Asher Fraser POV:

I hear her laugh before I even turn the corner—high-pitched, sugar-coated, the kind of laugh that doesn’t belong in our apartment. Not when you're supposed to be the one walking through that door.

Goddamnit, Ethan. I just wanted my damn coffee. And aspirin for the migraine I’ve been trying to push through. Maybe coffee wasn’t the best idea.

Ethan’s panic snaps me out of the fog.

“Shit.” He’s already half-strangled in his shirt, peeking through the peephole like maybe it’ll show someone else. “It’s her. It’s—fuck, it’s her.”

I glance toward the kitchen.

She’s still here—his mistake in your T-shirt, perched on the counter like she owns it, sipping from your mug with red lips that don’t belong anywhere near this apartment. Lipstick on his collar. Hair still messed up from what he swore never happened again.

Ethan spins toward the kitchen like he’s in some kind of sitcom panic. He grabs dishes, scrambling to clean the evidence, and flings open a cupboard.

I have to duck to avoid getting nailed in the face by the door.

“Careful,” I snap, straightening up. My 6’4” frame unfolds from where I’d leaned, tight with tension. I run a hand through my dark hair, fingers scraping my scalp as my brows draw together into a low, familiar frown.

“Just—fuck, Ash, I need you to cover.” He’s breathless, disoriented. “Keep her busy at the door. Stall her. Five minutes.”

“You want me to lie to her again?”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “It was a mistake. I was drunk. It won’t happen again.”

It never stops happening. You’ve been with him for three years, and he’s been ruining it since the first. And every time, I’m the one taping the cracks together so you won’t notice they were there at all.

I fucking hate this shit. This bullshit.

Ethan wants me to use my own blanket to cover the mess he made in his own damn bed - which of course he refuses to lie in. And because he’s like family—like my blood—I always did. By being enemy number one. By being so cruel, you were too angry with me to notice Ethan’s messed-up hair or the fact that there were more than two dirty plates and two half-full glasses laid out right now in the apartment he and I shared. So I do what I always do. Breathe in. Mask on. The one I wear on stage—the rockstar, the prick, the one who makes headlines for the wrong reasons. The villain.

I open the door.

And there you are.

Wind in your hair. Eyes wide with trust—not for me, never for me—for him. You're about to smile, but then you see me, and just like that, your jaw tightens. Your posture shifts. You brace for the fight I always bring.

I give you the smirk you’ve grown to hate. The one that makes your fist curl tight at your side. The one I wear to keep you from looking past me.

And I say it as loudly and as dismissively and as cruelly as I can make it.

“Oh, it’s Ethan’s never-ending April Fools’ joke. You know April was four months ago—you can stop showing up here like some abandoned puppy looking for its owner. Unless you want me to throw a ball to get rid of you?”

You flinch. Barely—but I catch it. You're angry... just like I planned.

Because that’s what I do, I play the villain. So you never notice the real monster is standing behind me, zipping up his jeans and shoving sex-doll Barbie out the fucking fire escape like she’s just another lie you’ll never hear about.