckled slowly as his fingers fanned out against the wood of the door. A shrug lifted one of his shoulders before dropping it with a calming carelessness. “Everyone thinks that of me, I wasn’t expecting you to.”
Her humor sobered into confusion and realization. She cleared her throat and leaned against the door, almost to the point of her leaning under his ever closer lurking form. “You weren’t?”
“No, I thought you’d be a little more creative than that.” Asher slowly whispered out as he leaned around her, his hand pressing beside her head.
“And what if I’m not what you’re thinking?” Kaden swallowed slowly as she stared deep into those dark eyes with a tremble climbing her spine.
Asher could easily feel the growing tension in the air, the need for him to kiss her was spreading across her cheeks in a soft rosy blush. “I know I’m not.”
Kaden’s breath hitched as Asher began to lean a little closer. There was a need to lower her voice, to speak in a whisper for him to lean closer to hear it correctly. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
Asher was now the one to swallow whatever taste was in his mouth as he slowly dragged his foot across the threshold and pivoted his body in front of her. He searched through her eyes and nodded once as he took in the beautiful cherry wood brown they were. “I do know that after you looked through my drawings you thought I was just as normal as you.”
Slowly, Kaden pressed her hand to his chest and curled her fingers around the fabric, dragging him closer towards her. Her lips were moving softly with the nighttime air and whispering just loud enough to pierce his eardrums. “What if I don’t want you to be normal?”
He gulped as he pressed his chest into hers, his head turning down as her head tipped against the door and stared up into his eyes. He gripped the wrist that was at her side and pressed it into the wood of the door, his other hand pressing with gentle fingers against her neck. “What if I told you there was no going back from this point? What if I told you I needed to have you?”
Kaden’s breath hitched in anticipation. She had literally no clue as to what was going on with her. She wanted Asher so much that it burned her stomach with eagerness, a building want she couldn’t control. She wanted him to claim her, but the only thing that was stopping her was that this wasn’t how she usually acted. She needed and belonged with the kind of person Callum was. Someone who was innocent and promised not to hurt her, promised to always be loyal to her and love her with all of the force in the world. Asher could never promise her any of those things. In fact, he could probably promise the exact opposite of all of those.
She figured that was why she wanted him as badly as she did. “What if I told you to kiss me, Asher?”
His breath hitched when she said his name, his body pressing more into hers as he rolled his eyes back for a moment. When he opened them up again, he pressed his body completely against hers and started to lower his mouth to hers. He stopped once he was a breath away, whispering just as equally with need. “What if I told you all it would take was a kiss?”
♠ ♠ ♠
Wow, so... wow.I'm just going to say, I teared up writing the first half of this chapter. Asher's past is a very sad, very disgusting past and that makes it equally as anticipating to write it out for you. I hope this glimpse into his past was nice and helped you understand why he was always so cryptic. Kind of.
And how about that tension? Anyone else just dying for them to kiss yet? I know I am. ALL IN DUE TIME, MY LOVELIES. <3