Asher didn't sleep at all. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and he could hear the others coming out of their RV. He glanced down at Mina, gently shifted his arm from under her, pulled on his pants, and went to the door. "Pack up." He ordered. "I want to be ready to go in an hour." They all nodded and got to work, putting the slides in and hooking the SUVS back up to the RVs to be towed. They never said anything or questioned him, but he did catch the dirty look Eric gave him before he got to work. Deciding to address that later, he returned to the bedroom and climbed back in with Mina.
Less than an hour later, he heard Les come aboard, and the RV rumbled to life. He was about to get up when Mina shifted and moaned softly. Seeing she was waking up, he put a little space between them, not sure how much of her asking him to stay was because of the sleeping pills. Spotting him next to her, she sat up and glared at him.
"You behaved like an ass." She said quietly. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have Les bring me to the nearest airport and disappear?"
"I have several reasons; I'm not sure they are good enough to make you stay." He pushed himself up, so he was sitting next to her. "Because honestly, half of them make it sound like I'm trying to excuse my actions, and the rest sound like pathetic attempts to manipulate you into staying."
"Are you trying to excuse it or manipulate me?"
"Not excuse it. There isn't an excuse. I essentially had a fight or flight response to my emotions and chose flight." He took a deep breath and shook his head. "Manipulate you, maybe."
Mina chewed on her lower lip. He still wasn't looking at her. "Keep going; if you can't give me a reason to stay, then tell me why." Remembering something her cousin, a school teacher, had told her about getting boys to open up and talk versus getting girls to open up and talk, she shifted, so she was next to him, fixing it so she wasn't looking at him and he wasn't looking at her.
Asher swallowed. "When I came and looked in your eyes, all I could see was trust and… I called it devotion, but I don't know if that's right, and I felt this warm, caring, and protective feeling come over me, and it dialed my orgasm up to eleven. After, I wanted to hold you, kiss you and make you promise you'll never leave me. That I would prove that I deserved you, I also wanted to be as far away from you as possible because I'm not supposed to feel these things, and feeling them scared me."
"It scared me because you shouldn't trust me or have feelings for me. I kidnapped you. It's more likely that you think I'm the lesser of two evils, or Stockholm syndrome or some kind of weird hero complex. And the end result of all of this will be you going back to your life, and I'm left feeling empty again. So yes, I'm probably trying to manipulate you because I want you to stay. Everything I do is about me and what I gain out of it. I'm a very selfish person Mina."
"Why'd you come back?" She decided to ignore his declaration of selfishness for the time being.
"Because I told you "if it made you happy I'd seriously consider it" and instead I hurt you and made you cry. I couldn't live with myself if you chose to leave and something happened to you because of my actions. I was hoping I'd be able to explain things, beg for your forgiveness and at the very least you'd stay and let me continue to keep you safe until this is finished."
"Okay, I understand a little better now and I know Les and Joe have probably been pushing you to explain your childhood to make me forgive you, but you don't have to, not if you're not ready or you don't want to."
"If you want to know, I'll tell you. I promised I would."
"It has to be because you want to and I'm saying that because I don't know how or why I'm feeling things right now. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I one hundred percent trust you to keep me safe, to help me, and to respect me in the bedroom and outside it. Yes, you kidnapped me, but you also removed the bracelet immediately when I started to panic. You accepted my deal, laid ground rules and boundaries, and agreed to mine without hesitation, and have not once stepped across them, even going so far as to offer to move to the other RV if that's what I wanted."
"I can't promise I won't want to leave when this is over because I don't know how I feel. I don't think it's a hero complex, because I don't think you're a hero, I don't think it's Stockholm Syndrome because I'm willing to leave if I feel I have to and I definitely don't think you're the lesser of two evils because I don't think you're evil."
"I can say you really fucking hurt me last night. Getting up and walking away after sex that way, not only made me question what I had done wrong, but it also ruined the whole evening." Mina's voice cracked and tears slipped down her face. "It was probably the best ever and you ruined it."
Asher looked over, saw she was crying, and pulled her into his arms. "I know. I know I did and I'm so sorry. It was the best ever for me to Princess and I fucked it up. I'm sorry." She didn't try to fight her way out of his arms and after a few minutes of letting him hold her, her hands slid up around his neck.
"If anything is going to come out of this Asher, I need you to communicate with me. If you can't at the moment and you need space to think, that's fine, just tell me that's what you need. As long as I have an idea of what's going on and that you're going to talk to me about it later, I can handle it."
"I will, I promise." He kissed the rope of her head and hugged her tightly. "Are we okay?"
The hesitancy in his voice made Mina feel for him. "Mostly. I need some time to process some things."
"I can give you that."