“You ready?” he asks finally.
No. “Yes.”
We walk to the garage without speaking. The car feels too sleek, too silent, the leather of the seats cold against the backs of my thighs. Asher starts the engine. The radio is off. The absence of sound presses in.
I can feel his presence beside me the way I always do—solid, grounding, familiar. But it also feels like he’s a hundred miles away, sitting behind invisible glass.
The drive starts quiet. Streetlights blur past. Buildings turn into gray smears. The city feels like it’s holding its breath.
The silence goes from awkward to suffocating within minutes.
“This is weird,” I say.
Asher glances at me briefly, then back at the road. “What is?”
“You. Me. This.” I wave a hand vaguely in the space between us. “You’ve been… distant.”
He tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “I’ve been here every day.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” The frustration in my chest rises, thick and unwieldy. “You’rephysicallyhere, Asher. You’re always physically here. But a few weeks ago it felt like—” My throat closes around the words. “It felt like we had… something. And now it feels like you’re halfway out the door every time we’re alone.”
His jaw flexes. The muscle there jumps once, twice. I watch his knuckles whiten on the wheel.
“A few weeks ago,” he says slowly, “Xavier wasn’t in a hospital bed because I didn’t get to him fast enough.”
Guilt. It splinters through his voice, through the line of his shoulders. I knew it was there, humming under his skin, but hearing it out loud makes my chest ache.
“You’re not responsible for what happened to him,” I say.
“I’m responsible for the people under my protection,” he counters. “Always have been. Always will be.”
“And I’m responsible for the Raiders now,” I say. “By that logic, everything that goes wrong is my fault too, and we both know that’s not how this works or I’d already be six feet under from the weight of it.”
He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes stay fixed on the road, jaw locked, throat working.
“What are we doing, then?” I push. “What areyoudoing? Because I feel like I’m reaching across this… gap, and every time I get close, you add another mile.”
A muscle twitches in his cheek. “We can’t…”
“We can’t what?” I press.
He exhales, a harsh, ragged sound. “We can’t have anything. Not while Xavier is like this.”
The words land like a slap.
I stare at him, trying to pull oxygen into my lungs. “Is that what you think this is?Having somethinglike it’s a luxury item on a shelf you can pick up later?”
He flinches, barely. “Val?—”
“We’re not talking about dating,” I say, voice tight. “We’re not talking about some stupid label. I’m talking about the fact that afew weeks ago I felt like I could lean on you without wondering if you were going to vanish. I’m talking about the fact that you looked at me like I was more than a job. And now you’re… polite. Careful. Distant.”
His hands flex on the wheel. “I can’t want you while he’s lying in that bed because I wasn’t fast enough. Because I didn’t stop it. Because the last time I took my eyes off what mattered, my best friend took a bullet.”
The car fills with those words. Heavy. Irrefutable.
He swallows, eyes still on the road. “My guilt won’t let me move forward with… anything that isn’t keeping you alive and getting him back.”
There it is. Not a rejection. Not really. Just a wall he’s built out of penance.