“Thanks.” I grab them from his hand. He bends down and grabs my bag next. I hadn’t realized I’d dropped it. “Hey!” I say when he starts to open the paper that fell out of the front pocket. He ignores me, glancing at it before he shoves it back into my bag, only for his hand to come back out with my phone.

“It’s going off.” The phone vibrates in his hand. He stares down at the screen. I grab my bag from him and hold my hand out for it. “Someone is popular.” He finally hands it over.

“Right,” I say dryly. “I have a final to study for.” Asher’s eyes flick up and down me. They narrow. I feel like a bug under a microscope.

“You’ll join us for dinner?” Tomas asks. I nod before I flee up the stairs. I’m not going to leave my mom alone to face him even if she has Tomas at her side.

Asher is a big old jerk. A very handsome jerk. Far more handsome than I’d realized from some of his pictures. Though in the pictures I’ve seen, he was more of a boy. In them, he looked my age possibly. But that’s no longer reality; now he’s a man. One that clearly despises not only my mom but me too.

4

Asher

What the fuck was that? The smell of sweet honey still lingers even after the girl has made her escape. I can still feel the softness of her small, warm body against mine.

“You could have introduced yourself.” My father's irritation bleeds through his words. “Molly is a sweet girl.”

“What does that mean?” I tear my gaze away from the stairs Molly escaped up to get far away from me as quickly as she could. I think that little mouse was listening to what my father and I had been talking about. I stare down my father, waiting for an answer. My irritation grows, which I didn’t think was possible at this point. Why am I so pissed at what he’s saying?

“She’s a sweet girl. Quiet. Don’t be an asshole to her.”

There it is again. That irritation is growing, but this time I can pinpoint it. It’s the word sweet that’s pissing me off.

“I’m not going to be an asshole.” Besides, the dark-haired Molly doesn’t look like her mother at all. She’s short and curvy with the darkest green eyes I’ve ever seen.

“It might be too late if she heard anything we were talking about.” Shit. How much had she heard?

“Is she always that skittish?” I find myself asking. Or it could be that she heard enough that she wants to be as far away from me as possible. I can’t say I blame her.