Confiding in You ϟ a.i.

Chapter 42

Ashton and I rush up the stairs two at a time, him ahead of me pushing everyone out of the way and stopping for nothing. Not even Cooper calling him or to apologize for elbowing someone in the face. I trip over my feet trying to keep up with him. Milly and Michael are no where to be found, lost somewhere in the crowd. We should probably find them, but he shows no concern for that either. He just wants to get away from the party.

We get up to my room and the door is closed. I shut it, didn't I? I had to, but I shut my eyes anyway while Ashton opens it. I swear, if there are people getting it on in my bed...

"Calum, get the hell out," Ashton grunts.

When I bring my sight back, instead of there being anything scarring in front of me, Calum is standing by himself and is staring back at us in shock. He has one of the photographs that were on my wall in his hands and it flutters down onto my desk as he lets go of it. There isn't any reason he could be snooping around my room, unless it has to do with Luke. Which can't be any good at all.

All Calum does for Luke is scheme. That's all he does. Help him carry out his plans of trying to get with me and, at this point, ruin my relationship. Nothing in my room could help him do that and I'm not about to add another thing to my long list of things to worry about, as much as I should.

"I-I was just--" He stammers, putting his hands behind his back. I cock my head at him and he averts his eyes, guilt overcoming his features.

"Save it, just get out of here," Ashton points toward the door, leaving Calum to scurry out just as Luke had, and he shuts it behind him with a bang. Over night, it seems, both of the boys have come to fear Ashton so much more than he had ever scared him before. There are no bruises on them, nothing to show why this would make sense, Nothing.

He looks around my room in a bit of an awe as soon as we're alone and steps further inside slowly. This is the first time he's really been in here other than the times I overslept and he was picking me up. We spend the majority of time in his room and, it never occurred to me, so little in mine. The door can finally be closed and he has this big smile, like a child waking up on Christmas.

I lean against the door, watching him bend down at my bookcase from afar. His copy of Spiderman that he left in my bookbag is sitting on top, but he ignores it. He starts to pull out the books and reads the backs of them to himself.

From behind me, the bass of whatever song is playing shakes the rest of the house. Here, though, the floor is stable. There is no catastrophic, dangerous party going on. It's just us. Me and Ashton.

He goes through at least ten books, reading their summaries and then putting them back where they were. The silence while he reads isn't full of judgement like the time at the bookstore in the summer. It's full of something new and weird, something unexplainable. When he stands, he takes the last book he was holding with him and taps the top of it with his knuckles.

"I'm going to read this," his voice is still thick with the influence of alcohol and he gives me a crooked grin.

"You're going to read Twenty Boy Summer?" I can't help but laugh. The last time a boy looked at the summary of that book was back in California, before everything happened. A boy in my lab group named Jake took it from me, read the first line, made a face and put it back in my hands. He shook his head at me and said it was the girliest book he's seen. It was disgusting to him.

He and Ashton are so similar; their obsession with partying and weed and sleeping around. There's absolutely no way Ashton would enjoy it.

"Yeah, if it will make you read Spiderman," He sets the book, a heart made out of sea glass on the cover, on top of his comic book. I should have guessed he had alterior motives.