He looked at Asher’s hands where they rested in his lap. He knew those hands. He knew them better than he’d ever wanted to. Those hands had closed around his throat. Those hands had killed him — more than once, patient and certain. Those same hands saved him more than once too, and held him while he cried, and took him apart slowly in the dark until he forgot to be afraid.
Nobody else would ever know what that was like, because what those hands had done, there was no one left whocould— and there never would be.
Mine.
The thought arrived fully formed, and it was wrong, and Levi felt exactly how wrong it was. He knew the healthy version of this moment: the one where being someone’sonlyfeeling was a horror. The one where being coveted by a man like Asher Kane meant get to a door and run. He knew that read. He could have picked it up.
He didn’t.
He sat there instead and let the wrong thing stay, warm and low and proprietary, and the fear just folded in alongside it, because maybe he’d always be afraid of Asher’s hands, maybe that never went away, but the fear was his now too, like one more thing about Asher that no one else got to have.
And I love him.
Levi closed his eyes.
That was always going to happen. That isn’t the problem.
The problem is I’m not sure I want it to stop.
39
Add a Hunger Die
Player One
Asherwastryingtobe patient and understanding. He really was. He knew how sensitive and soft Levi was; he knew Levi was adjusting, and he was okay with that…mostly. He could wait for Levi to return physical affection this time. But Levi’s stomach was growlingloudly, and if he heard it growl again, he was going to lose his fucking mind.
Three times his body had told him it was hungry, and three times Levi had ignored it.
Why won’t you eat?
He’d been trying for two days. Eggs, soup, broth, bread. Different textures, different temperatures, different times of day. The broth stayed down for one sip. Everything else came back up. The tube was keeping Levi alive, but the tube wasn’t eating, and it was pissing him off, because Levi was treating his body like a machine to be maintained.
Levi was perfect and beautiful and everything Asher never knew he wanted, and he was treating himself like athing. Asher wanted to grab that tube and rip it out of his face, because a piece of plastic shouldn’t be feeding Levi. He should. That tube was another piece of wall between them. How could Levi ever need him the right way if he relied on fucking plastic to feed himself?
Something is wrong with you, and it’s not your throat, and it’s not the food. I’m going to figure out what it is.
Asher got out of bed, but Levi didn’t turn over. He went through the freezer — he’d looked at it two days ago, he knew what was in it. A bag of frozen vegetables. Two ice cube trays. A frost-burned pizza he wasn’t going to try. And behind the pizza, a pint of unopened vanilla ice cream, the cheap one with the cardboard lid. He grabbed it and a spoon.
Levi had turned over. He watched Asher come back from the kitchen with a pint of vanilla ice cream, and his face twisted up all cute, the same way it got whenever Asher surprised him with something new. Asher really wanted to grab his face and kiss him, but he reminded himself that he could do that later. He had never really been one for physical affection, but everything about Levi made his mind go wobbly and want pointless things and wastes of time.
“It’s six in the morning,” Levi croaked.
“I know.” Asher sat on the edge of the bed. He held the pint between his knees and let it soften. “We’re going to try something different.”
“I don’t want to throw up ice cream at six in the morning, Asher,” Levi said, rolling his eyes.
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” He dug the spoon in and let the ice cream sit on it, softening. “I want to tell you something while it melts. You don’t have to eat it yet. Just let me talk.”
Levi looked at the spoon. He looked at Asher. He pulled the blanket higher on his chest and didn’t say no, which was the closest thing to yes Asher was going to get.
“When I was eleven,” Asher began, running his fingers along Levi’s side and trying very hard not to smile when Levi didn’t flinch, “Marianne got a call from my father. He left when I was three to start over with someone else. Marianne hadn’t talked to him in years, and he just called out of the blue because his new kid — my half-brother — was turning eight and he wanted Marianne to know. I don’t know why. Maybe he wanted to hurt her. Maybe he just wanted someone to tell.”
“That seems cruel,” Levi said softly.