Intertwined

Chapter 20

The curtain is wavering in the wind escaping through the open window and I'm cold, but I don't have enough energy to get up and close it.

I feel powerless; like an empty shell, trying to keep from closing in on it-self.

It's funny really, how someone you've barely just met and never really knew can have such a big impact on you.

Asher entered my life and whirled through it like a tornado; catching me in the eye of it as it went along and leaving me stuck in love with his breathtakingly, sorrowful and haunting eyes. Even now, huddled up in my bed, fighting countless oncoming dry sobs, they are still all I can think about.

Love.

In love.

My breath hitches in my throat.

The realization of the depth of Asher's hold on me brings on another wave of sorry, or is it grief? I've stopped being able to tell the difference between the two; they're both equally torturing and seemingly frequent intruders in my life.

Ever since Asher.

There's one upside to it all it seems; with Asher's words still fresh in mind the pain of it has managed to overshadow the age old would left behind after my father's passing.

I don't know how long I've been lying here; I've lost track of time. I feel as if I'm stuck in a deep dark spiral of endless depressing moments.

And that's exactly how he finds me, as he climbs back inside my open window, closes it behind him and takes a seat on the side of my bed: curled up in bed, sobbing my eyes out and tending to my runny nose.

"Shit." His hands are on me before I can object to it, stroking clumsily over my hair with shaking hands, as if he doesn't quite know what to do with him-self. The shock of his touch jolts me. "Don't cry. Please don't cry, Charlie."

"What are you doing here?" I wince at the croak in my voice, wishing it to go away.

"I needed to apologize," he tells me, catching me off guard, as he reaches for a tear tumbling down my cheek.

I push myself up on the bed, until my back is resting again the headboard, and stare at him with wonder. Asher has never been the type of person who would return to the scene of a crime or come crawling back to someone, yet here he is, speaking the one word I thought I would never hear fall from his lips. "I don't get why you're so upset, but I see it and I don't like it." If I ever thought my heart would catch a break I would have been sincerely wrong: it aches as the echo of Asher's words take residence in it.

"I don't understand."

"I'm sorry; for what I said and for how I reacted and for every other shitty situation I've put you through. Just please don't cry," he begs, sounding almost desperate to stop the waterworks. "Please."

"It's okay," I tell him softly, the stream of tears subsiding.

"No it's not."

I'm about to argue, but he cuts me off before I have a chance to: "If it was okay you wouldn't be crying right now."

"Asher -" I start to say, but he cuts me off again, seemingly unwilling to let me get a word across.

"I came back because I couldn't bare the thought that I had ruined this; whatever the fuck it is, or even just the chance of it, because this is the only fucking time I'm happy," he tells me, his eyes finding mine in the darkness. I want to laugh, because if being with me is the only times that Asher is happy then he sure has a twisted way of showing it, with all the arguing and yelling and frustration that usually follow one of our hangouts. "I need a second chance, at whatever this fucking thing is."