Chapter 39

“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore,” I’d said.

Silence followed. The air cooled and grew thick with tension.

Then, voice very low, Asher replied, “What?”

Suddenly he was standing, and I was too. Everything felt like a dream, distant and hazy. I couldn’t think clearly.

Yet even with the fog, Asher’s piercing, alarmed gaze shot through me.

“Just for a while,” I amended. “Until I can get my head on straight.”

“Cynthia.” He stepped closer.

I held up my hand. He stopped at once.

“I’m so tired, Asher. Physically and emotionally. I don’t know what to think right now.” I rubbed at my eyes, smearing my makeup.

I wanted to go back home, crawl under my covers, and forget everything Joseph had said to me.

“Okay, Cyn.” Asher sounded so unbelievably soft that my heart positively melted. Could he really just be pretending, like Joseph suggested?

A tear slid down my cheek and Asher made a wounded noise.

“My wolf doesn’t like that we caused you distress,” he said. Lower, he added, “Neither do I.”

He hates me. And here I was giving him even more trouble.

“If I agree to stay away from you for a little while, like you want…” He didn’t sound at all happy about it. “Then you have to swear to me that you will keep away from Joseph, too.”

The notion of distance from Asher, even though it had been all my idea, was so all-consuming, that I’d barely given Joseph a second thought. Staying away from him was no great ask.

“I swear I will,” I said.

Asher sighed, long and slow. “I don’t understand this, but… I’ll do as you ask.”

Back under my blankets, I couldn’t stop thinking about Asher. I wanted him to hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay.

But Joseph’s words haunted me. Asher could hate me from troubling him so much. He had to make sacrifices to protect me that he never should have had to.

I couldn’t change the past, but I could make sure that in the future I was less demanding.

Like now. With this distance.

I groaned. It had only been twelve hours, and I missed him already.

As much as I wanted to spend another all-day session in bed, if I stayed here, I’d only think about Asher.

No, I had to get out and do something.

To distract myself, I let my mind wander to the mystery of Aimee. Maybe with this new free time, I could find out what really happened to her.

I knew I should let it go, but I just… couldn’t.

I would want someone to find me if I was lost.

Resolved, I crawled out of bed, dressed, and made my way to Aimee’s dorm.

In the lounge, I spotted someone whom I recognized from Aimee’s social media. She wasn’t one of Aimee’s four remaining friends, but she must have been once, to be in so many of Aimee’s pictures.

She sat alone reading a couch tucked in the corner of the room. She glanced up at me, wary, when I approached.

“Something you need?” she asked, not even lowering her book.

I looked around, checking no one was in earshot. Then I leaned closer. “I was hoping to ask you about Aimee.”

She snapped her book closed. “Why? So you can join in the mocking?”

“No,” I said at once. I quickly explained about how the history professor sent me to look for her. “She’ll fail out if she doesn’t show up for midterms.”

“Seems like she doesn’t have much interest in staying,” the girl said. “Maybe she’d be better off.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

I looked at this girl, at the protective fire in her eyes. Maybe they weren’t friends anymore but they had been once, of that I was sure.

So I said, “And I don’t think you do either.”

The girl glared at the cover of her book.

“If you can tell me what happened,” I continued. “Then maybe I can help her. I just want to be her friend.”

The girl still seemed unsure. “People mock her everywhere she goes. You sure you want to be involved in that? You might get caught in the crossfire.”

“Is that what happened to you?” I asked.

She dropped her chin. “I wasn’t a good enough friend to tough it out. I think my delaying the inevitable hurt her worse than if I’d just left right away like everyone else. She trusted me to stay, and I…”

Guilt twisted her face. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Help her now,” I said. “If she fails out, she won’t get another chance.”

“Why do you care so much?”

I couldn’t answer that without giving my secret away, so I said, “Everybody needs help sometime.”

It wasn’t near enough, but the girl seemed so guilt-stricken that she accepted the reasoning, weak as it was.

“Alright,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

I replied, “Everything.”

The story started simple enough. Aimee had a serious boyfriend, a year older. He was already a sophomore at the Academy when she was just entering.

She discovered she was pregnant in her first week.

The boyfriend – the girl said his name but I didn’t recognize him – dumped Aimee as soon as he found out.

“Aimee never told me who the father was,” the girl said. “But I’d known her since high school. I knew who she was dating. I could figure out the timeline. He denied it later of course, and said she cheated.”

“You don’t believe that?” I asked.

“Not a chance. He has a lot of ambition,” the girl told me. “Too much, maybe. You know how that type is. He probably thought a family too young would hold him back.”

Images of Joseph flashed through my mind. Once, he had cornered me in his room and demanded I get an abortion. He had changed since then, but… I would never forget the look of disgust on his face.

If Asher hadn’t come to my rescue…

Asher.

I rubbed at a phantom pain in my chest.

“She tried to go it alone for a while,” the girl continued. “None of us really knew what was happening. We just thought she was getting fat. But then…”

She frowned harder. “We found her in the bathroom, right there down the hall.” She pointed.

“There was so much blood… and we saw… It was obvious what had happened. What she had done to herself.”

She shook her head. “She went to the hospital, but the damage was done. The baby was dead, and any secret she’d been trying to protect was out there for the world to know.”

I crossed an arm protectively over my waist.

“The bullying came soon after,” she continued. “I could never find out what was the root source, exactly. Maybe people didn’t like being deceived. Or because of the way she… aborted.”

She took a shaky breath. “Or maybe it was because she got pregnant at all. Hypocrites. Like it couldn’t happen to any of them.”

The thought made me cold all over. If that were true, was this how I could expect to be treated when my pregnancy came to light?

“Now, her reputation is ruined and she hides in her room all day.” The girl finished in a rush. “And that’s the whole story. Are you happy, now?”

“No,” I said.

The harshness in the girl’s tone faded. “Yeah. Me, either.”

I left the girl and went to the elevator. On the fifth floor, I found Aimee’s room.

I knocked. And I waited. But Aimee never answered.

Fear tremored through me.

Was this my future?