Page 120 of Gravehouse

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t know why you both lied and didn’t just say you were his son. Unless,” I lift a single finger. “Parker didn’t know you were his?”

“—You can do better than that,” he answers dryly.

Asshole.

This is going to be a long day. “I don’t know. Fill me in.”

He drags a hand down his face. “You’ll figure it out, Ivy.”

“It’s okay,” I whisper, but he tries to move out of my grip.

I force him back down to me. “I don’t need to know.”

His eyes widen. “You do, but it just can’t be me to tell you.”

“I know you’re not like him, Asher.” Guilt weighs down my words for even asking him that in the first place. “I saw it every single day how much you didn’t engage with him, I just want to know why. Why you put yourself there if you despised him so much?”

His hand slips behind my head, as if he’s afraid I’ll run. “I was there foryou,Ivy. Not him. Not Camille. Not anyone else but fucking you.”

My brows cross. “What?”

He traces the choker over my neck, and my eyes fall to the faint scar on his.

“Mine. You’re never leaving me.” The words rip out of him and the muscles in his neck tense when he swallows.

I place my hand over his as my answer.

His grip on the chain tightens. “That’s an order, Ivy, not a declaration.”

“Okay!” I answer quickly, because I know. I know I can’t leave him even if I wanted to. And I have wanted to. Many times. “So, La Maison Du Mal, is this another family?”

He pushes up to his full height with a dry laugh, like the idea is so fucked it’s almost funny. “I wish.”

“Why would you wish? Playhouse isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.”

Which means he’s either more fucked up than I thought, or he doesn’t know enough about what I do.

Time slows as he turns over his shoulder. “Because killing one-thousand trained assassins would be much easier than going up against even justonemember of La Maison Du Mal.”

Nothing. I have nothing to answer back to that, so I stand in place, mouth open.

I force myself to move forward. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“You believe me?” he asks, his eyes softening, as if I’ve given him something he’s wanted all along.

I dampen my bottom lip. It’s not like I have a choice, since my soul decided to trust him long before my heart did. “I believe you.”

Threading our fingers together, he tugs me onto his lap.

I swing my legs over to either side so I’m straddling him and bury my hand in his hair.

“Mmmm, fuck you feel good.” his eyes roll back, tension rolling off him with every twitch of his muscles. “We have to break up.”

I pull back. “What?”

“I was on the phone with him today. That’s who you saw me talking with. Emeric has been in hiding since the beginning. No one has seen him. Except you, of course.”

“So what did he want?” It makes sense more than him not replying to my texts. I would have sat with that for weeks, months, if Asher didn’t just tell me this.